by Eric Flint
But it didn't matter, as he'd known it wouldn't. Confused men-soldiers, especially-will automatically turn to the nearest authority figure for guidance. With Nanda Lal dead-many of them had seen the killing-that meant. .
Well, Toramana. The commander of the entire garrison.
And Lord Damodara, of course. The Goptri of the Decca, whom they could even now see passing through the gates behind Rana Sanga and the lead Rajputs.
"Treason!" Toramana bellowed, standing on the battlements where the soldiers could see him easily. "Nanda Lal was planning treason! The murder of Lord Damodara!"
He pointed with the sword in his hand to the figure of Damodara, riding into the city. "All rally to the Goptri! Defend him against assassins!"
In response, Lord Damodara waved his hand. It was a rather cheery gesture, actually. Then, twisted in his saddle and gave Toramana something in the way of a salute.
* * *
It took no more that. The soldiers were still confused, the Ye-tai as much as any of them. But, if anything, the confusion made them even more inclined to obey unquestioningly.
And why not? For years, for that army, their real commanders had been soldiers like Damodara. Toramana, for the Ye-tai; Sanga for the Rajputs.
Nanda Lal was simply a mysterious and unsettling figure from far-off Kausambi. Neither known nor popular. And, if somewhat fearsome, not nearly as fearsome as the commanders who had once even beaten Belisarius in battle.
The reaction of two Ye-tai soldiers was typical. Drawing his sword, one of them snarled at a nearby squad of regular troops.
"You heard him, you piglets! Spread out! Watch for assassins!"
As the squad scurried to obey, the Ye-tai's companion leaned over and half-whispered: "What do you think-"
"Who gives a shit?" the first Ye-tai hissed.
He stabbed his sword toward the distant body of Nanda Lal. The headless corpse had sprawled to the edge of the parapet. By now, most of the blood had drained from the neck, leaving a pool on the ground below.
"If you care that much, go ask him."
The other Ye-tai stared at the corpse. Then, at the head lying some yards from the parapet wall. It had bounced, twice, and then rolled, after it hit the ground.
He drew his own sword and lifted it high. "Long live the Goptri! Death to traitors!"
* * *
Some time later, once he was sure the city was under control, Toramana returned to the parapet wall and retrieved Nanda Lal's head. After brushing off the dirt, he held it up.
"A bit dented. But you'll do."
Sanga came up.
"Lord Damodara wants the wedding this evening, if possible. The Ye-tai seem solid, but the wedding will seal the thing."
"Yes. Not just my clan, either. All of them." Toramana continued to admire the head. "I told Indira to be ready several days ago, for a quick wedding. You know your sister."
Sanga's dark eyes studied him, for a moment. "Yes, I do. I hadn't realized you did, so well."
Toramana smiled. "Nothing improper! If you don't believe me, ask that mob of old women. But you can talk about other things than flowers and insects in a garden, you know. And she's smart. Very, very smart."
"Yes, she is." The dark eyes went to the severed head. "I approve of a man who keeps his promises. On a spike?"
Toramana shook his head. "Bit of a nuisance, that. It's garam, don't forget."
Sanga made a face. "Flies."
"A horde of them. Even more than those old women. I think a clear jar will do fine." The Ye-tai commander finally lowered the head. "I promised him he'd be at the wedding. I made no guarantees he'd be able to flatter the bride."
* * *
By sundown, Sanga was satisfied that all the mahaveda and mahamimamsa in the city had been tracked down and slaughtered. There might be a handful surviving in a corner here and there. Bharakuccha was a huge city, after all.
But, he doubted it-and knew for a certainty that even if there were, they wouldn't survive long anyway. The Mahaveda cult had never sunk roots into India's masses. Had never, for that matter, even tried to win any popular support. It was a sect that depended entirely on the favor of the powerful. That favor once withdrawn-here, with a vengeance-the cult was as helpless as a mouse in a pen full of raptors.
