Chapter 40 #2
“Had.” Nallini put a final knot on the torch and tucked it away before gathering leaves for another. “The late raja favored Vishwajeet’s older brother and was training him to be the right hand of his son. Do you know much about Raja Lakshmappa’s father?”
“Just that he expanded Banghervari into the powerful nation it has become. We built up our army as he expanded his conquests.” And that he was murdered.
Nallini nodded. “The raja’s father had always wanted to expand the kingdom, and over time, he became obsessed.
Banghervari couldn’t afford the costs anymore—the people were suffering—but he wouldn’t stop.
When our battle-weary soldiers returned from the east, he was already planning an attack on the north.
His advisers all agreed that he had to be stopped.
He had a much more peaceful brother and . . .”
“Regicide,” I whispered. I moved my torch farther away—I’d accidentally moved it too close to Nallini’s dry leaves as I leaned in, desperate to hear the other side of the history Aru had given me.
Nallini’s hands stilled. “Vishwajeet pretended to agree, but he had his own plans. The day of the attempted coup, my parents sent me outside, to the palace grounds. An adaiman led me to the temple. Vishwajeet saw me and followed with the young rajkumar Lakshmappa in tow. We huddled in the darkness, and I could hear Vishwajeet’s whispers.
He convinced the rajkumar that he and the Spirits had saved him, and that Vishwajeet had nothing to do with the regicide.
The rajkumar believed him. I can’t blame him; he was young, and he’d lost everyone he’d loved.
He was convinced that Vishwajeet was the only one he could trust. After becoming raja, he made sure that everyone who Vishwajeet said had been part of the attempted regicide paid the price. ”
“And Vishwajeet became the right hand of the new raja,” I said, putting it all together.
Vishwajeet had betrayed his own family—and Nallini’s.
He’d sentenced them to death so he could secure his place as the only one the new raja would trust. A trust that lasted to this very day. And Aru had no idea.
“But why did he let you—”
I didn’t have the chance to finish my question.
“Protect the rani!” Thevan’s voice rang out.
Parushi materialized at my side in a heartbeat as Thevan charged forward on our right, weaving his horse through the woods with his sword drawn.
Beyond him, I saw what made him yell, and it took all my control not to scream.
Slicing through the trees, with its silvery scales catching the light from our torches, was a Porcugi.
Now that the monster realized it’d been seen, it made no attempt to be silent, and it thrashed through the woods, crushing everything in its path.
It was weaponless, but that hardly seemed to matter as its horrifying smile exposed its long fangs.
“Spirits help us,” Nallini whispered.
“Damn the Spirits,” Parushi said, ignoring Nallini’s shocked gasp. “Trust our arrows.”
She unslung her bow from her back and unleashed arrow upon arrow toward the monster. One of them landed, and the Porcugi screamed. Parushi let loose a hair-raising battle cry as she charged toward the Porcugi.
“Keep her safe!” she called back to Nallini and Tara as she wove through the brush, shooting as she rode.
Tara came beside me, looking utterly ridiculous as she held a sword aloft.
“Give that to me!” I commanded.
“Your job is to hide, not to fight.” She tried to snatch my torch, but I held it beyond her reach.
“Look out!” Nallini yelled as she lunged toward Sima’s face.
Sima leaped aside, and I flung myself onto his neck, holding on for dear life with the arm that wasn’t gripping the torch as we sprinted away.
Behind me, someone screamed. I thought it was Nallini, but I couldn’t be sure. I whirled around to see another Porcugi rearing up in front of Tara, who stood above Nallini protectively. Nallini lay on the ground, curled up and unmoving.
The tip of Tara’s sword trembled as she held it aloft.
She’d kept her torch in her right hand—her dominant hand—and her left could hardly support the long, heavy blade.
The Porcugi seemed to sense her weakness.
It pulled itself up and opened its mouth, letting its fangs slowly unhinge. They shone in the flickering light.
I turned Sima and encouraged him back, but there was no way we’d make it to them before the Porcugi struck. Keeping my torch aloft, I felt for my dagger, but my hand only grasped air above its sheath. It must have fallen out in the chaos, which left me with nothing.
Nothing but the torch.
Sima whinnied as he broke through to the road again, putting the Porcugi in clear sight. Distracted by the sound, the monster swiveled to face me. Sima leaped toward the Porcugi at my command, a true warhorse through and through.
The Porcugi’s eyes widened as we approached, but instead of coming to attack us, it turned back to Tara and Nallini.
“No!” I screamed.
I flung my torch toward the Porcugi with all my might. It looked like a blazing arrow of fire, and the flying light caught the monster’s attention. The Porcugi swiveled to face me just in time to be hit squarely in its chest.
It let out a scream that echoed through my bones as it fell to the ground, its arms and tail twitching as its cry bounced through the woods.
It tried to lift its hooded head as I thundered to Tara’s side, but it fell back down and screamed again.
The sound made my stomach clench—their screams reminded me so much of ours.
As soon as I was close enough, Tara handed me the torch she was carrying and then lit another. “Stay back, Rani.”
She sprinted toward the fallen Porcugi with far more agility than I would have expected for a woman her age.
