Samudra managed to stave off that disaster. But it took two days to do so.

It wasn't until the morning of the third day that he remembered the Kushans at Margalla Pass. By which time it was too late to do anything.

Chapter 32

Near Mayapur, on the Ganges

"It's them, Great King," said the Pathan scout, pointing to the east. "Must be. No general-not even a Malwa-would be leading a large army from a chaundoli."

"How close are they to the Ganges?"

"For us, Great King, a day's march. For them, two. By mid-afternoon on the day after tomorrow, they will have reached Mayapur. They will need to wait until the next day to ford the river. The Ganges is still quick-moving, just coming out of the Silawik hills and the rapids. They would be foolish-very foolish-to cross it after sundown."

"Unless they were forced to…" Kungas mused. "Do you know if there's high ground nearby?"

"Yes, Great King. I have been to the shrines at Mayapur, to see the Footstep of God."

Kungas was not surprised. The Pathans were not Hindus, but like tribesmen in many places they were as likely to adopt the gods of other people as their own. Mayapur-also known as Gangadwara-was an ancient religious site, which had drawn pilgrims for centuries. It was said that Vishnu had left his footprint there, at the exact spot where the holy Ganges left the mountains.

The Pathan's hands moved surely in the air, sketching the topography. "Here, below, is the Ganges. Here-not far-there is a ridge. Very steep. There is a temple on the crest. I have been to it."

"Is the river within mortar range of the ridge?"

"Yes. The big mortars, anyway. And the flatland by the river is wide enough to hold the whole Malwa army, while they wait to cross." The Pathan grinned fiercely. "They will be relaxed and happy, now that they are finally out of the hills and entering the plain. You will slaughter them like lambs, Great King."

As he studied the distant hills, Kungas pondered the man's use of the title Great King. That was no title that Kungas himself had adopted or decreed, and this scout was not the first Pathan whom Kungas had heard use the expression. From what he could tell, in fact, it seemed to have become-or was becoming, at least-the generally accepted term for him among the tribesmen.

Great King.

There were subtleties in that phrase, if you knew-as Kungas did-the ways of thought of the mountain folk. People from lands accustomed to kings and emperors would think nothing of it. "Great" was simply one of many adjectives routinely attached to such rulers. A rather modest one, in fact, compared to the "divine" appellation of Indian tradition. Even the relatively egalitarian Axumites, when they indulged themselves in formal oratory, plastered such labels as "He Who Brought The Dawn" onto their monarchs.

Something else was involved here. Great king-where the Kushans themselves simply called him "king." The title added a certain necessary distance, for the Pathans. Kungas was not their king. Not the authority to whom they directly answered, who were their own clan leaders. But they would acknowledge that he was the overlord of the region, and would serve him in that capacity.

Good enough, certainly for the moment.

Kujulo was frowning slightly, looking at the Pathan. "Are you sure-"

Kungas waved his hand. "If a Pathan scout says it's Great Lady Sati, it's Great Lady Sati."

The man looked very pleased. Kungas' following question, however, had him frowning also.

"How large is her army?"

The Pathan's hands moved again, but no longer surely, as if groping a little. "Hard to say, Great King. Very large army. Many hundreds of hundreds."

Kungas left off further questioning. The Pathan was not only illiterate, but had a concept of arithmetic that faded away somewhere into the distance after the number "one hundred." Even that number was a borrowed Greek term. And, although the man was an experienced warrior, he was the veteran of mountain fights. Feuds between clans, clashes with expeditions from the lowlands-none of them involving forces on the scale of battles between civilized nations. Any estimate he gave of the size of Sati's army would be meaningless.

He nodded, dismissing the scout, and turned to Kujulo. "We'll need some of our own soldiers to do a reasonably accurate count. Send off a party guided by the scout."

"And in the meantime? Continue the march?"

"No. As hard as we've pressed them the past few days, the men need a rest." He glanced at the sky, gauging the sun. "I'll want a long march tomorrow, though, and it'll be a hard one, followed by a night march after a few hours rest. I want to be at that ridge before Sati can cross the river."

Kujulo started to move off. Kungas called him back.

"One other thing. By now, the bitch will be suspicious because we've cut the telegraph lines. Take three thousand men and march immediately. Stay to the south. She'll send back a scouting expedition. Three thousand should be enough to drive them off-but make sure you draw their attention to the south. "

Kujulo nodded. "While you march by night and slip past them to the north."

"Yes. If it works, we'll come onto the ridge opposite the river. They won't know we're there until they start crossing."

Kujulo's grin was every bit as savage as the Pathan's. "A big army-tens of thousands of soldiers-in the middle of a river crossing. Like catching an enemy while he's shitting. Good thing you made us wait to get more ammunition for the mortars, before we left Margalla Pass."

"We only lost a day, thanks to Irene's efficiency, and I knew we'd make it up in the march."

"True. Best quartermaster I ever saw, she is. Stupid Pathans. If they had any brains, they'd know it was just plain and simple 'king'-but with a very great queen."

He hurried off, then, leaving Kungas behind to ponder the question of whether or not he'd just seen his royal self deeply insulted.

Being an eminently sane and rational man who'd begun life as a simple soldier, it took him no more than a second to dismiss the silly notion. But he knew his grandson-great-grandson, for sure-would think otherwise. There were perils to claiming Alexander and Siddhartha Gautama as the ancestors of a dynasty. It tended to produce a steep and rapid decline in the intelligence of the dynasty's succeeding generations.

But that was a problem for a later decade. In the coming few days, Kungas would be quite satisfied if he could tear the flanks of the army escorting Malwa's overlord to what he thought was its final battle.

He probably couldn't manage to destroy the monster itself, unfortunately. But if Kungas was right, Belisarius was waiting to pounce on the creature somewhere down the Ganges. He'd kill the monster, if it was already bleeding.

"Another splendid speech," said Jaimal approvingly.

Next to him, Udai Singh nodded. "I knew-I remembered-that your Hindi was excellent. But I didn't know you were an orator, as well."

Belisarius glanced at the men riding beside him. Over the days of hard marches since they'd left Ajmer, a subtle change had come in the way Jaimal acted toward the Roman general. Udai Singh, also.

In the beginning, they'd both been stiffly proper. Their new emperor and Rana Sanga had ordered them to place the Rajputs under Belisarius' command, and they had done so dutifully and energetically. But it had been clear enough that some hostility lurked beneath the polite surface.

Belisarius had wondered about that. He'd found it surprising. True, they'd been enemies until very recently. But the clashes between Belisarius' army and Damodara's had been gallant affairs, certainly by the standards of the Malwa war. He hadn't though there'd be any real grudges left, now that they were allied. There'd certainly been no indication of personal animosity from either Damodara himself or Rana Sanga, when Belisarius met them for a parlay in the midst of their campaign in Persia.