Most of the time, the Rajputs hadn't even needed to hunt down the priests and torturers. At least a third of the populace was still Maratha. The majority of the inhabitants might not have hated them as much, but they hated them nonetheless. The only face the cult had ever turned to the city's poor was that of the tithe-collector. And a harsh and unyielding one, at that. Most of the priests and mahamimamsa who went under the swords of the Rajputs were hauled to them by the city's mobs.
* * *
The telegraph and radio stations were secured almost immediately. Ajatasutra's assassins had seen to the first, with the telegraph operators whom Narses had already suborned.
The Ye-tai commander of the unit guarding the radio station had not been privy to Toramana's plans. But the Ye-tai general had selected the man carefully. He was both smart and ambitious. It hadn't taken him more than thirty seconds to realize which way the new wind was blowing-and that it was blowing with all the force of a monsoon. By the time Toramana and Damodara got to the radio station, the operators had all been arrested and were being kept in an empty chamber in the palace.
Damodara studied them. Huddled in a corner, squatting, the radio operators avoided his gaze. Several of them were trembling.
"Don't terrify them any further," he instructed Toramana's lieutenant. "And give them plenty of food and water. By tomorrow, I'll need at least one of them to be cooperative."
"Yes, Lord."
Damodara gave him an impassive look. It didn't take the lieutenant-smart man-more than half a second to remember the announcement.
"Yes, Emperor."
"Splendid."
* * *
The wedding went quite smoothly. More so than Sanga had feared, given the hastiness of the preparations.
Not that hasty, he finally understood. His sister took firm charge of it, driving right over the protests of the old women who'd expected a traditional Rajput wedding. Within an hour, it became obvious to Sanga that she and Toramana must have planned this, too.
He'd never think of promenades in a garden the same way, he realized ruefully.
The ceremony was a hybrid affair. Half-Rajput, half-Ye-tai, with both halves almost skeletal.
Good enough, however. More than good enough.
"Don't you think?" he asked the head in a glass jar.
* * *
Nanda Lal's opinion remained unspoken, but Sanga was quite sure he disapproved mightily. The Malwa dynasty had maintained its rule, among other things, by always keeping a sharp and clear boundary between the Rajputs and the Ye-tai. Able, thus, to pit one against the other, if need be.
True, under the pressure of the Roman offensive, the Malwa had begun to ease the division. The dynasty had agreed to this wedding also, after all. But Sanga knew they'd never intended to ease it very far.
Damodara was simply tossing the whole business aside. He'd base his rule-initially, at least-on the oldest and simplest method. The support of the army. And, for that, he wanted the two most powerful contingents within the army tied as closely together as possible. The marriage between Toramana and Indira would only be the first of many.
Sanga understood the logic. For all the many things that separated the Rajputs and the Ye-tai, they had certain things very much in common.
Two, in particular.
First, they were both warrior nations. So, whatever they disliked about the other-for the Rajputs, Ye-tai crudity; for the Ye-tai, Rajput haughtiness-there was much to admire also.
Second, they were both nations still closely based on clan ties and allegiances. The fact that the Rajputs draped a veil of Hindu mysticism over the matter and called their clan chieftains "kings" was more illusion than truth. Sanga had known since he was
a boy that if you scratched the shiny Rajput veneer, you'd find more than a trace of their central Asian nomadic origins.
Clan ties meant blood ties. Which were brought by marriages. Within three generations, Rajput and Ye-tai clans would be so intermingled as to make the old divisions impossible.
Not conflict, of course. Clan wars could be as savage as any. But they were not the stuff-could not be the stuff-that would tear northern India into pieces.
The Malwa methods had been determined by their goal of world conquest. For Damodara, having given up that grandiose ambition, everything else followed. He would build a new empire that would not go beyond northern India. But, within those limits-which were still immense, after all-he would forge something far more resilient, and more flexible, than anything the dynasty had done before.
More resilient and flexible, for that matter, than anything the Maurya or Gupta empires had accomplished either. Sanga was beginning to suspect that Damodara would someday have the cognomen "the Great" attached to his name.
