Eric Flint - An Oblique Approach

"I hate mustaches on a woman," grumbled Anastasius.

"I can live with the mustaches," retorted Valentinian. "It's those damned beards that bother me."

"And the knobby fingers."

"The scrawny legs."

"Which go so oddly with those"—here Anastasius cupped his hands before his stomach—"bloated bellies."

"And where did they get that habit of filing their teeth into sharp points?" demanded Valentinian crossly.

"Oh, well," groaned Anastasius. "Duty calls." He arose. "Come, Valentinian. We must be off, about the general's business."

As the two veterans were leaving the room, Anastasius shook his sausage-sized finger in Valentinian's face.

"Remember! Kushans only! I won't have you leading me astray!"

"Kushans only," grumbled Valentinian. As they went through the door, a last repartee:

Valentinian, whispering: "But those eyes—those rheumy, salt-encrusted, lifeless—"

"It's because of the diseases they all carry, you know. That's what causes the sores on their—"

The door closed.

Menander looked at Belisarius. "They're lying, aren't they?"

Belisarius chuckled. "Through their teeth, Menander. Kushans are quite attractive folk, in their own way. They look much like Ye-tai. More like Huns, perhaps. They're of the same stock."

"I didn't know that."

Belisarius nodded. "Oh, yes. They're all part of that great mass of central Asian nomads which erupts into civilized lands every century or so. The Kushans conquered Bactria and parts of north India a long time ago. Over the centuries, they lost most of their barbarousness and became rather civilized. They did quite well, in fact. Bactria under Kushan rule used to be quite a pleasant place, by all accounts."

"What happened?"

Belisarius shrugged. "I don't know, in detail. Fifty years or so ago, their Ye-tai cousins erupted into the area. They ravaged parts of Persia, conquered Bactria and reduced the Kushans to vassals, and then plundered their way into north India. Where, in the end, they seemed to have reached an accommodation with the Malwa."

Frustration replaced curiosity on Menander's face.

"Damn." He struggled to find solace. "Oh, well, it's not that bad. I never found Huns attractive anyway. They stink, all the ones I've met. And I think their way of greasing up their hair is grotesque."

Belisarius forebore comment. Menander hadn't thought through the implications of Belisarius' little history lesson. The Kushans hadn't been nomads for centuries, and had long since adopted such civilized customs as regular bathing. Belisarius himself had met a few Kushans, and he had found them a reasonably comely people.

But he saw no reason to enlighten the lad. The one part of this journey which Menander had looked forward to was encountering exotic and fascinating women. And here he was, in Bharakuccha, with uncountable numbers close at hand. And so weak he could barely feed himself, much less—

Belisarius rose.

"I've got to be off, myself. Will you—"

"I'll be fine, sir. I think I'm going to sleep, anyway. I'm very tired." Apologetically: "I'm sorry I'm of so little—"

"Quiet! Wounds are wounds, Menander. And yours was—well, there's no reason not to tell you now. Yours was fatal, nine times out of ten. I'm surprised you're still alive, and mending. I hardly expect you to do anything more. Not for weeks."

Menander smiled, faintly. Within a minute, he was fast asleep. Belisarius left the room, closing the door softly.

Once outside the hostel, the general wandered in the vicinity of the docks. While their ship had been working its way into the harbor, he had noticed something he wanted to investigate further.

As he walked through the teeming streets, he let his mind go blank and allowed the jewel to work its linguistic magic. It was still strange to him, how the jewel could enable him to grasp languages so quickly and effortlessly. But its capacity to do so had been proven often enough.

There were limits to the magic. The jewel enabled him to understand language very swiftly. After hearing only a few sentences spoken in a foreign tongue, Belisarius was able to grasp the essential meaning of what was being spoken. Understanding every single word, especially when the speaker was talking rapidly, took longer.

Learning how to speak the language, however, was a different proposition altogether. Here, the muscles of the mouth and tongue were needed as much as intelligence. Belisarius had already discovered, from his experience with Ge'ez, that it took him much longer to learn to speak a language than to comprehend it. He could manage to make himself understood fairly quickly, so long as he spoke slowly and carefully. But being able to speak it fluently, and without accent, took a great deal of practice.

Still, the jewel made that possible also. In some manner Belisarius did not clearly understand, the jewel fed his own words back to some part of his mind, acting as a continuous tutor. It took time and patience, true, but with practice Belisarius could make himself sound as a native speaker of any language.

Thus far, he had only used the capability to learn to speak Ge'ez. He could now understand Hindi and Ye-tai perfectly, when he heard it, but he had as yet had no practice in speaking them.

He had hoped, by pretending ignorance, that Venandakatra would reveal something inadvertently. It had been a small hope, however. And, as he had expected, the Indian lord was much too shrewd to utter any secrets in his own tongue in front of strangers. They did not seem to understand Hindi and Ye-tai, but who was to know?

The streets of Bharakuccha were a veritable Babel of languages, so much became obvious within minutes. Belisarius feared that the jewel would inundate him with the comprehension of a multitude of languages. But, after a while, he decided that the jewel understood his purpose. Of the untold number of phrases which surrounded him in his peregrination, in countless tongues, only those which were spoken in two languages were translated into comprehension.

And precisely the two languages he sought: Kushan and Marathi.

His progress in learning the languages was slow and haphazard, however, since he was not pursuing them systematically. Not today. His encounter with those two tongues simply came by chance, and the chances were few and far between.

At first, he thought the infrequency of encounter was simply due to the relative scarcity of Kushans and Marathas in the city. Eventually, however, as he began to discern the subtle physical features which distinguished Marathas from other Indians, he realized that he was only half right. Kushans were, indeed, rather rare. Marathas, on the other hand, were quite plentiful. But they did not speak much, for most of them were slaves, and slaves quickly learn to maintain silence in the presence of their masters.

Especially slaves like these, with masters like these.

A newly conquered people, and a proud one. They do not take to slavery well, judging from their looks and the marks of their beatings.

Eventually, Belisarius arrived at the harbor and began making his way toward the portion of the docks which had interested him earlier. His progress was slow, for the docks were teeming with people. Slave laborers, for the most part; the majority of them Maratha, with Malwa overseers and Ye-tai guards. Many Ye-tai guards, he noted. Many more than were normally found guarding parties of slave laborers.

Even as rarely as the slaves spoke, there were so many of them that by the time he arrived at his destination he was already able to comprehend the gist of the language. And he comprehended something else, as well, from the undertones and nuances of the Marathi phrases he had overheard.

A warrior people, it will take the Malwa at least a generation to break them. As I hoped.