Bertram followed John’s hand and shook his head in wonder.
“Shit,” John said.
“What?”
“While Bidhi and his men are fighting hand to hand, they can’t shoot at—” He stopped speaking and risked a quick glance over the wall. A fresh wave of attackers was within feet of the parapet.
“Get ready!” he screamed.
He pushed out over the wall again, leading with the pistol this time. Two shots at each climber in view emptied the magazine in no time. As he pulled back to reload an arrow flashed by within an inch of his face.
Putting discomfort and fear from his mind, John put his back to the tower wall. Dropping the empty magazine into his off hand and stuffing it into his belt, he slapped the last magazine into the well. He had more 9mm back in his quarters, and the bandoliers he was strapped with still had a lot of .308, but the rifle was among the ruins of the middle gate and he couldn’t exactly shout time out! and run to his room for more ammunition.
“Just where the hell is Dara?” Bertram yelled, stabbing downward at an attacker who got too close.
“Good question!” John snatched up a fallen sword in his off hand. Lousy with a blade, John was young, strong, relatively healthy, and about to run out of ammo. Better a sword in hand than buried in his guts.
He glanced again at the redoubt to the east. Bidhi Chand continued to dance between arrows and swords, shining in the sun as he cut men down with grace and astonishing speed.
Fucking Conan, that guy!
“John!” Bertram’s desperate scream snapped John’s reverie.
A bandy-legged warrior had Bert’s blade locked with his and was steadily pushing the smaller man over backward. There was no way he could shoot from his current position without hitting Bertram.
Never too close to miss.
John strode forward to press the pistol to the man’s head just below the turban and pulled the trigger. The man dropped dead, smoke drizzling from the contact wound.
Bertram shoved the corpse from him, screaming, “Where the fuck is Dara?”
Panting, John didn’t answer. Indeed, he was happy enough to surrender all attention to surviving the moment. That way he didn’t have to think about any of what he had done—or would do—in order to survive the next few heartbeats.
I will hold Ilsa again.
Pavilion of the Healers
“Begum, it is not proper or right!” the physician said in scandalized tones, despite all the times all of the hospital staff had been warned that Priscilla would be treating the wounded.
“Damn your ideas of what’s right, these men need treatment and she can treat them!” Jahanara raged, waving at Priscilla. Jahanara had been walking the up-timer to the operating room she was to use when a tall, rangy physician whose name she could not remember exited the chamber and blocked the way.
The up-timer, both hands up and raw from scrubbing, nodded.
Did the idiot think they’d been lying to him this entire time? All of the staff had been trained on the procedures, and those procedures had Priscilla as the overflow surgeon in any situation where urgent cases outnumbered the other physicians.
The physician—Jahanara could not remember his name beyond thinking it was a convert’s—was one of the traditionalists she’d felt she had to keep in service as she built the medical corps, if for no other reason than his connection to the project would make the umara, and therefore their men, more comfortable with the idea.
A poor bargain, if this is the result!
She considered calling for a guard, but wasn’t sure how many would answer. Rather than show such weakness, she lifted her chin as a new thought occurred to her. “Why are you here instead of seeing to your patient?”
“I-I was getting fresh bandages.”
Liar. She could smell the fear on him.
But fear made him strong—and foolish—in the face of her anger. “Begum Sahib, I beg you, reconsider. These men will die or not, as God wills, all in accordance with the natural order of things.”
Two women appeared behind the physician. Wives of her brother’s umara that she had drafted to serve the physicians as orderlies and nurses. One—why could she not remember names this day?—waved a hand at a corpse lying on the table in the operating room, pointed at the physician’s head and pantomimed breaking a stick between two fists.
So, madness and fear drive this creature, not moral outrage! Typical.
“They can make penance in future. Get out of the way.”
He shook his head. “I’ll not allow it.”
“Allow it?!” Jahanara snarled, drawing herself up. The anger burned in her so brightly she thought surely he would boil away under her gaze. “Get. Out. Of. Our. Way. And. Get. Back. To. Work.”
But the man’s fear rendered him immune to threats as well as reason. He shook his head again, beard bristling, and shrilled, “I will not let you endanger their souls!”
Jahanara drew breath to call a guard to put an end to this idiocy, but Priscilla stepped between them, surprising her.
“Fuck this,” Priscilla said. Without breaking stride, she kicked the wretch, hard, in the crotch. So hard, the man went up on tiptoe. The way his expression went from utter surprise, to fear, to pain, might have been comical under other circumstances. As it was, Jahanara was too surprised, both by the man’s obstinate idiocy and Priscilla’s violent solution to do much more than stare as Priscilla walked daintily past the man who, on striking the marble floor, folded up and vomited.
Sensing Jahanara had stopped following her, Priscilla turned to face the princess, who was still staring.
“What?” Priscilla said, raising her hands. “I’m scrubbed in and wasn’t about to wash up again just so I could punch him.” She touched his shoulder with a toe. “Besides, I was always better with my feet than hands.”
Pressing her lips together to avoid loosing a mad giggle, Jahanara joined her friend, skipping across the physician’s curled legs to avoid the small pool of vomit.
Priscilla waved goodbye as she
