Belisarius - Destiny's Shield Part 33

Baresmanas' whisper confirmed his guess.

"That's Merena's clan-those of them who were present in the city, at least."

The sahrdaran's enigmatic smile was now almost a grin. He shook his head.

"You still don't understand? Odd, really, for a man who is normally so acutely perceptive. I would have thought-"

A small commotion was taking place. The little mob of dehgans along the eastern wall was stepping aside, clearing a s.p.a.ce for a small party advancing into the chamber through an archway in the eastern wall.

Four women appeared-the first women Belisarius had seen since he entered the palace.

Aide's voice-smug, smug: I figured it out yesterday.

The woman in front was middle-aged. The three walking behind her were quite young. Her daughters, obviously.

Belisarius felt his jaw sag.

What a dummy.

The girl in the center, the oldest, was perhaps sixteen years of age.

It's the first signs of senility, that's what it is.

She was dressed in an elaborate costume. Her sisters, flanking her, wore clothing which was generically similar but not quite as ostentatious.

Don't worry, grandpa.

Her face was covered with a veil, except for her eyes. Dark brown eyes, they were. Gleaming with excitement. Beautiful eyes. Belisarius had no doubt that the rest of the girl was just as beautiful.

I'll take care of you.

Belisarius was not able to follow most of the ritual-the long ritual-which followed. Just the obvious highlights. Partly, because he was caught off-guard. Partly, because it was the ceremony of a foreign religion. Mostly, though, because Aide kept interrupting his train of thought.

The lighting of the sacred fire- You'll have to stick with porridge from now on.

The presentation by the chief scribe of the intricate property rights and obligations which were a central feature of patixsayih marriages- Can't risk you eating meat. Cut yourself, for sure, forgetting which end of the dagger to use.

The stiff presentations, by Agathius and Merena, of their respective n.o.ble rankings- We'll get rid of your horse, of course.

The learned counsel of the herbads, added to the judgement of the mobads, weighed by the district governor and his a.s.sembled advisers- Find you a donkey to ride.

-who agreed, after lengthy consultation, that the marriage maintained the necessary purity of the Aryan n.o.bility.

A small donkey. So you won't get hurt, all the times you'll fall off.

After the ceremony was over, during the feast which followed, Merena approached Belisarius.

"I have a question," he asked. Stiff as ever.

Politely, Belisarius inclined his head in invitation.

"Was Agathius at Mindouos? I did not wish to ask him, before. And now that he is my son-in-law, I cannot."

"No, Merena. He wasn't."

The dehgan grunted. "Good, good." Merena rubbed his thigh. "That would have been-difficult," he murmured. Then, moved away, limping very badly.

Walking out of the palace, Belisarius glanced at Baresmanas. The smile was still there. Not enigmatic, however. Simply smug.

"And how did you find out about it?" growled the general.

"I didn't 'find out about it,' my friend. I am the one who-ah, what is that word you Romans are so fond of? Yes, yes-I engineered the whole thing."

Belisarius' eyes widened. Baresmanas chuckled.

"Oh, yes. I am the one who introduced the gallant young officer to Merena and his family-after conspiring with his wife to make sure that Sudaba would be present, looking her very-beautiful! beautiful!-best. I am the one-"

"Stop bragging," grumbled Belisarius. "I will fully admit that it was a masterstroke, insofar as the problem we discussed-"

"You think I did it because of that?" The sahrdaran snorted. "I had a much more immediate problem to solve, my friend. As I told you, Merena is a famous warrior and an absolute paragon of Aryan propriety. He is also, by dehgan standards, poor. So-the man had a daughter of marriageable age and no respectable dowry to give her. Think of the shame! The disgrace! No suitable Persian n.o.bleman would accept a bride with no dowry."

Belisarius smiled crookedly.

"Whereas a vigorous, ambitious young Roman officer risen from the ranks-and newly rich from the booty of Anatha-would be far more concerned with increasing his status than his wealth."

"Precisely."

Belisarius shook his head sadly. "I am a lamb among wolves. An innocent babe surrounded by schemers."

Don't worry, old man. I'll take care of you.

Oh-be careful! There's a step coming up!

Chapter 25.

BABYLON.

Autumn, 531 a.d.

Khusrau a.n.u.shirvan sprang lightly onto the low wall which surmounted the highest level of Esagila, the ancient ruin which had once been the great temple of the G.o.d Marduk. From that vantage point, the Emperor of Persia could gaze south at the huge Malwa army encamped before Babylon.

