The Tide of Victory

He shrugged. "I'm quite sure we will have our share of battles with barbarian tribes. But not all that many, truth to tell, and more in the nature of short wars and skirmishes than great campaigns of conquest and slaughter. Keep in mind, Antonina—I am Bantu myself—that Africa is not heavily populated. And there is no great Asian hinterland producing Huns and such to drive the other tribes forward. We expect most of the task to be one for missionaries and traders, not soldiers. Peaceful work, in the main."

He broke off. Another Malwa volley was coming—and would strike home or come close, judging from the sound.

"Two rockets!" shouted the sailor at the viewslit. "One of them—"

An instant later, the shield shook under the impact of a missile. Antonina was a bit startled. Unconsciously, she had been expecting the same deep booming sound which she remembered from her experience in the battle outside Charax's harbor the year before. But the Victrix's bow shield was no primitive, jury-rigged thing of leather stretched over poles. This warship was not a hastily converted galley. The Victrix had been designed from the keel up for this kind of battle, and the shield was a solid thing of timber clad with metal sheathing. It shrugged off the rocket as easily as a warrior's shield might shrug off a pebble thrown by a child.

"Ha!" shrilled Eusebius. "John was right! They need cannons—big ones, too, not piddly field guns—to break through this thing. And they don't have any!"

The sailor at the viewslit next to him shook his head. Antonina couldn't actually see the grin splitting his face, but she had no doubt it was there. "Not on this miserable priest-ship, anyway. Probably be a different story when we come up against the Malwa main fleet."

He turned his head toward Eusebius, showing his profile to Antonina. He was grinning. "But that's for a later day."

The sailor's grin faded. "Captain, I can handle this from here on. We're only a hundred yards off. Better see to the cannon. You're still the only one who can really use it very well."

Eusebius nodded. Watching, Antonina was struck by the little exchange. A different commander might have taken umbrage at such a semi-order coming from a subordinate. But although Eusebius had, more or less, become comfortable in his new role as a ship captain, he still had the basic habits and instincts of an artisan accustomed to working with others.

She didn't think John would have approved, really. But John was gone, and Antonina herself was not much concerned over the matter. She suspected that Eusebius' methods would probably work just as well.

And it was not her business, anyway. She forced her eyes away from Eusebius and looked at Ousanas. "Continue," she said. She spoke the word so forcefully that she was reminded, again, of her own tension.

"Not much else to say, Antonina. Axum has slowly been extending its rule to the south anyway, over the past two centuries. But heretofore the process was basically unplanned and uncoordinated. Most of our attention was focused on the Red Sea and southern Arabia. We will retain those, of course. But we will seek no further expansion in that direction. The Arab farmers and townsmen and merchants of Yemen and the Hijaz are content enough with our rule. But if we press further, we would simply embroil ourselves in endless conflicts with the bedouin of the interior—not to mention the certainty of an eventual clash with Persia. No point to any of it!"

He broke off. Another rocket volley. Both rockets, this time, struck the shield. And both were deflected just as easily and harmlessly.

"So after the war with Malwa," Ousanas resumed, "we will concentrate on the African interior—and do it properly. We will start by sending an expedition, led by myself, to incorporate the land between the great lakes which is my own homeland. That is the first step—along with seizing and settling the east African coast. At least as far south as the Pangani river. We will also seize the island of Zanzibar and build a fortress there. And we will found a new city on the coast, which will be destined to become a great seaport."

He smiled whimsically. "There are definite advantages, you understand, to Aide's knowledge of the future. Eon has even decreed that we will give that city the name it would have had, centuries from now. Mombasa."