Lord Damodara reined in his horse and sat a little straighter in the saddle. Then, casually, swiveled his head back and forth as if he were working out the kinks in his neck. The gesture would seem natural enough, to anyone watching. They'd been riding along the Narmada river for hours, watching carefully for any sign of a Maratha ambush.
In fact, his neck was stiff, and the movement was pleasant. But the real reason Damodara did it was to make sure that no one else was within hearing range.
They weren't. Not even the twenty Rajputs serving as his immediate bodyguard, who were now halting their mounts also, and certainly not the thousand or so cavalrymen who followed them. More to the point, the three Mahaveda priests whom Nanda Lal had instructed to accompany Damodara today were at least a hundred yards back. When the patrol started, the priests had ridden just behind Damodara and Sanga. But the long ride—it was now early afternoon—had wearied them. They were not Rajput cavalrymen, accustomed to spending days in the saddle.
"Tell me, Rana Sanga," he said quietly.
The Rajput king sitting on a horse next to him frowned. "Tell you what, Lord? If you refer to the possibility of a Maratha ambush, there is none. I predicted as much before we even left Bharakuccha. Rao is playing a waiting game. As I would, in his position."
The Malwa general rubbed his neck. "I'm not talking about that, and you know it. I told you this morning that I knew perfectly well this patrol was a waste of time and effort. I ordered it—as you know perfectly well—to keep Nanda Lal from pestering me. Again."
Sanga smiled, thinly. "Nice to be away from him, isn't it?" He reached down and stroked his mount. As long as his arm was, that was an easy gesture. "I admit I prefer the company of horses to spymasters, myself."
Damodara would have chuckled, except the sight of that long and very powerful arm stroking a Rajput horse brought home certain realities. About Rajputs, and their horses—and the Malwa dynasty, and its spymasters.
"It is time, Sanga," he said, quietly but forcefully. "Tell me."
The Rajput kept stroking the horse, frowning again. "Lord, I don't..."
"You know what I'm talking about. I've raised it before, several times." Damodara sighed. "Perhaps a bit too subtly, I admit."
That brought a flicker of a smile to the Rajput's stern face. After a moment, Sanga sighed himself.
"You want to know why I have not seemed to be grieving much, these past months." The flickering smile came and went again. "And my references to philosophical consolations no longer satisfy you."
"Meaning no offense, king of Rajputana, but you are about as philosophically inclined as a tiger." Damodara snorted. "It might be better to say, have a tiger's philosophy. And you are not acting like a tiger. Certainly not an enraged one."
Sanga said nothing. Still stroking the horse, his eyes ranged across the Vindhya mountains that paralleled the river on its northern side. As if he were looking for any signs of ambush.
"Luckily," Damodara continued, "I don't think Nanda Lal suspects anything. He doesn't know you well enough. But I do—and I need to know. I... cannot wait, much longer. It is becoming too dangerous for me. I can sense it."
The Rajput king's face still had no expression beyond that thoughtful frown, but Damodara was quite certain he understood. Sanga kept as great a distance as possible from the inner workings of the Malwa empire, beyond its military affairs. But he was no fool; and, a king himself, knew the realities of political maneuver. He was also one of the very few people, outside of the Malwa dynasty, who had communed directly with Malwa's hidden master. Or mistress, if one took the outer shell for what it was.
"I do not think my family is dead," Sanga said finally, speaking very softly. "I am not certain, but..."
Damodara closed his eyes. "As I suspected."
He almost added: as I feared. But did not, because Rana Sanga had become as close to him as Damodara had ever let a man become, and he would not wish that terrible grief on the Rajput.
Even if, most likely, that absence of grief meant that Damodara would soon enough be grieving the loss of his own family.
"Narses," he murmured, almost hissing the word.
He opened his eyes. "Yes?"
Sanga nodded. "I am not certain, you understand. But... yes, Lord. I think Narses spirited them away. Then faked the evidence of the massacre."
