The Tide of Victory

Antonina was unable to suppress a giggle. "That's one way to keep the azadan from being, ah, `restive.' Take them off on a great plundering expedition. Like the Achaemenids of old!" Without rising from her chair, she gave Khusrau an exaggerated bow. "Hail, Cyrus reborn!"

Khusrau chuckled, and returned the bow with a nod. "Darius, at the very least." He moved his eyes back to Belisarius. "You do have wide-ranging authority on anything that concerns military affairs. You can always present the thing to Empress Theodora—excuse me, Empress Regent Theodora—as a necessity for the success of the campaign against the Malwa."

He bestowed another nod on Antonina. "In light of the new circumstances uncovered by Antonina, Theodora's best and most trusted friend."

Belisarius started to snarl a reply, but forced it down. Then, growling: "I agree that it might work. With the emperor personally leading a campaign into the central valley . . ."

He fell silent, for a moment, his acute military mind working feverishly almost despite himself. " . . . staging itself in the little known fertile basin of the Sistân, as we'd already planned . . ."

There was a large campaign map lying on a nearby table. By the time Belisarius finished half-mumbling those last words he was leaning over it. Antonina and Khusrau both rose and came to his side.

The Roman general's finger traced the route. "It'd be a monster of a trek. Even if . . . assemble an army of dehgans in the Sistân—from where?"

"I'd start in Chabahar," stated Khusrau, pointing to a port on the coast of the Gulf of Oman. "Exactly as you were planning to do, anyway, with Maurice's expedition. Most of the dehgans are here in lower Mesopotamia already, so it would be easy to ship them to Chabahar. And from there—just as you've been planning—the expedition would march north to the Sistân. Shielded from any enemy view by the mountains to the east. Take—let us say—a week to refit and recuperate, and we'd begin the invasion of the middle Indus valley. Just as you were planning all along."

Belisarius' scowl was now ferocious. "That route? An entire army of Persian dehgans? Impossible, Khusrau! You'd have two deserts and a mountain range to cross, before you reach the Indus at Sukkur."

"Just below the Sukkur gorge, which separates the Sind from the Punjab," said Antonina brightly. "The natural northern frontier of the new Aryan province of Industan."

Both men glared at her. Then, glared at each other.

"Impossible!" repeated Belisarius. "I was only planning to send a small expedition. Six thousand men, most of them light Arab cavalry. Just enough to surprise the Malwa and drive the population south while we established a beachhead in the delta. How in creation do you expect to get a large army of dehgans—heavily armored horsemen—through that kind of terrain?"

Khusrau smiled beatifically. "You forget two things, Belisarius. First, you forget that village dehgans from the plateau and the northeast provinces—thousands upon thousands of whom are gathered here in lower Mesopotamia, grumbling about the absence of any prospect for glorious battle—are far more accustomed to traveling in arid terrain than you, ah, perhaps more civilized Romans."

He understood the sarcastic raise of the Roman general's eyebrow, and shook his head in response. "You are not really familiar with that breed, Belisarius. Most of your contact has been with the higher nobility of the Aryans. Most of whom, I admit, could be accused of loving their creature comforts. But the dehgans from the east . . .

"A crude lot!" he barked, half laughing. "But, for this campaign, the cruder the better."

Belisarius scratched his chin. He understood Khusrau's point, and was remembering various jests which high Persian noblemen like Kurush had made to him in the past concerning the rough, frontier nature of the eastern dehgans.

"And the other thing?"

Khusrau looked smug. "You forget, I think, that the Sistân is the home of the legendary Rustam. National hero of the Aryans."

Belisarius groped, for a moment, at the significance of this last statement. But Aide understood it at once. The crystal's excited thoughts burst into Belisarius' mind.

He's right. He's right! The Sistân is just today's name for ancient Drangia. The Sistân—its population, I mean—will be awash in mythology. A sleepy, isolated province—but it's still fertile and densely inhabited, because Tamerlane hasn't wrecked it yet—won't ever, now, actually, because we've already changed history—

Aide was practically babbling with excitement.