‘Damn!’ cursed Swuth as he wiped some of his spittle that had got stuck on the Naga mask that he wasn’t used to wearing. But he was careful enough to curse in Sanskrit. He had strictly forbidden his people from speaking in their native Egyptian tongue. The charade of their being Nagas had to be strictly maintained.
‘Nandi!’ screamed Sati, as she swirled around and thrust her sword at Swuth.
Swuth moved aside, easily avoiding her attack. Another assassin swung his sword from behind Sati, cutting through her upper back and left shoulder.
‘Wait!’ said Swuth, as two of his men were about to plunge their swords into her heart.
The assassins immediately held Sati’s arms, awaiting Swuth’s instructions. The leader did not want to sully his tongue by speaking to a woman; a sex that he believed was far beneath men, only a little better than animals.
‘Ask her who the blue-throated Lord is.’
One of his assistants looked at Sati and repeated Swuth’s question.
A shocked Sati did not hear them. She continued to stare at Nandi, lying prone on the ground, losing blood at an alarming rate from his severed limbs. But the unconscious Suryavanshi was still breathing. She knew that since the wounds were only on the limbs, the blood loss would not be so severe as to cause immediate death. If she managed to keep him alive for some more time, expert medical help could still save him.
‘Is this the blue-throated Lord?’ asked Swuth, pointing at Nandi.
Swuth’s assistant repeated his question to Sati. But Sati was looking towards the gates of Devagiri from the corner of her eye. She could see people at the top of the platform running towards her. They would probably reach in another ten to fifteen minutes. She had to keep Nandi alive for that much time.
Swuth shook his head when he did not get any response from Sati. ‘A curse of Aten on these stupid baby-producing machines!’
Sati stared at Swuth, catching on to his mistake in swearing in his own God’s name, sure at last of his identity. He was an Egyptian; an assassin of the cult of Aten. She had learnt about their culture in her youth. She knew immediately what she had to do.
Swuth pointed at Nandi and turned to his men. ‘Behead this fat giant. He must be the blue-throated Lord. Leave the other injured alive. They will bear witness that they were attacked by the Nagas. And collect our dead. We’ll leave immediately.’
‘He’s not the blue-throated one,’ spat Sati. ‘Can’t you see his neck, you Egyptian idiot?’
The Egyptian holding Sati hit her hard across her face.
Swuth sniggered.
‘Leave the giant alive,’ said Swuth, before turning to one of his fighters. ‘Qa’a, torture this hag before you kill her.’
‘With pleasure, My Lord,’ smiled Qa’a, who was not the best of assassins, but an expert in the fine art of torture.
Swuth turned to his other men. ‘How many times do I have to repeat myself, you putrid remains of a camel’s dung? Start gathering our dead. We leave in a few moments.’
As Swuth’s assassins started implementing his order, Qa’a moved towards Sati, returning his blood-streaked sword to its scabbard. He then pulled out a knife. A smaller blade always made torture much easier.
Sati suddenly straightened up and shouted loudly, ‘The duel of Aten!’
Qa’a stopped in his tracks, stunned. Swuth stared at Sati, surprised beyond measure. The duel of Aten was an ancient code of the Egyptian assassins, wherein anyone could challenge them to a duel. They were honour-bound to engage in the duel. It could only be a one-on-one fight; multiple assassins could not attack or they would suffer the wrath of their fiery Sun God – an everlasting curse from Aten.
Qa’a turned towards Swuth, unsure.
Swuth stared at Qa’a. ‘You know the law.’
Qa’a nodded, throwing his knife away. He drew his sword, pulled his shield forward, and waited.
Sati wrenched herself free from the assassins who were holding her. She bent down and ripped out some cloth from a fallen assassin’s cloak, tying the strip of cloth across her face, covering her mutilated eye in an effort to stem the blood from flowing across her face. She hoped this would give her unimpeded vision and not disturb the good eye. Then she slowly pulled out the knife buried in her upper arm and tied another strip of cloth around the injury, using her teeth to tighten the bind.
She then drew her sword and held her shield high. Ready. Waiting.
Qa’a suddenly threw his shield away. All the assassins standing around burst out laughing and began to clap. Clearly, Qa’a was taunting Sati, suggesting that he didn’t even need his shield to combat a stupid woman. Much to Qa’a’s surprise, Sati threw her shield away as well.
