Eric Flint: In the Heart of Darkness

Hundreds of grenades, their fuses sputtering, flew across the Hippodrome. The volley was not concentrated on any particular target. Each grenadier had simply decided to smite the foe. Any foe.

The volley erupted throughout the huge mob of faction thugs. A few landed in the vicinity of the wooden bulwarks sheltering the kshatriya. The Malwa soldiers, accustomed to gunpowder weapons, took shelter long before the grenades arrived. Few of them were even injured.

The mob-

A man of the future, had he been watching, would have called that volley a gigantic shotgun blast.

A sawed-off shotgun, at short range.

"Beautiful!" shouted Maurice, raising his fist in triumph. Below, the cataphracts and the grenadiers added their own cries of elation.

"The hell it was," snarled Antonina. " Sloppy. "

Scowling, the little woman stalked forward and began yelling orders at her grenadiers. Her clear, soprano voice-trained by an actress mother-projected right through the shrieking din of the Hippodrome.

Now steadied, the grenadiers began following her commands. Their volleys became concentrated, targeted salvoes.

Antonina aimed the first volley at the kshatriya. All of the rocket troughs were shattered or upended. Again, most of the Malwa soldiers escaped harm by sheltering behind the bulwarks. The bulwarks were solidly built-heavy timbers fastened with bolts. The grenades did no more than score the wood.

But Antonina didn't care. She simply wanted to cow the Malwa, put them out of action. She was quite confident in her ability to deal with a few hundred kshatriya. Her grenadiers, with their slings, easily outranged the Malwa grenades. And the rocket troughs were too fragile and cumbersome to be much of a threat in this kind of battle.

What she was really worried about-despite her confident proclamation to Maurice-was that the huge mob of faction thugs would swarm her with their numbers. There were forty thousand of them, against less than a thousand grenadiers and cataphracts-and the grenadiers would be of little use in a hand-to-hand melee.

So, while the Malwa soldiers coughed dust out of their lungs, crouching from the fury, Antonina began dismembering the mob.

Chop. Chop. Chop.

The next three volleys landed-in series, north to south-on the nearest fringes of the crowd. When the dust settled, and the bodies stopped flying, hundreds of faction thugs were scattered in heaps over the stone tiers. Dead, dying, wounded, stunned.

The crowd, shrieking, began piling away. More thugs died, trampled to death.

The nearest members of the mob were on the northern tiers of the Hippodrome. Antonina sent two volleys that way. The packed mass shredded, disintegrated. The survivors packed even tighter, pushing their fellows back, back. Back toward the far exits. Dozens more were trampled to death.

The kshatriya were stirring again. Small groups of Malwa soldiers were raising the two rocket troughs which had only been upended instead of destroyed. The rest were hurling their own grenades. But, without slings, those grenades fell harmlessly in the center of the Hippodrome.

Still-

Keep them cowed.

Antonina sent another volley at the kshatriyas. The Malwa soldiers, again, suffered relatively few casualties. But, as before, they were forced to retreat behind their bulwarks, out of action.

Back to the mob.

Chop. Chop. Chop.

Maurice, standing a few feet behind Antonina, smiled grimly. He said nothing. There was no need.

A knife fight in a kitchen.

The first members of the mob who fled from the Hippodrome escaped. Perhaps two thousand of them, less the hundred or so who were trampled to death squeezing through the northeastern gates.

The rest ran into Belisarius.

Marching up with his army, and seeing the Blue and Green thugs pouring out of the Hippodrome, Belisarius ordered half of the infantrymen to form lines on either side of the gates.

"Make them run the gauntlet, Hermogenes," he commanded. "Kill as many as you can- without breaking your lines."

"Most of them will escape," protested Hermogenes. "We should box them in. Kill all the stinking traitors."

Belisarius shook his head.

"We don't need that kind of bloodbath. Just enough to terrorize the factions for the next twenty years."

He turned to Irene, who was riding next to him. The spymaster had wanted to stay with Theodora, but Belisarius had insisted she accompany him to the Hippodrome. Theodora was safe, now. She and Justinian were being guarded in the Gynaeceum by Theodora's surviving excubitores, five hundred infantrymen, and most of Sittas' cataphracts. Irene could do nothing for Theodora, at the moment, whereas Belisarius had wanted her expertise.

"Can you identify the faction leaders?" he asked.

Irene nodded.

Belisarius whistled and waved to Sittas. The general trotted over, along with the hundred or so cataphracts he still had with him.

Belisarius pointed to the infantrymen lining up on either side of the gates. Already, the soldiers were cutting down those faction members who stumbled against their lines. The thugs who managed to stay out of sword range were in no danger from the soldiers. But, pushing away from the threatening infantrymen, the crowd was squeezing itself into a packed torrent of hurtling bodies. Within seconds, another dozen were trampled to death.

"Let them through, Sittas, those of them that survive the gauntlet. Except the faction leaders. I want them dead or captured. Irene will point them out for you."

Sittas began to protest the orders. Like Hermogenes, he was filled with a furious determination to massacre the entire crowd.

"Do as I command!" bellowed Belisarius. He matched Sittas glare for glare.

"Don't be an idiot, Sittas!" He pointed to the southwest. "Antonina has less than a thousand men. Most of them are grenadiers, who won't be worth much in a hand-to-hand battle. If that huge mob attacks them head on, they'll be slaughtered."

Sittas was still glaring. Belisarius snarled.

" Think , Sittas. If we trap that mob from this end, they'll have no choice but to pour out the other. So let them out here. Hermogenes and his men will savage them on the way out, and you make sure to get the leaders. That's good enough ."

"He's right, Sittas," hissed Irene.

Sittas blew out his cheeks.

"I know," he grumbled. "I just- damn all traitors, anyway ."

But he reined his horse around without further argument. Within a minute, his cataphracts were forming a mounted line a hundred and fifty yards away. By now, Hermogenes had his five hundred infantrymen lined up on either side of the gates, half on each side. His men stood three feet apart, in three ranks. As the faction thugs poured out of the Hippodrome, they would have to run a gauntlet almost a hundred yards long. Then, they would break against the heavily armored, mounted cataphracts-like a torrent against a boulder. The thugs who survived the gauntlet would be able to escape, by fleeing to either side through the fifty-yard gaps between the last infantrymen and Sittas' line. But during that time they would be exposed to Irene's searching eyes-and cataphract archery.

Satisfied, Belisarius turned away. Some of the faction leaders would escape. Not many.

He began trotting his horse to the southwest, below the looming wall of the Hippodrome. Valentinian, Anastasius and Menander rode next to him. Behind them came the remaining thousand infantrymen of Hermogenes' army.

Belisarius turned in his saddle. He saw that the infantry were maintaining a good columnar formation-well-ordered and ready to spread into a line as soon as he gave the command.

Ashot was right , he thought. The best Roman infantry since the days of the Principate.