Belisarius series
The New Gods back the Malwa Empire of India[Note 1] and commence attempts to conquer the world and stamp out meritorious accomplishment as a means to privilege and instead favor planned eugenics and hereditary birth (autocracy) in order to change the future.
Meritorious performance is seen to originate in the Eastern Roman Empire, and the root cause of a future that must be changed by conquest, and Malwa has a malleable society and the base power for their intervention.
He and his wife thus spearhead a conspiracy to save the empire despite its rulers, setting out to build an alliance with Byzantium's historical enemy, Persia, with whom they are currently effectively at war, the African Kingdom of Axum—a naval and trading power of the day which is so far away little is known of it or its capabilities, and various Indian forces and individuals that remain in opposition to Malwa—which may or may not be out there, but which are suggested by the visions presented by the mysterious crystal—whatever agenda it might have.
This is a period of seeming calm that precedes any major conflict between rivals where the conspiracy struggles to play catch up and not let its existence be discovered by friend or foe—an important deception hoping to gain both information and time.
Belisarius meanwhile leaves the dangers of both his emperor—being too popular can be a 'bad thing' and his stunning victories in the first book against the Persians made him so—and cultivates the Kingdom of Axum as allies, a naval power of the day, and leads a five-man invasion of his 'exposed' Malwa enemies (nominally diplomatic friends).
The events in this book provide him time to plan out various contingencies which come to bear fruit in surprising ways in the later sequels and allow the West's own gunpower tech researchers to get started.
His companions (and people they gathered along the way during the course of the spying parts of the book) are also variously pursued, but saved by prior contingency planning by the wily general, who is at least as good at deceptions as he is at indirections (But they are complementary skills).
Belisarius leads an under-strength expeditionary force in much more characteristic "indirect approaches" to the aid of the Persian empire which as a new ally had requested four to five times as many troops.
The Dance of Time concludes the series as the disparate events set in motion by Belisarius unfold, creating the opportunities that he hopes will end the threat that the Malwa pose to Rome once and for all.
