An oblique approach b-1

by David Drake

  In a different way, hearing the tale, the Wind had also been struck dumb. Speechless, its voice strangled between a great hatred, and a greater wish that its hatred could be directed elsewhere.

  Now, it could. Now, the iron-faced man was gone. And gone, as well, were the men he commanded. Men of his breed.

  Gone, replaced by- these.

  So difficult it was! Not to howl with glee!

  Two Malwa guarded the hall. One priest, one mahamimamsa.

  Soldiers would have guarded that hall differently.

  Any soldiers.

  Common soldiers, of course, would have been more careless than his men. Common soldiers, in their idle boredom, would have drifted together in quiet conversation. True, they would have remained standing. But it would have been a slouching sort of stance, weapons casually askew.

  Ye-tai, in their feral arrogance, would have taken their seats in the chairs at the table in the center of the hall. And would have soon rung the hall with their boisterous exchanges. Still, even Ye-tai would have sat those chairs facing outward, weapons in hand.

  Only a priest and a torturer would guard a room seated at a table, their backs turned to the corridors, their swords casually placed on a third chair to the side, poring over a passage from the Vedas. The priest, vexed, instructing the thick-witted torturer in the subtleties of the text which hallowed his trade.

  From the corridor, just beyond the light, the Wind examined them. Briefly.

  The time for examination was past.

  The Wind, in the darkness, began to coil.

  In the first turn of its coil, the Wind draped the remaining length of cord across an unlit lantern suspended on the wall.

  The time for silk was past.

  In the second turn of its coil, the Wind admired the silk, one last time, and hoped it would be found by a servant woman. Perhaps, if she were unobserved, she would be able to steal it and give her squalid life a bit of beauty.

  In the third turn of its coil, and the fourth, the Wind sang silent joy. The Wind sang to an iron face which was gone, now, but which, while there, had watched over the Wind’s treasure and kept her from harm. And it sang, as well, to an unknown man who had caused that iron face to be gone, now, when its time was past.

  The Wind took the time to sing that silent joy, as it coiled, because the time for joy was also past. But joy is more precious than a cord of silk and must be discarded carefully, lest some small trace remain, impeding the vortex.

  An unknown man, from the primitive Occident. In the fifth turn of its coil, the Wind took the time to wonder about that strange West. Wonder, too, was precious. Too precious to cast aside before savoring its splendor.

  Were they truly nothing but superstitious heathens, as he had always been told? Ignorant barbarians, who had never seen the face of God?

  But the Wind wondered only briefly. The time for wonder was also past.

  The vortex coiled and coiled.

  Wonder would return, of course, in its proper time. A day would come when, still wondering, the Wind would study the holy writ of the West.

  Coiling and coiling. Shedding, in that fearsome gathering, everything most precious to the soul. Shedding them, to make room.

  Coiling and coiling.

  Hatred did not come easily, to the soul called the Wind. It came with great difficulty. But the Wind’s was a human soul; nothing human was foreign to it.

  Coiling and coiling and coiling.

  The day would come, in the future, studying the holy writ of the western folk, when the Wind would open the pages of Ecclesiastes. The Wind would find its answer, then. A small wonder would be replaced by a greater. A blazing, joyful wonder that God should be so great that even the stiff-minded Occident could see his face.

  But that was the future. In the dark corridor of the present, in the palace of the Vile One, joy and wonder fled from the Wind. All things true and precious fled, as such creatures do, sensing the storm.

  Coiling and coiling. Coiling and coiling.

  Love burrowed a hole. Tenderness scampered up a tree. Pity dove to the bottom of a lake. Charity, ruing its short legs, scuttled through the grass. Tolerance and mercy and kindness flapped frantic wings through the lowering sky.

  A great soul, the Wind’s. Enormous, now, in its coil. With a great emptiness at the center where room had been made. Into the vacuum rushed hatred and rage, fury and fire. Bitterness brought wet weight; cruelty gave energy to the brew. Vengeance gathered the storm.

  Monsoon season was very near.

  The monsoon, like the Wind, was many things to many people. Different at different times. A thing of many faces.

  Kindly faces, in the main. One face was the boon to seamen, in their thousands, bearing cargoes across the sea. Another was the face of life itself, for peasants in their millions, raising crops in the rain which it brought.

  But the monsoon had other faces. There was the face that shattered coasts, flooded plains, and slew in the millions.

  It was said, and truly, that India was the land created by the monsoon. Perhaps it was for that reason-what man can know? — that the Indian vision of God took such a different form than the vision which gripped the Occident.

  The stiff-minded Occident, where God was but the Creator. Yet even the Occident knew of the seasons, and its Preacher penetrated their meaning.

  India, where God danced destruction as well, singing, in his terrible great joy: I am become death, destroyer of worlds.

