In the Heart of Darkness(82)
He turned away from the pouring rain, made haste to close and bar the gates to the stable.
Not that they'll need to eat much ground with those mounts, he thought wrily. The most pleasant, docile little elephants I've ever seen.
Halfway across the stable, his wife emerged from the door to the adjoining house. She scurried to meet him.
"Are they gone?" she asked worriedly. Then, seeing the closed and barred gates, asked:
"Why did you shut the gates? Customers will think we are closed."
"We are closed, wife. And we will remain closed until that madness"—a gesture to the north—"dies away and the city is safe." Wry grimace. "As safe, at least, as it ever is for poor folk."
His wife began to protest, but the stablekeeper silenced her with the coins in his hand.
"The nobleman was very generous. We will have more than enough."
His wife argued no further. She was relieved, herself, at the prospect of hiding from the madness.
Later that night, as they prepared for bed, the stablekeeper said to his wife:
"Should anyone inquire about the nobleman, in the future, say nothing."
His wife turned a startled face to him.
"Why?"
The stablekeeper glared. "Just do as I say! For once, woman, obey your husband!"
His wife shrugged her thick shoulders with irritation, but she nodded. (Not so much from obedience, as simple practicality. Poor men are known, now and then, to speak freely to the authorities. Poor women, almost never.)
Much later that night, sleepless, the stablekeeper arose from his bed. He moved softly to the small window and opened the shutter. Just a bit—there was no glass in that modest frame to keep out the weather.
He stood there, for a time, staring to the east. There was nothing to see, beyond the blackness of the night and the glimmering of the rain.
When he returned to his bed, he fell asleep quickly, easily. Resolution often has that effect.
Chapter 15
After an hour, Belisarius finally found what he was looking for.
It had been a thoroughly frustrating hour. On the one hand, he had found plenty of lone soldiers. But all of them had been common Malwa troops, shirking their duty by hiding in alleys and out-of-the-way nooks and crannies of the city. None of these men had been big enough for their uniforms to fit him. Nor, for that matter, did he think he could pass himself off as an Indian from the Gangetic plain.
Ye-tai was what he wanted. The Ye-tai, in the west, were often called White Huns. The word "white," actually, was misleading. The Ye-tai were not "white" in the sense that Goths or Franks were. The complexion of Ye-tai was not really much different than that of any other Asian steppe-dwellers. But their facial features were much closer to the western norm than were those of Huns proper, or, for that matter, Kushans. And, since Belisarius himself was dark-complected for a Thracian—as dark as an Armenian—he thought he could pass himself off as Ye-tai well enough. Especially since he could speak the language fluently.
Ye-tai tended to be big, too. He was quite sure he could find one whose size matched his own.
Ye-tai he found aplenty. Big Ye-tai, as well. But the Ye-tai always traveled in squads, and they tended to be much more alert than common troops.
Fortunately for him, the alertness of the Ye-tai was directed inward rather than outward—toward the common soldiers they were rounding up and driving into the streets. Scouring the streets and alleys was beneath the dignity of Ye-tai. That was dog work, for common troops. Their job was to whip the dogs.
At first, as he watched the massive search operation which began unfolding in the capital, Belisarius was concerned that he would be spotted before he could make his escape from Kausambi. But, soon enough, his fears ebbed. After a half an hour, in fact—a half hour spent darting from one alley to another, heading west by a circuitous route—Belisarius decided that the whole situation was almost comical.
The explosion of the armory had roused every soldier in the Malwa capital, of every type and variety. And since there were a huge number of troops stationed in Kausambi, the streets of the city were soon thronged with a mass of soldiers. But the soldiers were utterly confused, and largely leaderless. Leaderless, not from lack of officers, but because the officers themselves had little notion what, exactly, they were supposed to do. But they didn't want to seem to be doing nothing—especially under the hard eyes of Ye-tai—so the officers sent their men scurrying about aimlessly. Soon enough, the masses of troops charging and counter-charging about the city had become so hopelessly intermingled that any semblance of disciplined formation vanished.