The Tide of Victory

Lord Damodara shook the thought away, as he had so often before. The asuras had been evil creatures. However ferocious in combat, Rana Sanga could not be accused of the same. Not by any sane man, at least; and whatever else Damodara was, he was most certainly sane.

The Malwa general heaved a very faint, very controlled sigh. And that is perhaps all I am. Sane. He turned away from the sight of his silent, seething, enraged subordinate and studied the new maps which had been brought to the command tent. Damodara's keen mind found comfort in those maps. The lines drawn upon them were clean and precise. Quite unlike the human territory which they so glibly claimed to represent.

Honor. Morality. Those are for others. For me, there is only sanity.

"There is no leeway in the orders, Rana Sanga," he said harshly. "None whatsoever."

Sanga was now glaring at an idol perched on a small pedestal next to the tent's entrance. The very expensive ivory carving was a miniature statue of the four-armed, three-headed and three-eyed god called Virabhadra. In each of his hands, the god bore a bow, an arrow, a shield and a sword. The weapons were all made of pure gold. A necklace of sapphire skulls adorned his bare chest, and each cyclops eye was a ruby. The scarlet color of the gems seemed to reflect Sanga's rage with blithe indifference.

Virabhadra had once been a minor god, one of Siva's variations. But the Mahaveda cult which dominated the Malwa empire's new version of Hinduism had elevated him to much higher status. Damodara rather loathed the statue, himself, despite its value. But it helped to keep the ever-suspicious priests of Malwa from prying too closely into his affairs.

"I have already come under criticism for my methods of suppressing rebellion here in eastern India," he added softly. He gestured at one of the scrolls on his large desk. "I received that from Nanda Lal just two days ago. The emperor's spymaster is wondering why we have made such infrequent use of impalement."

Sanga tore his eyes away from the statue. "That idiot," he snarled, utterly oblivious to the fact that he was insulting one of the emperor's close kinsmen in front of another. For some reason—or, rather, a reason he chose not to examine closely—Damodara found that unthinking trust something of a small treasure in its own right.

Sanga began pacing back and forth in the command tent. His steps, as always, were as light and powerful as a tiger's. And his voice carried the rumbling undertones of the same predator of the forest.

"We have spilled a river of blood across this land," he growled. "Here, and in half of Bengal also. Stacked heads in small piles at the center of a hundred villages. And then burned the villages. And for what?"

He paused, for a moment, and glared at the closed flap of the tent as if he could see the ravaged countryside beyond. "To be sure, the rebellion is suppressed. But it will flare up again, soon enough, once we are gone. Does that—that—" Teeth clenched: "—spymaster really think that impaling a rebel instead of decapitating him will serve us for magic?"

Damodara shrugged. "In a word: yes. Nanda Lal has always been a firm believer in the value of terror. As much as Venandakatra, the truth be told, even if he does not take Venandakatra's personal pleasure in the doing."

Mention of Venandakatra's name, inevitably, stoked the Rajput's rage. But Damodara did not regret the doing of it. Rana Sanga, in the privacy of Damodara's tent, could afford to rage. Lord Damodara had no such luxury himself. There was no superior in front of whom he could pace like a tiger, snarling his fury at bestial cruelty. Damodara had no superiors, beyond Nanda Lal and the emperor himself. And the being from the future called Link which ruled them in turn. Nanda Lal and Emperor Skandagupta would—at best—immediately remove Damodara from command were he to express such sentiments to them. The thing would almost certainly do worse.

"My family is in Kausambi now, you know," he said softly. "All of them. I just got a letter from my wife yesterday. She is not pleased with the climate in the capital—it's particularly hard on my parents—but she says the emperor has provided them with a very fine mansion. Plenty of room, even with three children."

The quiet words seemed to drain Sanga's anger away, as quickly as water pouring out of a broken basin.

"So soon?" he murmured.

Damodara shrugged and spread his hands widely. The lithe gesture brought a peculiar little pleasure to him. After the past two years of arduous campaigning—first in Persia, and then in eastern India—the formerly rotund little Malwa general was almost as fit as any of his Rajput soldiers.