Damodara scowled. "Faked some of the evidence, you mean. There were plenty of dead Ye-tai on the scene."
Sanga shrugged. "How else would Narses fake something? He is as dangerous as a cobra. A very old and wise cobra."
"So he is," agreed Damodara. "I've often thought that employing him was as perilous a business as using a cobra for a guard in my own chambers."
Again, he rubbed his neck. "On the other hand, I need such a guard. I think."
"Oh, yes. You do." Sanga left off his pointless scrutiny of the Vindhyas and twisted his head to the west, looking toward Bharakuccha. "You're far more likely to be ambushed back there, by Nanda Lal, than you are here by Raghunath Rao."
Since Damodara had long ago come to that same conclusion, he said nothing. No need to, really. There were no longer many secrets between he and Rana Sanga. They had campaigned together across central Asia and into Mesopotamia, winning every battle along the way, even against Belisarius. And had still lost the campaign, not through any fault of theirs but because Malwa had failed them.
In the upside-down world of the Malwa empire, his accomplishments placed him in greater peril than defeat would have done. Malwa feared excellent generals, in many ways, more than it did bad ones.
"We will return to Bharakuccha," Damodara announced. "This patrol is pointless, and I'd just as soon reach the city before nightfall."
Sanga nodded. He started to rein his horse around, but paused. "Lord. Remember. I swore an oath."
After Sanga was gone, Damodara stared sourly at the river. Rajputs and their damned sacred oaths.
But the thought came more from habit, than anything else. Damodara knew how to circumvent the oath that the Rajputs had given to the emperor of Malwa, swearing their eternal fealty. He'd figured it out long ago—and hadn't need any of Narses' hints to do so.
The thing was quite obvious, really, if a man was prepared to gamble everything on a single daring maneuver. The problem was that, military tactics aside, Damodara was by nature a cautious and conservative man.
Damn Narses!
That thought, too, after a moment, Damodara dismissed as simply old habit. True enough, the Roman eunuch was maneuvering Damodara, and doing so ruthlessly—and entirely for Narses' own purposes. The fact remained that he was probably wiser in doing so, than Damodara had been in hesitating. Could you curse a man who manipulated you in your own best interests?
Of course, you could—and Damodara did it again. Damn Narses!
But... Malwa remained. Malwa and its secret ruler. The greatest, the most powerful—and certainly the most venomous—cobra in the world. Next to which, even Narses was a small menace.
So, finally, on a dirt road next to the Narmada river, Malwa's greatest general made the decision that had been long years in the making.
Many things went into that decision.
First, that he knew himself to be caught in a trap, if he did nothing. If Malwa won the war, it was Damodara's assessment that he himself would be eliminated as too dangerously capable. Most likely, however—another assessment, and one that he was growing ever more sure about—the war would not be won. In which case, Damodara would join in the general destruction of the dynasty.
Second, his fears for his family. Either of those two outcomes—certainly the first—would result in their destruction also. In the event of a Roman victory, Damodara did not think that the victors would target his family. But that meant nothing. In the chaos of a collapsing Malwa empire, rebellions were sure to erupt all over India—and all of them would be murderous toward anyone associated with the Malwa dynasty. The odds that Damodara's wife and children would survive that carnage was almost nil.
Third, and finally—and in some ways, most of all—Damodara was sick and tired of Malwa's secret overlord. Looking back over the years of his life, he could see now that the superhuman intelligence from the future was...
An idiot. A beast and a monster, too. But most of all, just an arrogant, blithering, drooling idiot.
Damodara remembered the one conversation he'd had with Belisarius, and the Roman general's musings on the folly of seeking perfection. He'd thought, at the time, that he agreed with the Roman. Now, he was certain of it.
So, he came to his decision.
Damn all new gods and their schemes.
He might have added: Damn Malwa. But, given his future prospects—if he had any—that would be quite absurd. From this moment forward, Damodara and his family would only survive insofar as he was Malwa.