Tara approached from the tail side of the monster and then drove the torch into the Porcugi’s preexisting wound with surgical precision.
The Porcugi stopped moving, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.
I slipped off Sima’s back, went to Tara’s side, and took the sword from her before she could protest.
Smoke billowed up from the wound on the Porcugi’s chest. A circle of scales had been melted off, and the spiraling smoke made the air around us taste burnt.
Without hesitating, I drove my sword into the center of the wound, and the Porcugi was completely still as the blade sunk deep into its charred flesh.
“Save this one.” I handed the burning torch to Tara, and I grabbed two more from the bag that had fallen from Nallini’s horse. “We need it to light the rest. Go take care of Nallini—she needs a healer.”
I didn’t let her argue. I lit the torches and made my way toward the other Porcugi who was still battling with Parushi and Thevan.
Parushi had dismounted, and she darted from tree to tree, loosing arrows as she sprinted from one to the next.
The Porcugi tried desperately to keep up with her, twisting this way and that, but it was hard for it to maneuver in such a tight space.
As I prepared to fling a torch at the Porcugi, Thevan emerged from behind a tree opposite Parushi and sneaked behind the monster, keeping silent as Parushi taunted the creature to keep its attention. He took a mighty swing at its back with his huge sword.
A clang echoed through the woods. Just as Thevan had taken his swing, the Porcugi had darted toward Parushi, so Thevan’s blade had contacted the thicker scales of its lower back and tail.
Parushi rolled out of the way, and the Porcugi twisted to see Thevan standing nearby.
The monster sent Thevan flying with a flick of his tail.
He landed with a crunch, and I could only hope that it was just the branches breaking beneath him.
As the Porcugi turned back to Parushi, it caught sight of me, standing there like an idiot with two blazing torches held aloft.
“Rani!” Parushi yelled, and an arrow whizzed by the Porcugi’s head, but the monster hardly even noticed as it slashed its way toward me, fangs exposed.
I dived behind a tree, landing on my back, and the Porcugi crashed into the brush to my side. Before it could get up again, I buried one of the torches into the back of its neck.
The hiss of heat hitting liquid filled the air as smoke billowed up from where I struck the Porcugi. Its scales melted away, dripping down its curved hood as the exposed flesh blackened and curled. It didn’t move after that, but I struck the wound again with my other torch to make sure it was dead.
“Get away from that thing!” Parushi pushed me back and placed herself between me and the Porcugi, shooting an arrow into its head for good measure.
Thevan rushed to my side, still covered in all manner of sticks and leaves after his fall. He pulled my right shoulder so I was facing him, and he looked me up and down. “Are you hurt?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “So long as it’s really dead.”
“Looks dead, but there’s only one way to be sure.”
Thevan stepped closer to the Porcugi’s head as Parushi watched with another arrow nocked, just in case. Thevan raised his blade and brought it down just beyond the cobra-like hood of the Porcugi, beheading it in one powerful stroke.
We heaved a collective sigh of relief and then returned to Nallini and Tara.
“What happened?” Parushi pushed past me to Nallini’s side.
“She’s hurt.” Tara didn’t look up as she examined Nallini.
“Get the turmeric!” Parushi rose to get the healer’s bag. “We need to apply it quickly.”
“No, we need to set this bone and bind it.” Tara tried to grab Nallini’s bag out of Parushi’s hands.
“I fell off my horse,” Nallini said weakly.
Parushi acted as if she didn’t hear as she yanked the bag away from Tara and found the turmeric. She tried to push the master healer aside as she brandished the root, but Tara held her ground resolutely.
“Stop, Parushi,” I said.
“How can you say that? You know what will happen!” Parushi glared at me with bloodshot eyes.
“She doesn’t need turmeric.” I pointed to Nallini’s injury. “She wasn’t hit by a weapon or its fangs. She broke her arm when she fell. She needs it set and wrapped.”
Parushi stopped pushing Tara. When Nallini nodded in agreement, she lowered the turmeric.
Tara reset the bone, and Parushi hovered near Nallini’s shoulders, watching Tara’s every move. Sweat trickled down Nallini’s face and neck, but she kept her teeth clenched shut in silence. When Tara finished, Nallini wiggled her fingers and gave Tara a look of renewed respect.
“Thank you,” she said. “I could not have done it better myself.”
Tara nodded. “You saved the rani. This is the least I could do.”
“The rani was right to let you join us,” Thevan said, and Nallini blushed. “I don’t want to think of what may have happened if you weren’t here.”
He inclined his head at her and then made his way to the nearby Porcugi corpse. He studied its wounds as he held a coconut leaf torch aloft. The melted scales and flesh still dripped as smoke rose up from the edges. “You did that . . . with these?”
I stared at the dead Porcugi. Those scales, which had been so difficult to penetrate with our blades, had melted away with the heat of the flame.
True, the wound wasn’t enough to kill them when the torches were thrown from a distance, but it was a way—or at least the start of a way—to take these monsters on in battle.
We could melt their scales and then . . .
well, I wasn’t sure yet, but we could do something to kill them once their armor had been weakened.
“We’ve just lit our path to victory.”