The Tide of Victory (5 page)

Tahmina was much nearer, now. Despite himself, Photius was fascinated to see her move. Even under the heavy Persian robes, he could sense the lithe and athletic figure. Tahmina was fifteen years old. Just old enough—quite unlike Photius himself—that she was beginning to bring her body under control. There was no gawkiness at all in that easy, gliding progress.

Maurice, his father's cataphract, had seen the girl before. Maurice had told him that she was extraordinarily beautiful. For a moment, Photius was cheered by the thought.

Only for a moment. Great. Just great. I'll have the most beautiful wife in the world. And she'll still be holding her nose whenever I'm around. 

Then, finally, his eyes met those of his approaching bride. Between the heavy veil and the headdress, Tahmina's dark eyes and the bridge of her nose were all that Photius could see of her face.

The Emperor of Rome froze.

Tahmina's own eyes were fixed upon him. They never moved once, in the time it took for her to finally take her place next to him.

Beautiful eyes, of course. As clear and bright as moonshine, for all their darkness. Brown eyes, technically, but of such a deep hue they almost seemed black. So much, Photius had expected. But he had not expected the warmth he saw in them. Like embers, glowing.

And he
certainly
hadn't expected to hear the whisper, just as the ceremony finally began. In heavily accented but perfect Greek.

"Relax, husband. You will like me. I promise."

And he did relax, even if the ceremony itself was long, and tedious, and required him to follow a labyrinth of carefully rehearsed gestures and words. Photius, too, had read Herodotus. And so he knew the creed of the Aryans.

Teach them horsemanship, and archery. 
 

And teach them to despise all lies. 
 

Hours later, in the midst of the great festivities which were spilling all through the public areas of the palace—all through the entire city, in fact—Emperor Khusrau Anushirvan sidled up to Belisarius.

"That went supremely well, I thought."

Belisarius nodded. For once, his smile was not crooked at all. It was every bit as wide and open as the emperor's own.

"I thought so, too." They were still standing in the aivan. Through the great opening, the last colors of sunset could be seen. Belisarius glanced at the small door which led to the private quarters of the imperial entourage. Photius and Tahmina had been provided with a suite in those quarters, for their use until the imperial Roman delegation returned to Constantinople some days hence. The new husband and bride had just passed through that door, not more than ten minutes earlier.

Belisarius' smile now assumed its more familiar, crooked shape. "Of course, I'm not sure Photius is still of that opinion. He seemed cheerful enough earlier. But now—" The Roman general chuckled. "He looked for all the world like a man being led to his own execution."

Khusrau grinned. "Nonsense. I raised the girl, you know, as much as Baresmanas did. She is every bit as intelligent as she is comely. I assure you that your stepson will soon be at ease."

The Emperor of Iran and non-Iran paused. "Well . . . Not at
ease
, precisely."

Belisarius' eyes widened a bit. "He's only ten years old, Your Majesty."

Khusrau's face bore an expression of supreme smugness. "Romans. Such a primitive folk."

After his servants dressed him in his bedclothes, Photius nervously entered the sleeping chamber and found Tahmina already waiting for him. She was lazing on the bed, wearing her own nightgown. As soon as Photius entered, she smiled and patted the bed next to her. "Come, husband," she said softly.

"I'm only ten years old," Photius managed to choke out.

"Relax, I say," murmured his wife. She arose and led him gently to the bed. "Lie down."

Photius did as he was commanded. He could not imagine doing otherwise. For all of Tahmina's poise and demure demeanor—
how does she manage that, wearing nothing but a silk gown?—
her hands upon him were strong and firm. She was bigger than he was, true. But it was more the certainty of her intentions, and the sheer beauty of her person—Maurice had been right, been right, been right—that drove him to obey.

It seemed but an instant before she had him stretched out on the bed, herself alongside, and was gently caressing his little body. Slowly, Photius felt the rigidity leaving his muscles.

"I'm only ten years old," he repeated. This time, more by way of an apology than an expression of terror.

"Of course you are," murmured Tahmina. Gently, she kissed his forehead. "Relax, husband." She raised her head and smiled serenely down upon him, while her hands continued their caresses.

