The Tide of Victory

"—are more than welcome to transmit your displeasure to the emperor and Nanda Lal," Damodara was saying. His tone was mild, almost serene. "Please, Lord Venandakatra! Do me the favor! Perhaps the emperor might heed your words—unlikely though that is—and send me and my army elsewhere. To fight a war instead of attempting to indulge a spoiled child."

Venandakatra hissed at the insult. He began gobbling incoherent outrage and indignation, but Damodara's still-calm voice slid through it like a knife.

"A stupid child, as well as a spoiled one. I told you from the beginning that not even Rajputs with Pathan trackers could hope to match Rao's Maratha hillfighters on their own terrain. The Panther has hillforts scattered throughout the Great Country. If we match him in the hills and valleys, he retreats to the hilltops. If we besiege the forts—which is easier said than done, Venandakatra—he fades down the slopes. Not without, each time, bleeding us further."

Gobble, gobble, gobble.

Damodara heaved a little half-snort, half-sigh. Derision mingled with exasperation. "From the day I arrived, I told you to cease your terror campaign. Butchering and torturing Maratha villagers does nothing beyond swell the ranks of Rao's army. By now, that army is at least as large as my own. Half again the size, I estimate."

The gobbling began producing coherent half-phrases. Have you impaled yourself . . . I am the emperor's first cousin . . . you only distantly related . . . insubordination and mutiny and treason . . . on a short stake . . .

"Be silent!" snarled Damodara. For once, the Malwa military commander's normal placidity was frayed. "Just exactly how do you propose to have me impaled, you foul creature?"

Damodara's round face twisted into a sneer. He waved a hand at Venandakatra's bodyguards. The five Ye-tai were standing against the rear of the audience chamber. They seemed a bit nervous.

"With them?" demanded Damodara, his sneer turning into a savage grin. Sitting next to him, Sanga casually placed a powerful hand on the hilt of his sword. That sword had been a minor legend throughout India even before the war began. Today, the legend was no longer minor.

The five Ye-tai bodyguards were definitely nervous.

Behind Sanga and Damodara, where they squatted on cushions, Sanga could sense the slight manner in which his two Rajput and one Ye-tai officers shifted their own stances. Without having to look, Sanga knew that all three men were now ready to leap to their feet in an instant, weapons in hand.

The Ye-tai bodyguards were very nervous. For all the outwardly respectful manner of their unmoving stance, the five men against the wall practically exuded fear and apprehension. Their eyes were no longer on their master, Venandakatra. They were riveted on the men sitting behind Sanga, even more than on Sanga himself.

One of those men, rather. Sanga knew—and suddenly had to fight down a cheerful laugh—that it was the Ye-tai officer squatting behind him who most thoroughly intimidated the bodyguards. Not so much because Toramana was a fearsome warrior, but simply because he was Ye-tai himself.

Ye-tai, yes—just like the bodyguards. But it was already known by all the Malwa forces in the Deccan that Rana Sanga, the greatest king of Rajputana, had promised one of his own half-sisters to Toramana as a wife. And had done so, because Toramana had requested marriage into the Chauhar dynasty.

The implications of that liaison had not escaped anyone. Certainly not Venandakatra . . .

The Goptri of the Deccan was now glaring past Sanga's shoulder. Past his hip, rather, where the face of Toramana would be visible to him. For all his fury and his self-indulgence, Venandakatra had not missed the subtleties of the matter at hand.

"This—this absurd marriage has not been agreed to by the emperor! All Ye-tai are still—"

He choked off whatever might have been the last words. As the pressure of the Roman-Persian campaign led by Belisarius mounted on the Malwa empire, the Malwa were being forced to relax the long-standing principles of their rigid system of caste, status and hierarchy. Venandakatra knew full well that Nanda Lal had already given his approval to the marriage. The emperor's approval was bound to follow.

In times past, of course, they would not have done so. Would, in all likelihood, have punished any Rajput or Ye-tai who even proposed it. High-ranking and meritorious Ye-tai, and occasionally Rajputs, had been allowed to marry into the Malwa clan as a means of cementing their allegiance to the ruling dynasty. But never had the two principal pillars of Malwa rule been allowed to marry each other. The threat of such liaisons was obvious.

In times past . . .