An instant later, Belisarius joined him. The general took a moment to make sure his footing was good. The wall-almost a battlement-was at least a yard wide, but there was nothing to stop someone who overbalanced from plunging to their death on the stone rubble sixty feet below.

Khusrau smiled.

"Does alt.i.tude bother you?" he asked. The question was polite, not scornful.

The Roman general shook his head. "Not par-ticularly. Still, I wouldn't want to dance up here."

"Lucky man! I myself am petrified by heights. Anything above the level of horseback."

Belisarius glanced at the Persian Emperor. In truth, Khusrau's face seemed a bit pinched, as if he were controlling himself by sheer force of will.

He was impressed, again, by the Emperor's self-discipline. Since his arrival in Babylon three days before, Belisarius had been struck by the way Khusrau kept his obviously exuberant and dynamic personality under a tight rein. That same self-control was being manifested now, in the Persian ruler's ability to remain standing on a perch which would have sent most men to their knees seeking safety.

For ten minutes or so, the two men said nothing. They simply stood side by side, studying the battle being waged below them.

Belisarius' attention was immediately drawn by the roar of siege guns. A cloud of gunsmoke, well over a mile distant, indicated the presence of a battery of the huge cannons. After the wind blew the cloud away, he could spot the actual guns themselves. Eight of them, sheltered behind a berm. He recognized the pattern from his previous experience at the siege of Ranapur. His eyes ranged north and south, quickly spotting two more batteries. Another roar, another cloud of gunsmoke, and one of those batteries was also hidden from view.

Belisarius shifted his gaze to the walls of the besieged city. His eyes widened.

The defenses of Babylon were gigantic. The outer ring was so ma.s.sive that it was impossible, almost, to think of it as anything other than a low ridge. The fortifications were not particularly tall-perhaps twenty feet, no more-but they spanned perhaps forty yards in thickness.

Studying it more closely, Belisarius saw that the outer defenses were actually a triple wall-or, at least, had been so once. The inner wall, some twenty feet wide, was constructed of sun-dried mud brick. Squat towers s.p.a.ced at regular intervals projected another twenty feet above the wall itself, topped with sheltered platforms for Persian soldiers manning scorpions and other artillery engines. A rubble-strewn s.p.a.ce fifty feet wide separated this inner wall from the middle wall. The middle wall was a bit thicker than the inner wall, with no towers. Unlike the inner wall, this wall was made of harder and more durable oven-baked brick.

That same type of brick was used in the third, outermost wall. No s.p.a.ce separated this outermost wall from the midwall. The third wall, originally ten feet in thickness, served both as a bulwark for the midwall as well as the escarpment for the huge moat beyond it.

There was not much left of that third wall, however. Over the centuries, peasants had plucked away the good bricks for their own use. Today, the moat which lapped at the crumbled edge of the wall seemed more like a natural river than a man-made artifact. The size of the moat, of course, was partly responsible for producing that impression-Belisarius estimated that it was at least a hundred yards wide.

Belisarius watched a cannonball slam into the outer wall. A little avalanche of broken bricks slid into the moat, leaving a ripple in their wake. Other than that, the siege gun seemed to have made no impact whatsoever.

"At that rate," he mused, "they'll fill the moat with rubble and cannonb.a.l.l.s before they ever finish breaking down the wall."

Khusrau snorted.

"We were terrified-myself also, I will admit it-when they first began firing with those incredible machines. 'Siege guns,' as you call them. But after a few days-then weeks, and now months-we have little fear of them. It's ironic, actually. Most of my advisers urged me to make a stand at Ctesiphon, taking advantage of its tall, stone walls. But I think if I had done so-"

"You would have been defeated by now," concluded Belisarius. "I have seen these guns in use before, and I have seen the walls of Ctesiphon. Those walls would have been brought down within two months."

He pointed to Babylon's outer fortifications. "Whereas this wall-this wide, soft, low wall-is actually more of a berm. Exactly the best kind of defenses against siege guns."

Both men watched as another cannonball struck the wall-the inner wall, this time. The cannonball buried itself in the crumbly mudbrick, without so much as shaking the tower thirty yards away from the impact.

"The wall just got stronger, I think," chuckled Khusrau.

"How many a.s.saults have they mounted?" asked Belisarius.

"Seven. The last one was a month ago. No-almost six weeks now."

