"We should go back," whispered Rajiv's little sister. Nervously, the girl's eyes ranged about the dark cellar. "It's scary down here."
Truth be told, Rajiv found the place fairly creepy himself. The little chamber was one of many they'd found in this long-unused portion of the palace's underground cellars. Rajiv found the mazelike complexity of the cellars fascinating. He could not for the life of him figure out any rhyme or reason to the ancient architectural design, if there had ever been one at all. But that same labyrinthine character of the little grottoes also made them . . .
Well. A little scary.
But no thirteen-year-old boy will admit as much to his seven-year-old sister. Not even a peasant boy, much less the son of Rajputana's most famous king.
"You go back if you want to," he said, lifting the oil lamp to get a better look at the archway ahead of them. He could see part of another small cellar beyond. "I want to see all of it."
"I'll get lost on my own," Mirabai whined. "And there's only one lamp."
For a moment, Rajiv hesitated. He could, after all, use his sister's fear and the lack of a second lamp as a legitimate justification for going back. No reflection on his courage.
He might have, too, except that his sister's next words irritated him.
"There are ghosts down here," she whispered. "I can hear them talking."
"Oh, don't be silly!" He took a step toward the archway.
"I can hear them," she said. Quietly, but insistently.
Rajiv started to make a sarcastic rejoinder, when he heard something. He froze, half-cocking his head to bring an ear to bear.
She was right! Rajiv could hear voices himself. No words, as such, just murmuring.
"There's more than one of them, too," his sister hissed.
Again, she was right. Rajiv could distinguish at least two separate voices. From their tone, they seemed to be having an argument of some sort.
Would ghosts argue? he wondered.
That half-frightened, half-puzzled question steadied his nerves. With the steadiness, came a more acute sense of what he was hearing.
"Those aren't ghosts," he whispered. "Those are people. Live people."
Mirabai's face was tight with fear. "What would people be doing down here?"
That was . . . a very good question. And the only answer that came to Rajiv was a bad one.
He thrust the lamp at his sister. "Here. Take it and go back. Then get the Mongoose and Anastasius down here, as quickly as you can. Mother too. And you'd better tell Lady Damodara."
The girl squinted at the lamp, fearfully. "I'll get lost! I don't know the way."
"Just follow the same route I took us on," Rajiv hissed. "Any time I didn't know which way to go, when there was a choice, I turned to the left. So on your way back, you turn to the right."
He reminded himself forcefully that his sister was only seven years old. In a much more kindly tone, he added: "You can do it, Mirabai. You have to do it. I think we're dealing with treachery here."
Mirabai's eyes widened and moved to the dark, open archway. "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," he whispered. "Something."
He half-forced her to take the lamp. "Now go!"
After his sister scampered off, Rajiv crept toward the archway. He had to move from memory alone. With the light of the lamp gone, it was pitch dark in these deep cellars.
After groping his way through the arch, he moved slowly across the cellar. Very faintly, he could see what looked like another archway on the opposite side. There was a dim light beyond that seemed to flicker, a bit. That meant that someone on the other side—probably at least one cellar farther away, maybe more—had an oil lamp.
His foot encountered an obstacle and he tripped, sprawling across the stone floor. Fortunately, the endless hours of training under the harsh regimen of the Mongoose had Rajiv's reflexes honed to a fine edge. He cushioned his fall with his hands, keeping the noise to a minimum.
His feet were still lying on something. Something . . . not stone. Not really hard at all.
Even before he got to his knees and reached back, to feel, he was certain he knew what he'd tripped over.
Yes. It was a body.
Fingering gingerly, probing, it didn't take Rajiv long to determine who the man was. Small, wiry, clad only in a loincloth. It had to be one of the Bihari slave miners that Lady Damodara was using to dig an escape route from the palace, if it was someday needed. They worked under the supervision of half a dozen Ye-tai mercenary soldiers. Ajatasutra had bought the slaves and hired the mercenaries.
Now that he was close, he could smell the stink. The man had voided himself in dying. The body was noticeably cool, too. Although the blood didn't feel crusted, it was dry by now. And while Rajiv could smell the feces, the odor wasn't that strong any longer. He hadn't noticed it at all when he entered the room, and he had a good sense of smell. Rajiv guessed that the murder had taken place recently, but not all that recently. Two or three hours earlier.
