‘It is beautiful,’ whispered Harisena, almost under his breath.
‘And very well protected by nature and man,’ added Bhasma.
‘I am hoping he’ll lose his nerve,’ said Harisena. ‘The nor’westers are threatening to break any time now and I don’t particularly want to camp out in the open in the middle of a thunder storm.’
I didn’t reply but I could see Harisena’s point. Despite scouts, guides, ammunition and logistic help from Mahendra, this fort could be near impossible to breach. Now rain-fed, the river looked angry and fording it would be extremely difficult. Besides, the fort was very well protected on the east thanks to the lake so our only option was to risk the crocodiles, cross the moat and attack the northern or southern gates. Even if the infantry and cavalry managed it with sheer speed, it would have to do so without the elephants and the catapults – both too bulky and cumbersome to risk crossing a moat brimming with crocodiles. But without elephants and catapult slingshots, we would be seriously hobbled in terms of attack options.
Kosala’s scouts had cleared up a large swathe of forest on the southern side and set up camp for us. But looking at the grey clouds swirling above, I directed my men to fell more trees and raise a palisade. We would need more than flimsy camps if we were to stick it out in this weather even for a week. We had to send out a message to Byagra that we weren’t going to budge come rain or sun. It was the only way to cower him into submission. Otherwise, we were looking at a long, rain-soaked, fever-infested siege ahead.
To be honest, things did not start well for us. Despite help from our Kosala friends, it still took the men nearly a week to set up camp and they had to battle a couple of vicious storms while they were at it. Still, by the end of it, they did a decent enough job. The palisade looked pretty stout and inside the men raised wood-and-thatch huts on stilts to keep us and our supplies dry if the river were to flood. The thick forests meant there was plenty of game and fodder for everyone and Bhasma kept himself occupied by routinely going out with our foraging teams to hunt for the pot. Though not a stone and brick fortification, our palisade looked much sturdier than the usual battle camp, prompting Bhasma to wonder whether we would spend the entire rainy season crocodile spotting at Asurgarh.
‘Aren’t you sending him an envoy to check things out?’ asked Harisena.
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Give him any indication that we are in a hurry to wrap this up quickly, and he’ll simply sit tight and wait us out. Remember, he’s inside, nice, dry and cozy, and we’ll be out here battling the elements. No, no. This is a battle of nerves. We can’t afford to blink first.’
Harisena’s brow arched into a question mark. ‘What if he doesn’t blink at all?’
I clapped him on the back. ‘He’s never won even a skirmish against Magadh. Trust me, he’ll break.’
‘Can’t we starve them out?’ asked Bhasma.
‘With a river on one side and a lake on the other? I don’t think so. There’s enough fish in there to feed them for the next month or two.’
For a while, all three of us chewed on the situation. I was convinced Byagra would blink but the only question was when.
‘He doesn’t need to fight – flood, fever and frustration will do his job nicely enough,’ said Bhasma. It was something none of us wanted to think about – the possibility that Byagra would take his own sweet time to come around. And as the weeks rolled on and the rain clouds burst upon us, Bhasma’s words began to sound more and more prophetic. Despite our best efforts, the camp soon turned into a marshland. Both men and animals died of snakebites and fever. Foraging became difficult in the incessant downpour. And the River Sandul was in spate – if the flooding got worse, our scouts warned us, the camp would be in waist-high water.
‘We are losing men every day,’ complained Bhasma. ‘How long do we wait for Byagra to run scared?’
‘Let us go back to Kosala, sire,’ said Harisena. ‘Wait out the rainy months. We can come back at the beginning of Bhadra (mid-August).
‘If we blink now, we will never defeat Byagra,’ I said. ‘We have to stare him down. There’s no other way.’
The days crept by one by one, dripping despair as more and more men fell prey to the shivering fever. We began to lose horses too though King Mahendra assured us he would send fresh supplies once the rains let up. By the beginning of Shravan (mid-July), we had been camping in that godforsaken site for nearly five weeks and morale was about as low as it could get. The men were desperate for action – any action – and even Harisena began to grumble that the lull would kill him if the mosquito bites did not. And then, Bhasma fell ill.