He spent the rest of the ride back to the city convincing himself of that notion. It was not easy. The inner core of Damodara which had kept him sane since he was a boy was laughing at himself all the way.
Once the patrol returned to Bharakuccha, just after sunset, Damodara went immediately to Narses' chambers. The Malwa general made no attempt to hide his movements. Nanda Lal would surely have spies watching him, but so what? Damodara regularly consulted with Narses, and always did so openly. To have begun creeping about would raise suspicions.
"Yes, Lord?" Narses asked, after politely ushering Damodara into the inner chamber where they always discussed their affairs. In that chamber—for a certainty—Nanda Lal's spies could overhear nothing. "Some wine? Food?"
The old eunuch indicated a nearby chair, the most luxurious in the chamber. "Please, be seated."
Damodara ignored him. He was carefully studying the third man in the room, the hawk-faced assassin named Ajatasutra who had been Narses' chief associate since the failure of the Nika revolt in Constantinople.
"Do I want to ask him to leave, Narses?" Damodara asked abruptly.
The question brought a sudden stillness to the room. Along with a tightness to Narses' expression, and—perhaps oddly—a little smile to the face of the assassin.
Damodara waited. And waited.
Finally, Narses replied. "No, Lord, I think not. Ajatasutra can answer all your questions. Better than I can, actually, because..."
"He's been there. Yes." Damodara's eyes had never left the assassin. "My next question. Do I need to ask him to leave?"
For the first time since he entered the room, he glanced at Narses. "Or would it be wiser for me to summon Rana Sanga? For my protection."
Seeing Narses' little wince, Damodara issued a curt little laugh. "Not looking forward to that, are you? I thought not." He turned his gaze back to the assassin. "Well, then. Perhaps three other Rajputs."
Ajatasutra's thin smile widened. "Unless one of them is Jaimal or Udai, I'd recommend four. Five would be wiser. However..."
Gracefully, Ajatasutra slid off his chair. Then, to the Malwa general's surprise, went down on one knee. From nowhere, a dagger appeared. Flipped easily and now held by the tip, Ajatasutra laid the blade across his extended left forearm, offering the weapon's hilt to Damodara.
"There is no need for Rajputs, Lord of Malwa." There was not a trace of humor in the assassin's tone of voice, and the smile was gone. "This blade is at your service. I have served Malwa faithfully since I was a boy. Never more so than now."
Damodara studied the man, for a moment. A quick decision was needed here.
He made it. Then, reached out and barely touched the dagger hilt with the tip of his fingers.
"Keep the weapon. And now, Ajatasutra, tell me of my family. And Rana Sanga's."
Narses was fidgeting a bit. Smiling as thinly as the assassin had done, Damodara murmured to him: "I shall stand, I think. But perhaps you should be seated. Have some food. Some wine. Now that the assassin's blade is sworn to me, it may be your last meal."
Ajatasutra barked a laugh. "Ha! Like cutting an old crocodile's neck. Take me an hour, afterward, to sharpen the edge properly."
Narses scowled at him. But he took a seat—and some wine. No food. Perhaps his appetite was missing.
By the time the assassin had finished his report, and answered all of Damodara's questions, the Malwa general was seated on the luxurious chair. Seated on it, his neck perched against the backrest, and staring at the ceiling.
"Guarded by the Mongoose, no less," he murmured. "The arms trainer for a Rajput prince, no less. Narses, were this a fable told to me by a story-teller, I should have him executed for incompetence."
Wisely, Narses said nothing.
Damodara rubbed his face with a hand. Once, both the hand and the face had been pudgy. Two years of campaigning had removed most of the general's fat. Along with much else.
"The moment I move, my family—Sanga's too, once they're discovered—are as good as dead. May I presume that among all these other incredibly intricate schemes, you have given some thought to that problem?"
There was little visible sign of it, but Damodara could sense Narses relaxing. As well he might. That last question made clear that he'd survive this night.
