The officer could hear his men grumbling in the background. They had seen the size of the bribe offered by the nobleman, and were seething at their commander’s idiotic obsession with petty rules and regulations.
The officer hesitated, vacillated, rattled back and forth within the narrow confines of his mind.
The nobleman’s wife ended that dance of indecision.
The officer heard her sharp yelps of command. Watched, as she clambered down from the howdah, assisted by her fierce looking soldiers. Watched her stalk over to him.
Small, she was, and obviously young. Pretty, too, from what little he could see of her face. Beautiful black eyes.
Whatever pleasure those facts brought the officer vanished as soon as she began to speak.
In good Hindi, but with a heavy southern accent. A Keralan accent, he thought.
After I inform the Emperor of Kerala of your insolence your remaining days in this world will be brief. He is my father and he will demand your death of the Malwa. Base cur! You will—
Her husband tried to calm her down.
—be impaled. I will demand a short stake. My father the Emperor will—
Her husband tried to calm her down.
—allow a long stake in the interests of diplomacy but he will not—
Her husband tried to calm her down.
—settle for less than your death by torture. I will demand that your carcass be fed to dogs. Small dogs, who will tear at it rather than devour it whole. My father the Emperor will—
Her husband tried to calm her down.
—not insist on the dogs, in the interests of diplomacy, but he will demand—
Finally, finally, the nobleman managed to usher his wife away. Over her shoulder, shrieking:
—your stinking corpse be denied the rites. You will spend five yugas as a worm, five more as a spider. You will—
As the party passed through the post, the officer’s mangled dignity was partially restored by the large bribe which the nobleman handed him. Partially, no more. The young officer did not miss the smirks which were exchanged between his own soldiers and those of the nobleman’s escort. The smirks which common troops exchange, witnessing the abasement of high-ranked adolescent snots.
Within the next week, nine of the ten Malwa couriers died in Majarashtra. They traveled faster than the Maratha guerillas, of course, but the couriers were restricted to the roads and had no real knowledge of the countryside. Rao’s young men, on the other hand, knew every shortcut through those volcanic hills. And every spot for a good ambush.
Of the fourteen royal couriers who had headed south from Kausambi weeks earlier, only one survived the journey. His route had been the northernmost of those taken by the couriers, and did not really do more than skirt the Great Country. So he arrived, eventually, at his destination. A tiny port nestled at the northern end of the Gulf.
Finally, everything went according to plan. The commander of the little garrison immediately mobilized his troops and began a thorough and efficient patrol of the port and its environs. All ships—all three of them—were sequestered, prevented from leaving.
The commander was an aggressive, hard-driving officer. The small harbor was sealed tight. And so, according to plan, none of the enemy escaped through that port.
Which, as it happens, they had never had the slightest intention of doing.
Chapter 18
Had Nanda Lal not intervened, it might have come to blows. Rana Sanga would have been executed, thereafter, but he would have had the satisfaction of slaughtering Lord Tathagata like the swine that he was.
“Silence!” bellowed the spymaster, as soon as he charged into the room. “Both of you!”
Nanda Lal had a powerful voice. It was distorted somewhat, due to his shattered nose, but still powerful. And the spymaster’s voice was filled with a pure black fury so ugly it would have silenced anyone.
That mood had settled on Nanda Lal as soon as he recovered consciousness on the floor of Great Lady Holi’s barge. On the blood-soaked carpet, stained by his own wound, where a foreign demon’s boot had sent him sprawling.
A week had gone by, now, and his rage had not lifted. It was a spymaster’s rage—icy, not hot, but utterly merciless.