In the Heart of Darkness

by Eric Flint

  "Now," whispered Kungas. Shakuntala drove all thoughts of Rao from her mind. She rose and began walking forward into the street. Behind her came all four of the Maratha women.

  Tarabai pushed her way past Shakuntala.

  "Follow me, Your Majesty," she whispered. "Do as I do, as best you can."

  Again, for an instant, royal arrogance threatened to rise. But Shakuntala's struggle against it was brief and easy this time. She had no need to call Rao to her aid. Common sense alone sufficed.

  I can wear the clothing. But I don't, actually, have any idea how a prostitute acts.

  She watched Tarabai's sashaying stride and tried, as best she could, to copy it. Behind her, she heard Ahilyabai's voice, rising above the muttered words of sullen Kushan soldiers.

  Strident voice. Mocking voice.

  "If you want charity, get a beggar's bowl!"

  Shakuntala and Tarabai were halfway across the street. Before them, the Empress watched the Mahaveda priests stiffen. First, with surprise. Then, with moral outrage.

  Again, behind, the angry sound of male voices. Drunken voices, speaking slurred words. Shakuntala recognized Kungas' voice among them, but could understand none of the words. Her concentration was focussed on the priests ahead of her.

  She did, vaguely, hear Ahilyabai:

  "Fucking bums! Seduce a stupid virgin, if you have no money! Don't come sniffing around me!"

  The priests were fifteen feet away, now. Shakuntala almost laughed. The Mahaveda—faces distorted with fury—were practically cowering in the overhang of the door to the armory. They had drawn their swords, and were waving them menacingly. But it was a false menace, an empty menace. Fear of pollution held them paralyzed.

  "Keep away!" cried one.

  Another: "Filthy women! Unclean!"

  Tarabai swayed forward, crooning:

  "Oh, now, don't be like that! You look like proper men. We don't cost much."

  The third Mahaveda bellowed to the Ye-tai. The two barbarians had come partway down the street to watch the spectacle. The Ye-tai were grinning from ear to ear. Even the sight of the straggling band of Kushan soldiers haggling with the whores didn't cut through their humor.

  Again, the priest bellowed, waving his sword in a gesture of furious summoning. Still grinning, the two Ye-tai trotted toward them.

  Shakuntala stepped forward to meet them. Tarabai was pressing the priests further back into the alcove formed by the overhang. Pressing them back, not by force of body, but by the simple fact of her tainted nearness.

  Behind her, Shakuntala heard Ahilyabai's shriek of anger.

  "Get away, I say! Get away! Worthless scum!" Then, fiercely: "We'll set the Ye-tai on you!" Then, crooning: "Such good men, Ye-tai."

  The two Ye-tai reached the Empress. Neither one of them had even bothered to draw his sword. Still grinning, the barbarian on her left placed a hand on her shoulder.

  "Come on, sweet girl," he said in thick Hindi. "Leave the poor priests alone. They're manless, anyway. Come along to our guardhouse—and bring your sisters with you. We've got ten strong Ye-tai lads there. Bored out of their skulls and with money to burn."

  Smiling widely, Shakuntala turned her head aside. Shouted to Tarabai:

  "Forget the stupid priests! Let's—"

  She spun, drove her right fist straight into the Ye-tai's diaphragm. The barbarian grunted explosively, doubling up. His head, coming down, was met by Shakuntala's forearm strike coming up. A perfect strike—the right fist braced against left palm, a solid bar of bone sweeping around with all the force of the girl's hips and torso. A small bar, true, formed by a small bone. So the Ye-tai's jaw was not shattered. He simply dropped to his knees, half-conscious. His jaw did shatter, then, along with half of his teeth. Shakuntala's knee did for that. The barbarian slumped to the street.

  The Empress had turned away before the Ye-tai hit the ground. She was beginning her strike against the other Ye-tai. Twisting aside, drawing back her leg, preparing the sidekick. Silently cursing her costume. The sari impeded the smooth flow of her leg motion.

  This Ye-tai, squawking, reached for his sword.

  The sword-draw ended before it began.

  Shakuntala's leg fell back, limply, to her side. The Empress stared, wide-eyed. Her jaw almost dropped.

