Eric Flint: An Oblique Approach

So far—excellent. But then—impetuous hoyden!

The Wind puffed old exasperation. How many times had the child been told? How many? Headstrong girl!

But the raging vortex was fast disappearing. Faster than it had gathered, in fact, much faster. Emotions which came easily to the Wind were pouring back in, singing their return. Among these—great among these—was humor.

Truly, in its own way, a comical scene.

A large, heavy man. Heavy head, atop a heavy neck, atop a heavy torso. Clutching his groin. Groaning. Grimacing with pain. Staggering about like a wounded buffalo. With a girl—a smallish girl, mind, for all that her extraordinary body had been shaped under the Wind's ruthless regimen—hanging on to that massive head with both little hands.

Perfectly positioned, those hands, that the Wind allowed. The left, clutching the shaggy beard; the right, rooted firmly in the shaggy mane. Perfectly positioned for the deadly, twisting, driving contraction that would snap the man's neck like a twig.

If, that is, the man had been half his size, and she twice hers. As it was, it was a bit like a monkey trying to break the neck of a buffalo. The buffalo staggering about, swinging the monkey wildly to and fro.

The furious black eyes of the princess met the gaze of the Wind. The Wind stooped, hopped about, made soft monkey noises, scratched. The black eyes blazed pure rage.

"Oh— all right! " she hissed. She released her grip, bounced onto her toes. An instant for balance, an instant for poise, an instant for thought.

The swift kick to the knee was excellent—a copy of the one delivered by the Wind to a torturer in the room beyond. His had pulverized the knee, hers simply dislodged the kneecap. No matter—the man was disabled either way. And the position of his head—

Yes! The Wind was deeply gratified by the palm-strike to the bridge of the nose. For the Wind, that blow was itself lethal. But the girl— this time —delivered it as she had been taught. Speed, fluid grace. She simply didn't have the mass and sheer male strength to shatter strong bones with every blow. So, for her, the palm strike was to daze the foe, turn his head, set up—

The elbow smash to the temple which followed, like a lightning bolt, was a perfect duplicate of the one which the Wind had delivered to another mahamimamsa in the adjoining room, less than a minute earlier. True, the Wind's strike had slain his man instantly, whereas the princess needed two more before her opponent slumped lifeless to the floor.

So?

Only the soul matters, in the end.

The Wind died away, then. Fled, dancing, back to the Great Country. It would rise again, like the monsoon, when Maharashtra called. But for now, it was gone.

Only the man Raghunath Rao remained, cradling the treasure of his soul in his arms, whispering her name, kissing her eyes, weeping softly into her hair.

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Contents

Framed

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Contents

EPILOGUE

"To move along the line of natural expectation consolidates the opponent's balance and thus increases his resisting power . . . In most campaigns the dislocation of the enemy's psychological and physical balance has been the vital prelude to a successful attempt at his overthrow."

—B. H. Liddell-Hart, Strategy

A soldier and a general

Once he was satisfied that his men had finished all the necessary preparations for their departure, Kungas decided that it was time to pay a courtesy call. It would be a long journey to the Emperor's camp at the siege of Ranapur. At least a month, probably more, judging from the appearance of the caravan—and his past experience with the caravan's master. He and his men would be spending a considerable time with the party of foreigners they had been assigned to escort. Best to be introduced properly, in advance, so that no unfortunate misunderstandings would arise.

Especially with those foreigners, thought Kungas, as he passed through the courtyard of Venandakatra's palace. He stopped for a moment, to admire the scenery.

A harsh life had taught Kungas many lessons. One of those was to keep your sentiments hidden. The world had always presented a hard face to him; he returned the compliment. Old Iron-face , he knew, was one of the nicknames his men had for him. He did not object. No, not in the slightest.

Still, even for Kungas, it was hard not to grin.

Four of the Ye-tai were still alive, barely. One of them was even still making some noise. Small, mewling sounds. With luck, thought Kungas, that one might survive another day. Another day of agony and hopelessness.

Kungas would be gone by then, but he would be able to cherish the memory. He and his men had been assigned the task of cutting the stakes and spitting the Ye-tai. It had been the most pleasurable duty they'd had in years.

His eye fell on a figure perched among the Ye-tai, and his pleasure vanished.

Not all of it.

They had done what they could for the old woman. They had tried to smuggle in a longer stake, but Venandakatra had spotted it and forbidden its use. The servant was to be spitted on the same short stakes as the Ye-tai, in order to prolong the agony.

The mental grin returned. It was a bleak, bleak grin.

But we'd expected that. Too bad we couldn't get any real poison, in the short time we had. But the women in the kitchen mixed up what they could. Venandakatra watched us like a hawk, to make sure we didn't slip her anything to eat or drink. But we'd expected that, too. By the time we fit the poor soul onto the stake, the stuff had all dried. Venandakatra would have had to scrape the stake itself to spot it.

He started to turn away. Then, moved by an impulse, turned back. His eyes quickly scanned the courtyard. No one was watching.

Kungas made a very slight bow to the dead crone. He thought it was the least he could do. By the time the villagers would be allowed to remove her body, there would not be much left. The priests would refuse, of course, to do the rituals. So, the poor wretch was at least owed that much from her killer.

It was not, in any real sense, a religious gesture. Like most of his people, Kungas still retained traces of the Buddhist faith which the Kushans had adopted after conquering Bactria and north India. Adopted, and then championed. In its heyday, Peshawar, the capital of the Kushan Empire, had been the great world center of Buddhist worship and scholarship. But the glory days of the Kushan empire were gone. The stupas lay in ruins; the monks and scholars dead or scattered to the wind. The Ye-tai, on their own, had persecuted Buddhism savagely. And after the barbarians were absorbed into the rising Malwa power, the persecution had simply intensified. To the brutality of the Ye-tai had been added the calculating ruthlessness of the Malwa. They intended their Mahaveda cult to stamp out all rival tendencies within the great umbrella of Hinduism. Needless to say, they had absolutely no ruth toward Buddhists or Jains.

Between the persecution and his own harsh life, therefore, Kungas retained very little of any religious sentiment. So, his slight bow to the dead crone was more in the way of a warrior's nod to a courageous soul. Perhaps that recognition would comfort her soul, a bit, waiting for its new life. (If there was a new life. Or such a thing as a soul. Kungas was skeptical.)

Not that her soul probably needs much comfort, he thought wryly as he walked away. She seemed to enjoy the Ye-tai squawling even more than we did. Maybe we did her a disservice, poisoning her.

He rubbed the new wound on his face, briefly. It was scabbed over now, and would heal soon enough. The pain was irrelevant. Kungas did not think the scar would even last beyond a few months. The man who put it there was a weak man, for all that he'd been in a rage. And a quirt is not, all things considered, the best weapon to use, if you want to scar up an old veteran.