The Korum Pass was a wound in the earth. A jagged, granite canyon carved by an ancient river, now just a trickle of water at its base. The fortress was a stone fang embedded in the canyon's narrowest point, its walls seeming to grow out of the cliffs themselves. For centuries, it had been the gatekeeper of the spice road, a symbol of the Sultan's unbreachable power. No army had ever taken it by storm.
Bhaskar hated it on sight. It was a place of arrogant stone and killing grounds. A place designed to break armies and devour men.
He lay on his belly, the rough granite biting into his elbows. Two hundred paces below, the fortress slumbered under the afternoon sun. He could see the sentries on the parapets, small, lazy figures pacing in the heat. He could hear the faint nicker of a horse from the stables within. It was a picture of complacent strength.
His fifty riflemen were scattered along the ridge beside him, ghosts in the rocks. They had spent two days getting into position, moving only at night, crawling the last half-mile on their bellies. Every man had his place, his field of fire, his designated partner. The silence of their discipline was more impressive to Bhaskar than any battle cry.
He looked over at Kavi, who lay nearby, chewing on a piece of dried meat. The boy's face was calm, his eyes scanning the fortress below with the detached patience of a hunter. The fear and awe he'd once shown were gone, replaced by a quiet, chilling confidence. They all had it. A certainty that came from the long, heavy weapon resting in their hands.
Bhaskar felt a pang of something he couldn't name. A distance. He was their commander, but he did not share their experience. He was a man of the sword. His world was one of noise, of sweat and blood, of looking a man in the eye as you killed him. This… this was different. This was the cold work of a scorpion, striking from a distance with a venomous tail.
He waited for the sun to touch the western rim of the canyon. The light shifted, throwing the eastern face of the fortress into sharp relief. He could see the stone aqueduct that snaked down the cliffside, the fortress's single, vital artery of water.
He gave the signal. A low, single note from a shepherd's flute.
It was the only sound. There was no shout, no horn.
Twenty-five rifles rose as one, their dark barrels resting on outcroppings of rock. A pause. The men breathed out, finding the stillness Aditya had taught them.
Bhaskar gave the second signal.
The sound was not a volley. It was a single, whip-crack of thunder, the fifty rifles firing so closely together their reports merged into one violent, echoing blast.
Down below, the effect was instantaneous. The sentries on the walls were not struck; they simply ceased to exist, their bodies thrown from the parapets like discarded dolls. The wooden watchtower at the fortress's main gate erupted in a shower of splinters. But the true target was the aqueduct. A twenty-foot section of the stone channel, struck by a dozen heavy lead balls at once, simply disintegrated into a cloud of dust and rock. Water gushed from the wound, a useless torrent pouring down the cliff face.
For a moment after the echo died, there was a stunned silence. Then, the fortress erupted like a kicked anthill. Men shouted in confusion, trumpets blared in alarm, soldiers scrambled onto the walls, their matchlocks smoking ineffectually, the shots falling hundreds of paces short.
On the ridge, Bhaskar's men were already reloading. Calmly. Methodically. Each man rolled back from the edge, using the rock as cover, going through the practiced motions.
The second volley came a minute later. It was not a thunderclap this time. It was a series of sharp, individual cracks, each one a punctuation mark in a sentence of death. A captain, appearing on the wall to shout orders, collapsed, his chest caving in. The crew of a small cannon, trying to haul it into position, were picked off one by one.
Then, the long silence began.
For the rest of that day and all of the next, Aditya's plan unfolded with a terrible, patient cruelty. There were no more volleys. Only single shots, fired at irregular intervals from different positions. A man who peered over the wall for a second too long would fall with a hole in his head. A horse led to water in the courtyard would scream and drop. The constant, invisible threat was maddening. The soldiers in the fortress became prisoners in their stronghold, hunted by an enemy they could not see and could not fight.
On the third day, a small, desperate party of cavalry charged out from the main gate, hoping to storm the ridges. They were cut down in the canyon before they had covered two hundred yards.
Bhaskar watched it all through a small looking-glass Aditya had given him. He felt no thrill of victory. He felt a cold, professional satisfaction, the same as a stonemason looking at a well-laid wall. This was not a battle. It was slaughter.
He lowered the looking-glass, the grim, efficient work below mirroring the coldness in his own heart. He had been a warrior. But the prince had made him something else entirely. He had made him an instrument of a new and terrible equation.