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But it didn't matter. The girl was obviously too petrified to think at all, even if she weren't dim-witted to begin with. She'd been overlooked in the initial evacuation, and now…
"Step aside, Rajiv," Valentinian said harshly.
Lata could see the shoulders of the young Rajput prince tighten. He didn't move from his position at the front of the alcove.
"Obey me, boy. "
Rajiv took a shuddering little breath; then, moved aside and flattened himself against the wall.
Valentinian already had an arrow notched. The bow came up quickly, easily; the draw, likewise. Lata wasn't astonished, even though Valentinian had once let her draw that bow when she'd expressed curiosity.
Try to draw it, rather. She might as well have tried to lift an ox.
She never really saw the arrow's flight. Just stared, as the poor stupid maid was pi
Valentinian had no expression on his face at all. Another arrow was already out of the quiver and notched.
"It was quick, Rajiv," said Anastasius quietly. "In the heart. We can't leave anyone behind who might talk, you know that. And we need you now on the detonator."
Tight-faced, Rajiv nodded and came toward Lata. Looking down, Lata saw an odd-looking contraption on the floor not more than three feet away from her. It was a small wooden box with a wire leading from it into the wall of the alcove, and a knobbed handle sticking up from the middle. A plunger of some kind, she thought.
Rajiv didn't look at Valentinian as he passed him. He seemed surprised to see Lata. And, from the look on his face, a bit frightened.
"You have to go below!" He glanced back, as if to look at Valentinian. "Quickly."
"I just came up to see what happened to her. We took a count and…"
Turning his head slightly, Valentinian said over his shoulder: "Get below, Lata. Now."
Once she was back in the cellar, she just shook her head in response to the question in Lady Damodara's raised eyebrows.
The lady seemed to understand. She nodded and looked away.
"What happened?" Dhruva hissed.
"Never mind. She's dead." Lata half-pushed her sister toward the tu
There were two Bihari miners left, still standing by the entrance. One of them came to escort them.
"This way, ladies. You'll have to stoop a little. Do you need help with the baby?"
"Don't be silly," Dhruva replied.
The upper hinge gave first. Once the integrity of the door was breached, three more blows from the battering ram were enough to knock it complete aside.
By the time those blows were finished, Valentinian had already fired four arrows through the widening gap. Each one of them killed a Malwa soldier in the huge mass of soldiery Rajiv could see on the street beyond.
Anastasius fired only once. His arrow, even more powerfully shot, took a Malwa in the shoulder. Hitting the armor there, it spun him into the mob.
The Ye-tai mercenary fired also. Twice, Rajiv thought, but he wasn't paying him any attention. He was settling his nerves from the killing of the maid by coldly gauging the archery skill of the two cataphracts against his father's.
Anastasius was more powerful, but much slower; Valentinian, faster than his father-and as accurate-but not as powerful.
So, a Rajput prince concluded, his father remained the greatest archer in the world. In India, at least.
That was some satisfaction. Rajput notions concerning the responsibility of a lord to his retainers were just as stiff as all their notions. Even if, technically, the maid was simply a servant and not one of Rajiv's anyway, her casual murder had raised his hackles.
Don't be silly, part of his mind said to him. Your father would have done the same.
Rajiv shook his head. Not so quickly! he protested. Not so-so The voice came again. Uncaringly? Probably true. And so what? She'd have been just as dead. Don't ever think otherwise. To you, he's a father and a great warrior. To his enemies, he's never been anything but a cold and deadly killer.
And you are his son-and do you intend to flinch when the time comes to push that plunger? Most of the men you'll destroy when you do so are peasants, and some of them none too intelligent. Does a stupid maid have a right to live, and they, not?
The door finally came off the hinges altogether and smashed-what was left of it-onto the tiles of the huge vestibule. Malwa soldiers came pouring in.
Valentinian fired three more times, faster than Rajiv could really follow. Valentinian, once; the Ye-tai, once. Four Malwa soldier fell dead. One-the Ye-tai's target-was merely wounded.
Valentinian stepped back quickly into the shelter of the alcove. Anastasius and the Ye-tai followed, an instant later.
"Now," commanded Valentinian.
Rajiv's hand struck down the plunger.
The charges carefully implanted in the walls of the vestibule turned the whole room into an abattoir. In the months they'd had to prepare, the major domo had even been able to secretly buy good drop shot on the black market. So it was real bullets that the mines sent flying into the room, not haphazard pieces of metal.
Rajiv supposed that some of the soldiers in the room must have survived. One or two, perhaps not even injured.
But not many. In a split second, he'd killed more men that most seasoned warriors would kill in a lifetime.
Somewhere on the stairs leading to the cellars, Rajiv uttered his one and only protest.
"I didn't hesitate. Not at all."
Anastasius smiled. "Well, of course not."
Valentinian shook his head. "Don't get melancholy and philosophical on me, boy. You've still got to do it twice more. Today."
For some reason, that didn't bother Rajiv.
Maybe that was because his enemies now had fair warning.
He said as much.
Anastasius smiled again, more broadly. At the foot of the stairs, now in the cellar, Valentinian turned around and glared at him.
"Who cares about 'fair warnings'? Dead is dead and we all die anyway. Just do it."
Anastasius, now also at the bottom of the stairs, cleared his throat. "If I may put Valentinian's viewpoint in proper Stoic terms, what he means to say-"
"Is exactly what the fuck I said," Valentinian hissed. "Just do it."
He glanced up the stairs. "In about ten minutes, at a guess."
His guess was off, a bit. Rajiv didn't blow the next charges for at least a quarter of an hour.
Whether because he'd satisfied himself concerning the ethics of the issue, or simply because Valentinian's cold-blooded murderousness was infectious, he wasn't sure. For whatever reason, Rajiv had no trouble waiting until the cellars were full of Malwa soldiery, probing uncertainly in the torch-lit darkness to find whatever hole their quarry had scurried into.
From the still greater darkness of the tu
"Now, boy."
"Not yet."
Two minutes later, he drove in the next plunger. The same type of shaped-charge mines implanted in the walls of the cellars turned those underground chambers into more abattoirs.
"Quickly, now!" urged Anastasius, already lumbering at a half-crouch down the tu