"You will age. Soon enough, be sure of it. And when the time comes, you will not be anxious at all. You will know everything. About me. About you. It will be so easy."

Photius thought she had the most beautiful voice he had ever heard. He felt like he was drowning in the darkness of her eyes.

The rest of the night, until they fell asleep, was a time of wonder for him. Wonder of the body, partly. Ten years old is not too young for everything, after all, and Tahmina was as sensuous as she was beautiful. Her caresses felt more wonderful than anything Photius could imagine.

But, mostly, it was wonder of the mind. He had never imagined it. Not once. That he might come to love his wife.

Within an hour after awakening the next morning, wonder turned to certainty. Ten years old was not, after all, too young for a man to understand that pleasures of the mind outweigh pleasures of the body.

His wife turned out to be a genius, too. Such, at least, was Photius' firm conviction. Who else would know so many ways to thwart officious tutors?

"And another thing," she explained, nestling his head into her shoulder. "When they start nattering about your grammar—"

For the first time, Photius assumed the proper mantle of husbandly authority.

"Hush, wife!" he commanded. He lifted his head, summoned his courage—Emperor of Rome!—and planted a kiss on his wife's cheek. After the evening and night, all those
hours
, it came almost easily to him.

Tahmina laughed. "See? Not long!"

Some time later, again, Tahmina was gazing down upon him serenely.

"You will have concubines," she said softly, "but I intend to see to it that you do not spend much time with them."

Photius cleared his throat. "Uh, actually, concubines are not permitted under Christian law." A bit guiltily: "Not supposed to be, anyway."

Tahmina's eyes grew very round. "
Really?
How odd!"

The beautiful eyes narrowed a bit. "I will be converting, of course, since a Christian empire must have a Christian empress." Narrowed further. "I foresee myself a devoted convert." Slits. "A religious fanatic, in fact."

Photius gurgled like a babe. "S'okay with me!"

"It better be," growled his wife. A moment later, she was giving him a foretaste of the punishment which awaited Christian sinners.

And so the servants found them. The servants, and Julian.

The prim and proper servants frowned, needless to say.
Such unseemly conduct for royalty!
But Julian, scarred veteran of many battlefields, was immensely pleased. A Persian empress tickling a Roman emperor, he thought, boded well for the future. Perhaps Belisarius was right, and the thousand year war was finally over.

That still left the Malwa, of course. But that thought brought nothing but a sneer to the cataphract's face.
Anything
was child's play, compared to Persian dehgans on the field of battle.

That same morning, while Photius and Tahmina began laying the foundation for their marriage, another wedding took place. This wedding was private, not public. Indeed, not to put too fine a point on it, it was a state secret—unauthorized knowledge of which would earn the headsman's sword.

Another foundation was being laid with this wedding. A new empire was being forged, destined to rise up out of the ruins of Malwa. Or rather, destined to play a great part in Malwa's ruination.

The ceremony was Christian, as was the bride, and as simple a rite as that faith allowed. The bride herself had so stipulated, in defiance of all natural law—had insisted, in fact. She had claimed she wanted a brief and unembellished ceremony purely in the interests of security and secrecy. Given that the bride was acknowledged to be a supreme mistress in the arts of espionage and intrigue, the claim was accepted readily enough. Most people probably even believed it.

But Antonina, watching her best friend Irene kneeling at the altar, was a bit hard-pressed to restrain a smile. She knew the truth.

First thing that scheming woman's going to do, after she gets to Peshawar, is hold the biggest and most splendiferous Buddhist wedding in the history of the world. Last for a month, I bet. 
 

Her eyes moved to the man kneeling next to Irene. Kungas was droning his way through the phrases required of a Christian groom with perfect ease and aplomb.

Any Christian objects, of course, she'll claim her husband made her do it. 
 

Kungas was destined to be the new ruler of a new Kushan empire. The Kushans, in their great majority, adhered to the Buddhist faith. In secret, for the most part, since their Malwa overlords had decreed their grotesque Mahaveda version of Hinduism the established religion and forbade all others. But the secrecy, and the frequent martyrdoms which went with it, had simply welded the Kushans that much more closely to their creed.