"Quite a bit more than 'some.' First—meaning no offense, Lord—it is not true that 'the moment you move' anything will happen. Kausambi is hundreds of miles and a mountain range away from here. Great Lady Sati and the main Malwa army are in the Punjab, still farther than that."
"Telegraph," Damodara stated. "And, now, the new radio."
"Seven of the nine telegraph operators in Bharakuccha are mine. In the event the eighth or ninth are on duty, I have men ready to cut the wires. I'd rather not, of course. That would itself be a signal that something is amiss. They wouldn't assume rebellion, simply Maratha marauders. But a patrol would be sent out to investigate."
Damodara waved his hand impatiently. "I have Rajputs to deal with patrols. But I, also, would rather not have the little problem."
Narses glanced at Ajatasutra.
"All I need is to know the day," the assassin said calmly. "Not even that. A three-day stretch will do. Nanda Lal will be suspicious regarding the unfortunate deaths, of course, but won't have time to do anything about it."
Damodara nodded. "I can manage the three days. That still leaves the radio."
Narses smiled. "The radio station is guarded by Ye-tai. A special detachment—chosen by Toramana and under his direct authority."
Damodara brought his gaze down from the ceiling. "Toramana..." he mused. "Despite his upcoming marriage to Rana Sanga's half-sister Indira, can we really trust him?"
"Trust him?" Narses shrugged. "No, of course not. Toramana's only real loyalty is to his own ambition. But we can trust that."
Damodara frowned. "Why are you so certain his ambition will lead him to us? Nanda Lal is just as aware of the implications of Toramana's marriage to a Rajput princess as we are. Yet he seems completely confident in Toramana's loyalty. Even to the point of insisting that I place Toramana in charge of the city's security, whenever I leave Bharakuccha."
"Lord..." Narses hesitated. "Forgive me, but you are still too much the Malwa."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that you are still a bit infected—pardon me for the term—with that unthinking Malwa arrogance. Your dynasty has been in power too long, too easily, and with..."
The eunuch let the sentence trail off. For an instant, his eyes seemed to move, as if he had started to glance at Ajatasutra and stopped himself.
Damodara understood the significance of that little twitch of the eyes. Narses, other than Rana Sanga and Belisarius, was the only human being not a member of the Malwa dynastic family who had had direct contact with Link. The cybernetic organism who was the Malwa empire's secret overlord and provided the dynasty with its ultimate source of power.
And—yes, its ultimate source of arrogance.
Damodara pondered Narses' words, for a moment. Then, decided the eunuch was probably right. It would be fittingly ironic if a dynasty raised and kept in power by a superhuman intelligence should fall, in the end, because that same power made the dynasty itself stupid.
Not stupid, perhaps, so much as unseeing. Nanda Lal, for instance, was extremely intelligent. But he had been so powerful, and so feared, and for so long, that he had grown blind to the fact that there was other power—and that not all men feared him.
"What are Toramana's terms?" he asked abruptly. "And do not irritate me by pretending you haven't already discussed it with him. Your life is still hanging by a thread, Narses."
"Nothing complicated. A high position for himself, of course. Acceptance of his ties to the Rajputs through his upcoming marriage. Beyond that, while he does not expect the Ye-tai to continue to enjoy the same special privileges, he wants some guarantees that they will not be savaged."
Damodara cocked his head. "I shouldn't think he'd care about that, if he's solely driven by his own ambitions."
Narses looked uncomfortable, for a moment. "Lord, I doubt if there is any man who is solely driven by ambition." His lips grew twisted. "Not even me."
Ajatasutra spoke. "Toramana still has his clan ties, Lord. They wear lightly on him, true, but they exist. Beyond that..."
The assassin lifted his shoulders, in a movement too slight to be really considered a shrug. "If the Ye-tai are singled out for destruction, how long could a single Ye-tai general remain in favor? No matter what his formal post."
