The Guardians of the Halahala Read Free Page A

leading the way, observed the outpost’s cook and an off- duty guard seated at a verandah, hunched over a
chaturanga
board spread out between them. Both men sat still, immersed in thought as they devised their game strategies.
    The captain swore silently at the cook. Silly oaf, still at his bloody game when he should be in the kitchen getting dinner ready!
    Deciding that the cook needed a ticking off, the captain dismounted, tethered his horse to a nearby rail and marched briskly toward the verandah. He was still ten meters from the house, when he sensed something was wrong.
    The two men had not moved a muscle since he’d spotted them – surely they must have heard the horses trotting in. And even if they had missed that, the noise of his leather sandals crunching on gravel was loud enough to wake the dead. One of them ought to have noticed
that.
But both men just sat staring at the
chaturanga
board as the torch threw shadows around them.
    It suddenly dawned upon the captain that the outpost was strangely silent. Yes, the stationed unit was small, and some soldiers were probably still out on patrol... Yet, there ought to have been
some
degree of activity, but there wasn’t any.
    Something else was odd, too. No smell of burning firewood anywhere. Not from the kitchen, not from the fires that should have been lit to fight the chill.
    Working on instinct, the captain drew his sword, dropped to a crouch and pussyfooted forward, his eyes darting from the verandah to the shadows lurking behind the building. Somewhere behind him, the lieutenant and the boy were laughing at some joke, but the captain’s mind barely registered this. He was preoccupied with the two men on the verandah.
    As he drew closer, the captain’s eyes grew wide in horror as he noticed the hilt of a large knife protruding from the cook’s back, plumb in between the shoulder blades. Circling cautiously, the captain came in full view of the guard seated opposite the cook – and the first thing he saw was the guard’s tunic, soaked in blood from a neat slash that had opened the guard’s throat. The two men were propped up by spears that dug into their sides, preventing the bodies from keeling over under their weight.
    In a flash the captain knew that the whole thing was a trap.
    â€œEverything okay, captain?” hollered the horseman who had prevented a flare-up on the ridge.
    Choking back waves of nausea and panic, the captain turned and stumbled away from the building, flailing frantically at his men, who were now approaching him tentatively.
    â€œNo...” he croaked. “No... we’re trapped. They are back.”
    The three soldiers stared at the captain. “Who are back?” the lieutenant asked sharply, drawing his sword. The other two did likewise, peering at the verandah in confusion.
    â€œThey...
the Hunas and the Sakas,” the captain’s voice rose a pitch and quavered.
    â€œWhat?”
    The captain turned, raised his sword with both hands and scanned the darkness. Instantly, the three others, too, turned to face the dark, their swords on the ready. Slowly, facing outward, they stepped back toward one another to form a tight protective circle, their eyes peeled for danger.
    Suddenly, a thin whistling noise filled the air. Before the soldiers could even make sense of it, a heavy arrow smacked into the thin boy’s head, cracking his skull and burying itself an inch above his left temple. The boy was dead before he slumped to the ground.
    The other three had just about realized what had happened when a second arrow skewered into the lieutenant’s neck, ripping through muscle and tissue, its head emerging from the other side. The lieutenant coughed in surprise and blood gurgled from his lips as he fell on his face with a heavy thud.
    The fourth horseman, the peacemaker, wasn’t so lucky. The arrow that was shot at him was aimed at his neck, but owing to sudden movement on his