"None of this'll mean shit, you understand, if the Ethiopians can't give us supremacy at sea." The comfort with which he settled back into morose pessimism was almost palpable. "Something will go wrong, mark my words."
* * *
"I can't see a damned thing," complained Antonina, peering through the relatively narrow gap between the foredeck's roof and the bulwarks which shield the cannons in the bow.
"You're not supposed to," retorted Ousanas, standing just behind her. "The sun is down. Only an idiot would make an attack like this in broad daylight on a clear day."
Scowling, Antonina kept peering. She wasn't sure what annoyed her the most-the total darkness, or the endless hammering of rain on the roof.
"What if we go aground?" she muttered. Then, hearing Ousanas' heavy sigh, she restrained herself.
"Sorry, sorry," she grumbled sarcastically. "I forget that Ethiopian seamen all sprang full-blown from the brow of Neptune. Can see in the dark, smell a lee shore-"
"They can, as a matter of fact," said Ousanas. "Smell the shore, at least."
"Easiest thing in the world," chimed in Eon. The negusa nagast of Axum was standing right next to Ousanas, leaning on one of the four cannons in the bow. In the covered foredeck of the large Ethiopian flagship, there was far more room than there had been in the relatively tiny bow shield of the Victrix.
"People call it the 'smell of the sea,' " he added. "But it's actually the smell of the seacoast. Rotting vegetation, all that. The open sea barely smells at all." He gestured toward the lookout, perched on the very bow of the ship. "That's what he's doing, you know, along with using the lead. Sniffing."
"How can anyone smell anything in this wretched downpour?" Antonina studied the lookout. The man's position was well forward of the roof which sheltered the foredeck. She thought he looked like a drowned rat.
At that very moment, the lookout turned his head and whistled. Then whistled again, and twice again.
Antonina knew enough of the Axumite signals to interpret the whistles. Land is near. Still no bottom.
For a moment, she was flooded with relief. But only for a moment.
"We're probably somewhere on the Malabar coast," she said gloomily. "Six hundred miles-or more! — from Chowpatty."
Suddenly she squealed and began dancing around. Eon was tickling her!
"Stop that!" she gasped, desperately spinning around to bring her sensitive ribs away from his fingers.
Eon was laughing outright. Ousanas, along with the half dozen Axumite officers positioned in the foredeck, was grinning widely.
"Only if you stop making like Cassandra!" boomed Eon. Who, at the moment, looked more like a very large boy than the Ethiopian King of Kings. A scamp and a rascal-royal regalia and vestments be damned. The phakhiolin, as Ethiopians called their version of an imperial tiara, was half-askew on Eon's head.
With a last laugh, Eon stopped the tickling. "Will you relax, woman? Ethiopian sailors have been running the Malwa blockade of Suppara for almost two years now. Every ship in this fleet has half a dozen of those sailors aboard as pilots. They know the entire Maratha coastline like the back of their hand-good weather or bad, rain or shine, day or night."
He went back to lounging against the cannon, and patted the heavy flank of the great engine of war with a thick and powerful hand. "Soon enough-soon enough-we will finally break that blockade. Break it into pieces."
Antonina sighed. Abstractly, she knew that Eon was right. Right, at least, about the dangers of the voyage itself.
A long voyage that had been, and in the teeth of the monsoon's last days. The entire Axumite warfleet had sailed directly across the Erythrean Sea, depending entirely on their own seamanship-and the new Roman compasses which Belisarius had provided them-to make landfall. A voyage which would, in itself, become a thing of Ethiopian legend. Had the negusa nagast not led the expedition personally, many of the Ethiopian sailors might well have balked at the idea.
But, just as Eon and his top officers had confidently predicted weeks before, the voyage had been made successfully and safely. That still left.
A voyage, no matter how epic, is one thing. Fighting a successful battle at the end of it, quite another.
Antonina went back to fretting. Again, her eyes were affixed to the view through the foredeck.
"Silly woman!" exclaimed Eon. "We are still hours away. That Malwa fleet at Chowpatty is so much driftwood. Be sure of it!"
Again, for a moment, her fears lightened. Eon's self-confidence was infectious.
To break the Malwa blockade. Break it into pieces!
Such a feat, regardless of what happened with Belisarius' assault on the Sind, would lame the Malwa beast. The Maratha rebellion had already entangled the enemy's best army. With Suppara no longer blockaded, the Romans would be able to pour supplies into Majarashtra. Not only would Damodara and Rana Sanga be tied down completely-unable to provide any help to the larger Malwa army in the Indus-but they might very well require reinforcements themselves. Especially if, after destroying the Malwa fleet at Chowpatty which maintained the blockade of Suppara, the Ethiopian fleet could continue on and.
That "and" brought a new flood of worries. "It'll never work," Antonina hissed. "I was an idiot to agree to it!"
"It was your idea in the first place," snorted Ousanas.
"Silly woman!" she barked. "What possessed sane and sensible men to be swayed by such a twaddling creature?"
* * *
The Roman army made camp that night eight miles further north of the "battle" ground. North and, thankfully, upwind.
Just before they did so, they came upon the ruins of a peasant village. Bodies were scattered here and there among the half-wrecked huts and hovels.
There was a survivor in the ruins. An old man, seated on the ground, leaning against a mudbrick wall, staring at nothing and holding the body of an old woman in his arms. The woman's garments were stiff with dried blood.
When Belisarius rode up and brought his horse to a halt, the old man looked up at him. Something about the Roman's appearance must have registered because, to Belisarius' surprise, he spoke in Greek. Rather fluent Greek, in fact, if heavily accented. The general guessed that the man had been a trader once, many years back.
"I was in the fields when it happened," the old man said softly. "Far off, and my legs are stiff now. By the time I returned, it was all over."
His hand, moving almost idly, stroked the gray hair of the woman in his arms. His eyes moved back to her still face.
Belisarius tried to think of something to say, but could not. At his side, Maurice cleared his throat.
"What is the name of this village?" he asked.
The old peasant shrugged. "What village? There is no village here." But, after a moment: "It was once called Kulachi."
Maurice pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. "Today, we destroyed the army which did this. And now, as is Roman custom, we seek a name for the victory."
Belisarius nodded. "Quite right," he announced loudly. "The Battle of Kulachi, it was."
Around him, the Roman soldiers who heard growled their satisfaction. The peasant studied them, for a moment, as if he were puzzled.
Then, he shrugged again. "The name is yours, Roman. It means nothing to me anymore." He stroked the woman's hair, again, again. "I remember the day I married her. And I remember each of the days she bore me a child. The children who now lie dead in this place."
He stared to the south, where a guilty army was bleeding its punishment. "But this day? It means nothing to me. So, yes, you may have the name. I no longer need it."
On the way out of the village, several soldiers left some food with the old man. He seemed to pay no attention. He just remained there, stroking a memory's hair.