  For all things, there is a time. For all things, there is a season.

  In the palace of the Vile One, that season came.

  Monsoon.

  For all its incredible speed, the rush was not heard by the Malwa at the table until the Wind was almost upon them. The mahamimamsa never heard it at all, so engrossed was he in poring over the difficult text. One moment he was thinking, the next he was not. The fist which crushed the back of his skull ended all thought forever.

  The priest heard, began to turn, began to gape as he saw his companion die. Then gasped, gagged-tried to choke, but could not manage the deed. The Wind’s right hand had been a fist to the torturer. The torturer done, the hand spread wide. The edge of the hand between thumb and finger smashed into the priest’s throat like a sledge.

  The priest was almost dead already, from a snapped spine as well as a collapsed windpipe, but the Wind was in full fury now. The monsoon, by its nature, heaps havoc onto ruin. The terrible hands did their work. The left seized the priest’s hair, positioned him; the right, iron palm-heel to the fore, shattered his nose and drove the broken bone into the brain. All in an instant.

  The Wind raged across the domed hall, down a corridor.

  The end of that short corridor ended in another. Down the left, a short distance, stood the door to the princess’ suite. Before that door stood three mahamimamsa. (He had only stationed two; three were too many for the narrow space, simply impeding each other.)

  The Wind raced down the corridor. The time for silent wafting was over. A guard had but to look around the bend. (He had stationed one of his two guards at the bend itself, always watching the hall; the Wind had despaired here also.)

  For all the fury of the Wind’s coming, there was little noise. The Wind’s feet, in their manner of racing, had been a part-small part-of the reason his soul had been given another name, among many. A panther’s paws do not slap the ground, clapping their loud and clumsy way, when the panther springs on its prey.

  Still, there was a bit of noise. The torturer standing closest to the corridor frowned. What-? More out of boredom than any real alarm, the mahamimamsa moved toward the bend. His companions saw him go, thought little of it. They had heard nothing, themselves. Assumed the tedium had driven him into idle motion.

  The Wind blew around the bend. Idleness disappeared. Boredom and tedium vanished. The torturers regretted their sudden absence deeply, much as a man agonizes over a treasure lost because he had not recognized its worth.

  The agony was
brief.

  The first torturer, the-so to speak-alert one, never agonized at all. The dagger came up under his chin, through his tongue, through the roof of his mouth, into his brain. The capacity for agony ended before the agony had time to arrive.

  The remaining two torturers had time-just-to startle erect and begin to gape. One, even, began to grope for his sword. He died first, from a slash which severed his throat. The same slash-in the backstroke-did for the other.

  There were sounds now, of course. The muffled sound of bodies slumping to the floor, the splatter of arterial blood against walls. Loudest of all, perhaps, the gurgling sound of air escaping. The deep breaths which the torturers had taken in their brief moment of fear were hissing their way out, like suddenly ruptured water pipes.

  Ye-tai guards, for all their arrogant sloppiness, would not have failed to hear those sounds. Even through a closed door.

  But the priest and the six torturers standing guard in the room beyond that door heard nothing. Or, rather, heard but did not understand the hearing. Unlike Ye-tai warriors, they were not familiar with the sounds by which men go swiftly to their doom.

  Other sounds of death, yes. Oh, many of them. Shrieks of pain, they knew. Howls of agony, they knew. Screams, yes. Wails, yes. Groans and moans, it goes without saying. Whimpers and sobs, they could recognize in their sleep. Even the hoarse, whispering, near-silent hiss from a throat torn bloody by hours of squalling terror-that they knew. Knew well.

  But the faint sounds which came through the door, those they did not recognize. (Though one torturer, puzzled, stepped to the door and began to open it.) Those were the sounds of quick death, and quick death was a stranger to the men beyond that door.

  It would be a stranger no longer.

  The full surging fury, now. The door vanished, splintered in passing by the monsoon that wreaked its way into the room.

  In its wooden disintegration, the pieces of the door knocked one torturer to the floor, staggered another. The Wind ignored, for the moment, the one on the floor. The one who staggered found the best of all balance-flat on his back, dead. Slain by a truly excellent dagger, which carved its way out of the scrawny chest as easily as it ravened its way in.

  The five other Malwa in the room gasped. Their eyes widened with fear and shock. And, most of all, utter disbelief.

  Odd sentiments, really, especially on the part of the priest. Had he not himself, time and again, explained to the mahamimamsa that butchery and slaughter were blessed by the Vedas? (Other Indian priests and mystics and sadhus had denied the claim, hotly and bitterly-had even called the Mahaveda cult an abomination in the eyes of God. But they were silent now. The mahamimamsa had done their work.)

