SONS OF SITA

The second one tried to skewer her throat with his iron pike. There were gobs of flesh stuck to the point and she could smell the reek of something awful as the weapon shot out at her with deadly efficiency.

She dodged the point, feeling it scrape the edge of her collar, and plunged her swordblade upwards, into the gap between his armour and his belt. It stabbed deep into the region of his liver, and beyond, into his vitals, and he screamed much louder than the first man, sounding more like an animal than a human, and fell sideways onto her. She had been prepared for that possibility and hurled him over, sending him sprawling on the ground with a sickly cracking of bones and more animal screaming, freeing her sword with practised effort.

The third man shouted with anger. He had not expected to see his friends die before him, killed by a woman be probably assumed to be another sadhini from the ashram, and was furious. He was the one with the elephant mace and he came at her with a speed and ferocity that almost undid her.

She rolled in the nick of time—across the path of his horse—and narrowly missed having her skull stoved in by the pounding hooves. But then she was up and swinging and he yelled with outrage as her sword hacked through his leather garments, severing his thigh.

He swung the horse around for another pass, but she had slipped a throwing dagger into her palm from a belt at her waist, and she flung it at his throat where it stuck and cut off any further sounds of protest he might wish to produce.

She turned just in time to see the last rider—he was in fact the third rider but he had hung back after watching her cut down the first man—raise a spear. There was no time to turn or dodge before he threw the yard-long length of wood and iron.

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