An Oblique Approach

Especially with those foreigners, thought Kungas, as he passed through the courtyard of Venandakatra's palace. He stopped for a moment, to admire the scenery.

A harsh life had taught Kungas many lessons. One of those was to keep your sentiments hidden. The world had always presented a hard face to him; he returned the compliment. Old Iron-face, he knew, was one of the nicknames his men had for him. He did not object. No, not in the slightest.

Still, even for Kungas, it was hard not to grin.

Four of the Ye-tai were still alive, barely. One of them was even still making some noise. Small, mewling sounds. With luck, thought Kungas, that one might survive another day. Another day of agony and hopelessness.

Kungas would be gone by then, but he would be able to cherish the memory. He and his men had been assigned the task of cutting the stakes and spitting the Ye-tai. It had been the most pleasurable duty they'd had in years.

His eye fell on a figure perched among the Ye-tai, and his pleasure vanished.

Not all of it.

They had done what they could for the old woman. They had tried to smuggle in a longer stake, but Venandakatra had spotted it and forbidden its use. The servant was to be spitted on the same short stakes as the Ye-tai, in order to prolong the agony.

The mental grin returned. It was a bleak, bleak grin.

But we'd expected that. Too bad we couldn't get any real poison, in the short time we had. But the women in the kitchen mixed up what they could. Venandakatra watched us like a hawk, to make sure we didn't slip her anything to eat or drink. But we'd expected that, too. By the time we fit the poor soul onto the stake, the stuff had all dried. Venandakatra would have had to scrape the stake itself to spot it.

He started to turn away. Then, moved by an impulse, turned back. His eyes quickly scanned the courtyard. No one was watching.

Kungas made a very slight bow to the dead crone. He thought it was the least he could do. By the time the villagers would be allowed to remove her body, there would not be much left. The priests would refuse, of course, to do the rituals. So, the poor wretch was at least owed that much from her killer.

It was not, in any real sense, a religious gesture. Like most of his people, Kungas still retained traces of the Buddhist faith which the Kushans had adopted after conquering Bactria and north India. Adopted, and then championed. In its heyday, Peshawar, the capital of the Kushan Empire, had been the great world center of Buddhist worship and scholarship. But the glory days of the Kushan empire were gone. The stupas lay in ruins; the monks and scholars dead or scattered to the wind. The Ye-tai, on their own, had persecuted Buddhism savagely. And after the barbarians were absorbed into the rising Malwa power, the persecution had simply intensified. To the brutality of the Ye-tai had been added the calculating ruthlessness of the Malwa. They intended their Mahaveda cult to stamp out all rival tendencies within the great umbrella of Hinduism. Needless to say, they had absolutely no ruth toward Buddhists or Jains.

Between the persecution and his own harsh life, therefore, Kungas retained very little of any religious sentiment. So, his slight bow to the dead crone was more in the way of a warrior's nod to a courageous soul. Perhaps that recognition would comfort her soul, a bit, waiting for its new life. (If there was a new life. Or such a thing as a soul. Kungas was skeptical.)

Not that her soul probably needs much comfort, he thought wryly as he walked away. She seemed to enjoy the Ye-tai squawling even more than we did. Maybe we did her a disservice, poisoning her.

He rubbed the new wound on his face, briefly. It was scabbed over now, and would heal soon enough. The pain was irrelevant. Kungas did not think the scar would even last beyond a few months. The man who put it there was a weak man, for all that he'd been in a rage. And a quirt is not, all things considered, the best weapon to use, if you want to scar up an old veteran.

And I'd much rather carry around a quirt-scar than be stuck on a stake.

The thought made him pause, brought another impulse. A very wry sense of humor, Kungas had. He stopped and turned back again; again examined the courtyard to make sure no spies were about; again bowed slightly. This time to the Ye-tai.