The Dance of Time

And why bother? These were the only two ironclads the Malwa had built on the Indus. Once they were destroyed, they had no way—no quick and easy way, at least—to bring their ironclads from the other rivers. All of the rivers in the Punjab connected to the Indus eventually—but only at the Iron Triangle.

Which was held by the Romans. Who had an ironclad of their own. Which they had not dared to use because of these two ironclads. Which would shortly no longer exist.

"Do it," the emperor commanded.

* * *

He did not participate personally in the charge and the battle that followed. He was brave enough, certainly, but doing so was unnecessary—would even be even foolish. Persians did not expect their emperors to be warriors also.

What they did expect was that their emperors would present them with victories.

* * *

The ironclads burned very nicely. Khusrau had worried, a bit, that they might not. But the Malwa built them the same way the Romans did, just as Menander and Justinian had said they would. An iron shell over a wooden hull.

Burned very nicely, indeed.

Almost as nicely as the emperor's victory would burn in the hearts of his soldiers, after he returned to his camp. Where the sahrdaran and vurzurgan who had insisted on that insane assault—the emperor himself had been doubtful, and made sure everyone knew it—would be low-spirited and shamefaced.

As well they should be.

* * *

"I don't care if those sorry bastards up north are getting hammered by the Kushans!" General Samudra shouted at the mahaveda priest. Angrily, he pointed a finger to the west. "I've got Persians hammering on me right here! They just destroyed our ironclads on the Indus!"

The priest's face was stiff. He was one of several such whom Great Lady Sati had left behind to keep an eye on the military leadership. Without, however, giving them the authority to actually over-ride any military decisions made by Samudra.

From the priests' point of view, that was unfortunate. From Samudra's point of view, it was a blessing. What priests knew about warfare could be inscribed on the world's smallest tablet.

"Absolutely not!" he continued, lowering his voice a little but speaking every bit as firmly. "I've already sent couriers with orders to the expedition I sent in relief to turn back. We need them here."

The priest wasn't going to give up that easily. "The Kushans are out of the Margalla Pass, now!"

"So what?" sneered Samudra. "Fifteen thousand Kushans—twenty at most, and don't believe that nonsense about fifty thousand—can't do anything to threaten us here. Sixty—maybe seventy—thousand Romans and Persians can."

"They can threaten Great Lady Sati!"

For a moment, that caused Samudra to pause. But only for a moment, before the sneer was back.

"Don't meddle in affairs that you know nothing about, priest. If you think the Kushans are going to leave their kingdom unprotected while they hare off trying to intercept the Great Lady—"

He shook his head, the way a man does upon hearing an absurd theory or proposition. "Ridiculous. Besides, by now she'll have reached the headwaters of the Sutlej. That's a hundred miles from the Margalla Pass. It would take an army of twenty thousand men—assuming they have that many to begin with—a week and a half to cover the distance."

He cleared his throat sententiously. "Had you any experience in these matters, you would understand that a large army cannot travel faster than ten miles a day."

He hoped the words didn't ring as false to the priest as they did to him, the moment he said them. That ten mile a day average was...

An average. No more, no less. It did not apply to every army. Samudra had had Kushan forces under his command, in times past, and knew that a well-trained and well-led Kushan army could march two or three times faster than that—even while fighting small battles and skirmishes along the way.

Still...

"By the time they got to the headwaters of the Sutlej—assuming they were foolish enough to make the attempt in the first place—Great Lady Sati's forces will have already reached the headwaters of the Ganges. It's conceivable, I suppose, that the Kushans might be mad enough to venture so far into the northern Punjab, but no enemy force—not that size!—will be lunatic enough to enter the Ganges plain. The garrison at Mathura alone has forty thousand men!"

The priest stared at him from under lowered brows. Clearly enough, he was not persuaded by Samudra's arguments. But, just as clearly, he did not have the military knowledge to pick apart the logic. So, after a moment, he turned and walked away stiffly.

Samudra, however, did have the knowledge. And, now that he thought upon the matter more fully, be was becoming more uneasy by the minute.