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

And then, having done so, both branches of the Aryans had invented a new
history for themselves. A history full of airy legends and grandiose claims,
and precious little in the way of fact.
Myths and fables, grown up in the feudal soil of the east. The real power of
the Iranians, now as before, lay on the Persian plateau and the great rich
lands of Mesopotamia. But the Aryans -- the nobility, at least -- chose to
remember the legends of the northeastern steppes.
And then, he thought sourly, remember them upside down. They don't remember
the military strength of barbarian horsemen. Only the myth of pure blood, and
divine ancestry.
Studying his wife, Baresmanas recognized the impossibility of penetrating her
prejudices.
So be it. The Aryans had other customs, too.
"Obey your husband, wife," he commanded. "And your Emperor."
She opened her mouth.
"Do it."
Lady Maleka bowed her head. Sullenly, she stalked from the room.
Baresmanas lowered himself onto a couch near the fire. He stared into the
flames. The hot glow seemed to lurk within his dark eyes, as if he saw a
different conflagration there.
Which, indeed, he did. The memory of a fire called the battle of Mindouos.
Where, three years before, a Roman general had shattered the Persian army.
Outfoxed them, trapped then, slaughtered them -- even captured the Persian
camp.
Belisarius.
Baresmanas had been at that battle. So had his children, in the Persian camp.
He looked away from the fire, wincing.
His children would never have been at Mindouos had Baresmanas not brought them
there. He, too, for all his scholarship, had lapsed into Aryan haughtiness. It
was the long-standing custom of noble Persians to bring their families to the
field of battle. Displaying, to the enemy and all the world, their arrogant
confidence in Aryan invincibility.
His wife had refused to come, pleading her health. (Not from the enemy, but
from the heat of the Syrian desert.) But his children had come, avidly -- his
daughter as much as his son. Avid to watch their famous father, second-in-
command to Firuz, destroy the insolent Romans.
Baresmanas sighed. He reached up with his left hand and caressed his right
shoulder. The shoulder ached, as always, and he could feel the ridged scar
tissue under the silk of his tunic.
A Roman lance had put that scar there. At Mindouos. Baresmanas, like all the
charging noble lancers, had been trapped in the center. Trapped, by the
cunning of the Roman commander; and, then, hammered under by the force of his
counter-blow.
Belisarius.
Baresmanas could remember little of the battle's final moments. Only the
confusion and the choking dust; the growing, horrible knowledge that they had
been outwitted and outmaneuvered; the shock and pain, as he lay dazed and
bleeding on the trampled ground, his shoulder almost severed.
Most of all, he remembered the terror which had coursed through his heart, as
if hot iron instead of blood flowed through his veins. Terror, not for