Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [200]
I winced. “Dead?”
“Unconscious.” Bao rolled the boy over, testing his pulse. “Broken nose, chipped front teeth. He’ll live if we let him.”
“Let him,” I said.
Bao nodded and called for Pradeep, who procured a long length of sturdy rope from somewhere in our supply train. Together, they trussed the boy Sudhakar securely and dragged him into one of the blind alleys. Gods willing, we would retrieve him on our return journey.
“Two down,” I said. “Seven to go, plus the Falconer. Do you suppose there are more in the maze ahead of us?”
“Yes,” Bao said soberly. “At least one. They wouldn’t have left a half-trained lad like Sudhakar as the last line of defense in here.”
He was right.
For two more hours, we climbed uneventfully, the call of Kamadeva’s diamond growing ever stronger. I struggled to ignore it, struggled to maintain my hold on the twilight, trying not to think about the offer Naamah had made to me, trying not to let myself get distracted by the fear that I had chosen unwisely. Nearing yet another hairpin turn, I barely sensed the presence ahead of us in time to order Pradeep to halt.
It was narrow, very narrow. Once again, Bao and I dismounted and went to investigate on foot, me with an arrow nocked.
As strained and mentally weary as I was, I couldn’t make sense of the vision before me. For the space of a few seconds, I thought I was seeing one of Bhodistan’s strange gods with two heads and four arms.
Then it resolved into the image of two men crowded into the narrow space together. One gestured silently to the other, who cupped his hands together. The first man put his foot in the other’s cupped hands, and the other tossed him upward with a powerful heave. The fellow soared into the air, catching the ledge of the steep wall and pulling himself to his feet.
Behind us, shouts of alarm came as the assassin appeared above us; and I lost my grip on the twilight.
The fellow before us gave a hoarse cry of surprise, plucking a pair of short-handled battle-axes from his belt.
Bao shouldered past me. “The Rani, Moirin!” he shouted. “Get the other one! He’s after Amrita!”
I whirled and took aim, but the fellow was already in motion, racing along the top of the deep crevasse, sure-footed and swift. He had a row of silver quoits like razor-edged bangles along one arm, plucking them free with his other hand and hurling them with deadly force as he ran. Cries of agony arose in his wake.
I shot at him and missed; and by the time I had a second arrow nocked, he was around the hairpin turn, the high walls blocking him from me. With fifty men between me and my lady Amrita, there was nothing further I could do to protect her.
Sick with fear, I turned back, only to find Bao faring poorly in his battle.
Like the archer, the axe-man had picked his spot well. The path was too narrow here for Bao to wield his long bamboo staff effectively, forcing him to parry with awkward diagonal moves, essaying cautious jabs and retreating step by step.
And step by step, the assassin advanced, the narrow space suited to his short-handled weapons, which he wielded with fearful ease, describing complex patterns in the air as they crossed and uncrossed, spun and slashed. A death’s-head grin stretched his lips from his teeth, and there was a manic gleam in his eyes.
Although I had an arrow nocked, with Bao between us, I couldn’t shoot the fellow, either.
“Moirin!” Bao yelled. “Call your magic!”
There was too much shouting, too much fear, too much chaos altogether. I tried and found I couldn’t do it, couldn’t summon the concentration.
“I can’t!” I yelled back at him, furious and helpless. In a surge of desperate inspiration, I switched to the Shuntian scholars’ tongue. “Bao, when I count to three, duck!”
He gave a sharp nod.
I counted. “One… two… three!”
Bao dropped like a stone into a deep crouch, ducking his head and raising his staff at a steep angle above it in a last effort to ward off the descending battle-axes. The assassin’s eyes shone.
Aiming high, I loosed my bow.