"I feel like I've been keelhauled for a week." Hawksworth gingerly touched his forehead and there was a pulse of pain. Vasant Rao listened with a puzzled expression. "You were tied over your horse. Some of the clan wanted to kill you and leave you there, but then they decided that would give you too much honor." "What the hell are you talking about? I remember I gave them a fight." "You used a pistol. You killed a man, the head of this dynasty, with a pistol." The words seemed to cut through the shadows of the room. The pain returned and ached through Hawksworth's body. More deaths. The two men who died on the _Discovery_. I saw Nayka die with an arrow in his throat. And how many of the Rajput guards died? Why am I always in the middle of fighting and death? "The bastards killed my driver." "The driver was nothing. A low caste." He shrugged it away. "You are an important _feringhi_. You would not have been harmed. You should never have drawn a pistol. And then you allowed yourself to be captured. It was an act beneath honor. The women spat on you and your horse when you were brought through the streets. I have no doubt they'll kill us both now." "Who's left alive?" "No one. My men died like Rajputs." A trace of pride flashed through his eyes before they dimmed again with sadness. "When they knew they could not win, that they had failed the prince, they vowed to die fighting. And all did." "But you're still alive." The words seemed almost like a knife in the Rajput's heart. "They would not kill me. Or let me die honorably." He paused and stared at Hawksworth. "There was a reason, but it doesn't concern you." "So all the men died? But why did they kill the drivers?" "The drivers weren't killed." Vasant Rao looked surprised. "I never said that." I keep forgetting, Hawksworth told himself, that only high castes count as men in this God-forsaken land. "This whole damned country is mad." The absurdity overwhelmed him. "Low castes, your own people, handled like slaves, and high castes who kill each other in the name of honor. A pox on Rajputs and their fornicating honor." "Honor is very important. Without honor what is left? We may as well be without caste. The warrior caste lives by a code set down in the Laws of Manu many thousands of years ago." He saw Hawksworth's impatience and smiled sadly. "Do you understand what's meant by _dharma_?" "It sounds like another damned Hindu invention. Another excuse to take life." "_Dharma_ is something, Captain Hawksworth, without which life no longer matters. No Christian, or Muslim, has ever been able to understand _dharma_, since it is the order that defines our castes--and those born outside India are doomed to live forever without a caste. _Dharma_ defines who we are and what we must do if we are to maintain our caste. Warfare is the _dharma_ of the Kshatriya, the warrior caste." "And I say a pox on caste. What's so honorable about Rajputs slaughtering each other?"