He didn't think it could have happened earlier than that, though. The body wasn't stiff yet. Some years before—he'd been about eight, as he recalled—Rajiv had questioned his father's lieutenant Jaimal on the subject, in that simultaneously horrified, fascinated and almost gleeful way that young boys will do. Jaimal had told him that, as a rule, a body stiffened three hours after death and then grew limp again after a day and a half. But Rajiv remembered Jaimal also telling him that the rule was only a rough one. The times could vary, especially depending on the temperature. In these cool cellars, it might all have happened faster.
It was possible there'd simply been a quarrel amongst the slaves. But where would a slave have gotten the blade to cut a throat so neatly? The only tools they had were picks and shovels.
So it was probably treachery—and on the part of the Ye-tai. Some of them, at least.
Rajiv had to find out. He hadn't really followed the progress of the tunnel-digging, since it was none of his affair and he was usually preoccupied with his training. The only reason he'd had today free to do some exploring was that the Mongoose was now spending more time in the company of Dhruva and her infant.
If the tunnel was almost finished—possibly even was finished . . .
This could be bad. Very bad.
Rajiv moved into the next cellar, slowly and carefully.
It seemed to Mirabai that it took her forever to get out of the cellars. Looking back on it later, she realized it had really taken very little time at all. The lamp had been bright enough to enable her to walk quickly, if not run—and her brother's instructions had worked perfectly.
The most surprising thing about it all was that she got more scared when it was over. She'd never in her life seen that look on her mother's face. Her mother never seemed to worry about anything.
"Get Kandhik," Valentinian hissed to Anastasius. "Break all his bones if you have to."
Anastasius didn't have to break any of the Ye-tai mercenary leader's bones. As huge and powerful as he was, a simple twisting of the arm did the trick.
Kandhik massaged his arm. "I don't know anything," he insisted. The Ye-tai was scowling ferociously, but he wasn't scowling directly at Anastasius—and he was doing everything in his power not to look at Valentinian at all.
The Mongoose was a frightening man under any circumstances. Under these circumstances, with that weasel smile on his face and a sword in his hand, he was terrifying. Kandhik was neither cowardly nor timid, but he knew perfectly well that either of the Roman cataphracts could kill him without working up a sweat.
Anastasius might need to take a deep breath. Valentinian wouldn't.
"Don't know anything," he insisted.
Sanga's wife and Lata came into the chamber. So did Lady Damodara.
"Three of the Ye-tai are missing," the girl said. "The other two are asleep in their chamber."
Although Ye-tai were sometimes called "White Huns," they were definitely Asiatic in their ancestry. Their only similarity to Europeans was that their features were somewhat bonier than those of most steppe-dwellers. Their complexion was certainly not pale—but, at that moment, Kandhik's face was almost ashen.
"Don't know anything," he repeated, this time pleading the words.
"He's telling the truth," Valentinian said abruptly. He touched the tip of the sword to Kandhik's throat. "Stay here and watch over the women. Do everything right and nothing wrong, and you'll live to see the end of this day. If my mood doesn't get worse."
With that, he turned and left the room. Anastasius lumbered after him.
Dhruva came in with the baby. She and her sister stared at each other, their eyes wide with fright.
Not as wide as Mirabai's, however. "What should we do, Mother?"
Sanga's wife looked around, rubbing her hands up and down her hips. The familiar gesture calmed Mirabai, a bit.
"May as well go to the kitchen and wait," she said. "I've got some onions to cut. Some leeks, too."
"I agree," said Lady Damodara.
After several minutes of listening from the darkness of the adjoining cellar, Rajiv understood exactly what was happening. The three Ye-tai in the next cellar were, in fact, planning to betray their employers. Apparently—it was not clear what threats or promises they'd made to do it—they'd gotten two of the Biharis to dig a side tunnel for them. It must have taken weeks to do the work, while keeping it a secret from everyone else.
And, now, it was done. But one of the Ye-tai was having second thoughts.
"—never dealt with anvaya-prapta sachivya. I have! And I'm telling you that unless we have a guarantee of some—"
"Shut up!" snarled one of the others. "I'm sick of hearing you brag about the times you hobnobbed with the Malwa. What 'guarantees'?"