He’d gone hunting as usual but came back drenched and shivering. By nightfall, his body was on fire. The camp physicians kept a small bowl of camphor burning day and night in his sleeping quarters. They massaged his feet with warm oil, bathed his forehead and armpits, and covered the rest of him in quilts that smelt musty in the soggy weather. The fever raged on for three full days. On the fourth, the royal physician gave me the bad news. ‘If the fever doesn’t break in the next twenty-four hours, we could lose him, Majesty,’ he said.
I took Harisena aside and told him to send an envoy to Byagra for help. ‘I can’t risk losing Bhasma,’ I told him.
‘His mother will blame it all on you,’ replied Harisena.
‘Forget about his mother,’ I snapped. ‘I will blame it all on me.’
The next morning the charcoal sky looked so unforgiving that my heart sank. Bhasma was still delirious. The weather was angry. All hope, as far as I could see, was lost. And yet, just as our messenger trotted up to ride out, I saw a thin sliver of light break through the dark clouds. Moments later, a group of men, wearing the grass skirts and green laurels typical of Byagra’s tribe, rode up to our camp. It was a peace offering. The shivering fever had claimed more than a dozen lives inside the fort, the last being Byagra’s youngest and favourite son. The Tiger King had lost his appetite for a fight. He was ready to talk.
That afternoon, Bhasma’s fever broke.
We camped at Asurgarh for the remaining rainy months. I wanted to plan the next leg of the campaign and for that I needed the scouts to map the terrain first. Once he offered his fealty, Byagra proved to be a helpful ally, offering us his fort for shelter as well as his seasoned forest scouts to help chart the route. I wanted to hug the coast all the way down to Kanchi but I had only a sketchy idea of the topography and terrain. The scouts helped me work it out.
The first kingdom on our list was Kurala, ruled by Manta Raja. This lay to the south of Kosala and would give us access to the rich and very fertile land between two great rivers – Mahanadi and Godavari. This stretch was ruled by three kings – Mahendragiri of Pishtapura on the east of the Godavari river, Swamidatta of Kottura near Kalinga (modern Ganjam district) and Kubera of Devarashtra closer to the coast. All three were relatively small kingdoms but together they held the land that would give me access to the deep South. Harisena suggested he would go ahead and parley with them. After our resounding victory at Kosala and Byagra’s very public surrender, it would not be difficult to cower them into subjugation. Since we were demanding nothing more than an atma nivedan and a yearly tax, I reasoned, it would not be difficult to make these rulers see sense.
South of this region lay a number of kingdoms, some big, others small. This was the land hugged by three mighty rivers – Godavari in the north, Krishna in the south and Tungabhadra in the southwest. The kings who ruled this land included Dhananjaya of Kushthalapura whose kingdom lay between Godavari and Krishna, Hastivarman of Vengi on the banks of the Krishna, and Damana of Erandapalla, west of the Godavari. Beyond this was Nilaraja’s realm Avamukta on the banks of the Tungabhadra from where we would march in a southeasterly direction towards Palakka, King Ugrasena’s kingdom, just a day’s ride from Kanchi.
From what our spies told us, it was clear we would have to fight our way through most of this area. These southern kings were rich and enjoyed good neighbourly rela
tions with each other. Which meant even smaller kingdoms would not give up their suzerainty without a fight, knowing that their allies would back them up.
‘We could face a confederacy,’ said Harisena.
I agreed that was entirely possible. But with Byagra and Mahendra supplying horses, elephants and pack animals, we now had a base to venture forth into this very prosperous land whose glittering temples and beautifully carved Viharas were known all over Jamvudweep.
‘My spies tell me King Ugrasena of Palakka is a Pallava prince who is a distant kinsman of both regent Vishnugopa as well as his nephew, the boy king Skanda Varman,’ said Harisena.
‘Which means…’ I asked.
‘If we attack him, Kanchi will step forward to help,’ said Harisena.
I smiled. ‘We draw them out and take them on in one fell swoop … I like that.’
Harisena’s eyes glinted. ‘We could do that. Or you could simply marry Angai and make a kinsman out of an enemy.’
I looked straight into his eyes. They did not reflect the smile on his lips.