Qa’a bellowed loudly and charged, swinging his sword at a high angle. Sati smoothly leaned back and swerved to the left as she avoided the strike. Qa’a turned swiftly and swung his sword high again, catching Sati by surprise. The Egyptian’s sword cut through Sati’s left hand, slicing off four fingers. Much to his surprise, Sati didn’t flinch from the injury but swung her sword from a height at Qa’a. Qa’a swerved and defended Sati’s blow with an elevated strike.
Sati, meanwhile, had surmised that the swinging strike was Qa’a’s standard attack. She played to that as she kept swinging at Qa’a from a high angle and the Egyptian kept striking back. Both of them kept changing the direction repeatedly to surprise the other, but the strikes were almost typical and therefore, no serious injury was caused. Suddenly, Sati dropped to one knee and swung hard. The strike hit home. Her blade hacked brutally through Qa’a’s abdomen, cutting deep. He collapsed as his intestines spilled on to the ground.
Sati stood up, towering over a kneeling Qa’a, who had been paralysed by the intense pain. She held her sword high vertically, and thrust it through Qa’a’s neck, straight down, deep into his body right up to his heart, killing him instantly.
Swuth stared at Sati, dumbfounded. It wasn’t just her skill with the sword that had surprised him; it was also her character. She hadn’t beheaded Qa’a when she could easily have done so. She let him keep his head. She gave him an honourable death; a soldier’s death. She had followed the rules of the duel of Aten, even though the rules were not her own.
Sati pulled aside and ran her bloodied sword into the soft muddy ground. She bent over and ripped another piece of cloth from the now dead Qa’a’s cloak and tied it around her left palm, covering the area where her fingers had been amputated.
She stood tall, pulled up her sword from the ground and held it aloft, careful not to look at Nandi.
Just a few more minutes.
‘Who’s next?’
Another assassin stepped forward, reached for his sword and then hesitated. He had seen Sati battle brilliantly with the long blade. He drew out a knife from his shoulder belt instead.
‘I don’t have a knife,’ said Sati, putting her sword back in its scabbard, wanting to fight fair.
Swuth pulled out his knife and flung it high in Sati’s direction. She reached out and caught the beautifully-balanced weapon easily. In the meantime, the assassin had removed his mask and pulled back his hood. He didn’t want to suffer the disadvantage of a restricted vision against a skilled warrior.
Having lost four fingers of her left hand, Sati couldn’t battle this assassin the way she had battled Tarak in Karachapa many years ago, where she had hidden the knife behind her back with the aim of confusing her opponent about the direction of attack. So she held the knife in front, in her right hand. But she kept the hilt forward with the blade pointing back, towards herself, much to the surprise of the gathered assassins.
The Egyptian adopted the traditional fighting stance, and pointed the knife directly at Sati. He moved forward and slashed hard. Sati jumped back to avoid the blow, but the blade sliced her shoulder, drawing some blood. This emboldened the assassin to move in further, swinging the knife left and then right as he charged in. Sati kept stepping back, allowing the assassin to draw closer into the trap. The assassin suddenly changed tack and thrust forward with a jabbing motion. Sati swerved right to avoid the blow, raising her right hand. She now held the knife high above her left shoulder. But she hadn’t moved back far enough. The assassin’s knife sliced through the left side of her abdomen, lodging deep within her, right up to the hilt.
Without flinching at the horrifying pain, Sati brought her hand down hard from its height, stabbing the Egyptian straight through his neck. The blow had so much force that the knife cut all the way through, its point sticking out at the other end of the hapless Egyptian’s throat. Blood burst forth from the assassin’s mouth and neck. Sati stepped back as the Egyptian drowned in his own blood.
Swuth was staring at this strange woman, the sneer wiped off his face. She had killed two of his assassins one-on-one, in a free and fair fight. She was bleeding desperately, and yet she stood tall and proud.
Sati, meanwhile, was breathing slowly, trying to calm her rapidly beating heart. She had been cut up in too many places. A pulsating heart would work against her, pumping more blood out of her body. She also needed to conserve her energy for the duels that were to come. She looked at the knife buried deep in her abdomen. It hadn’t penetrated any vital organ. The only danger was the continuous bleeding. She spread out her feet, took a deep breath, held the knife’s handle and yanked it out. She didn’t flinch or make any sound of pain while doing so.
