An Oblique Approach

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.