He waited for the explosions that would signal the attack. For all that Kungas was prepared to see Irene's girl warriors suffer casualties, he'd seen no reason to make them excessive. He didn't want to risk destroying the walls with the implanted shaped charges, true-but there was no reason not to use the much smaller charges it would take to simply blow open the doors.
Blow them open-and spray splinters all through the room. That should be enough to give the inexperienced girls the edge they'd need.
A bigger edge than he'd expected, in the event. A moment later, the explosions came-and one of the Malwa assassins was blown right out the window. From the way he toppled to the ground twenty feet below, Kungas knew he was already unconscious. A big chunk of one of the doors must have hit him on the back of the head.
He landed like a sack of meal. From the distance, Kungas couldn't hear the impact, but it was obvious that he hadn't survived it. Most of the street square was dirt, but it was very hard-packed. Almost like stone.
"Ruptured neck, for sure," Vima grunted. "Probably half his brains spilling out, too."
Another assassin appeared in the same window. His back, to be precise. The man was obviously fighting someone.
A few seconds later, he too toppled out of the window. Still clutching the spear that had been driven into his chest, he made a landing that was no better.
Worse, probably. The assassin had the bad luck of landing on the flagstones in front of the building's entrance.
The shouts and screams and other sounds of fighting could be heard across the square for a bit longer. Perhaps ten seconds.
Then, silence.
Kungas glanced down into the center of the square, to assure himself that the decoy was unharmed. He had no particular concern for the girl in question-in fact, he didn't even know who it was-but he didn't want to face Irene's recriminations if she'd been hurt.
Self-recriminations, really. But Irene was not exempt from the normal human tendency to shed blame on others as a way of handling guilt.
That left the question of how many of the Sarmatian squad that launched the attack had been killed or injured. But that was a different sort of matter. Getting killed in a fight with weapons in hand didn't cause the same gut-wrenching sensation as getting killed serving as a helpless decoy.
"Odd, really," Kungas murmured to himself. "But that's the way it is. Someday I'll have to ask Dadaji if he can explain the philosophy of it to me."
He turned and headed for the door. "Come. Let's find out."
It was better than he'd thought. Certainly better than he'd feared.
"See?" he demanded of Vima. "Only one girl dead. One badly injured, but she'll probably survive."
"She'll never walk right, again," Vima said sourly. "Might lose that leg completely, at least from the knee down."
Kujulo chuckled. "Will you listen to him? Bad as a doddering old Pathan clan chief!"
For a moment, he hunched his shoulders and twisted his face into a caricature of a prune-faced, disapproving, ancient clansman. Even Vima laughed.
"Not bad," Kujulo stated firmly, after straightening. "Against five assassins? Not bad."
Irene was upset, of course. The dead and injured girls were names and faces to her. People that she'd known, even known well.
But there were no recriminations. No self-recriminations, even. Her Sarmatian guards themselves were ecstatic at their success, despite the casualties.
It probably wasn't necessary, but Kungas put it into words anyway.
"Make Alexander the Great and the Buddha's son the forefathers of a dynasty-this is what comes with it, Irene."
"Yes, love, I know."
"They were all volunteers."
"Yes, love, I know. Now please shut up. And go away for a few hours."
Axum, in the Ethiopian highlands
Ousanas glowered at the construction crew working in the great field just on the outskirts of the city of Axum. Most of the field was covered with the stone ruins of ancient royal tombs.
"I ought to have the lot of them executed," he pronounced, "seeing as how I can't very well execute you. Under the circumstances."
Antonina smiled. "Approximately how much more of your Cassandra imitation will I be forced to endure?"
"Cassandra, is it? You watch, woman. Your folly-that of your husband's, rather-will surely cause the spiritual ruin of the great kingdom of Axum." He pointed an accusing finger at the radio tower. "For two centuries this ridiculous field given over to the grotesque monuments of ancient pagan kings has been left to decay. As it should. Now, thanks to you and your idiot husband, we'll be resurrecting that heathen taste in idolatry."
Antonina couldn't help but laugh. "It's a radio tower, Ousanas!"
The aqabe tsentsen of Ethiopia was not mollified. "A Trojan horse, what it is. You watch. Soon enough-in the dark, when my eagle eye is not watching-they'll start carving inscriptions on the damned thing."
Gloomily, his eyes ranged up and down the huge stone tower that was nearing completion. "Plenty of room for it, too."
Antonina glanced back at the Greek artisan who was over-seeing the project. "Tell me, Timothy. If I understand this right, once the tower is in operation anyone who tries to climb onto it in order-"
The artisan winced. "They'll be fried." Warily, he eyed the tall and very muscular figure of the man who was, in effect if not in theory, the current ruler of Ethiopia. "Ah, Your Excel-"
"See?" demanded Ousanas, transferring his glare to the hapless artisan. "It's already starting! I am not an 'excellency,' damnation, and certainly not yours. A humble keeper of the royal fly whisks, that's all I am."
Timothy sidled back a step. He was fluent in Ge'ez, the language of the Axumites, so he knew that the title aqabe tsentsen meant "the keeper of the fly whisks." He also knew that the modesty of the title was meaningless.
Antonina came to the rescue. "Oh, stop bullying the poor man. Timothy, please continue."
"Well… it's hard to explain without getting too technical. But the gist of it is that a big radio tower like this needs a big transmitter powered by"-here he pointed his finger at a huge stone building-"the steam engine in there. In turn, that-"
The next few sentences were full of mysterious terms like "interrupter" and "capacitor bank" that meant absolutely nothing to Antonina or Ousanas. But Timothy's concluding words seemed clear enough:
"-every time the transmitter key is depressed, you'd have something like two thousand watts of power shorting across your body. 'Fry' is about the right word for what'd happen, if you got onto the tower itself. But you'd never make it that far, anyway. Once you got past the perimeter fence you'd start coupling to the radials implanted around the base of the tower. Your body would start twitching uncontrollably and the closer you got, the worse it'd get. Your hair might even catch on fire."
Ousanas grimaced, but he was still not mollified. "Splendid. So now we will have to post guards to protect idolators from idolatry."
Antonina laughed again. "Even for you, Ousanas, this display is absurd! What's really bothering you? It's the fact that you still haven't figured out what I'm going to decree tomorrow regarding the succession. Isn't it?"