The Tide of Victory

Kungas chimed in again. This time, not as a husband correcting his wife, but as a king allied with his queen. "Yes. And under our rule, all of Transoxiana will flourish anew. Bukhara, Samakhand, Tashkent—our cities, they will be, reborn from the ashes. And great metropolises they will become, to rival Constantinople or Ctesiphon or Kausambi."

All the Kushan generals, as was their custom, were now tugging the tips of their goatees. Vima and Huvishka were even fondling their topknots, the sure sign of a Kushan warrior lost deep in thought.

"Difficult," murmured Vasudeva. "Difficult." His goatee-tugging became vigorous. "Beyond Transoxiana lie the great steppes. Time after time, fierce tribes have come sweeping down from that vastness, burning and pillaging all in their wake. No one has ever managed to stymie them, for more than a century or two. We ourselves came from that place, and were in turn overrun by the Ye-tai after civilization made us soft. Why would it not happen again?"

Irene laughed. With delight, not sarcasm. As was true of any enthusiast trained in the dialectic of Socrates, nothing pleased her more than a well-posed question. Like a fat lamb it was, stretched bleating on the altar.

"Guns, Vasudeva! Guns! Those steppe nomads have never been numerous. You know as well as I that the accounts of `hordes' are preposterous. It was always their mounted mobility combined with archery which made them so formidable. But firearms are superior to bows, and no primitive nomads can make the things. Once civilization became armed with guns, the threat from the steppes vanished soon enough."

She leaned forward. This time, her enthusiasm was so great that she barely noticed the pain that movement caused her. "I spent many hours, with Belisarius, speaking with the Talisman of God. Let me now pass on to you what the Talisman told me of the future. Of a great nation that would someday have been called Russia, and how it conquered the steppes."

And so, until long after nightfall, Irene told her Kushans of the great realm they would create. The realm that she called by the odd name of Siberia. A realm which would be created slowly, not overnight. More by traders and explorers and missionaries than armies of conquest—though armies would also come, when needed, from the secure fastnesses of the great mountains which bred them. Slowly, but surely for all that.

Let the Kushans avoid entanglements with Indians and Persians, and there was no power to stymie their purpose in Siberia. The distant Chinese, as ever, were preoccupied with their own affairs. The other power that might contest the area, the nation that would have been called Russia in a different future, was still centuries from birth. Whether it would be born in this new future was not something which Irene could foresee. But, even if it were, it would remain forever on the far side of the Urals. Siberia, with all the great wealth in its vast expanse, would be Kushan.

And so, while the Kushans built the foundation of their own future, they would also shield the rest of civilization from the ravages of barbarism. Having no cause for quarrel over territory, the Romans and the Persians and the Indians would acquiesce in the Kushan control of the great trade routes through central Asia. Might even, when called upon, send money to defray the costs of holding back the barbarians.

In the end, the queen's soldiers were satisfied. The queen's plan appealed to their military caution in the present as much as to their political ambitions for the future. They were small and weak, still. By planting their roots in the protected mountains, not exposing them to the peril of the oases and the plains of the Indus, they would lay the basis for the great Buddhist empire which would eventually spread throughout half of Asia. To the north!

* * *

As they made their way back to their tent, Irene still mincing her steps, Kungas allowed the smile to spread across his face. In the darkness, illuminated only by the cookfires and the few lanterns in the market, there was no one to see that unusually open expression on the king's face.

"That went marvelously well. Tomorrow, of course, you will twist the screw on Baresmanas."

Irene grimaced. Not at the thought of the next day's negotiations, but simply because her back now seemed like a sea of fire. "He'll shriek with agony," she predicted. "But he'll still give me the guns."

* * *

As it happened, Baresmanas did not squeal with pain, because he put up no more than a token resistance.