“Rani!” Parushi yelled, and an arrow whizzed by the Porcugi’s head, but the monster hardly even noticed as it slashed its way toward me, fangs exposed.
I dived behind a tree, landing on my back, and the Porcugi crashed into the brush to my side. Before it could get up again, I buried one of the torches into the back of its neck.
The hiss of heat hitting liquid filled the air as smoke billowed up from where I struck the Porcugi. Its scales melted away, dripping down its curved hood as the exposed flesh blackened and curled. It didn’t move after that, but I struck the wound again with my other torch to make sure it was dead.
“Get away from that thing!” Parushi pushed me back and placed herself between me and the Porcugi, shooting an arrow into its head for good measure.
Thevan rushed to my side, still covered in all manner of sticks and leaves after his fall. He pulled my right shoulder so I was facing him, and he looked me up and down. “Are you hurt?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “So long as it’s really dead.”
“Looks dead, but there’s only one way to be sure.”
Thevan stepped closer to the Porcugi’s head as Parushi watched with another arrow nocked, just in case. Thevan raised his blade and brought it down just beyond the cobra-like hood of the Porcugi, beheading it in one powerful stroke.
We heaved a collective sigh of relief and then returned to Nallini and Tara.
“What happened?” Parushi pushed past me to Nallini’s side.
“She’s hurt.” Tara didn’t look up as she examined Nallini.
“Get the turmeric!” Parushi rose to get the healer’s bag. “We need to apply it quickly.”
“No, we need to set this bone and bind it.” Tara tried to grab Nallini’s bag out of Parushi’s hands.
“I fell off my horse,” Nallini said weakly.
Parushi acted as if she didn’t hear as she yanked the bag away from Tara and found the turmeric. She tried to push the master healer aside as she brandished the root, but Tara held her ground resolutely.
“Stop, Parushi,” I said.
“How can you say that? You know what will happen!” Parushi glared at me with bloodshot eyes.
“She doesn’t need turmeric.” I pointed to Nallini’s injury. “She wasn’t hit by a weapon or its fangs. She broke her arm when she fell. She needs it set and wrapped.”
Parushi stopped pushing Tara. When Nallini nodded in agreement, she lowered the turmeric.
Tara reset the bone, and Parushi hovered near Nallini’s shoulders, watching Tara’s every move. Sweat trickled down Nallini’s face and neck, but she kept her teeth clenched shut in silence. When Tara finished, Nallini wiggled her fingers and gave Tara a look of renewed respect.
“Thank you,” she said. “I could not have done it better myself.”
Tara nodded. “You saved the rani. This is the least I could do.”
“The rani was right to let you join us,” Thevan said, and Nallini blushed. “I don’t want to think of what may have happened if you weren’t here.”
He inclined his head at her and then made his way to the nearby Porcugi corpse. He studied its wounds as he held a coconut leaf torch aloft. The melted scales and flesh still dripped as smoke rose up from the edges. “You did that... with these?”
I stared at the dead Porcugi. Those scales, which had been so difficult to penetrate with our blades, had melted away with the heat of the flame. True, the wound wasn’t enough to kill them when the torches were thrown from a distance, but it was a way?—or at least the start of a way?—to take these monsters on in battle. We could melt their scales and then... well, I wasn’t sure yet, but we could do something to kill them once their armor had been weakened.
“We’ve just lit our path to victory.”
Chapter 41
The entry to the fort was draped in marigolds, and trumpets sang my arrival. People rushed to the streets and cheered, their eyes crinkling with their smiles as we passed by.
I stared in disbelief. Gone were the glares and mutters of Banghervari. In Ullal, there was no denying the worry lines on my people’s foreheads, but they stood tall and proud. Thevan really had rallied the people behind our war against the Porcugi. Their warmth embraced me and erased the ache in my back and the exhaustion in my legs. I smiled as I waved, and I drew my sari tighter around my belly so they could see my growing bump. The crowd screamed even louder, and a curtain of flowers fell before us. We walked on a path of petals by the time we reached the fort.
Nikith was waiting in front of the doors with a jasmine garland in hand. My brother-in-law’s broad smile didn’t erase the deepened hollows in his cheeks or the shadows haunting his face. Behind him, Chetan held four more garlands, looking more tired and wrinkled than I remembered.
