In the Heart of Darkness

Fortunately for him, the alertness of the Ye-tai was directed inward rather than outward—toward the common soldiers they were rounding up and driving into the streets. Scouring the streets and alleys was beneath the dignity of Ye-tai. That was dog work, for common troops. Their job was to whip the dogs.

At first, as he watched the massive search operation which began unfolding in the capital, Belisarius was concerned that he would be spotted before he could make his escape from Kausambi. But, soon enough, his fears ebbed. After a half an hour, in fact—a half hour spent darting from one alley to another, heading west by a circuitous route—Belisarius decided that the whole situation was almost comical.

The explosion of the armory had roused every soldier in the Malwa capital, of every type and variety. And since there were a huge number of troops stationed in Kausambi, the streets of the city were soon thronged with a mass of soldiers. But the soldiers were utterly confused, and largely leaderless. Leaderless, not from lack of officers, but because the officers themselves had little notion what, exactly, they were supposed to do. But they didn't want to seem to be doing nothing—especially under the hard eyes of Ye-tai—so the officers sent their men scurrying about aimlessly. Soon enough, the masses of troops charging and counter-charging about the city had become so hopelessly intermingled that any semblance of disciplined formation vanished.

Watching the scene, Belisarius realized that he was witnessing one of the military weaknesses of the Malwa Empire. The Malwa, because of their social and political structure, had no real elite shock troops. The Malwa kshatriya, who had a monopoly of the gunpowder weapons, functioned more as privileged artillery units than elite soldiers. The Ye-tai, for all their martial prowess, were not really an elite corps either. Their position in the Malwa army was essentially that of security battalions overseeing the common troops, rather than a spearhead. And the Rajputs, or Kushans—who could easily have served the Malwa as elite troops—were too distrusted.

The end result was that the Malwa had no body of soldiers equivalent to his own Thracian bucellarii. And for the task of hunting down a foreign fugitive in the streets of a great city like Kausambi—especially at night, in pouring rain—a relatively small body of disciplined, seasoned men would have done much better than the hordes of common troops whom the Malwa had sent floundering into action.

So, with relatively little difficulty, Belisarius managed to get almost to the outskirts of Kausambi within that first hour. Three times, during the course of his journey, he encountered platoons of Malwa soldiers. Each time, he handled the situation by the simple expedient of commanding them to search a different alley.

The Malwa troops, hearing authoritative words from an authoritative figure, never thought to question his right to issue the orders. True, they did not recognize his uniform. But, between the darkness and the rainstorm, it was hard to make out the details of uniforms anyway. Every soldier in the streets of Kausambi that night looked more like a half-drowned rat than anything else. And besides, the Malwa empire was a gigantic conglomeration of subject nations and peoples. No doubt the man was an officer of some kind. His Hindi was fluent—better than that of the soldiers in two of those platoons, in fact—and only an officer would conduct himself in that arrogant, overbearing manner. Malwa troops had long since been hammered into obedience, and they reacted to Belisarius like well-trained nails.

Then, finally, he found his lone Ye-tai. Hiding in some shrubbery near the mouth of an alley, Belisarius watched a squad of Ye-tai hounding a mob of soldiers down one of the large streets which formed a perimeter for the outskirts of Kausambi. As they passed the alley, one of the barbarians split off from his comrades and stepped into it. Belisarius drew back further into the shadows, until, watching the man, he realized that his moment had arrived. The Ye-tai was big—big enough, at least—and, best of all, he was about to provide Belisarius with the perfect opportunity. The Ye-tai moved ten feet into the alley, turned to face one of the mudbrick hovels which formed the alley's walls, and began preparing to urinate.