Naturally, their new ruler would insist that his wife the empress espouse that faith herself. Naturally. He was a strong-willed man, everyone knew it.

Ha! 
 

Belisarius glanced at down at her, and Antonina fiercely stifled her giggle.

Ha! It was her idea, the schemer! Never would have occurred to Kungas. 
 

Kungas was the closest thing Antonina had ever met to a fabled atheist. Agnostic, for a certainty. He was prepared to accept—as a tentative hypothesis—the existence of a "soul." Tentatively, he was even willing to accept the logic that a "soul" required a "soul-maker."
Grudgingly
, he would allow that such a "soul-maker" of necessity possessed superhuman powers.

That he—or she—or it—was a
god
, however . . .

The
God?

"Rampant speculation," Kungas called it. In private, of course, and in the company of close friends. Kungas was literate, now, in both Greek and Kushan. But he was no intellectual and never would be. "Rampant speculation" was his lover Irene's serene way of translating his grunted opinion. "Pure guesswork!" was the way Antonina had heard it.

But if Kungas was no intellectual, there was nothing at all wrong with his mind. That mind had been shaped since childhood in the cauldron of battle and destruction. And if, against all logic, the man who had emerged from that fiery furnace was in his own way a rather gentle man—using the term "gentle" very loosely—he had a mind as bright and hard as a diamond.

His people were Buddhists, whatever Kungas thought. So would he be, then. And his empress, too, now that she mentioned it to him.

Ha! Pity the poor Malwa! 
 

In the brief reception which followed the wedding, the Emperor of Iran and non-Iran advanced to present his congratulations along with his wife. So did Theodora, the Empress Regent of Rome. So too did Eon, the
negusa nagast
of Ethiopia and Arabia, accompanied by his own wife Rukaiya. The man and woman destined to be the rulers of a realm which still existed only in the imagination were being given the official nod of recognition by three of the four most powerful empires in the world.

The most powerful empire, of course, was absent. Which was hardly surprising, since even if that empire had known of this wedding it would hardly have approved. The new realm would be torn from Malwa's own bleeding flank.

Belisarius and Antonina saw no need to join the crowd pressing around Kungas and Irene. Neither did Ousanas.

"Silly business," muttered Ethiopia's
aqabe tsentsen
—vizier, in effect, although the title actually translated as "keeper of the fly-whisks." The quaint and modest title was in keeping with Ethiopian political custom.

"Silly," he repeated. He glanced at Antonina. "Don't lie, woman. You know as well as I do that she'll be a Buddhist soon enough." He snorted. "And God knows what else. All those mountains are full of pagans. She'll be getting remarried every week, swearing eternal devotion to whatever prancing goat-god happens to be the local fancy."

Antonina maintained an aloof smile. "I think that's absolute nonsense. I can't believe you could be so cynical." She bestowed the serene expression upon Belisarius. He responded with his own smile, more crooked than ever, but said nothing.

Antonina's smile now went to the small group of soldiers standing just behind her husband. All three of the top Kushan commanders of Belisarius' army—former commanders, as of this moment—were gathered there. Vasudeva was in the center, flanked by Vima and Huvishka.

"Surely you don't agree with him," stated Antonina.

Vasudeva's smile, as always, was a thin and economic affair. "Wouldn't surprise me," he said. "Not a bad idea, in fact. Pagans are a silly superstitious lot, of course, but they're not the least bit inclined toward exclusivity." He stroked his wispy goatee. "Maybe."

"
Et tu, Brute?
" muttered Antonina.

Vasudeva's smile widened. "Antonina, be serious." He nodded toward the wedding couple and the small crowd gathered about them. "Have I not myself—me and my officers—been the subject of just such a premeditated marital display this very morning?"

Antonina was a bit disconcerted by the Kushan general's perspicacity. Belisarius had told her, but she was not very familiar with the man herself.

Shrewd indeed! 
 

All three of the Kushan generals were now smiling. "And quite well done it was, too," murmured Vima approvingly. "What ambitious general, daydreaming of his own possible lineage, would risk bringing the wrath of such empires down on his head? Wouldn't do at all to overthrow the
established
dynasty, in the face of such universal approval."