wore an officer’s uniform. His legs were in puttees, long strips of cloth wound round for protection, and he had an old-fashioned tin hat, a Brodie, on his lap. The soldiers around him looked at the camera, cigarettes or pipes loose in their mouths, weary, with muddy shovels and picks lying around a half-dug trench. One man rested his arm across a large machine gun.
The First World War.
It had to be. The style of the uniforms and the weapons were consistent with the Great War. Ash had studied it and read about the terrible slaughters of the first mechanical war and how thousands of men would march across no-man’s-land to be decimated by machine-gun fire and poison gas.
Only Savage looked relaxed. He knew that he was going to get out of this alive. He knew the bullets and the gas and the bombs couldn’t hurt him.
One of the men was gazing across at Savage. Ash looked at his face – just some nameless private. Forgotten in history. Was there anyone alive now who knew his name? What sort of life he’d led? What sort of death he’d had? Whether or not he’d made it out of the Normandy mud alive?
If only I could slip into the picture, thought Ash. Stop Savage then, before he became too powerful.
But that might only make it worse. He’d be changing Time himself then, and who knew what the effects would be? The further back you went, the bigger the ripples.
He came to the desk and checked the drawers. Then he grinned.
Got it.
A notebook, the electronic variety. He ran his palm over it. There might be some useful info on it, and if Ashoka could bypass all this security then surely he’d have no problem hacking something like this. He put it in its plastic case and zipped it closed. Too big for his pocket, he tucked it inside his shirt. Ash closed the drawer, had a last look around to see if there was anything else of use – nope. He had what he wanted.
He was out a moment later, the door clicking as he closed it behind him.
He jumped as Parvati appeared in front of him. She was just a silhouette at the top of the stairs, but he knew it was her by her stance and her shape. Even in the darkness he could see the faint shimmer of her scales.
“I’ve got Savage’s notebook.” He patted his chest as he approached her. “It could be useful. You find anything?”
Parvati hissed and Ash stopped.
“Parvati? What’s up?”
Her front foot slid forward and her fingers flexed.
Now, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Ash noticed something different about the rakshasa princess. “What happened to your hair?”
Her hair was always long, down to her waist and as glossy black as oil on water. Now it was cropped short and spiky.
“Parvati?” Ash stepped nearer and reached out. “What’s wrong?”
Her fist rammed into his jaw, propelling Ash into the wall. Stars blazed in his eyes. He blinked and dived as her boot swung towards his head. Her heel smashed the wall lamp, sprinkling Ash with glass.
He blocked the next kick, but couldn’t stop the flurry of punches that came from all directions. It was as if Parvati had six arms. One blow rattled the teeth in his mouth and suddenly he was spitting blood.
“Parvati!” he shouted. “Stop!” What the hell was going on? She had gone mad. But there wasn’t a chance to ask. Parvati reached over her shoulders and there was the ominous sound of steel against steel. Two curved blades shone in the darkness.
He needed to level the battleground. Darkness was Parvati’s element. He stumbled backwards towards the patch of light in the corridor.
“Parvati …”
She swung the twin tulwar blades with mastery. A wall of lightning, blazing silver blurred about him and Ash ripped free his katar, barely deflecting one of the swords before it decapitated him. Sparks jumped as metal struck metal. Ash struck back, a feint to try to wrong-foot her, but Parvati saw through it and he received a cut along his arm for his pains.
“Parvati, please …”
Parvati stepped into the square of light. “My name is Rani.”
Three crooked grooves crossed her face. Her left eye was blind and white, the tip of the upper lip raised in a sneer by the scar that ran from her temple down her cheek. Steel barbs chimed in her hair, tied to the brutal short locks. Her armour was a mixture of ancient and modern, her arms coiled with serpentine tattoos. A pair of daggers had been rammed into the white sash she wore around her slim waist, each with a cobra-styled hilt, matching the designs on her swords, their eyes glistening with emerald stones. She glared at Ash, her forked tongue flicking between her long fangs. Her face was framed by scales, giving her a greenish hue. This wasn’t the Parvati he knew.
“Ash!”
Parvati ran up the stairs. His Parvati. She stared at Ash and the girl he was fighting. Ashoka, huffing and puffing, clambered up behind her, carrying a satchel. His mouth dropped open.
Two Parvatis. And Ash was obviously fighting the evil-twin version.
That explains a lot. None of it good.
Two Ashes. Two Parvatis. Two of everyone.
Parvati flicked free her urumi. The four steel ribbons danced and lashed, eager tongues wanting blood.
“Wait!” shouted Ash. This was Parvati, of this world. Maybe she could help them.
But Parvati wasn’t listening. She pounced.
Rani transformed. She spun between the steel whips, any one of them capable of slicing off a limb, one moment taking the form of a cobra, twisting in the air, then, as the four blades recoiled, landing on the ground, human again.
Parvati couldn’t change that fast, nor with such precision.
Rani spun her swords and came at Parvati. She sheared off one of her locks and Parvati flinched as the tip entered her shoulder. The urumi skated across Rani’s armour but did nothing more than scratch the black-lacquered steel.
They weren’t going to stop. One would kill the other.
Ash wasn’t going to let that happen. He charged in.
He jabbed low with the katar, following with kicks and punches as Parvati swept her urumi blades in all directions.
But Rani wove through their assault. Ever changing, often in the blink of an eye, she twisted and spun and struck, one second human, another cobra, sometimes a creature melding both. Her spine did things that should be impossible without crippling herself and her limbs were quadruple-jointed so attacks came from unbelievable angles and she could slip through even the strongest, bone-breaking locks and holds.
But she couldn’t defeat them. She stepped back as Parvati and Ash merged their fighting into a single, seamless, blazing blitzkrieg.
Ash, panting and sweaty, stood beside Parvati as she shook the urumi, ready for another attack.
“You