The quarrel went back over familiar ground. Rajiv himself was inclined to agree with the doubter. He'd no more trust the Malwa royal clan than he would a scorpion. But he paid little attention to the rest of it.
Whether or not the doubting Ye-tai was worried about the reaction of the anvaya-prapta sachivya, it was clear enough he was weakening. He didn't really have any choice, after all, now that the deed was effectively done. Soon enough, he'd give up his objections and the three Ye-tai would be gone.
Then . . . within a day, Lady Damodara's palace would be swarmed by Emperor Skandagupta's troops. And the secret escape tunnel wouldn't be of any use, because the Ye-tai traitors would have told the Malwa where the tunnel exited. They'd have as many soldiers positioned in the stable as they would at the palace. And it wouldn't take them long to torture the stable-keeper—his family, more likely—into showing them where it was.
It was up to Rajiv, then. One thirteen-year-old boy, unarmed, against three Ye-tai mercenaries. Who were . . .
He peeked around the corner again.
Definitely armed. Each of them with a sword.
But Rajiv didn't give their weapons more than a glance. He'd already peeked around that corner before, twice, and studied them well enough. This time he was examining the body of the second Bihari miner, whom the mercenaries had cast into a corner of the cellar after cutting his throat also.
Not the body, actually. Rajiv was studying the miner's tools, which the Ye-tai had tossed on top of his corpse.
A pick and a shovel. A short-handled spade, really. Both of the tools were rather small, not so much because most of the Biharis were small but simply because there wasn't much room in the tunnels they dug.
That was good, Rajiv decided. Small tools—at least for someone his size—would make better weapons than large ones would have.
Until he met the Mongoose, Rajiv would never have considered the possibility that tools might make weapons. He'd been raised a Rajput prince, after all. But the Mongoose had hammered that out of him, like many other things. He'd even insisted on teaching Rajiv to fight with big kitchen ladles.
Rajiv's mother had been mightily amused. Rajiv himself had been mortified—until, by the fourth time the Mongoose knocked him down, he'd stopped sneering at ladles.
He decided he'd start with the pick. It was a clumsier thing than the spade, and he'd probably lose it in the first encounter anyway.
There was no point in dawdling. Rajiv gave a last quick glance at the three oil lamps perched on a ledge. No way to knock them off, he decided. Not spaced out the way there were.
Besides, he didn't think fighting in the dark would be to his advantage anyway. That would be a clumsy business, and if there was one thing the Mongoose had driven home to him, it was that "clumsy" and "too damn much sweat" always went together.
"Fight like a miser," he whispered to himself. Then, came out of his crouch and sprang into the cellar.
He said nothing; issued no war cry; gave no speech. The Mongoose had slapped that out of him also. Just went for the pick, with destruction in his heart.
Still many cellars away, Valentinian and Anastasius heard the fight start.
Nothing from Rajiv. Just the sound of several angry and startled men, their shouts echoing through the labyrinth.
Rajiv went to meet the first Ye-tai. That surprised him, as he'd thought it would.
When you're outmatched, get in quick. They won't expect that, the fucks.
The Ye-tai's sword came up. Rajiv raised the pick as if to match blows. The mercenary grinned savagely, seeing him do so. He outweighed Rajiv by at least fifty pounds.
At the last instant, Rajiv reversed his grip, ducked under the sword, and drove the handle of the pick into the man's groin.
Go for the shithead's dick and balls. Turn him into a squealing bitch.
The Ye-tai didn't squeal. As hard as Rajiv had driven in the end of the shaft, he didn't do anything except stare ahead, his mouth agape. He'd dropped his sword and was clutching his groin, half-stooped.
His eyes were wide as saucers, too, which was handy.
Rajiv rose from his crouch, reversed his grip again, and drove one of the pick's narrow blades into an eye. The blunt iron sank three inches into the Ye-tai's skull.
As he'd expected, he'd lost the pick. But it had all happened fast enough that he had time to dive for the spade, grab it, and come up rolling in a far corner.
He wasn't thinking at all, really, just acting. Hours and hours and hours of the Mongoose's training, that was.
