The Tide of Victory

If Belisarius could accomplish that—and provided his army and Khusrau's could salvage enough of a labor force from the Malwa massacre—he would have a position from which the Malwa could not hope to dislodge him. Not, at least, so long as Rome and its Axumite allies retained naval superiority. The entire lower valley of the Indus would be securely in Roman and Persian hands. An area sizeable enough and rich enough to provide them with far more than a mere "beachhead." The theater of war would have been irrevocably shifted entirely into Indian territory.

"All of the Sind . . ." he murmured.

Maurice, as was usually true except when Belisarius' crooked mind was working through some peculiar stratagem, was following his commander's thoughts. "Remind me to compliment Antonina on her feminine intuition," he said, with a little smile.

"Isn't that the truth!" laughed Belisarius. His own smile was not little at all—nor even in the least bit crooked.

The experience of the past few days had driven home to him quite forcefully how much Antonina's insistence on moving up the invasion schedule had ultimately worked to his advantage. Impulsive and narrowly focused that insistence might have been, but in the end it had proven wiser than the sagacity of experienced soldiers. From everything Belisarius could determine, the Malwa had been caught by surprise. As much surprise, at least, as an opponent could be when faced by an inevitable invasion route.

He chuckled harshly. "I suspect Nanda Lal's excellent spy service worked against him, too. He knew we wouldn't attack this soon. He had hundreds of spies feeding him information on every stage of our preparations and planning. Down to every amphora full of grain, I don't doubt. Of course, once we changed plans and started scrambling, he would have heard of that as well. But—"

"Too late," finished Maurice. "That's the problem with having such a gigantic and powerful empire. It's just too big to react quickly."

Like a stegosaurus, chimed in Aide, flashing an image of a bizarre giant reptile into Belisarius' brain. By the time the nerve impulse gets to the brain . . . True, that brain is Link's, not a stupid reptile's. But Link can't be everywhere. The monster has no magic powers. It's not clairvoyant. It relies on information provided by others.

Aide's words reminded Belisarius of a phrase the crystal had used occasionally, when Aide lapsed into the language of a future accustomed to artificial intelligence. The expression had never quite made sense to Belisarius, until this moment.

Again, he smiled. Garbage in, garbage out. GIGO.

Belisarius' good cheer was not entirely shared by Maurice. "They'll recover from the surprise soon enough. Not quick enough, maybe, to keep us from taking the Sind up to Sukkur and the gorge. But that won't do us much good if we don't get a labor force to bring in the food. Not to mention maintaining the irrigation works. Not to mention keeping the towns and cities working."

The gray-bearded chiliarch glared at the carpet of doabs which stretched to the horizon. The multitude of canals and riverlets winkled in the sun, holding the dry patches of land in place like lead holding stained glass. "Picture soldiers doing that, will you? Even if most of them were peasants not too long ago. It'd take us half the army to keep the other half working."

The telescope was back at Belisarius' eye. "Unless I miss my guess, Maurice, those grasslands are practically crawling with peasants and their families. Laying low, out of sight. By now, the Malwa must have begun their butchery, and word travels fast.

"Besides," he added, sweeping his telescope around to the north, "they can't be too thrilled to see us coming, either."

Maurice didn't argue the point. He knew from his own experience, both as a peasant and a cataphract, how astute a rural population could be when it came to keeping out of sight of a passing army. And knew, as well, that they usually had good reason to do so.

As it happened, they had little to fear from Belisarius' army. That army, in fact, was all that would save their lives. But Maurice knew perfectly well that the Romans had as much chance of "convincing" the Indus peasantry of that as a cat would have convincing mice it was a vegetarian. Especially a peasantry which had been yoked by Malwa for half a century now. First they would have to force the peasantry out of hiding. Only then, as experience unfolded, could they hope to gain their allegiance. Or, at the least, their acquiescence in the new regime. And it would all have to be done fairly quickly, or the Roman army pouring into the Sind would begin starving.