* * *
As they headed down the road, Belisarius waved Valentinian and Anastasius forward. Once the two men were riding on either side, he said:
"Don't touch your weapons unless the muti—ah, dispirited troops—take up theirs."
He gave both men a hard glance. Anastasius' heavy face held no expression. Valentinian scowled, but made no open protest.
A thin smile came to the general's face. "Mainly, what I want you to do after we arrive at the Greeks' camp is to disagree with me."
Anastasius' eyes widened. "Disagree, sir?"
Belisarius nodded. "Yes. Disagree. Not too openly, mind. I am your commanding officer, after all. But I want you to make clear, in no uncertain terms, that you think I'm an idiot."
Anastasius frowned. Valentinian muttered.
"What was that last, Valentinian?" queried Belisarius. "I'm not sure I caught it."
Silence. Anastasius rumbled: "He said: `That won't be hard.' "
"That's what I thought he said," mused Belisarius. He grinned. "Well! You won't have any difficulty with the assignment, then. It'll come naturally to you."
Valentinian muttered again, at some length. Anastasius, not waiting for a cue, interpreted. "He said—I'm summarizing—that clever fellows usually wind up outsmarting themselves. Words to that effect."
Belisarius frowned. "That's all? It seemed to me he muttered quite a few more words than that. Entire sentences, even."
Anastasius shook his head sadly. "Most of the other words were just useless adjectives. Very redundant." The giant bestowed a reproving glance on his comrade. "He's given to profanity."
They were nearing the encampment of the Con-stantinople garrison troops. Belisarius spurred his horse into a trot. After Valentinian and Anastasius dropped back to their usual position as his bodyguards, Belisarius cocked his head and said:
"Remember. Disagree. Disapprove. If I say something reasonable, scowl. Pleasant, snarl. Calm and soothing—spit on the ground."
Mutter, mutter, mutter.
Belisarius repressed his smile. He did not ask for a translation. He was quite sure the words had been pure profanity.
They began encountering the first outposts of the Constantinople garrison. Within a minute, trotting forward, they passed several hundred soldiers, huddled in small groups at the outer perimeter of the route camp. As Belisarius had expected, a large number of the troops were holding back from the body of men milling around in the center. These would be the faint-hearts and the fence-sitters—or the "semi-loyalists," if you preferred.
He made it a point to bestow a very cordial smile upon all those men. Even a verbal greeting, here and there. Valentinian and Anastasius immediately responded with their own glowers, which Valentinian accompanied by a nonstop muttering. The garrison troops responded to the general's smile, in the main, with expressions of uncertainty. But Belisarius noted that a number of them managed their own smiles in return. Timid smiles; sickly smiles—but smiles nonetheless.
I knew it, he thought, with considerable self-satisfaction.
Aide's voice came into his mind. Knew what? And what is going on? I am confused.
Belisarius hesitated, before responding. To his—"its," technically, but the general had long since come to think of Aide as "he"—consciousness, insubordination and rebellion were bizarre conceptions. Aide had been produced by a race of intelligent crystals in the far distant future and sent back in time, to save them from enslavement (and possibly outright destruction) by those they called the "new gods." The intelligence of those crystals was utterly inhuman, in many ways. One of those ways was their lack of individuality. Each crystal, though distinct, was a part of their collective mentality—just as each crystal, in its turn, was the composite being created by the ever-moving facets which generated that strange intelligence. To those crystals, and to Aide, the type of internal discord and dispute which humans took for granted was almost unfathomable.
We are having what we call a "mutiny," Aide. Or a "rebellion."
From long experience, Belisarius had learned how to project his own visions into the consciousness of Aide. He had found that such visions often served as a better means of communication than words.
He did so now, summoning up images of various mutinies and rebellions of the past, culminating with the revolt of Spartacus and its gruesome finale.
He could sense the facets flashing around the visions, trying to absorb their essence.
While they did so, and Aide ruminated, Belisarius and his bodyguards reached the center of the camp. At least four hundred soldiers from the Constantinople garrison were clustered there, most of them in small groups centered around the older soldiers.
Belisarius was not surprised. The men, he gauged, were leaning heavily on the judgements and opinions of their squad leaders and immediate superiors. This was an army led by pentarchs, decarchs, and hecatontarchs, now, not officers.
Good. I can deal with those veterans. They'll be sullen and angry, but they'll also be thinking about their pensions. Unlike the officers, they don't have rich estates to retire to.
Silence fell over the mob. Belisarius slowly rode his horse into the very center of the crowd. After drawing up his mount, he scanned the soldiers staring up at him with a long, calm gaze.
A thought came from Aide.
This is stupid. Your plan is ridiculous.
The facets had reached their conclusion, firmly and surely, from their assessment of the general's vision. Especially the last vision, the suppression of the Spartacus rebellion.
Preposterous. Absurd. Irrational. You cannot possibly crucify all these men. There is not that much wood in the area.
Belisarius struggled mightily with sudden laughter. He managed, barely, to transform the hilarity into good cheer.
So it was, to their astonishment, that the mutinous soldiers of the Constantinople garrison witnessed their commanding general, whom they assumed had come to thunder threats and condemnation, bestow upon them a smile of sheer goodwill.
They barely noticed the savage snarls on the faces of his two companions. Only two or three even took umbrage at Valentinian's loud expectoration.
An officer scurried forward, after pushing his way through the first line of the crowd standing around the general. Four other officers followed.
Belisarius recognized them immediately. The officer in front was Sunicas, the chiliarch who commanded the Constantinople troops. The men following him were the tribunes who served as his chief subordinates. He knew only one of them by name—Boraides.
When the five men drew up alongside his horse, Belisarius simply looked down upon them, cocking an eyebrow, but saying nothing.
"We have a problem here, general," stated Sunicas. "As you can see, the men—"
"We certainly do!" boomed Belisarius. His voice was startlingly loud, enough so that an instant silence fell over the entire mob of soldiers. The general was so soft-spoken, as a rule, that men tended to forget that his powerful baritone had been trained to pierce the din of battles.
Belisarius, again, scanned the immediate circle of soldiers. This time, however, there was nothing benign in that gaze. His scrutiny was intent and purposeful.
He pointed to one of the soldiers in the inner ring. A hecantontarch, young for his rank. The man was bigger than average, and very burly. He was also quite a handsome man, in a large-nosed and strong-featured way. But beneath the outward appearance of a muscular bruiser, Belisarius did not miss the intelligence in the man's brown eyes. Nor the steadiness of his gaze. "What is your name?" he asked.