You don't have time to think in a fight. If you have to think, you're a dead man.
The slumping corpse of the first Ye-tai got in the way of the second. Rajiv had planned for that, when he chose the corner to roll into.
The third came at him, again with his sword high.
That's just stupid, some part of Rajiv's mind recorded. Dimly, there was another, walled-off part that remembered he had once thought that way of using a sword very warriorlike. Dramatic-looking. Heroic.
But that was before hours and hours and hours of the Mongoose. A lifetime ago, it seemed now—and even a thirteen-year life is a fair span of time.
Rajiv evaded the sword strike. No flair to it, just—got out of the way.
Not much. Just enough. Miserly in everything.
A short, quick, hard jab of the spade into the side of the Ye-tai's knee was enough to throw off his backhand stroke. Rajiv evaded that one easily. He didn't try to parry the blow. The wood and iron of his spade would be no match for a steel sword.
Another quick hard jab to the same knee was enough to bring the Ye-tai down.
As he did so, Rajiv swiveled, causing the crumpling Ye-tai to impede the other.
Fuck 'em up, when you're fighting a crowd. Make 'em fall over each other.
The third Ye-tai didn't fall. But he stumbled into the kneeling body of his comrade hard enough that he had to steady himself with one hand. His other hand, holding the sword, swung out wide in an instinctive reach for balance.
Rajiv drove the edge of the spade into the wrist of the sword arm. The hand popped open. The sword fell. Blood oozed from the laceration on the wrist. It was a bad laceration, even if Rajiv hadn't managed to sever anything critical.
Go for the extremities. Always go for extremities. Hands, feet, toes, fingers. They're your closest target and the hardest for the asshole to defend.
The Ye-tai gaped at him, more in surprise than anything else.
But Rajiv ignored him, for the moment.
Don't linger, you idiot. Cut a man just enough, then cut another. Then come back and cut the first one again, if you need to. Like your mother cuts onions. Practical. Fuck all that other crap.
The second Ye-tai was squealing, in a hissing sort of way. Rajiv knew that knee injuries were excruciating. The Mongoose had told him so—and then, twice, banged up his knee in training sessions to prove it.
The Ye-tai's head was unguarded, with both his hands clutching the ruined knee. So Rajiv drove the spade at his temple.
He made his first mistake, then. The target was so tempting—so glorious, as it were—that he threw everything into the blow. He'd take off that head!
The extra time it took to position his whole body for that mighty blow was enough for the Ye-tai to bring up his hand to protect the head.
Stupid! Rajiv snarled silently at himself.
It probably didn't make any difference, of course. If the edge of the spade wasn't as sharp as a true weapon, it wasn't all that dull; and if iron wasn't steel, it was still much harder than human flesh. The strike cut off one of the man's fingers and maimed the whole hand—and still delivered a powerful blow to the skull. Moaning, the Ye-tai collapsed to the floor, half-unconscious.
Still, Rajiv was glad the Mongoose hadn't seen.
"Stupid," he heard a voice mutter.
Startled, he glanced aside. The Mongoose was there, in the entrance to the chamber. He had his sword in his hand, but it was down alongside his leg. Behind him, Rajiv could see the huge figure of Anastasius looming.
The Mongoose leaned against the stone entrance, tapping the tip of the sword against his boot. Then, nodded his head toward the last Ye-tai against the far wall.
"Finish him, boy. And don't fuck up again."
Rajiv looked at the Ye-tai. The man was paying him no attention at all. He was staring at the Mongoose, obviously frightened out of his wits.
The spade had served well enough, but there was now a sword available. The one the second Ye-tai had dropped after Rajiv smashed his knee.
No reason to waste the spade, of course. Certainly not with the Mongoose watching. Rajiv had been trained—for hours and hours and hours—to throw most anything. Even ladles. The Mongoose was a firm believer in the value of weapons used at a distance.
Rajiv would never be the Mongoose's equal with a throwing knife, of course. He was not sure even the heroes and asuras of the legends could throw a knife that well.
But he was awfully good, by now. The spade, hurled like a spear, struck the Ye-tai in the groin.
"Good!" the Mongoose grunted.