"True." Damodara thought about the problem, for a time. The chamber was silent while he did so.
"All right," he said finally. "It would be ridiculous to say that I'm happy with your plan. But... it seems as good as any. That leaves Rao, and his Marathas."
Now that the discussion had returned to the matter of war, a subject on which Damodara was an expert, the Malwa general sat up straight.
"Three things are needed. First, I need to extract the army from Bharakuccha. It's one thing for me to begin the rebellion—"
"Please, Lord!" Narses interrupted, raising his hand. "The restoration of the rightful emperor to his proper place." He waved the hand negligently. "I assure you that I have all the needed documentation—not here, of course—to satisfy any scholar on the matter."
Damodara stared at him. The eunuch's face was serene, sure, certain. To all appearances, Narses thought he was speaking nothing but the solemn truth.
The general barked a laugh. "So! Fine. As I was saying, it's one thing for me to begin the—ah—restoration with the army in the field. The men in their ranks, the officers at their head. Quite another to try to launch it here, with the men scattered all over the city in billets."
Narses nodded. So did Ajatasutra.
"Second—leading directly from that—I need to draw out Rao."
Narses grimaced. "Lord, even if you could get Rao out of Deogiri... the casualties... you really need your army intact—"
"Oh, be silent, you old schemer. Leave matters of war to me. I said 'draw him out.' I said nothing of fighting a battle. First, because I need that excuse to pull the entire army out of Bharakuccha. Second, because I will need to make a quick settlement with the Marathas. I can't start a new war without ending this one."
Hearing a little cough from Ajatasutra, Damodara looked at him.
The assassin waggled his hand. "A single combat. Rao against Rana Sanga. All of India has been waiting for years to see that match again."
Narses frowned. "Why in the name of—"
"Quiet, Narses." Damodara pondered the notion, for a moment.
"Yes... That might very well work." He eyed Ajatasutra intently. "With the right envoy, of course."
Despite the command, Narses could no longer restrain himself. "Why in the name of God would Rao be so stupid as to accept such an idiotic proposal as—"
The eunuch's jaws almost literally snapped shut. "Oh," he concluded.
Ajatasutra's thin smile came. "No one has ever suggested that Raghunath Rao was stupid. Which is precisely the point."
He gave Damodara a little nod. "I will take the message."
"You understand—"
"Yes, Lord. Nothing may be said directly. Rao will do as he will."
Damodara nodded. "Good enough. If it doesn't work, so be it. Then, the third thing I need. We will have to secure Bharakuccha instantly, when the time comes. I can't afford a siege, either. Once the rebellion—ah, restoration—begins, I'll have to cross the Vindhyas and march on Kausambi immediately. If I can't reach and take the capital before Sati and whatever forces she brings arrives from the Punjab, there's no chance. Even for me, much less my family."
Narses frowned. "Lord, I am sure I can get your family out of Kausambi before Emperor Skandagupta—ah, the false emperor—realizes they're gone. Why take the risk of a hasty assault on the city? Kausambi's defenses are the greatest in the world."
"Do not teach me warfare, spymaster," Damodara stated flatly. "Do not. You think I should launch a rebellion—let's call things by their right name, shall we?—in one of the provinces. And then what? Years of civil war that shreds the empire, while the Romans and the Persians wait to pick up the pieces. Of which there won't be many."
Damodara rubbed his face. "No. I have never been able to forget Ranapur. There are times I wake up in the middle of the night, shaking. I will not visit twenty Ranapurs upon India."
"But... Lord..."
"Enough!" Damodara rose to his feet. "Understand this, Narses. What a general can do, an emperor cannot. I will succeed or I will fail, but I will do so as an emperor. There will be no further discussion on the matter."
"Be quiet, old man," Ajatasutra murmured coldly. "I was at Ranapur also."
He rose to his feet and gave Damodara a very deep bow. "Lord of Malwa. Let us do the thing like an assassin, not a torturer."