If Belisarius could break into the Punjab, where he would have room to maneuver again.
That would truly press the Malwa against the wall. So, just as Belisarius would have done, Link would fortify the Punjab and the Sukkur "bottleneck"-but leave the Sind to its own devices. The monster would station soldiers there, to be sure. But their main task was not to prevent Belisarius from taking the lower valley, but to delay him long enough to allow Link to transform the Punjab and Sukkur into an impregnable stronghold. Those Malwa forces would retreat slowly northward, burning and destroying everything in the valley as they went. "Scorched earth" tactics with a vengeance.
Conceivably, if the Malwa could wrest control of the sea from the Romans and the Ethiopians, they could even turn the Sind into a death trap. Do to Belisarius' great army the same thing he had done to them at Charax.
Belisarius knew that unless he could break Link's plans before they came to fruition, he was faced with years of fighting a brutal, slogging campaign which had more in the nature of siege warfare than battles in the open field. A war of attrition, not maneuver, which would charge Rome with a price in blood and treasure which it could probably not afford. He had bloodied Malwa badly, over the past two years, and the Maratha rebellion in the Deccan which he had helped set into motion was bleeding it further still. But the fact remained that the Malwa empire could still draw on greater resources than Rome and Persia and Ethiopia combined. A long war of attrition was far more likely to work in favor of the Malwa than Belisarius.
Link would certainly do its best to make it so. The cybernetic organism was just as familiar with human history as Aide. The Malwa empire was now on the defensive, and they would adopt the methods and tactics which would be used in a future world by the Dutch rebels against the Spanish.
And those tactics worked for almost a century, came Aide's voice. Until the Spanish finally gave up.
Belisarius made the mental equivalent of a shrug. True. But the Spanish were never able to outflank the Dutch defenses, because the Dutch backs were protected by the sea. Malwa is not. I know Link's plans. I also believe I can foil them, when the time comes. Don't ask me how, because I don't know yet. But war is a thing of chaos, not order, and I think my understanding of that is far superior to Link's. "Superhuman intelligence" be damned. War is not a chess game. It is, in the end, more a thing of the soul than the mind. And that thing has no soul. It will try to control the chaos, where I will revel in it.
Belisarius could sense the hesitation in Aide's mind. But the only thoughts which finally came were simply: I trust your judgement.
Belisarius chuckled. Hearing the soft sound, Sittas cocked an inquisitive eye at him.
"Aide was just expressing his confidence in my judgement," murmured Belisarius. "I wish I felt as much."
He expected to hear Sittas make one of his usual quips-at Belisarius' expense-but his large friend simply chuckled himself. "As it happens, I agree with the cute little fellow. I think your strategy for this campaign is damned near brilliant. Hell, not even 'damned near,' when I think about it."
Belisarius scowled. "It's too complicated. Too intricate by half. Too much step one, step two, step three. Maurice hasn't stopped nattering at me about it for a single day. And I don't disagree with him, either. It's going to start coming apart at the seams, soon enough, and I'll be back to making strategic decisions on a saddle." The scowl faded, replaced by a slight, crooked smile. "Which, I admit, seems to be something I have a certain aptitude for. More than Link does, I'm willing to bet. Am betting."
Sittas lifted his great bulk up on the stirrups for a moment, his eyes scanning the huge army. "Where is the old grouch, anyway?"
After a moment, he eased back in the saddle. The task of spotting a single man in that great horde of soldiers and moving equipment, even a top officer with his banners and entourage, was essentially hopeless.
"Of course he's grumbling," grumbled Sittas. "What would life be for the morose old bastard, without the pleasure of grousing to fill it up? But the fact is-this time-he's just plain wrong."
Almost angrily, Sittas gestured at the arid landscape ahead of them. "That's what it's going to be like, Belisarius, from here on. I'm not even sure the Malwa will bother to contest the delta, when we finally arrive at Barbaricum. Just cede it and let us get well established. Then, when the monsoon shifts, watch us starve beneath the walls of their fortifications upstream. By the time we get there, you know they'll have stripped the delta clean."
"Easier said than done."
Sittas shrugged. "Sure, I know." He barked a little laugh. "Easy for historians to say: 'they ravaged the countryside.' Never catch one of those languid fellows trying to destroy croplands. Hard work, that is-harder than growing stuff, that's for sure. Wouldn't wish it on a peasant."
Belisarius smiled. He doubted if Sittas had actually ever read any of those historians he was denouncing. But Belisarius knew that Sittas had once gotten embroiled in a loud argument with three historians at an imperial feast. In the end, Theodora had sent her personal guards to quell the large and outraged general.
Belisarius had read many of those historians, on the other hand. And while he felt none of Sittas' sputtering fury at the stupidities of over-educated and over-sheltered intellectuals, he understood it perfectly well. Aristocratic scribblers suffered from the inevitable habit of turning prosaic and complex reality into simple metaphors. Almost poetry, really, which they blithely assumed was an accurate representation of reality.
Destroy the countryside. Ravage the land.
As it happened, Belisarius had given those very orders himself over the years. Especially in his earliest years as an officer, campaigning against barbarians in the trans-Danube and Persians in the Mesopotamian borderlands. But both he and his men had understood the prose between the poetry, the unspoken qualifiers attached to the muscular verbs and nouns:
As best you can-in the time allowed. To the extent possible-given the number of men available. Whatever you can do-with military equipment instead of agricultural implements, and teams of mules instead of oxen.
He could remember hearing his men cursing bitterly, wrestling with the endless and exhausting work of trying to destroy the tough vines and wood of grape fields and olive groves. Or the backbreaking work of cutting and assembling grain in piles suitable for burning. Not to mention the well-nigh hopeless task of finding all the food caches hidden away, by peasants who were far more experienced than soldiers at hiding such things-and had a far greater incentive to do the job properly.
It could almost never be done really successfully. Time after time, throughout the future history which Aide had shown him, Belisarius recognized the same pattern. An army marching through a region, "devastating the land," and then-not a year later-everything was back again. Half of it, at least. "Mother Nature," especially when assisted by poor and industrious peasants, was far tougher than any army of soldiers.
In truth, the most successful method was the most ruthless. The method the Mongols would use in Central Asia: kill everyone. Don't just destroy the irrigation works and the infrastructure, but kill all the people living there as well. Eliminate the labor force which could rebuild what was destroyed.