Then he said slowly and distinctly:
“You miscalled the Lady Aryenis just now, and said you would bring her to shame even as you and your brother did my cousin. For these things I promised to kill you with my two hands.
“When I send your brother to join you in hell, remember to tell him that I kept my word.”
And with that he twisted Atana’s head very slowly round and back, looking down into his face the while, the man’s eyes starting from his head, and his legs threshing the ground till suddenly something seemed to give; he straightened out slowly, gave a spasmodic jerk and a long shiver, and lay still.
Henga waited an instant before he loosed his grip. Then he got slowly to his feet, and, picking up his sword, wiped it on the dead man’s cape. He rolled over the body with his foot, the limp head grotesquely twisted back, and looked at it thoughtfully.
Spitting on the ground, he turned to me:
“The world is somewhat cleaner now. That is a useful trick, which I have practised long against the day when Atana or his brother and I should meet.”
“It is,” I said. “I envy you that piece of work, which I would have liked to do myself, but it seems that you have the greater right.”
My blood boiled as I thought of those cruel leering eyes looking at Aryenis in the gate.
Payindah had come running up just at the end, and, as Henga got up and wiped his sword, he said to him in Punjabi: