David Drake: Fortune's stroke

Huge hands seized Belisarius' thighs. The general relinquished his grip on the pegs, and Anastasius lowered him easily onto a floor. A gravel floor, Belisarius thought, from the feel of it.

He began to stand up straight, then flinched. He couldn't see the roof, and feared crashing his head.

That brought to mind a new problem. "Damn," he growled. "I forgot it would be pitch-black down here."

"I didn't," came Maurice's self-satisfied reply. "Neither did Vasudeva. But I hope you had the sense to bring that striker down with you. It's the only one we've got."

Belisarius dug into his tunic and withdrew the striker. His hand, groping in the darkness, encountered that of Maurice. The Thracian chiliarch took the device and struck it. A moment later, Maurice had a taper burning. It was a short length of tallow-soaked cord, one of the field torches which Roman soldiers carried with them on campaign.

The smoky, flickering light was enough to illuminate the area. Belisarius began a quick examination, while Maurice lit the taper which Vasudeva was carrying.

Valentinian, staring around, whistled softly. "Damn! I'm impressed."

So was Belisarius. The underground aqueduct they found themselves in was splendidly constructed-easily up to the best standards of Roman engineering. The aqueduct-the qanat, as the Persians called it, using the Arabic term-was square in cross section, roughly eight feet wide by eight feet tall. The central area of the tunnel, about four feet in width, was sunk two feet below the ledges on either side. That central area, where the water would normally flow except during the heavy runoff in mid-spring, was covered with gravel. The ledges were crudely paved with stone blocks, and were just wide enough for a man to walk along.

Except for a small trickle of water seeping down the very center, the qanat was dry. It was still too early in the season for most of the snow to begin melting.

"What do you think the slope is, Maurice?" asked Belisarius. "One in three hundred? That's the Roman standard."

"Do I look like an engineer?" groused the chiliarch. "I haven't got the faintest-"

"One in two hundred," interrupted Vasudeva. "Maybe even one in a hundred and fifty."

The Kushan smiled seraphically. In the flickering torchlight, he looked like a leering gargoyle. "This is mountain country, much like my own homeland. No room here for any leisurely Roman slopes." He pointed with his torch. "That way. The steep slope makes it easy to see the direction of the mountains. But we've a long way to go."

He set off, pacing along the ledge on the right. Cheerfully, over his back: "Long way. Tiring. Especially for Romans, accustomed to philosopher slopes and poet-type gradients." He barked a laugh. "One in three hundred!" Another laugh. "Ha!"

An hour later, Valentinian began complaining.

"There would have been room for the horses," he whined. "Plenty of room."

"How would you have lowered them down?" demanded Anastasius. "And what good would it have done, anyway?"

The giant glanced up at the stone ceiling. Unlike his companions, Anastasius had chosen to walk on the gravel in the central trough of the qanat. On the ledges, he would have had to stoop.

"Eight feet, at the most," he pronounced. "You couldn't possiblyride a horse down here. You'd still be walking, and have to lead the surly brutes by the reins."

Mutter, mutter, mutter.

"So stop whining, Valentinian. There's worse things in life than a long, uphill hike."

"Like what?" snarled Valentinian.

"Like being dead," came the serene reply.

They passed a multitude of vertical shafts along the way, identical to the one down which they had lowered themselves. But Belisarius ignored them. He wanted to make sure they had reached the mountains before emerging.

Three hours after beginning their trek, they reached the first of the sloping entryways which provided easier access to the qanat. Belisarius fought off the temptation. He wanted to be well into the mountains before they emerged, away from any possible discovery or pursuit.

Onward. Valentinian started muttering again.

Two hours later-the slope wasmuch steeper now-they reached another entryway. This one was almost level, which indicated how high up into the mountains they had reached.

Again, Belisarius was tempted. Again, he fought it down.

Further. Onward.

Valentinian's muttering was nonstop, now.

An hour or so later, they reached another entryway, and Belisarius decided it was safe to take it. When they emerged, they found themselves in the very same pass in the mountains from which they had begun their descent to the plateau. Night had fallen, but there was a full moon to illuminate the area.

It was very cold. And they were very hungry.

"We'll camp here," announced Belisarius. "Start our march tomorrow at first light. Hopefully, some of Coutzes' cavalry will find us before too long. I told him to keep plenty of reconnaissance platoons out in the field."

"Which could have done what we just did," grumbled Maurice. "A commanding general's got no business doing this kind of work."

Quite right, came Aide's vigorous thought.

"Quite right," came the echo from Valentinian, Anastasius and Vasudeva.

Seeing the four men glaring at him in the moonlight, and sensing the crystalline glare coming from within his own mind, Belisarius sighed.

It's going to be a long night. And a longer day tomorrow-if I'm lucky, and Coutzes is on the job. If not Sigh.

Days! Days of this! Slogging through the mountains is bad enough, without having every footstep dogged by reproaches and "I-told-you-so' s."

"I told you so," came the inevitable words from Maurice.

"I told you so," murmured Rana Sanga. The Rajput king strode over to the well and peered down into the shaft.

Pratap, the commander of the cavalry troop, suppressed a sigh of relief. Sanga, on occasion, possessed an absolutely ferocious temper. But his words of reproach had been more philosophical than condemnatory.

He joined the king at the well.

"You followed?" asked Sanga.

Pratap hesitated, then squared his shoulders. "I sent several men to investigate. But-it's pitch-black down there, and we had no good torches. Nothing that would have lasted more than a few minutes. By the time we finally cleared away the rubble and figured out what had happened, the Romans had at least an hour's head start. It didn't seem to me-"

Sanga waved him down. "You don't have to justify yourself, Pratap. As it happens, I agree with you. You almost certainly wouldn't have caught up with them and, even if you had-"

He straightened, finished with his examination of the well. In truth, there wasn't much to see. Just a stone-lined hole descending into darkness.

"From your description of the giant Roman, I'm sure that was one of Belisarius' two personal bodyguards. I've forgotten his name. But the other one is called Valentinian, and-"

From the corner of his eye, he saw Udai wince. Udai was one of his chief lieutenants. Like Sanga himself, Udai had been present at the Malwa emperor's pavilion after the capture of Ranapur. The emperor, testing Belisarius' pretense at treason, had ordered him to execute Ranapur's lord and his family. The Roman general had not hesitated, ordering Valentinian to do the work.

For a moment, remembering, Sanga almost winced himself. Valentinian had drawn his sword and decapitated six people in less time than it would have taken most soldiers to gather their wits. Sanga was himself accounted one of India's greatest swordsmen. Valentinian was one of the few men he had ever encountered-thevery few men-who he thought might be his equal. To meet such a man downthere "Just as well," he stated firmly. "In the qanat, with no way to surround them, the advantage would have been all theirs." He turned away from the well, and began picking his way across the mound of rubble.