  She had only seen Kungas in action once before in her life. In Amaravati, when Andhra had finally fallen and the Malwa hordes were sacking the palace. But, even then, she had not really seen. The Ye-tai astride her, tearing off her clothes and spreading her legs in preparation for rape, had obscured her vision. She had caught no more than a glimpse of a Ye-tai fist, amputated, before she had been blinded by the blood of her assailants' decapitation and butchering.

  Kungas had done that work, then, just as he did it now. In less than three seconds, the Kushan commander quite literally hacked the Ye-tai to pieces.

  Shakuntala shook off the moment, spun around. The Kushan soldiers, all pretense of drunkenness vanished, had lunged past Tarabai and finished the priests. Their bloody work was done by the time Shakuntala turned. The priests had not even had time to cry out more than a squeal or two. Shakuntala was not certain. The squeals had been cut very short. But she thought, for all the carnage, that there had been little noise. Not enough, she was sure, to carry into the guardhouse down the street.

  The Kushans were quick, quick. One of the soldiers was already examining the great door leading into the armory. His indifferent knee rested on the chest of a dead priest.

  "Too long," he announced curtly. "Two minutes to break through this great ugly thing."

  Kungas nodded, turned away. He had expected as much.

  "Through the guardhouse, then," he commanded. Kungas began loping up the street toward the side-door where the two Ye-tai had been standing earlier. His men followed, with that same ground-eating lope. Quick, quick. Shakuntala was struck by the almost total absence of noise as they ran. Some of that silence was due to the soft shoes which the Kushans favored over heavy sandals. But most of it, she thought, was the product of skill and training.

  Shakuntala and the Maratha women followed. More slowly, however, much more slowly. Saris complimented the female figure, but they did not lend themselves well to speedy movement. Frustrated, Shakuntala made a solemn vow to herself. In the days to come, among her many other responsibilities, she would inaugurate a radical change in feminine fashion.

  She had time, in that endless shuffle up the street, to settle on a style. Pantaloons, she decided, modeled on those of Cholan dancers she had seen. More subdued, of course, and tastefully dyed, to mollify propriety and sentiment. But pantaloons, nonetheless, which did not impede a woman's legs.

  She saw, ahead of her, the Kushans charge into the guardhouse. The sounds of violent battle erupted instantly. A harsh clangor of steel and fury, flesh-shredding and terror. The quiet street seemed to howl with the noise.

  Cursing bitterly, she sped up her shuffle. The battle sounds reached a crescendo.

  Shuffle, curse. Shuffle, curse. Shuffle, curse.

  The guardhouse was still ten yards distant. The sounds coming through the open door suddenly ceased.

  Finally, finally, she reached the door. Shuffled into the guardhouse.

  Stopped. Very abruptly. Behind her, the Maratha women bumped into her back. Tarabai and Ahilyabai peeked over the shorter shoulders of their Empress. Gasped. Gagged.

  Shakuntala did not gasp, or gag. She made no sound at all.

  Hers was a fierce, fierce heart. The ferocity of that heart, in the decades to come, would be a part of the legacy which she would leave behind her. A legacy so powerful that historians of the future, with a unanimity of opinion rare to that fractious breed, would call her Shakuntala the Great. But even that heart, at that moment, quailed.

  The Kushans had gone through the Ye-tai like wolves through a flock of sheep. Like werewolves.

  The floor was literally awash in blood. Not a single Ye-tai, so far as she could see, was still bodily inta
ct. The barbarians were not simply dead. Their corpses were gutted, beheaded, amputated, cloven, gashed, sliced, ribboned. The room looked like the interior of a slaughterhouse. A slaughterhouse owned and operated by the world's sloppiest, hastiest, most maniacal butcher.

  Her eyes met those of Kungas across the room. The commander of her bodyguard had a few bloodstains on his tunic and light armor, but not many. He was down on one knee, wiping his sword on a Ye-tai's tunic. His face, as always, showed nothing. Neither horror, nor fury, nor even satisfaction in a job well done. So might a mask of iron, suspended on a wall of brimstone, survey damnation and hellfire.

  Strangely, then, the emotion which swept through Shakuntala's soul was love. Love, and forgiveness.

