An Oblique Approach Page 12

  "What do you think?" he asked.

  Belisarius smiled. "Well, they're certainly throwing themselves into their roles. Although I'm not sure it's really necessary for so many of them to be tearing at their hair. Or howling quite so loud. Or shaking their knees and gibbering."

  Hermogenes' grin never faded.

  "Better too much than too little." He turned and admired the thespian display. By now, the soldiers at the wall were racing around madly, in apparent confusion and disorder.

  "Don't overdo it, Hermogenes," said Belisarius. "The men might get a little too far into it and forget it's just an act."

  The chiliarch shook his head firmly.

  "Not a chance. They're actually quite enthusiastic about the coming battle."

  Belisarius eyed him skeptically.

  "It's true, General. Well—maybe `enthusiastic' is putting it a little too strongly. Confident, let's say."

  Belisarius scratched his chin. "You think? I'd have thought the men would be skeptical of such a tricky little scheme."

  Hermogenes stared at the general. Then said, very seriously, "If any other general had come up with it, they probably would. But—it's Belisarius' plan. That's what makes the difference."

  Again, the skeptical eye.

  "You underestimate your reputation, general. Badly."

  Belisarius began to say that the scheme wasn't actually his. He had taken it from Julius Caesar, who had used hidden troops in a fortified camp in one of his many battles against the Gauls. But before he could utter more than two words, he fell silent. One of the sentries at the wall was shouting. A genuine alert, now, not a false act.

  Belisarius raced to the wall and peered over. Hermogenes joined him an instant later.

  The Persians were advancing.

  Belisarius studied the Mede formation intently. It was impressive, even—potentially—terrifying. As Persian armies always were.

  An old thought caused a little quirk to come to the general's lips.

  I'm always amazed at the way modern Greek scholars and courtiers don't live in the real world. Their image of Persian armies is fixed a thousand years ago, in the ancient times. When a small number of disciplined and armored Greek and Macedonian hoplites could always scatter the lightly-armed Persian mobs of Xerxes and Darius. The glorious phalanx of the Hellenes against the motley hordes of despotic Asia.

  Let them see this, and gape, and tremble.

  Many modern Greeks, of course, knew the truth. But they were of a different class than the Greeks who wrote the books and the laws, and collected the taxes, and lorded it over their great estates.

  Persia had changed, over the centuries. More, even, than Rome. A class of tough, land-vested nobility had arisen. They were the real power in Persia, now, when all was said and done. True, they paid homage to the Sassanid emperors, and served them, as they had the Parthians who preceded them. But it was a conditional homage and a proud service. The conditions and the pride stemmed from one simple fact. The Persian aristocracy had invented modern heavy cavalry, and they were still better at it than any people on the face of the earth. The Roman cataphracts were, in all essential respects, simply attempts to copy the Persian noble cavalry.

  The Persians were now close enough for the details of their formation to be made out.

  Unlike Roman armies, which used infantry as the stolid center of their formations—as an anchor for the battle, even if they weren't much use in the battle itself—the Persians scorned infantry almost entirely. True, there were ten thousand foot soldiers in the advancing Mede army. But Persian infantry were a ragged, scraggly lot: modern Persian foot soldiers were probably even worse than the rabble which had been broken by the hoplites at Marathon and Issus centuries earlier. Miserable peasant levies, completely unarmored except for hide shields; armed only with javelins and light spears; consigned to the flanks; assigned the simple duties of butchering wounded enemies and serving as a buffer against charging foes. Armed cattle, basically.

  Belisarius dismissed them with a glance. The general's attention was riveted on the cavalry advancing at the center of the Persian army. His experienced eye immediately sorted order out of the mass.

  The heart of the Persian cavalry were the heavily armored noble lancers, riding huge war horses bred on the Persian plateau. Each nobleman, in turn, brought to battle a small retinue of more lightly armored horse archers. The horse archers would start the battle, and would fight closely alongside the heavy lancers. When the lancers made charges, the mounted archers would act as a screen to keep off enemy cavalry and suppress enemy archers, while the lancers shattered their foe.