  And so, when the monsoon billowed into the room, the men therein should have appreciated the divine core of the experience. Yet, they didn’t. Scandalous behavior, especially for the priest. The other Malwa in the room could perhaps be excused. For all their ritual pretensions, their desultory half-memorization of the Vedas, the mahamimamsa were simply crude artisans of a trade which is crude by nature. It is understandable, therefore, that when that same trade was plied upon them, they could see nothing in it but a dazzling exhibition of the craft.

  The mahamimamsa lying prostrate on the floor never had time to be dazzled. The erupting door which had knocked him down had also stunned him. He just had a momentary, semiconscious glimpse of the stamping iron heel which ruptured his heart.

  The next mahamimamsa was more fortunate. The same iron-hard foot hurled him into a corner, but did not paralyze his mind along with his body. So he was privileged. He would be the last to die, after the Wind swept all other life from the room. He would have ample time to admire the supreme craftsmanship of murder.

  About four seconds.

  The priest died now. From a slash across the carotid artery so short and quick that even Valentinian, had he seen, would have been dazzled by the economy of the deed. Then a mahamimamsa, from an elbow strike to the temple so violent it shredded half his brain with bone fragments and jellied the other half from sheer impact.

  Another mahamimamsa, another carotid. Not so miserly, that slash-it almost decapitated the torturer.

  Finally, now, a Malwa had time to cry out alarm. The cry was cut short, reduced to a cough, by a dagger thrust to the heart.

  Only one mahamimamsa, of the seven Malwa who had been in that room, managed to draw a weapon before he died. A short, slightly curved sword, which he even managed to raise into fighting position. The Wind fell upon him, severed the wrist holding the sword, pulverized his kneecap with a kick, and shattered the torturer’s skull with the pommel of the dagger in the backstroke.

  In the fourth, and last second, the Wind swirled through the corner of the room where his kick had sent a torturer sprawling, and drove the dagger point through the mahamimamsa’s eye and into his brain. The marvelous blade sliced its way out of the skull as easily as it butchered its way in.

  Swift death, incredibly swift, but-of course-by no means silent. There had been the shattering of the door, the half-cough/half-cry of one torturer, the crunching of bones, the splatter of blood, the clatter of a fallen sword, and, needless to say, the thump of many bodies falling to the floor and hurled into the walls.

  The Wind could hear movement behind the last door barring the way to his treasure. Movement, and the sharp yelps of men preparing for battle. Two men, judging from the voices.

  Then-other sounds; odd noises.

  The Wind knew their meaning.

  The Wind swept to that door, dealt with it as monsoons deal with such things, and raged into the room beyond. The chamber of the Princess Shakuntala. Where, even in sleep, she could not escape the glittering eyes of cruelty.

  Two mahamimamsa, just as the Wind had thought.

  Unpredictable, eerie wind. For now, at the ultimate moment, at the peaking fury of the storm, the monsoon ebbed. Became a gentle breeze, which simply glided slowly forward, as if content to do no more than rustle the meadows and the flowers in the field.

  Only one mahamimamsa, now. The other was dead. Dying, rather.

  The Wind examined him briefly. The torturer was expiring on the floor, gagging, both hands clutching his throat. The Wind knew the blow which had collapsed the windpipe-the straight, thumb and finger spread, arm stiff, full-bodied, lunging strike with the vee of the palm. He had delivered that blow’s twin not a minute earlier, to the priest in the domed hall.

  Had the Wind himself delivered the strike which had sent this mahamimamsa to his doom, the torturer would have been dead before he hit the floor. But the blow had been delivered by another, who, though she had learned her skill from the Wind, lacked his hurricane force.

  No matter. The Wind was not displeased. Truly, an excellent blow. Skillfully executed, and-to the Wind’s much greater satisfaction-selected with quick and keen intelligence. The man might not die immediately. But, however long he took, he would never utter more than a faint croak in his passing.

  In the event, he died now, instantly. The Wind saw no reason for his existence, and finished his life with a short, sudden heel stamp.

  The blow was delivered almost idly, however, for the Wind’s primary attention was on the final foe, and his demise.

  Here, the Wind found cause for displeasure, disgruntlement. Deep grievance; great dissatisfaction.

  As was her unfortunate tendency, the imperious princess had not been able to resist the royal gesture.

  True, admitted the Wind, she had obviously started well. The swift, sharp kick to the groin. Well chosen, that, from the vast armory the Wind had given her. A paralyzing blow-semiparalyzing, at the very least-and, best of all, paralyzing to the vocal cords. A sharp cough, a low moan, no more.

  She had delivered that kick first, the Wind knew. Knew for a certainty, though the Wind had not been present in the room.

  Just as the Wind had taught her, when dealing with two opponents. The quick, disabling strike to one; the lethal blow to the other; retur
n and finish the first. (It was a simple sonata form which the Wind itself did not always follow, of course. But the Wind was a maestro, skilled in variations because it was master of the tune.)

  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.