  Not for Kungas, but for Rao. She had never, quite—not in the innermost recesses of what was still, in some ways, a child's heart—forgiven Rao. Forgiven him, for the months she had remained in captivity before he finally rescued her. Weeks, at the end, in Venandakatra's palace at Gwalior, while she paced the battlements and halls, guarded by Kungas and his Kushans, knowing—sensing—that Rao was lurking in the forest beyond. Lurking, but never coming. Watching, but never striking.

  She had cursed him, then—somewhere in that child's innermost heart—for a coward. Cursed him for his fear of Kungas.

  Now, finally, the curse was repudiated. Now, finally, she understood.

  Understanding brought the Empress back. The child vanished, along with its quailing heart.

  "Excellent," she said. "Very excellent."

  Kungas nodded. His men smiled. None of them, she was relieved to see, was badly hurt. Only two were binding up wounds, and those were obviously minor.

  Kungas jerked his head toward a door at the far end of the guardhouse.

  "That leads into the armory itself. It is not barred."

  "We must hurry," said Shakuntala. She eyed the floor, trying to find a way to cross without leaving her feet soaked with blood.

  Two of the Kushan soldiers—grinning, now—solved the problem in the simplest way possible. They grabbed Ye-tai corpses and dumped them on the floor, forming a corduroy road of dead flesh.

  Shakuntala, never hesitating, marched across that grisly path. More gingerly, her women followed.

  By the time she passed through the far door, the Kushans were already spreading through the recesses of the armory, setting a perimeter. They knew, from a prior hasty reconnaissance, that there was another guardhouse on the opposite side of the huge brick building. Now, they were searching for the door leading to that guardhouse, and keeping a watch for any Ye-tai or Mahaveda who might chance to be in the armory itself.

  The armory was uninhabited. They found the door. Behind it, the Kushans heard the sounds of Ye-tai. Idle sounds, barracks sounds. The barbarians had obviously heard nothing of the lethal struggle.

  The Kushans relaxed, slightly. They set a watch on the door, leaving four of their number on guard, while the remainder sped about the task which had brought them there.

  Shakuntala and her women were already prying open the lids of gunpowder baskets, using knives which had once belonged to Ye-tai guards. Following them, the Kushan soldiers upended the baskets and spread granular trails throughout the armory. Soon, very soon, every stack of baskets in the armory was united by a web of gunpowder on the floor. That work done, the Kushans seized racks of rockets hanging on the wall and positioned them in and around the gunpowder baskets.

  "Enough," commanded Kungas. His voice, though quiet, carried well. Instantly, his men left off their labor and hurried back to the guardhouse. Hurried through, until stymied by the slow-moving women. At Shakuntala's irritated command, the Kushans picked up all of the women—including her—and carried them into the street. Carried them, at Shakuntala's command, down the street and into the alley. Only then, at her command, did they place the women on their feet.

  Shakuntala looked back. Kungas was already halfway to the alley, walking backward, spilling a trail of gunpowder from a basket in his arms. The last of the gunpowder poured out of the basket just as he reached the alley.

  "Do it," commanded Shakuntala. Kungas drew out the striking mechanism, bent down, operated it. Immediately, the gunpowder began a furious, hissing burn. The sputtering flame marched its crackling way toward the armory.

  "Hurry," he growled. He did not wait for Shakuntala's command. He simply scooped her up in his arms and began racing down the alley. Behind him, his men followed his lead, carrying the Maratha women in that same loping run.

  Shakuntala, bouncing up and down in his arms, was filled with satisfaction. But not entirely. There was still room in her heart for another emotion.

  When the armory blew, two minutes later, the Empress was caught by surprise. Her frustrated mind had been elsewhere. Thinking about pantaloons.

  Chapter 14

  Belisarius was now fifty yards from the barge, well into the mainstream of the Jamuna. He paused, treading water, to take his bearings. Slowly he circled, to examine his situation, beginning with the near shore.

  He was safely out of range of lantern or torchlight from the wharf where Great Lady Holi's barge was moored. There was a bit of moonlight shimmering on the water, but not much. The moon was only the slimmest crescent. And, from the look of the clouds which were beginning to cover the sky, he thought there would soon be one of the downpours which were so frequent during the monsoon season. Visibility would be reduced almost to nothing, then.

