Eric Flint - An Oblique Approach

The priest pointed to Jijabai, barked something; made a dismissive gesture. The Ye-tai grinned and stooped over the maid. A moment later they were spreading her legs again and unbuckling their trousers.

Shakuntala lurched to her feet, but the Kushan commander was suddenly standing behind her. The man moved much more quickly than the princess would have thought possible. She felt him twisting her arm up behind her back. She drove her foot down, but struck only the floor, painfully. The Kushan had moved his instep aside—effortlessly, and without losing either his balance or his grip on her arm.

Shakuntala felt her arm twisted up, immobilized. She recognized the grip, and the expertise behind it, and despaired. Still—

Her elbow strike was blocked almost before it began. Her head snap was met with a cuff. Not a brutal cuff, just an expert one.

Jijabai started screaming. A blow. Screaming. Another blow. Blow. Silence. Except for coarse Ye-tai laughs.

"There's nothing you can do for her, girl," whispered the Kushan commander in good Hindi. "Nothing."

He propelled Shakuntala toward the door. He was strong. Very strong. The other Kushans moved with him. Several moved in front. Others strode on either side, still others behind. All with swords drawn. Blood-covered swords, without exception.

As she went through the door, Shakuntala heard Jijabai begin to wail again. Then: blow; blow; silence.

"Nothing, girl, nothing," whispered the Kushan.

The trip through the palace was sheer nightmare. The princess was covered with blood and half-dazed, but could still see. And hear. The entire palace was a raging madhouse of butchery, looting, torture and gang rape. The Ye-tai barbarians were like maddened wolves. The common Malwa troops were even worse, like crazed hyenas. Completely out of control. More than once, her Kushan escort was forced to strike down Malwa soldiers lunging for the princess. ("Forced" was perhaps not the right word. The Kushans slaughtered common Malwa troops who moved toward them instantly and without compunction; Ye-tai were butchered for even looking at them the wrong way.)

After a while, Shakuntala felt herself grow weak with horror. She tried to fight against the weakness, but it was almost impossible. Utter despair was overwhelming her.

The iron grip holding her became, as the trip progressed, more of a comforting embrace. Some part of her mind tried to seize the opportunity, but her will was buried beneath hopelessness. And always, every minute, the voice:

"Nothing, girl, nothing."

A gentle voice. If iron can ever be gentle.

Finally, they were leaving the palace, entering the great courtyard.

She caught a glimpse—

The iron hand turned her head into an iron shoulder. Guided her away.

Shakuntala summoned the last reserve of her will.

"No," she said. "No. I must see."

Iron hesitated. An iron sigh.

"You are certain?"

"I must see." A moment later: "Please. I must."

Iron hesitation. Another iron sigh.

"Nothing, girl, noth—"

" I must—please! "

The iron grip yielded, turned her back.

She saw. They were dead now, at least. The cluster of mahamimamsa around them were already well into the flaying. Soon enough, the skin sacks would be ready for hanging in the Malwa emperor's great hall.

Her father. Her mother. All of her brothers except the youngest, who had died in her room. His body would be brought down soon, for the flayers.

The iron grip turned her away again. She did not resist. A minute later, she began to shake. Then, seconds later, weep.

" Nothing, girl, nothing. "

She did not speak for three hours. Not until the last faint screams of Amaravati died away, lost in the distance. The Kushans pushed their horses hard, and the Rajput cavalry troop which escorted them did not object.

For three hours, she was lost in anguished memories of Andhra. Great Andhra, destroyed Andhra. For five centuries, under the Satavahana dynasty, Andhra had ruled central India. And ruled it well. Themselves Telugu speakers of Dravidian stock, the Satavahana had shielded Dravidia from the depredations of the northern Aryan conquerors; shielded Dravidia, while at the same time absorbing and transmitting throughout the Deccan all the genuine glories of Vedic culture. The very name satavahana referred to the seven-horse chariot of Vishnu. The name had been adopted by the dynasty upon its conversion to Hinduism— adopted , by choice, not by force.

So had the Satavahanas ruled. They had never shied from war, but had always preferred gentler methods of conquest and rule. Few, if any, of their subject peoples had found their overlordship oppressive. Even the stiff-necked and quarrelsome Marathas, after a time, had become reconciled to Andhra rule. Reconciled, and then, become Andhra's strong right arm.

Under the Satavahanas, Andhra had become one of the major trade centers of the world. Trade with Rome to the west, Ceylon to the south, Champa and Funan to the east. The great city Amavarati, now in flames, had been the most prosperous and peaceful city in all India.

With peace, prosperity and trade, had come knowledge, wisdom, and art. Encouraged and patronized by the Satavahanas, scholars and mystics and artists had flocked to Amavarati.

The bhakti movement had grown under Andhra's tolerance, revitalizing Hinduism. Buddhists and Jains, often persecuted in other Hindu realms, were unmolested in Andhra. Even the great rock-cut temples had been allowed to incorporate images of the Buddha.

Shakuntala remembered the beauty of those temples, and the monastic viharas, and the chaitya prayer halls, and the stupas. She fought back the tears. Then she remembered the glorious frescoes at the viharas at Ajanta, and could fight them back no longer.

Gone. All gone. Destroyed forever.

Her first words were: "Why not me?"

The Kushan commander explained. Gently. As gently, at least, as the truth allowed.

She spit on the ground. For a moment, it almost seemed as if the commander's face had developed a crack. A flaw in the iron, perhaps.

Her next words were:

"Raghunath Rao?"

The Kushan commander explained. This time, the voice was not gentle. There was no need to be. Then, the commander predicted. Now, gentle again; insofar as iron can be gentle.

Shakuntala laughed. Flaming glory burst through her soul, like a river washing out all hopelessness and despair.

The princess spoke her last word, on that day of destruction:

" Fools. "

* * *

When night fell, the Kushans and Rajputs made camp. Guards were set up all around, within and without the camp perimeter. The Rajputs guarded the camp from outside attack. The Kushans guarded the camp from Shakuntala.

It was an odd sort of guard. The Kushans kept their distance from her. Regaled each other—in Hindi, which she could understand—with tales of startled Ye-tai. Girl-startled Ye-tai, with a spear-blade in their armpits and throats and legs and mouths; with a foot in their guts and their teeth and their necks. They particularly relished the tale of a Ye-tai nose.

Beyond, in the flickering light of the campfires, haughty Rajput beards were seen to move. Smiles, perhaps, brought on by charming tales.

That same night, in a pond not far from the palace at Amavarati, a frog croaked and jumped aside. As if startled by a sudden motion nearby.

An alert guard might have spotted the slow, crawling figure which eased its way out of the reeds and onto the bank. But there were no alert guards at Amavarati that night. The Malwa army had disintegrated completely in its triumph. There was nothing at Amavarati that night but a horde of drunken, butchering thieves and rapists, and what few of their victims still survived. And a cluster of mahamimamsa, overseen by priests, who, though sober and on duty, were much too preoccupied with the task of properly flaying a fourteen-year-old boy to be watching any ponds.