The Dance of Time

Somewhere on the stairs leading to the cellars, Rajiv uttered his one and only protest.

"I didn't hesitate. Not at all."

Anastasius smiled. "Well, of course not."

Valentinian shook his head. "Don't get melancholy and philosophical on me, boy. You've still got to do it twice more. Today."

For some reason, that didn't bother Rajiv.

Maybe that was because his enemies now had fair warning.

He said as much.

Anastasius smiled again, more broadly. At the foot of the stairs, now in the cellar, Valentinian turned around and glared at him.

"Who cares about 'fair warnings'? Dead is dead and we all die anyway. Just do it."

Anastasius, now also at the bottom of the stairs, cleared his throat. "If I may put Valentinian's viewpoint in proper Stoic terms, what he means to say—"

"Is exactly what the fuck I said," Valentinian hissed. "Just do it."

He glanced up the stairs. "In about ten minutes, at a guess."

* * *

His guess was off, a bit. Rajiv didn't blow the next charges for at least a quarter of an hour.

Whether because he'd satisfied himself concerning the ethics of the issue, or simply because Valentinian's cold-blooded murderousness was infectious, he wasn't sure. For whatever reason, Rajiv had no trouble waiting until the cellars were full of Malwa soldiery, probing uncertainly in the torch-lit darkness to find whatever hole their quarry had scurried into.

From the still greater darkness of the tunnel, Rajiv gauged the moment. He even out-waited Valentinian.

"Now, boy."

"Not yet."

Two minutes later, he drove in the next plunger. The same type of shaped-charge mines implanted in the walls of the cellars turned those underground chambers into more abattoirs.

"Quickly, now!" urged Anastasius, already lumbering at a half-crouch down the tunnel. "We've got to get to the shelter as soon as possible. Before they can figure out—"

He continued in that vein, explaining the self-evident to people who already knew the plan by heart. Rajiv ignored him. Looking ahead, down the tunnel, he could see the figure of the Ye-tai already vanishing in the half-gloom thrown out by the few oil lamps still in place. Valentinian was close on his heels.

"You're doing good, boy," said the Mongoose. "Really, really good."

All things considered, Rajiv decided the Roman cataphract was right.

To be sure, this was not something he'd ever brag about. On the other hand...

When did you ever hear your father brag? came that little, back-of-the-mind voice.

The answer was: Never.

Rajiv had noticed that, in times past. Now, finally, he thought he understood it. And, for the first time in his life, came to feel something for his father beyond love, admiration and respect.

Simple affection. Nothing fancy. Just the sort of fondness that a man—a woman too, he supposed—feels when he thinks about someone who has shared a task and a hardship.

* * *

When they reached the shelter, even Valentinian took a deep breath.

"Well," he muttered, "this is where we find out. God damn all Biharis—miners down to newborn babes—if it doesn't."

The Ye-tai just looked blank-faced. Anastasius' eyes flicked about the small chamber, with its massive bracing. "Looks good, anyway."

It seemed fitting, somehow, for Rajiv to finally take charge. "Place the barrier." It seemed silly to call that great heavy thing a "door."

He pointed to it, propped against the entrance they'd just come through. "Anastasius, you're the only one strong enough to hold it in place. Valentinian, you set the braces. You"—this to the Ye-tai—"help him."

The work was done quickly. The last of it was setting the angled braces that supplemented the great cross-bars and strengthened the door by propping it against the floor.

There was no point in waiting. The shelter would either hold, or they'd all be crushed. But there'd be no point to any of it if Rajiv didn't blow the last charges before the surviving Malwa in the palace that was now over a hundred yards distant as well as many feet above them had time to realize what had happened.

"I guess you'd better—" Valentinian started to say, but Rajiv's hand had already driven home the plunger.

"Well, shit," he added, before the earthquake made it impossible to talk at all.

* * *

The Malwa general in command of the entire operation had remained outside the palace. After he was knocked off his feet, he stared dumbfounded as the walls of the palace seemed to erupt all around the base.

The palace came down, like a stone avalanche.

Some of those stones were large, others were really pieces of wall that had somehow remained intact.

Some were blown a considerable distance by the explosion. Others bounced, after they fell.

Scrambling frantically, the general managed to avoid all the ones sent sailing by the blast. But as close as he'd been standing, he didn't escape one section of wall—a very big section—as it disintegrated.

* * *

A few minutes later, his second-in-command and now successor was able to finally piece together the few coherent reports he could get.