"David Drake - Belisarius 3 - Destiny's Shield" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

not hostile, simply -- serious. Like most Roman soldiers he had the deepest
respect for Belisarius.
Belisarius nodded his head firmly. "Trust me in this, Germanicus. If Malwa is
not checked, the day will come when the Roman Empire will vanish as if it had
never existed."
After a moment, Germanicus sighed. "Very well, then. I will defer to your
judgement. I'm not happy about it, but -- " He sat up, squaring his shoulders.
"Enough. I withdraw my objections."
Theodora saw that all of her advisers had reached the same conclusion.
"So be it," she announced. "We'll tell the Persian ambassador that we accept
the offer of alliance. In principle, at least. Let's move on to the specifics
of their proposal."
She turned to Irene Macrembolitissa. Officially, Irene was the most junior
member of the high bureaucracy, having been elevated only recently to the post
of sacellarius, the "keeper of the privy purse." Her actual power was immense.
She was Theodora's spymaster and the chief of the Empire's unofficial secret
police, the agentes in rebus. She had also become one of Theodora's few --
very, very few -- genuine friends.
"Begin by summarizing the situation with the invasion, if you would."
Irene leaned forward, brushing back her thick brown hair. "The Malwa attack on
Persia began two months ago," she said. "As Belisarius had predicted, they
began with a massive sea-borne invasion of the Tigris-Euphrates delta. Within
two days, they captured the great port at Charax and have been turning it into
the entrepot for their invasion of Mesopotamia."
"Aren't they attacking in the north as well?" asked Hermogenes.
Irene nodded. "Yes. They have a large army pressing into Persia's eastern
provinces. That army, however, seems to be only lightly equipped with
gunpowder weapons. For the most part, they're made up of traditional forces --
Malwa infantry backed by Ye-tai security battalions, with a very large force
of Rajput cavalrymen."
"Second-raters, then," stated Germanicus.
Belisarius shook his head.
"Not at all. The Rajput cavalry are excellent, and they're under the command
of Rana Sanga. I know him from my trip to India. Know him rather well, in
fact. He's as good a general as you'll find anywhere. And while I don't
personally know the top Malwa commander of the northern expedition, Lord
Damodara, I do know that Rana Sanga respected him deeply."
Germanicus frowned. "Why -- ?"
Belisarius chuckled. "There's a method to the Malwa madness. The Rajputs are
the heart of Damodara's army, and the Malwa don't trust their Rajput vassals.
So they put their best general in charge of the toughest campaign, gave him
little in the way of gunpowder weapons, and placed almost all the Rajput
cavalry at his disposal. Damodara will have no choice. He'll have to rely on
Rana Sanga and the Rajputs for his shock troops, slugging it out for months
against Persian cavalry in some of the worst terrain you can imagine. The
Malwa are killing two birds with one stone. The Persians can't ignore the
threat, so they have to divert much of their army from the main campaign in
Mesopotamia. And, at the same time, the Malwa will be -- "
Germanicus nodded. "Bleeding the Rajputs white."
"Exactly."