Not in his own lifetime, though. He was far too canny for that.
* * *
Before the wedding was halfway over, Sanga realized he was in an excellent mood. He even participated in the dancing.
"Good thing I stopped the duel," Damodara told him afterward. "That too-clever-by-half Maratha bandit probably would have insisted on a dancing contest as part of it."
Sanga grimaced.
"Oh, yes. We'd have found your body strewn all over. Speaking of which-" He glanced around. "What happened to Nanda Lal's head?"
"My brother-in-law felt that propriety had been satisfied enough by his presence at the wedding, and there was no need to keep him around for the festivities. I believe he gave it to some Ye-tai boys. That game they play. You know, the one where-"
"Oh, yes. Of all my many cousins, I think I disliked him the most except Venandakatra. Well. Hard to pick between Nanda Lal and Skandagupta, of course. Isn't that the game where they use dogs to retrieve the lost balls?"
"Yes, Emperor."
"Splendid."
Chapter 22
Bharakuccha
Early the next morning, Damodara commanded Sanga to meet him in the radio station.
"Why here, Emperor?" Sanga asked, as soon as he arrived. The room was empty, except for the two of them and the bizarre equipment. "I thought you planned to use the telegraph."
Damodara looked a bit haggard, as if he hadn't slept well. "I did," he said, tugging at his chin. "But I thought about it most of the night. And I think. ."
He was interrupted by a small commotion at the door. A moment later, two burly Ye-tai came in, with a much smaller man between them. They weren't guiding him in so much as simply carrying him by the armpits.
Once in the room, they set him down. "Lord Toramana says this one, Emperor."
Damodara nodded. "Leave us, then."
For a moment, the Ye-tai seemed taken aback.
Damodara smiled, looking upon the radio operator. He was but a few inches over five feet tall, and couldn't have weighed more than one hundred and twenty pounds. Wearing nothing but a loincloth, it was also obvious that he was scrawnily built.
Damodara flicked his fingers toward Sanga. "I dare say that with the Rajput king present, this desperate fellow will restrain his assassin's impulses."
He gave the radio operator a winning smile. "Am I not correct?"
The man bobbed his head like a small bird pecking at grains.
"You will make no attempt upon my life?"
The man shook his head so fast it seemed to vibrate.
"I thought not." He gave the two guards a cold eye, and they departed.
After they were gone, Damodara pointed to the chair in front of the complex apparatus. "Sit," he commanded.
The operator did so.
"Is there a code you must use, when you transmit?"
Again, that vibrating head-shake.
"I'd really much prefer it if you spoke, man," Damodara said mildly.
The operator swallowed. Then, managed to croak out: "No, sir. There's no code."
Sanga frowned fiercely. "None? I warn you not to lie! It makes no sense to me-"
"But there isn't, Lord," the operator protested desperately. "I swear it. She-"
He broke off. Almost seemed to be choking.
Damodara sighed. "As I suspected. And feared." He leaned forward a bit. "I want nothing but the truth. This 'she.' Of whom do you speak?"
The operator stared at him, his eyes very wide with fear. He looked more like trapped rodent than anything else.
"You're speaking of Great Lady Sati, yes?"
The operator swallowed again. "Yes," he whispered. "But that's supposed to be a secret. I'm not supposed-"
He broke off again, this time because of the sight and sound of Sanga's sword coming out of the scabbard. The Rajput king held the sword blade in front of the man's face. So close he had to look at it cross-eyed.
"I suggest you have much deeper concerns now than whether you are violating an oath of secrecy," Damodara pointed out. "Tell me."
Still looking cross-eyed at the blade, the man began to speak softly but quickly.
"All the operators know it, Lord. We do, at least. I don't know about the telegraph men. When we make the transmissions, Great Lady Sati is always at the other end. Herself in person. She-she-she-"
"Yes, I know. She's a witch. A demoness."
"She is," he half-moaned. "It was part of our training. We had to spend a few minutes with her. She-she-she-"
Careful to avoid the blade, he brought up a shaky hand to wipe his brow. He was sweating profusely.
