Destiny's Shield

After passing through the inner gate, Kujulo took three steps forward before stopping to study the situation. The inside of the fortress was designed like a hollow square. The walls on the north, east and south of the structure were simply fortifications. Outside of the horse pens and corrals nestled up against the northeast corner, there were no rooms built into the walls themselves.

The western end of the fortress was a different proposition altogether. There, massive brick buildings abutted directly against the outer wall. Above those buildings, resting on a stone platform reinforced with heavy timbers, Kujulo could see the fortress' three great cannons.

Those buildings would be the quarters for the garrison. Already, Kujulo could see Malwa soldiers spilling out from the many doors set into the brickwork. The soldiers fumbled with spears and swords. Many of them were still putting on their armor. Flimsy, leather armor. Kujulo almost laughed, seeing one of the Malwa stumble and flop on his belly.

But Kujulo could see no grenades, and, what was better—

"Look at that, will you!" exclaimed one of his men. "They can't have more than two hundred men guarding this place!"

Kujulo nodded. His squad member had immediately spotted the most important thing about the fortress. The first thing Kujulo himself had noticed.

No tents.

The flat, empty ground which formed most of the fortress' interior should have been covered with tents. There was not enough room in the brick buildings for more than a small garrison. Kujulo thought his squad member's estimate of two hundred was overgenerous. The garrison's officers, for one thing, would have undoubtedly taken the largest rooms for themselves. For another, Kujulo could see no sign of any cookfires on the open ground. That meant a kitchen, taking up even more of the brick buildings' space.

"A hundred and fifty, tops," he pronounced. He studied the Malwa soldiers advancing toward them from the west—if the term "advancing" can be used to describe a mode of progress that was as skittish as a kitten's. Studied the soldiers, and, more closely, their leather armor.

"Shit." He spit on the ground. "Those aren't soldiers. Not proper ones. Those are nothing but fucking gunners. Cannon handlers."

His squad was now ranged on both sides of him. Behind, he could hear the thirty men from the next three squads moving up.

All of his men grinned. Like wolves eyeing a herd of caribou.

"I do believe you're right," said one.

Another laughed. "Think we can hold this gate against them? For the minute it'll take Kungas to get here."

Again, Kujulo spit on the ground.

"Fuck that," he snarled. "I intend to defeat those bastards. Follow me."

He stalked toward the Malwa gunners. By now, all four squads had taken position in a line stretching a third of the way across the inner grounds. Forty Kushans, wearing good scale armor, hefting their swords and spears with practiced ease, began marching on the Malwa.

The gunners stopped. Stared.

Kujulo broke into an easy trot. Forty Kushans matched his pace.

The gunners stared. Edged back.

Kujulo raised his sword and bellowed the order to charge. Shrieking like madmen, forty Kushans charged the hundred or so Malwa some thirty yards away.

The gunners turned and raced for the brick buildings. Half of them dropped their weapons along the way.

By the time Kungas arrived, a minute or so later, Kujulo was already organizing a siege. And complaining, bitterly, that he would have to go into the fucking forest and cut down a fucking tree since the fucking Malwa didn't have any fucking timber big enough to ram through the fucking doors.

Cutting down a tree proved unnecessary. The "siege" was perhaps the shortest in history. As soon as the Malwa gunners forted up in the brick buildings saw Kungas' five hundred men storming into the fortress, they immediately began negotiating a surrender.

The biggest obstacle in those negotiations were the five Mahaveda priests holed up with the gunners. The priests, bound by holy oaths to safeguard the secret of the Veda weapons, demanded a fight to the death. They denounced all talk of surrender as impious treason.

Kungas, hearing the priests' shouting voices, called out his own offer to the Malwa gunners.

Cut the priests' throats. Pitch their bodies out. You'll be given good treatment.

The first corpse sailed through one of the doors not fifteen seconds later. Within a minute, the lifeless bodies of all five priests were sprawled in the dirt of the fortress grounds.

Kungas cocked his head at Kujulo. "What's your opinion? Think those gunners'll spill their secrets?"

Kujulo spit on the ground. "Imagine so. Especially after I reason with them."