The Persian Emperor turned and pointed to his right, toward the Euphrates.

"That one they attempted with barges, loaded with soldiers. It was a ma.s.sacre. As you can see, the western walls of the city are still standing, almost as they were built by Nebuchadrezzar a thousand years ago. Stonework. Very tall. We poured burning naphtha on them, and sank many of the barges with catapults."

He elevated his finger, still pointing to the west.

"If they could position their siege guns to the west, they could probably break down those stone walls. But I ordered the dikes and levees broken."

Belisarius gazed toward the river. It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun's rays were reflected off a vast spread of water. Khusrau, following a Mesopotamian military tradition which went back to the ancient Sumerians, had ordered the flooding of the low ground. Unchecked by manmade obstructions, the Euphrates had turned the entire area west of Babylon into a swamp. Impossible terrain even for an infantry a.s.sault, much less the positioning of artillery.

The area east of Babylon had been protected in the same manner. The ancient city was almost an island now, surrounded by water and marshes to the west, east and northeast. The Malwa army held the southern ground. Persian forces still retained control of the narrow causeway which led from the Ishtar Gate on Babylon's northwest side to the northern regions of Mesopotamia. Even after all these months, the Malwa had not been able to surround and isolate the besieged city.

Khusrau looked back to the south.

"The first six a.s.saults were made here. The Malwa suffered great losses in all of them, with no success at all except, temporarily, during the third a.s.sault. In that attack, some of their troops-those excellent ones with the strange hair style-"

"Kushans."

"Yes. About a thousand of them got past the outer fortifications, in three different places. But-"

He shrugged. Belisarius, gazing down, could not help wincing.

"Must have been a slaughter."

"Yes," agreed Khusrau. The Emperor pointed at the inner fortifications, which consisted of a second ring of walls positioned about two hundred yards inside the outer ring.

"That is a double wall. The outer wall is twenty feet thick; the inner, fifteen. These fortifications were also built by Nebuchadrezzar. Very clever, he was-or his engineers and architects, at least. You can see that the two walls are separated by a s.p.a.ce of twenty feet. The area between is a built-up road, perfect for military traffic. Then, beyond the outer wall, is a low berm. You can't see it from here. But you can see the moat which b.u.t.ts up against that berm. It's fifty yards wide."

Belisarius shook his head. "A pure killing ground. If the enemy manages to cross the first moat and fight their way over the outer defenses, they find themselves trapped in the open-with another moat to cross, and still more fortifications to be scaled."

"That, too, was slaughter. I had the road packed with dehgans and their retainers. It is quite solid and wide enough for hors.e.m.e.n. They were able to fire their bows from the saddle, sheltered by the outer wall, and rush to whatever spot looked most in danger. I don't think we lost more than two hundred men. And that's about how many of the Kushans finally made it back across the outer fortifications alive."

He began to add something else, but his attention was distracted by the sight of a rocket arching up from the Malwa lines. Khusrau and Belisarius followed the rocket's erratic trajectory, until it plunged harmlessly into the open area between Babylon's two rings of defenses.

"The rockets actually have been more of a problem," commented the Emperor. "They do almost no damage to the walls, and many of them miss the city entirely. But those which do fly straight have a longer range than the siege guns, and they have caused casualties. It is the unpredictability of the cursed things which bothers my soldiers the most."

Belisarius nodded, but said nothing in reply. He was now preoccupied with studying the enemy's field fortifications.

That study was brief. He had seen their equivalent at Ranapur and, again, was not overly impressed. A Roman army, this many months into a siege, would have constructed much better and more solid field-works.

Now his eyes were drawn to a further distance, and toward the river. Several miles away, he could see the crude piers which the Malwa had constructed on the left bank of the Euphrates. Crudely made, but very capacious. He estimated that there were at least forty ships tied up to those docks, each of which had a capacity of several hundred tons. Another half dozen or so could be seen coming up the river, their oar banks flashing in the sun as they fought their way against the sluggish current.

Remembering Ranapur, he scanned the river more closely. As he expected, the Malwa were providing security for their supply fleet with a small armada of swift war galleys.

"It's incredible, isn't it?" asked Khusrau. "Not even the ancient legends speak of a logistics effort on this scale."

He fell silent, tight-lipped.

Belisarius eyed the Emperor covertly. Khusrau's face was expressionless, but the general realized that the man's fear of heights was taking a toll on him.