  It was a ferocious, well-disciplined military machine. No Roman army had won a major battle in the open field against Persia in over a century.

  But Belisarius was filled with confidence.

  Today, I'm going to do it.

  He began to turn away from the wall. Before leaving, however, he stopped a moment and gazed at Hermogenes. The infantry chiliarch grinned.

  "Relax, General. You just take care of the cavalry. The infantry will do its job."

  Once back on his horse, Belisarius cantered over to the right wing of his army. The right was in the hands of the Army of Lebanon's cavalry commanders. Belisarius intended to take his position there at the beginning of the battle. Although the Army of Lebanon had accepted his leadership, he knew that they would quickly slip the leash if he was not there to keep a tight grip on it. The one thing that could ruin his plans was a rash, unplanned cavalry charge. Which, in his experience, cavalry was always prone to do.

  That's another thing I like about infantry. When a man has to charge on his own two legs, he tends to think it over first. Less tiring.

  Seeing him approach, the cavalry chiliarchs rode to meet him.

  "Soon, now," announced Eutyches.

  Belisarius nodded.

  "As soon as—" A blaring cornicen cut him off. Belisarius turned in his saddle just in time to see the first missiles hurled from the four scorpions and two onagers which he had positioned behind the fortified camp. Phocas had gauged the range and given the command for the artillery fire.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a scowl on the face of Pharas.

  Belisarius understood the meaning of that expression. Like most modern Roman commanders, Pharas had no use for artillery in a field battle.

  But Belisarius forebore comment. He had learned, from experience, that it was a futile argument.

  They just don't understand. Sure, the damned things are a pain to haul around. Sure, they don't really inflict that many casualties. But they do two invaluable things. First, they break up the cohesion of the enemy's ranks. An alert soldier, even a heavily armored horseman, can usually dodge a great big scorpion dart or a huge stone thrown by an onager—as long as he isn't hemmed in by closely packed ranks. So, the enemy starts spreading out. Second—and most important—it's utterly infuriating to a warrior to be bombarded when he's too far away to retaliate. So he charges closer. Which is just what I want. Strategic offense; tactical defense. There's the whole secret in a nutshell.

  The two chiliarchs were already galloping toward the front line. Belisarius followed. He needed to be able to watch the progress of the battle, and had already decided he would do it from the right. The hill would have been a perfect vantage point, of course, but he would have been much too isolated from the right wing of his army. Which represented both his heaviest force and his least reliable.

  By the time he reached the front line, the Persians had already begun their charge. He saw at once that the enemy had begun the charge much too soon. Even the huge Persian horses couldn't charge any great distance before becoming exhausted.

  And so, once again, the artillery did the trick.

  Still, the Persians weren't Goths. Once Goths began a cavalry charge, they always tried to carry it through. The Medes, sophisticated and civilized for all their noble pride, were much too canny not to suspect a trap.

  So, once th
ey got within bow range, the Persian heavy cavalry reined in and let their horses breathe. The lighter mounted archers continued forward, firing their bows.

  Pharas didn't wait for Belisarius' command. He ordered the Roman horse archers forward. The Huns galloped out onto the battleground, firing their own bows. Within moments, a swirling archery duel was underway.

  Between Persian and Hun mounted archers, the contest was unequal. The Persians, as always, fired their bows as rapidly as did the Huns—much more rapidly than Roman cataphracts or regular infantry. But the Persians were better armored, and that extra armor counted for much against the relatively weak bows being used by both sides.

  Soon enough, the Huns began falling back. The Persian horse archers did not attempt to charge in pursuit. They were no fools, and knew full well that Huns surpassed everyone in the art of turning a retreat into a sudden counterattack. So they simply satisfied themselves with a disciplined, orderly advance. Firing volley after volley as they came.

  Pharas began to grumble, but Belisarius cut him off. Quickly. As he had expected, the chiliarch had already forgotten the battle plan.

  "Splendid," announced Belisarius. "The Huns have already succeeded in fixing the entire left wing of the enemy."

