Ousanas went back to scowling at the carpet. "She'd have him poisoned, within a year. Or simply stab him herself. But a Roman…"

"No. I could probably find her a suitable Roman husband-suitable from her standpoint-but that wouldn't solve the political problem. Rome is now simply too strong, Ousanas. A Roman husband during Rukaiya's regency would make everyone fear-Arabs and Ethiopians alike-that Axum was becoming a Roman satrapy. In reality, if not in name."

"True." He gave her a sly little look. "Perhaps you should poison your husband, Antonina. It's his fault, you know. If Belisarius hadn't spent the past five years proving to everyone that Roman military power is supreme… even against the Malwa empire, the world's greatest…"

Antonina smiled back, sweetly. "Can't, I'm afraid. I'm here and he's in the Punjab. Damnation. One of the reasons I'd like to settle the succession problem is so that I can get back to him-at which point, I assure you, poisoning the fellow will be the last thought on my mind. I'm finding that my own urges haven't subsided any, even at my advanced and decrepit age."

Finally, she turned and looked out the window. "So. We need an impressive husband. Impressive to Rukaiya as much as her subjects, so she isn't tempted to stray and no one thinks otherwise. But- but! -one who has no pre-existing ties that will make anyone worry about undue influences. And whose loyalties to Axum are unquestioned."

Far to the south, the snow-capped peaks of the Simien Mountains shone brightly, but the flanks were still dark. The sun hadn't risen high enough yet to bathe them in light.

Dark, massive, majestic beneath their crowns-and quite indifferent to any of those words. What did mountains care about attempts to depict them-much less the petty political frets and worries of humans? They simply were. And, being so, dwarfed any dynasty.

She understood her decision, then. It came to her, all at once, and in all its splendor.

"It's so obvious," she said happily. "I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out."

"Perhaps you will be so kind as to make clear this 'obvious' decision to me, at some point?" Ousanas said grumpily.

Antonina bestowed the sweet smile on the mountains. "Oh, yes. You can be sure of it, when the time comes."

Peshawar, in the Hindu Kush

Kungas launched the final assault just before dawn. By sunrise, his Kushan soldiers had demonstrated to the Pathan clansmen that they were just as adept at fighting in the rocks as the rebels-and far more disciplined.

Not to mention numerous. Kungas had calculated-correctly, it was now clear-that the Malwa were too pre-occupied with Belisarius in the southern Punjab at the moment to launch any serious attack on the new Kushan kingdom he was forging in the mountains to the northwest. So, he'd left a skeleton force guarding the passes while he took most of his army to suppress this first attempt by any Pathan tribesmen to rebel against his rule.

First-and hopefully last. For all his ruthlessness, when need be, Kungas took no pleasure in killing.

"Suppress" was a euphemism.

By late morning, the clansmen were routed and the Kushans had broken into their walled town nestled in the rocks of the mountains. Then, began the massacre Kungas had ordered. No member of that Pathan clan would be allowed to survive. Not women, not children, not oldsters. All animals in the town were to be slaughtered also. Then, the town itself completely destroyed. Not simply gutted by fire, but blown up. Razed from existence. Kungas had enough gunpowder to afford that, now that the supply lines through Persia had been stabilized.

While his Kushans finished that business, Pathans from other clans allied to Kungas chased down and butchered the Pathan warriors who tried to flee into the shelter of the mountains.

There weren't many of those. Pathans could be as stupid as any humans alive, but they never lacked courage. All but a handful of the defeated clansmen died in the town, desperately trying to defend their kinfolk.

By mid-afternoon, it was done. The entire clan had ceased to exist.

Throughout, Kungas remained at his position high on a nearby mountain-a spur of the same range, really-watching.

Throughout, there was no expression on his face. None at all. To the Pathan chieftains who stood there with him, the leaders of the allied clans, it did not even seem like a face at all. Just an unmoving, iron mask.

Those old men had been told that, in his palace in Peshawar, the new king of the mountains was known to show an expression, now and then. Not often, and usually only in the presence of his Greek wife.

That was possible, they thought, although they had their doubts. It was hard to imagine that inhuman mask of a face ever showing an emotion.

Still…

Maybe. The woman was known to be a sorceress, after all.

What the clan chieftains knew, however, was that with a king like this and his witch of a queen, rebellion was insane.

Any form of open resistance. The destroyed clan hadn't even rebelled. They'd simply thought to use the old and well-tested method of intimidating a new would-be ruler of the mountains by assassinating one of his officials.

The official had, indeed, been assassinated.

In return, Kungas had now proved that he was, indeed, the king of the mountains. The arithmetic of the equation was clear even to those illiterate clan leaders.

Clans assassinated officials.

Kings-real ones-assassinated clans.

So be it. The old men, no strangers to brutality themselves, chose to look on the bright side. The new king did not meddle with them much, after all, as long as they obeyed him. And trade was picking up a lot. Even the clans in the far mountains were getting richer.

When Kungas returned to Peshawar, he was in a very foul mood.

"That was a filthy business," he told his wife Irene. Scowling openly, now, in the privacy of their quarters in the palace. "It's your fault. If you hadn't stirred up those idiot clansmen letting their young women claim to be Sarmatians and join your idiot so-called 'queen's guard,' it wouldn't have happened."

The accusation was grossly unfair, and on many counts, but Irene kept silent. Until Kungas' mood lightened, there was no point arguing with him.

Yes, it was true that Irene's subtle undermining of Pathan patriarchalism irritated the clan chiefs. So what? Everything irritated those barbaric old men. They were to "conservative thinking" what an ocean was to "wet and salty." They practically defined the term.

And, again, so what? Irene and Kungas-with Belisarius, in times past, while they'd still been with him in Persia-had discussed the matter thoroughly. No one had ever ruled these mountains, in the sense that "ruled" meant in the civilized lowlands. Just as no one had ever "ruled" the great steppes to the north into which she and Kungas planned to expand their kingdom.

But if a king couldn't rule the mountains and the steppes, he could dominate them. Dominate them as thoroughly and as completely as, in a future era in another universe, the Mongol khans would dominate them.

There was one key difference, though, and Kungas understood it as well as she did. The new Kushan realm in central Asia would use the same methods as the Mongols, true enough. Methods which, in the end, amounted to the simple principle: oppose us and we will slaughter all of you, down to the babes and dogs.