‘For the last time, I am not doing this for Angai,’ I said. ‘I am doing this for myself and for the future of my legacy. If you must carry tales to Datta, just make sure you carry the right ones.’
12
Blue Beyond
THE ROAR RANG IN my ears and my eyes were full of blue. The sun-kissed water sprayed salt and foam on my face. I was riding the wind. I was ruling the waves. Tantalizing and tempestuous, an exquisite expanse spread out before me. A rainbow of colours, all blue – inky blue, sky blue, aqua marine, grey blue … Crowned by the white surf, the waves swept me on and on. I knew not where. I knew not why. Perhaps the where and why didn’t matter after all. What did was what I saw all around – an infinity, stretching from horizon to heaven. Limitless in its promise. Relentless in its call. Primeval, powerful, pure.
The dream drew me in like a swirling vortex. My reality obliterated, I was sucked into the deepest abyss of that teeming azure. I drowned in my wakefulness. I woke up dreaming. My feet in the golden sand, the sun in my eyes, I gazed at the sapphire waves crashing at my feet. Kanchi. After a lifetime of waiting, I had reached the ocean’s edge. I no longer needed to hold a conch shell to hear the waves. Their roar rang in my ear, that brilliant blue filled my soul. I closed my eyes and lifted my face to this swirling swathe. I tasted the salt on my tongue. The brine and seaweed filled my nose. It felt like salvation.
The gentle footsteps behind brought me back to reality. ‘They want to parley, sire,’ Harisena whispered into my ear.
I turned around to face him. The campaign had changed Harisena visibly, his earlier athletic frame was now positively wiry and there were fine lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. His bronze skin was now deeply sunburnt and his lovingly tended to moustache was gone, replaced by a grizzled unkempt stubble. He looked much older than his age. Perhaps I did too but in the rough and tumble of a campaign, I had neither the desire nor the respite to look into a mirror. Maybe I wasn’t ready for what I would see, if I did.
It had been more than nine months since we set out from Pataliputra. My southern sojourn would not have been possible without my best friend by my side. He used a mix of deft diplomacy and threat to cower the Kalinga confederacy of Pishtapura, Kottura and Devarashtra into submission. And it was his quick thinking that helped save the day when we faced the formidable southern alliance of Kushthalapura, Vengi and Erandapalla on the banks of the River Krishna. One by one, they bent their knee to the Garuda Dhwaja just like I dreamt they would. I had planned to wrap up the rest of the campaign well before Agrayan (mid-December), when the rain clouds move south causing giant waves, fearsome tempests and massive flooding. Also, I was eager to go back ever since word arrived from Pataliputra that Datta had delivered a healthy baby boy. My mother had named him Rama Gupta. Just like that, I was now a father and suddenly the only thing that mattered was to rush back home and hold the child in my arms.
But things weren’t going as planned on this last leg of our campaign. The Pallavas were proving surprisingly difficult to overcome. King Ugrasena of Palakka had asked for help from his Pallava kinsmen in Kanchi, just as we had expected him to. That blood-drenched battle lasted two entire days but threw up no clear winner. In the end, Ugrasena had withdrawn into his fort and we had no option but to lay siege to it.
That was more than four weeks ago. Vishnugopa, the regent of Kanchi – expecting a similar treatment for helping his neighbour and kinsman – also withdrew into his city. I divided my force into two halves: Bhasma leading the Palakka siege and Harisena and I handling the Kanchi one. Fortunately for us, the weather held up. The skies remained cheerfully azure. The waves stayed tame and the weather sun-kissed and balmy. My men dug a makeshift trench around the city to wait out the enemy’s patience. We fished and hunted, held jousts and war games. And waited for the food to run out in Kanchi.
For the first ten days, both sides waited for the other to blink. Located on the banks of the Vegavathy River, the city had no shortage of water and initially small coracle boats would venture out fishing, well beyond the reach of our arrow shower from the opposite bank. Harisena began to grumble that we would have to wait for the river to run out of fish if we wanted to starve Kanchi into submission. I knew their grain wouldn’t last forever but I had no desire to continue the siege indefinitely. Although the weather was still surprisingly dry, we were dangerously close to the stormy southern winter. And I felt we were tempting fate by prolonging what should have been a quick day-long raid, at best. Bhasma too wasn’t having much luck with his campaign and for a while it looked like a stalemate.