  "They're advancing on us!" exclaimed Pharas.

  How did this idiot ever get made a chiliarch? I wouldn't trust him to bake bread. The first thing he'd do is throw away the recipe.

  But his words were mild.

  "Which is precisely what I want, Pharas. As long as the Persian left is advancing on our right, they aren't free to be doing something else. Such as chewing up our left, which is where the battle's going to be decided."

  Belisarius ignored the fuming chiliarch and watched the battle develop on the other side of the field. The Isaurians and Thracian cataphracts on the hill were now starting to fire their bows at the Persian cavalry spreading into the center of the battleground. Within five minutes, it was obvious to Belisarius that his earlier estimate had been accurate.

  It was the great advantage of cataphract archery, and one of the reasons Belisarius had stationed his Thracians atop the hill. With individual exceptions, such as Valentinian, they didn't have the rapid rate of fire that Persian or Hun horse archers did. But no archers in the world fired bows more accurately, and none with that awesome power. With the advantage of the hill's altitude, the cataphract arrows were plunging into the ranks of the Persian cavalry, wreaking havoc. Even the armor of Persian nobility couldn't withstand those arrows. And his cataphracts—especially the veterans—weren't aiming at the Persians anyway. Their targets were the horses themselves. The heavy frontal armor of the Persian chargers might have turned the arrows. But these missiles were plunging down into the great beasts' unarmored flanks. Dying and wounded horses began disrupting the serried ranks of the enemy's heavy cavalry.

  Suddenly, Belisarius felt a breeze at his back. He almost sighed with relief. He had expected it, but still—

  The wind, blowing from west to east, would increase the range of his own archery and artillery, and hamper the Persian arrows. Much more important, however, was the effect which the wind would have on visibility. The battlefield was already choked with dust thrown up by the horses. As soon as the breeze picked up, that dust would be moving from the Roman side to the Persian. The enemy would be half-blinded, even at close range.

  "They're going to charge," predicted Eutychian, the other cavalry chiliarch. "Against us, on this wing."

  "Thank God!" snorted Pharas. The chiliarch immediately rode off, shouting at his subordinate commanders.

  Belisarius examined the battlefield and decided Eutychian was right.

  Damn it! I was hoping—

  He stared at Eutychian, estimating the man. His decision, as always, came quickly—aided, as much as anything, by the level gaze with which the chiliarch returned his stare.

  "Can I trust you not to be an idiot like that one?" he demanded, pointing with his thumb at the retreating figure of Pharas.

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning this—can I trust you to meet this charge with a simple stand? All I want is for the Persians to be held on this wing. That's all. Do you understand? They outnumber us, especially in heavy cavalry. If you try to win the battle here, with a glorious idiotic all-out charge, the Medes will cut you to pieces and I'll have a collapsed right wing. The battle will be won on the left. All I need is for you to hold the right steady. Can you do it? Will you do it?"

  Eutychian glanced over at Pharas.

  "Yes, Belisarius. But he's senior to me and—"

  "You let me worry about Pharas. Will you hold this wing? Nothing more?"

  Eutychian nodded. Belisarius rode over to the small knot of commanders clustered around Pharas. As he went, he gave Valentinian and Anastasius a meaningful look. Anastasius' face grew stony. Valentinian grinned. On his sharp-featured, narrow face, the grin was utterly feral.

  As Belisarius drew near, he was able to make out Pharas' words of command to his subordinates. Just as he had feared, the chiliarch was organizing an all-out direct charge against the coming Medes.

  Belisarius shouldered his horse into the group of commanders. In his peripheral vision, he could see Valentinian sidling his horse next to Pharas, and Anastasius moving around to the other side of the small command group.

  Thank you, Maurice.

  "That's enough, Pharas," he said. His tone was sharp and cold. "Our main charge is going to come later, on the other—"

  "The hell with that!" roared Pharas. "I'm fighting now!"

  "Our battle plan—"

  "Fuck your fancy damned plan! It's pure bullshit! A fucking coward plan! I fight—"

  "Valentinian."

