"David Drake - Belisarius 2 - In The Heart Of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

which Belisarius led had not brought the new devices to India, however.
Stirrups were one of the very few items of Roman military equipment which were
superior to those of the Malwa Empire, and Belisarius had no intention of
alerting his future enemy to them.
But he did miss the things, deeply, and was reminded of their absence every
time some little motion caused him to lose his balance atop his horse -- even
something as simple as turning in his saddle to answer the young Thracian
behind him.
"I agree with Anastasius, Menander," he said. "Actually, I think he's
understating the problem. It's not just that the Malwa cannons are superior to
our catapults at the moment. What's worse is that our artillery engines and
techniques are already at their peak of development, while the Malwa devices
are still crude and primitive."
Menander's eyes widened. "Really? They seem -- "
The young soldier's gaze scanned the battleground. Belisarius and his
entourage had arrived at Ranapur only the week before. But the northern Indian
province of which Ranapur was the capital had rebelled against their Malwa
overlords two years earlier. For more than a year now, Ranapur itself had been
under siege. The once fertile fields surrounding the large city had long since
been trampled flat and then re-elevated into a maze of trenchworks and earthen
fortifications.
The scene reminded Menander of nothing so much as a gigantic ant nest.
Everywhere his eyes looked he saw soldiers and laborers hauling supplies and
ammunition, sometimes with carts and wagons, but more often through simple
brute labor. Less than thirty yards away, he watched a pair of laborers toting
a clay-sealed, tightly woven basket filled with gunpowder. The basket was
suspended on a bamboo pole, each end of which rested on the men's shoulders.
Despite being clothed only in loincloths, the laborers were sweating heavily.
Much of that sweat, of course, was the product of the blistering heat which
saturated the great Gangetic plain of north India in springtime, during that
dry season which the Indians called garam. But most of it was due to the work
itself. Menander estimated the basket's weight at sixty pounds, and knew that
it was only one of many which those two men would have been hauling for hours.
That scene was duplicated dozens of times over, everywhere he could see. The
entire city of Ranapur was surrounded by wooden palisades, earthen walls,
trenches, and every other form of siegework. These had been erected by the
besieging Malwa as protection from the rebels' catapult fire and occasional
sallies.
Menander thought the Malwa were being excessively cautious. He himself was too
inexperienced to be a good judge of these things, but Belisarius and the
veteran cataphracts had estimated the size of the Malwa army surrounding
Ranapur at 200,000 soldiers.
The figure was mind-boggling. No western empire could possibly muster such a
force on a field of battle. And the soldiers, Menander knew, were just the
fighting edge of an even greater mass of humanity. Menander could see only
some of them from his current vantage point, but he knew that all the roads in
the vicinity of the city were choked with transport bringing supplies to the
army.
Glancing to the south, he could see barges making their slow way up the Jamuna
river to the temporary docks which the Malwa had erected to offload their