"Know what?"
Belisarius grinned at him. "That I'll be back. All they have to do is hold the Ganges-keep the monster pinned on this side-and I'll be back."
The oldest of the kings grunted. "I understand. Good plan. Now we go teach those shits from Mathura that all they're good for is garrison duty."
"Indeed," said Belisarius. "And we move quickly. "
After they began the forced march, Aide spoke uncertainly.
I don't understand. You must be careful! Link is not stupid. When it sees you are only burning behind its army, it will understand that you are trying to lure it further from the river. It will return, then, not come forward.
I know. And by then Kungas will already be there. They will not cross the Ganges against Kungas' will. Not though they outnumbered him ten-to-one.
There was silence, for a bit.
Oh. What you're really doing is keeping Link at the Ganges, not drawing it overland-which gives you time to crush the army coming up from Mathura.
Yes. That's where we'll kill the monster's army. Right on the banks of the holy river, caught between two enemies.
They'll have plenty of water.
Man does not live by water alone. Soon, they'll have nothing to eat-and we have all the time we need to watch them starve. We'll have Link trapped up here-when it needs to be in Kausambi. If Damodara can't do the rest, against Skandagupta alone, he's not the new emperor India needs.
Silence again, for a bit.
What if that new army isn't the Kushans?
Then we're screwed, said Belisarius cheerfully. I'm a pretty good gambler myself, you know-and you can't gamble if you're not willing to take the risk of getting screwed.
That produced a long silence. Eventually, Aide said:
I can remember a time when I wouldn't have understood a word of that. Especially "screwed." How did a proper little crystal fall into such bad company?
You invited yourself to the party. As a matter of fact, as I recall, you started the party.
That's a very vulgar way of putting it.
Chapter 35
The Punjab
By the time Khusrau and his army reached the Kohat Pass, the emperor of the Persians was in an excellent frame of mind.
First, because he'd succeeded in taking most of the western Punjab for his empire. Formally speaking, at least, even if Persian occupation and rule was still almost meaningless for the inhabitants. He hadn't even bothered to leave behind detachments of dehgans under newly-appointed provincial governments to begin establishing an administration.
He would, soon enough. In the meantime, there was still a war to be won and he only had thirty thousand troops at his disposal. Not enough to peel off even small detachments for garrison duty. Not with a Malwa army still in the Punjab that numbered at least one hundred and fifty thousand.
Secondly, because-here and there-he'd been able to grind up some more sahrdaran and vurzurgan hotheads in foolish charges against Malwa garrisons. It was amazing, really, how thick-headed those classes were.
Or, perhaps, it was simply their growing sense of desperation. For centuries, the grandees had been the real power in Persia. True, none of the seven great sahrdaran families or their vurzurgan affiliates ever formally challenged the right of an emperor to rule. Or that the emperor would always come from the imperial clan. But the reality had been that emperors were made and broken, at each and every succession, by the grandees. Those contestants for the throne that got their support, won. Those that didn't, lost their heads.
Their power had stemmed, ultimately, from two sources. One was their control of great swathes of land in a nation that was still almost entirely agricultural, which made them phenomenally wealthy. The other was their ability to field great numbers of armored heavy cavalry, which had been the core of Persia's might for centuries, because of that wealth.
They were losing both, now. Not quickly, no, but surely nonetheless. The huge areas of western India formerly ruled by the Malwa that Khusrau was incorporating into his empire, all of Sind and a third of the Punjab, were not being parceled out to the grandees, as they would have in times past. Instead, Khusrau was adapting the Roman model and setting up an imperial administration, staffed by dehgans who answered directly to him and his appointed governors-most of whom were dehgans themselves.
Worse still, the grandees were witnessing the death knell of the armored horseman as the king of battles. Within a generation, even in Persia, it would be infantry armed with guns who constituted the core of imperial might. Infantry whose soldiers would be drawn, as often as not, from the newly conquered territories. Indian peasants from the Sind or the Punjab, who would answer to the emperor, not the grandees-and would do so willingly, because the Persian emperor had given their clans and tribes a far more just and lenient rule than they'd ever experienced at the hands of the Malwa.
The continued insistence of the grandees to launch their beloved cavalry charges, Khusrau thought, was simply the willful blindness of men who could not accept their coming fate.
So be it. Khusrau was quite happy to oblige them. Why not? They were ferocious cavalry, after all, so they generally managed to seize the small cities and towns they attacked. And every sahrdaran and vurzurgan who died in the doing was one less the emperor would have to quarrel with on the morrow.
By the time the war was over, only the Suren would remain as powerful as they had been, of the seven great families. And under Baresmanas' sure leadership, the Suren were reaching an accommodation with the emperor. They'd long been the premier family of the seven, after all, and now they had the emperor's favor. Unlike the rest, the Suren would accept a role that diminished them as a family but would expand their power and influence as individuals within the empire.
Finally-best of all-there were the dehgans. The knightly class of Persia's nobility had always chafed under the yoke of the grandees. But they'd accepted that yoke, in the past, since they saw no alternative.
Khusrau was giving them an alternative, now, and they were seizing it. For a modest dehgan from a small village, the chance to become an imperial administrator or governor was a far better prospect than anything the grandees would offer. In the increasingly unlikely event that the grandees tried to launch a rebellion against Khusrau, he was not only sure he could crush them easily-but he'd have the assistance of most of the grandees' own feudal retainers in doing so.
"You're certainly looking cheerful, Your Majesty," said Irene. She'd come to meet him in a pavilion she'd had hastily set up at the crest of the pass, once she got word that the Persian army was approaching the borders of the Kushan kingdom.
Well, not quite at the crest. The pavilion was positioned on a small knoll a few hundreds yards below the crest, and the fortresses the Kushans had built upon it.
Khusrau-very cheerfully-gazed up at those fortifications.
"Very nicely built," he said. "I'd certainly hate to be the one who ever tried to storm them."
Lowering his eyes, and seeing the questioning look in Irene's eyes, Khusrau grinned. "Oh, don't be silly. Yes, I'm in a very good mood. For many reasons. One of them is that I don't have the prospect of watching my army bleed to death on these horrid-looking rocks."
Irene smiled. Khusrau, still grinning, turned slightly and pointed with his finger to the plain below. "I thought I'd found a small town there. With a modest garrison. Just big enough to formally mark the boundary of the Persian empire. And another town like it, a similarly discreet distance below the Margalla Pass. Any objection?"