  All he had to fear, immediately, was being spotted from one of the oared galleys which patrolled the river. He could see several of those galleys, beating their way toward the wharf. The officers in command had obviously heard the commotion on the barge, and were coming to investigate.

  Suddenly, a rocket was fired from the wharf. A signal rocket, Belisarius realized, watching the green burst in the sky when the rocket exploded, at low altitude. Another. Another.

  Instantly, the galleys picked up the tempo of their oarstrokes. The officers commanding them were shouting commands. Belisarius could not make out the words, but their content was unmistakeable. The galleys were converging rapidly on the wharf—and he could see new ones appearing, from all directions. Within seconds, no fewer than fourteen galleys were in sight.

  He decided that he had time, finally, to shed his clothing. He needed to wait, anyway, to observe whatever search pattern the galleys would adopt.

  It was the work of a minute to remove his clothing. Another minute, to remove his boots without losing them. Another minute, carefully, to make sure that the pouch carrying his small but extremely valuable pile of coins and gems was securely attached to his waist. Another minute, very carefully, to make sure the pouch containing the jewel was secure around his neck. A final minute, then, to tie all his clothing into a bundle, the boots at the center. Before doing so, he removed the little knife from its pouch and held it in his teeth. He might need that knife, quickly. It would be no use to him bundled away out of reach.

  He finished the work by tying the sleeves of his tunic in a loop around his neck. He would be able to tow his bundle of boots and clothing without obstructing his arms. The knife in his teeth would interfere, a bit, with his breathing. But there was nowhere else to put it.

  Throughout, he had been keeping a close eye on the galleys. By the time he was finished, the small fleet of warcraft were moving away from the wharf. He could hear commands being shouted, but, again, could not make out the words.

  There was no need. The search pattern which the Malwa adopted was obvious. Most of the galleys began rowing along the near shore, upstream and downstream of the Great Lady Holi's barge. Soldiers in the galleys were leaning over the sides, holding lanterns aloft. A matching line of torches was being carried along the south bank of the Jamuna, in the hands of soldiers searching the shore line.

  Six of the galleys, however, began rowing their way out into the river. Belisarius was most interested in these craft. After a minute, watching, he understood the logic. Two of them would re
main in the center of the river, patrolling in both directions. The other four were headed for the opposite shore, spreading out as they went. The Malwa were taking no chances. Clearly, they thought Belisarius was either staying by the south bank or had already gone ashore. But they would patrol the entire river, anyway.

  He decided upon the galley farthest to his right. That galley was heading for the opposite shore, and it would reach the shore farther upstream than any other.

  He began swimming toward it. He maintained the same powerful breaststroke. It was a relatively slow method—Belisarius was an excellent swimmer, and was quite capable of moving more rapidly in water—but it would be fast enough. And the breaststroke had several advantages. It was almost silent; it kept his arms and legs from flashing above the surface of the water; and—with the knife in his teeth—it enabled him to breathe easily.

  Fortunately, the angle was good, and so he was able to position himself where he needed to be a full half-minute before the galley swept through the area. Treading water, directly in the galley's path, he waited. As he had hoped, the Malwa soldiers aboard the galley were not holding lanterns over the bow. The lanterns were being held toward the stern. The soldiers on that galley, like all the Malwa, did not really think that Belisarius had gone anywhere but the near shore. It was that south bank of the river that the soldiers were watching, even as they headed in the opposite direction.

  The galley was almost upon him. Belisarius took a deep breath and dove below the surface. For a moment, he feared that the bundle he was towing might act as a buoy, hauling him back toward the surface. But his clothing was now completely waterlogged. If anything, the bundle simply acted as a weight.

  Now, swimming below the barge, down its starboard side, Belisarius encountered the first snag in his hastily-improvised plan.

  He was blind as a bat. He couldn't see a thing.

  He had expected visibility to be limited, of course, at night-time. But he had thought he would be able to see enough to guide himself. What he hadn't considered, unfortunately, was the nature of the Jamuna itself.