With the sword in his hand, Rajiv approached the Ye-tai. By now, of course, the man had noticed him. Half-crouched, snarling, clutching himself with his left hand while he tried to grab his dropped sword with the still-bleeding right hand.
Rajiv sliced open his scalp with a quick, flicking strike of the sword.
Don't try to split his head open, you jackass. You'll likely just get your sword stuck. And it's too easy to block and what's the fucking point anyway? Just cut him somewhere in the front of the head. Anywhere the blood'll spill into his eyes and blind him. Head wounds bleed like nothing else.
Blood poured over the Ye-tai's face. The sword he'd been bringing up went, instead, to his face, as he tried to wipe off the blood with the back of his wrist.
It never got there. Another quick, flicking sword strike struck the hand and took off the thumb. The sword, again, fell to the ground.
"Don't . . . fuck . . . it . . . up," the Mongoose growled.
Rajiv didn't really need the lesson. He'd learned it well enough already, this day, with that one mistake. He was sorely tempted to end it all, but not for any romantic reason. The carnage was starting to upset him. He'd never been in a real fight before—not a killing one—and he was discovering that men don't die the way chickens and lambs do when they're slaughtered.
He'd always thought they would. But they didn't. They bled the same, pretty much. But lambs—certainly chickens—never had that look of horror in their eyes as they knew they were dying.
That same, walled-off part of Rajiv's mind thought he understood, now. The reason his father always seemed so stern. Not like his mother at all.
Father's son or mother's son, Rajiv was Mongoose-trained. So the sword flicked out five more times, mercilessly slicing and cutting everywhere, before he finally opened the big arteries and veins in the Ye-tai's throat.
"Good." The Mongoose straightened up and pointed with his sword toward a corner. "If you need to puke, do it over there. Cleaning up this mess is going to be a bitch as it is."
Anastasius pushed him aside and came into the chamber. "For the sake of Christ, Valentinian, will you give the boy a break? Three men, in his first fight—and him starting without a weapon."
The Mongoose scowled. "He did pretty damn good. I still don't want to clean up blood and puke all mixed together. Neither do you."
But Rajiv wasn't listening, any longer. He was in the corner, hands on his knees, puking.
He still had the sword firmly gripped, though—and was careful to keep the blade out of the way of the spewing vomit.
"Pretty damn good," the Mongoose repeated.
"We were very lucky," Lady Damodara said to Sanga's wife, that evening. "If it hadn't been for your son . . ."
She lowered her head, one hand rubbing her cheek. "We can't wait much longer. I must—finally—get word to my husband. He can't wait, either. I'd thought Ajatasutra would have come back, by now. The fact that he hasn't makes me wonder—"
"I think you're wrong, Lady. " Rajiv's mother was standing by the window, looking out over Kausambi. She was making no attempt to hide from sight. Even if the Malwa dynasty had spies watching from a distance—which was very likely—all they would see in the twilight was the figure of a gray-haired and plain-seeming woman, dressed in simple apparel. A servant, obviously, and there were many servants in such a palace.
"I think Ajatasutra's long absence means the opposite. I think your husband is finally making his move."
More hopefully, Lady Damodara raised her head. She'd come to have a great deal of confidence in the Rajput queen. "You think so?"
Sanga's wife smiled. "Well, let me put it this way. Yes, I think so—and if I'm wrong, we're all dead anyway. So why fret about it?"
Lady Damodara chuckled. "If only I had your unflappable temperament!"
The smile went away. "Not so unflappable as all that. When I heard, afterward, what Rajiv had done . . ." She shook her head. "I almost screamed at him, I was so angry and upset."
"He was very brave."
"Yes, he was. That is why I was so angry. Reckless boy! But . . ."
She seemed to shudder a little. "He was also very, very deadly. That is why I was so upset. At the Mongoose, I think, more than him."
Lady Damodara tilted her head. "He is a Rajput prince."
"Yes, he is. So much is fine. What I do not want is for him to become a Rajput legend. Another damned Rajput legend. Being married to one is enough!"
There was silence, for a time.
"You may not have any choice," Lady Damodara finally said.
"Probably not," Sanga's wife agreed gloomily. "There are times I think I should have poisoned Valentinian right at the beginning."
There was silence for a time, again.
"He probably wouldn't have died anyway."
"Probably not."