Damodara straightened up. "Put away the sword, Sanga. He's telling the truth."
Sanga did as commanded. His own face was very stiff. Like Damodara-and now, it seemed, this insignificant radio operator-Sanga had spent time alone in the presence of one of the females of the dynasty who served as the vessel for Link. Great Lady Holi, in his case. But he knew it made no difference.
Damodara went to the door and opened it. The two Ye-tai were standing just beyond. "Take the operator elsewhere, for a time. I need to speak with Sanga in private. Don't take him far, though. And summon Narses."
After they were alone, Damodara sat in the chair. He stared at the mechanism whose workings he barely understood at all.
"Now you understand the problem. It came to me in the middle of the night. Like a nightmare."
"Yes, Emperor."
* * *
When Narses arrived and was informed, he shook his head.
"No, I had no idea. They always kept the radio men carefully sequestered. I was able to suborn most of the telegraph operators, but I couldn't even get close to these fellows. That's why Toramana and I finally decided just to use their Ye-tai guard contingent to secure the radio."
Damodara nodded. He hadn't thought Narses had known, or the shrewd old eunuch would long since have seen the problem. Their entire plan had just gone up in smoke.
For his part, Sanga grunted sourly. The look he gave Narses was more sour still. The Rajput king was still angry at the Roman traitor for the way he'd manipulated all of them. But after he'd learned from Narses that the eunuch had been instructed by Skandagupta and Great Lady Sati to murder his family outright, his sheer fury toward him had dissipated.
He didn't doubt the eunuch was telling the truth, either. Link was the ultimate source of that plot, and Sanga had met the monster. The plot Narses described was exactly the sort of thing it would have designed. It was cold-blooded beyond any sense of the term "cold" that either a reptile or a glacier would have understood.
Narses glared at the radio apparatus. "Maybe we could just use the telegraph-"
But he was already shaking his own head when Damodara interrupted him. "No point in that," the new emperor said. "Link will expect a radio transmission also. The fact that none took place last night will make it suspicious already. Perhaps there was a thunderstorm, of course, even if that's u
nlikely this time of year. Two nights in a row, impossible. It will immediately know something is wrong."
The eunuch took a deep, almost shuddering breath. "Damnation. It never occured to me that she might personally take the transmissions."
Damodara shrugged heavily. "There's a logic to it. I always wondered, a bit, why we were putting so much effort into these huge radio towers. The telegraph works well enough, for most purposes-and has fewer security problems. Now I know. Look where they are: Kausambi, the Punjab, and here. Nowhere else."
"Are we sure of that?" asked Sanga.
"Yes," growled Narses. "That much I am sure of. They're planning two more. One in Amaravati and one in Tamralipti. But they haven't even started building them yet."
"It makes perfect sense, Sanga," Damodara continued. "The basic function of these towers is to enable Link to control the empire. Well, not 'control' it so much as enable it to be sure if rebellion has begun."
Narses was still glaring at the apparatus. "I fooled that stinking bitch once. I bet I can. ."
The words trailed off.
"Don't be stupid, old man," he muttered, to himself as much as to the other men in the room. "First, you don't know how to use the gadget. Even if you tried to learn-in a few hours? — you'd fumble something. The bitch would know right away someone other than one of her operators was at the other end. And even if you could do it, the last time you weren't trying to lie to her."
Sanga frowned at the door. "If we calmed down the operator. ." But, like Narses, he rebutted his own half-advanced plan. "Impossible. There'd be some sign of his agitation. Nothing we'd notice-or he himself, even-but the monster would."
He ran fingers through his thick, still-black hair. "Yes, that explains the radio towers. The telegraph is now too common, too widely spread. There's no way she could personally monitor even most of the transmissions, much less all of them. But with a few towers, located only in the empire's critical regions, she can. And there is no way-no way-to lie to her. To it, that is both greater and less than human."
He fell silent. Damodara rose from the chair he'd been sitting on and began pacing. He, also, was silent.
