Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [201]
The arrow caught the fellow in the throat, piercing it clean through. He staggered backward, the battle-axes falling forgotten from his hands, which rose to feel at the feathered shaft. His face softened into that bewildered look that comes when death takes a man unaware, and he sat down hard on the trail, his breath gurgling wetly in his throat.
Once again, I swallowed against a rising tide of bile.
Bao was on his feet, bending over the fellow. I looked away as he ripped the arrow free from his throat.
The sound the man made as he died was dreadful.
Bao met my gaze. “The Rani?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Word travelled up and down the long, twisting line of our company. One man was dead, and a half dozen more seriously injured. The Rani Amrita was alive and safe. Hasan Dar had protected her with his own body, throwing himself from the saddle. He had suffered a grievous injury in the process, one of the razor-edged quoits lodged between his ribs.
He might live—or not.
The second assassin was dead, brought down at last by our own archers. Four down altogether; five left to go, plus the Falconer.
Kurugiri was still awaiting us.
“Moirin.” Bao touched my arm. “Can you continue?”
I gazed at the corpse of the axe-wielding assassin, remembering a story the trader Dorje had told me. “I think I’ve heard of this one, or at least one like him,” I murmured. “I think he stole a Tufani yak-herder’s daughter and slaughtered her family. Does that tale sound familiar to you?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “It does.”
“I thought so.” I remembered the weight of the prayer-urns as I turned them outside the temple of Sakyamuni in Rasa, the light touch of the boy-monk’s slender fingers on my tear-stained cheeks as he sought to comfort me, the dense, fragrant scent of incense all around us. His face blurred in my memory with Ravindra’s, with the boy Dash from the caravan; his fingers blurred in memory with the image of my lady Amrita’s graceful hands forming a mudra, with Sameera’s severed fingers discarded on the storeroom floor.
Kamadeva’s diamond sang to me.
I shook my head, willing it clear. I could continue because I had to continue.
“Moirin?” Bao nudged me.
“Aye?”
He flashed his incorrigible grin. “Marry me if we live through this?”
My heart gave an unexpected jolt, but I managed to raise my brows at him. “You already have a wife, my Tatar prince.”
“Nah.” Bao’s grin widened. “The Great Khan dissolved our union. So?”
“Oh, fine!” I took a deep breath, drawing the twilight into my lungs, spinning it softly around us both, finding new reserves of strength. “Yes.”
Bao kissed me. “Good.”
SEVENTY-ONE
Hours later, we gained the summit.
There had been no further assassins awaiting us in the maze, and none awaited us atop the peak of Kurugiri. Only the fortress itself, stark, solid, and forbidding.
One by one by one, members of our company straggled out of the narrow paths—or at least most of us. One dead, another half dozen injured, Hasan Dar among them. We had been forced to leave them behind, swaddled in blankets against the cold.
I dismounted and found my lady Amrita surrounded by anxious guards, and embraced her with relief. “You’re well?”
She shivered. “Well enough, young goddess. Hasan—”
“I know,” I said. “I pray he survives.”
Amrita laid one ice-cold hand against my cheek, shuddering uncontrollably in the thin air. “Let us make an end to this, shall we?”
I nodded. “Yes, my lady.”
“Moirin has agreed to wed me if we survive,” Bao informed her.
Despite everything, it made her smile, made her tired, lustrous eyes sparkle with gladness. “Well, then, we shall have to make sure of it, eh? All this effort and sacrifice must not be made in vain.”
The sun was beginning to sink low in the west, streaking the horizon in tones of gold and saffron. The snow-topped mountain peaks glowed. In the valleys and deep crevasses, the shadows of night were already gathering. Taking the place of his injured commander, Pradeep rallied his troops, assigning them their duties.
The men who had worked so hard to carry the battering