‘Who is this woman?’ asked a stunned assassin standing next to Swuth.
Sati bent down, ripped a part of the bloodied cloak of the assassin she had just killed, and bandaged it tightly around her abdomen. It staunched the blood flow. While doing so, she’d seen from the corner of her eye that the Meluhans who were running towards her were probably a third of the way through. She knew she couldn’t stop the duels now. She had seen the killers. They couldn’t leave her alive. Her only chance was to continue duelling and hope that she would still be breathing when the Meluhans reached her.
Sati drew her sword. ‘Who’s next?’
Another assassin stepped forward.
‘No!’ said Swuth.
The assassin stepped back.
‘She’s mine,’ said Swuth, drawing one of his curved swords.
Swuth didn’t approach Sati with both his curved swords. That would have been unfair according to the rules of Aten, since Sati had only one sword hand. He held the sword forward in his right hand. As he neared Sati, he started swinging the sword around, building it into a stunning circle of death just ahead of him, moving inexorably towards her. Even as Swuth’s sword whirred closer, Sati began to step back slowly. She suddenly thrust her sword forward quickly, deep into the ring of the circling blade of Swuth, inflicting a serious cut on the Egyptian’s shoulder. She pulled her sword back just as rapidly, before Swuth’s circling blade could come back to deflect her sword.
The wound must have hurt, but Swuth didn’t flinch. He smiled. He’d never met anyone with the ability to penetrate his sword’s circle of death.
This woman is talented.
Swuth stopped circling his sword and held it in a traditional sword-fighter stance. He stepped forward, swinging viciously from the right. Sati bent low to avoid the blow and thrust her blade at Swuth’s arm, causing a superficial cut. But Swuth suddenly reversed the direction of his blade, slashing hard across Sati’s shoulder.
Sati swerved back just in time, reducing the threat of what could have been a devastating blow. Swuth’s sword grazed her right arm and shoulder. Sati growled in fury and stabbed with such rapid force that a surprised Swuth had to jump back.
Swuth stepped back even further. This woman was a very skilled warrior. His standard tactics would not work. He decided to keep his distance, pointing his sword forward, thinking of what could be a good move against her. Sati remained stationary, conserving her strength. She couldn’t afford to move too much for fear of increasing the blood loss from her numerous wounds. Also, she was playing for time. She didn’t mind a few moments of reprieve.
An idea struck Swuth. Sati was primarily injured on her left side. This would impair her movements in that direction. He quickly took a giant step forward and swung viciously from his right. Sati twisted to the left and swung her blade up to block Swuth’s strike. The Egyptian could see that the movement had made blood spurt out of her wounded abdomen. As Sati stabbed at Swuth again, she stepped a little to the left to improve her angle. But Swuth had anticipated her move. He stepped further to his right and kept on swinging again and again from that awkward angle.
The intense pain of continuously turning leftwards forced Sati to take a gamble. She pirouetted suddenly and swung her sword in a great arc from her right, hoping to decapitate him. But this was exactly what Swuth had expected. He ducked low and stepped forward rapidly, easily avoiding Sati’s strike. At the same time, he brought his sword up in a low, brutal jab. His curved sword with its serrated edges went right through Sati’s abdomen, ripping almost every single vital organ; her intestines, stomach, kidney and liver were slashed through viciously. A paralysed Sati, her face twisted in agony, lay impaled on Swuth’s curved sword. Her own blade fell from her hand. The Egyptian bent back, used the leverage and rammed his sword in even further, till its point burst through to the other side, piercing her shattered back.
‘Not bad,’ said Swuth, twisting his blade as he pulled it out of Sati, ripping her organs to ribbons. ‘Not bad for a woman.’
Sati collapsed to the ground, her body shivering as dark blood began to pool on the ground around her. She knew she was going to die. It was only a matter of time. The blood flow couldn’t be staunched now. Her vital internal organs and the massive numbers of blood vessels in them had been mortally damaged. But she also knew something else very clearly. She wouldn’t die lying on the ground, slowly bleeding to death.
She would die like a Meluhan. She would die with her head held high.
She lifted her quivering right hand and reached for her sword. Swuth stared at Sati in awe, transfixed as he watched her struggling to reach her blade. He knew that she must know she was going to die soon. And yet, her spirit hadn’t been broken.