Maurice too, it seemed, had caught the general bloodlust. "Not that I wouldn't enjoy watching it, mind you. But, you're right-this is not the time and place." He sighed with happy satisfaction. "This is just a time and place for butcher's work."
* * *
By the time the real butchery began, the Malwa were already badly blooded. Sittas, if he had not violated the letter of his orders, had obviously stretched the spirit of them as far as he could. Watching the Malwa soldiers pouring down the river bed in complete disorder, Belisarius knew that Sittas and his Greek cataphracts had "rolled them up" the way a blacksmith rolls a gun barrel-with hammer and flame.
Belisarius had chosen to take his own position with the artillery and the sharpshooters. These were his least experienced troops-in the use of these weapons, at any rate-and he wanted to observe them in action.
The slant of the terrain gave him a view of at least half a mile of the riverbed. The first Malwa units had almost reached the slight bend where he intended to hold them. Behind, moving more like fluid water than solid men, came enough enemy soldiers to fill the riverbed from bank to bank.
"How many, do you think?"
Maurice shook his head. "Hard to say, exactly, with a mob like that. At a guess, we'll wind up facing maybe twelve thousand."
That was a little higher than Belisarius' own estimate, but not by much. He nodded, continuing to study the oncoming enemy. Some of the Malwa soldiers, perhaps instinctively sensing a trap, were trying to clamber out of the riverbed over the shallow southwestern bank. But Sittas-who, for all the fury with which he could drive home a charge, was as shrewd as any cataphract commander in the Roman army-had foreseen that likelihood. So he had peeled off Cyril's men to flank the enemy yet again. The Greek cataphracts were already on the southwestern bank, ready and eager to drive the Malwa back with lance and saber.
A few Malwa tried to clamber over the opposite bank. But, as Abbu had said, that far bank was steep if not especially high. Close to vertical, in many places; and, nowhere that Belisarius could see, shallow enough to allow a man to scamper rather than climb.
The opposite bank ranged in height from eight to twelve feet. Not much of a climb, perhaps-except for a man laden with armor and weapons, being driven in a packed crowd of confused and frightened soldiers. Not many of the Malwa even attempted to make that climb, and most of them were swept off the bank by their fellows pouring past in a rout. And for the few who made it, the ground beyond proved no refuge in any event. Abbu and his Arabs had crossed the riverbed and taken up positions on the opposite bank half an hour earlier. Their lances and sabers were just as eager as those of the cataphracts.
"It's working," said Maurice. "Damned if it's not."
Belisarius nodded. His tactics for this battle were proving themselves in action. Sittas and the main body of cataphracts had caught the Malwa infantry spread out, in the open. And the forces were evenly matched-twelve thousand against twelve thousand. The heavily armed and armored cavalry might be "obsolete" in this new age of gunpowder weapons, but obsolescence does not happen overnight.
A cataphract charge struck like a mailed fist. Well-organized and prepared troops could withstand such a charge, even bloody and break it, with pikemen shielding musketeers and volleys coming like clockwork thunder. But an army caught off-guard, driven off balance and never allowed to regain it, was like grain in a thresher.
Routed soldiers, like water, will follow the path of least resistance. Especially with Sittas and his cataphracts pouring into the riverbed themselves and driving the Malwa before them. With Cyril and his men guarding the shallow bank and Abbu guarding the other, almost the entire Malwa army was being herded toward the guns. Penned into a perfect killing ground.
The rise where Gregory had stationed the field guns had a clear line of fire into the river bed, and at enough of an angle to enfilade the coming troops. There remained only to place the "stopper" in the bottle.
"Now, I think," said Maurice.
Belisarius nodded. The chiliarch made a motion and the cornicenes began blowing. The Thracian bucellarii, awaiting the signal, trotted across the riverbed some two hundred yards down and took up positions. As the lead elements of the Malwa spotted them, they began slowing their pell-mell race. Several of them stopped entirely. Behind them, the Malwa soldiers started piling up in a muddle. They formed a perfect target for cannon fire, not more than four hundred yards away-almost too close, for round shot.
Belisarius leaned toward Gregory, who was sitting a horse to his left. "You're loaded with round shot, or canister?"
"Round shot," came the immediate and confident reply. "On that ground-most of the near bank is shale and loose rock-the ricochets will work as well as canister. And I've got more round shot than anything else."
Belisarius wasn't quite sure Gregory was right, but he wasn't about to second-guess him and order the guns reloaded. In truth, the artillery commander was more experienced at this than he was, at least in training and theory. This would be the first time ever in the Malwa war that either side used field guns as the major element in a battle. And since the range was at the outer limits of canister effectiveness, anyway.
"Go ahead, then. Fire whenever you're-"
"Fire!" bellowed Gregory, waving his arm. The cornicenes, waiting for the cue, began blowing the call. But the sound of the horns was almost instantly drowned under the roar of the guns. Gregory's entire battery-thirty-six three-pounders-had fired at once.
That volley. did much less than Belisarius expected. True, a number of Malwa soldiers went down-ripped in half, often enough. But instead of cutting entire swaths, the volley had simply punched narrow holes in the packed mass of soldiers.
He rose up in his stirrups, now tense. His whole battle plan depended on those field guns. And he didn't want to be forced to use the mitrailleuse and the mortars this early in the campaign. He turned to Gregory, about to order a switch to canister.
But Gregory was no longer there. The artillery commander had sent his horse trotting behind the guns. Gregory was up in his own stirrups, bellowing like a bull.
"Down, you sorry bastards! Lower the elevation! I want grazing shots, damn you!"
The artillerymen were working feverishly. In each gun crew, two men were levering up the barrels while the gun captain sighted by eye. On his command, a fourth man slid the quoin further up between the barrel and the transom, lowering the elevation of the gun and shortening the trajectory of the fire. That done, they raced to reload the weapons. Again, with the cast iron balls of simple round shot.
Belisarius hesitated, then lowered himself down to his saddle. He still wasn't sure Gregory was right, but.
Good officers need the confidence of their superiors. Best way for a general to ruin an army is to meddle.
While the guns were reloading, the Greek cataphracts who were now massing on the southwestern slope began firing their own volleys of arrows into the packed mass of Malwa troops in the riverbed. As Belisarius had insisted-he wanted to keep his own casualties to a minimum-Sittas and Cyril were keeping the armored horse archers at a distance. But, even across two hundred yards, cataphract arrows struck with enough force to punch through the light armor worn by Malwa infantrymen.
Belisarius could see a knot of Malwa begin to form up and dress their ranks. Somewhere in that shrieking and struggling pile of soldiers, apparently, some officers were still functioning and maintaining order. Good ones, too, from the evidence-within the few minutes it took for the Roman guns to reload, they managed to put together a semblance of a mass of pikemen, flanked by musketeers. Within a minute or so, Belisarius estimated, they would begin a charge.