  In his entire life, Belisarius had never met a man who could wield a sword more quickly and expertly than Valentinian. Nor as mercilessly. The cataphract's long, lean, whipcord body twisted like a spring. His spatha removed Pharas' head as neatly as a butcher beheading a chicken.

  As always, Valentinian's strike was economical. No great heroic hewing, just enough to do the job. Pharas' head didn't sail through the air. It just rolled off his neck and bounced on the ground next to his horse. A moment later, his headless body fell off on the other side. His horse, suddenly covered with blood, shied away.

  The commanders gaped with shock. One of them began to draw his sword. Anastasius smashed his spine. No economy here—the giant's mace drove the commander right over his horse's head. His mount, well-trained, never budged.

  Belisarius whipped out his own spatha. The four surviving commanders in the group were now completely hemmed in by Belisarius and his two cataphracts. They were still gaping, and their faces were pale.

  "I'll tolerate no treason or insubordination," stated Belisarius. His voice was not loud. Simply as cold as a glacier. Icy death.

  "Do you understand?"

  Gapes. Pale faces.

  "Do you understand?" Valentinian twitched the spatha in his grip, very slightly. Anastasius hefted his mace, not so slightly.

  "Do you understand?"

  Mouths snapped shut. Faces remained pale, but heads began to nod. After two seconds, vigorously.

  Belisarius eased back in his saddle and slid his spatha back into its waist-scabbard. (Valentinian, of course, did no such thing. Nor did Anastasius seem in any hurry to relinquish his mace.)

  Belisarius turned and looked at Eutychian. The chiliarch was not more than thirty yards away. He and his own subordinates had witnessed the entire scene. So, Belisarius estimated, had dozens of the Army of Lebanon's cavalrymen. The faces of Eutychian and his commanders were also pale. But, Belisarius noted, they did not seem particularly outraged. Rather the contrary, in fact.

  He studied the cavalrymen. No pale faces there. A few frowns, perhaps, but there were at least as many smiles to offset them. Even a few outright grins. Pharas, he suspected, had not been a popular commander.

  Belisarius returned his hard stare to Eutychian. The chiliarch suddenly smiled—j
ust slightly—and nodded his own head.

  Belisarius turned back to the four commanders at his side.

  "You will obey me instantly and without question. Do you understand?"

  Vigorous nods. Anastasius replaced his mace in its holder. Valentinian did no such thing with his spatha.

  A sudden blaring of cornicens. Belisarius turned back again. He could no longer see the Persian army, for his vision was obscured by the mass of cavalrymen at the front line. But it was obvious the Medes had begun their charge. Eutychian and his commanders were riding down the line, shouting orders.

  Now in a hurry, Belisarius issued quick, simple instructions to the four commanders at his side:

  "Eutychian will hold the right, using half of the Army of Lebanon's heavy cavalry and all of the mounted archers. You four will assemble the other half of the Army of Lebanon's lancers and keep them in reserve. I want them ready to charge"—his voice turned to pure steel—"when I say, where I say, and how I say. Is that understood?"

  Very vigorous nods.

  Belisarius gestured to Anastasius and Valentinian.

  "Until the battle is over, these men will act as my immediate executive officers. You will obey their orders as if they came from me. Is that understood?"

  Very vigorous nods.

  Belisarius began to introduce his two cataphracts by name, but decided otherwise. For his immediate purposes, they had already been properly introduced.

  Death and Destruction, he thought, would do just fine.

  After the four commanders left to begin sorting out and assembling their forces, Belisarius rode back to the front line. As he approached, the Hun light cavalry began pouring back from the battlefield. They were no match in a head-to-head battle with the oncoming Persian lancers, and they knew it.

  That's one of the few good things about mercenaries, thought Belisarius. At least they aren't given to idiotic suicide charges.

  For all their mercenary character, the Huns were good soldiers. Experienced veterans, too. Their retreat was not a rout, and as soon as they reached the relative safety of the Roman lines they began to regroup. They knew the Roman heavy cavalry would be sallying soon, and it would be their job to provide flanking cover against the Persian horse archers.