And then, once again, the goddess of fortune smiled upon us. A trading hub, Kanchi’s population included merchants from across Jamvudeep and beyond. At any given point, Roman sura wine sellers jostled with Chinese monks and Persian horse traders while Jewish caravans occupied the parking lot just outside the city. Known for its fine cotton and silk weaving, Kanchi exported its wares not only to many kingdoms up north, but also to such faraway places as China, Babylon and Egypt. The trade made this cosmopolitan melting pot of a city very rich. But it also made Kanchi particularly vulnerable to disease. Plagues and pestilences travelled by boat and were carried into the city by infected visitors. The citizens mostly reacted with alacrity at the first signs of any sickness by instantly throwing out the infected persons as a quarantine measure. The trouble however is that a quarantine is impossible to impose under a military siege.
We first heard of the pox through our foraging scouts. It seemed the Naga traders who carried it into the city had kept things quiet for a while. But when the infected started to die, news spread like wild fire within the compounds. The authorities could not dump the bodies in the river for fear of infecting the water. So when they ran out of firewood for the pyres, the bodies were buried hurriedly all along the eastern ramparts that bordered the city’s grazing grounds. But as the infection spread rapidly, the dead began to pile up and the merchant guilds that controlled the commerce in this city of silk and gold began to push for peace.
Vishnugopa was caught between commerce and conscience. The guilds were backed by the city’s biggest temples, which effectively bankrolled much of the silk trade. Unless the epidemic was controlled, Kanchi would lose both lives and livelihoods. Without the taxes that the trade brought in, the city would not be able to afford an army, much less wage a war. But bending his knee to the imperial Garuda Dhwaja meant ceding suzerainty. As regent, Vishnugopa was loathe to give away a kingdom that was not his by right.
It belonged to his nephew and he, Vishnugopa, was merely its trustee. As long as he lived, he could not shun his duty towards his ward. So far, he had resolutely fobbed off all efforts at a rapprochement. Despite persistent pleas by the likes of King Dhananjaya of Kushthalapura, King Hastivarman of Vengi and King Damana of Erandapalla – all part of the defeated confederacy of southern rulers who were now helping us with supplies and diplomatic ef
fort – the Pallava regent stuck to his point that the kingdom of Kanchi was not his to give up.
But now that resolve seemed to be crumbling. Kanchi’s willingness to talk meant they were desperate. And that could only be good news for us. I clapped Harisena on the back and said, ‘It’s always good to talk. Ask them to send their man. Let’s parley.’
Harisena refused to meet my eye. ‘Their envoy is waiting for you, Majesty. It’s someone you already know.’
I frowned. ‘I don’t think I have personally met Regent Vishnugopa,’ I said. ‘And their king, Skanda Varman, is a child.’
‘Kanchi’s envoy is Princess Angai,’ said Harisena. ‘Parley, sire?’
She glittered like a jewel in the golden glare of a mid-morning sun. A profusion of rubies and emeralds glinted around her neck and covered her torso – an exquisite armour that chained in the pleats of her blood red chinanshuk sari with military precision. A wide gold belt accentuated her slender waist and thick ropes of mogra jasmine twisted themselves all along her long, tight braid. She walked in, hips gently swaying like a dancer, her golden anklets tinkling on the carpeted floor, holding a bunch of red and white long-stemmed lotus blooms in her hand. I stole a glance at Harisena and saw the familiar questioning arch on his brow. Was Angai here to talk or seduce me into peace?
‘This is a surprise,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, princess.’
‘I could say the same to you, Majesty,’ she replied, and then held out the flowers for me. ‘Welcome to Kanchi.’
‘This is a battlefield, madam,’ said Harisena brusquely. ‘We have no use for flowers.’
‘It is good to greet friends with civility, is it not?’ she asked. ‘Besides, I brought these flowers simply to thank His Majesty for keeping his promise.’
I smiled. ‘You remember,’ I said.
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