Sundar’s ragtag following was a blip in comparison with the majestic armies of Madurai. Veera had ensured that Sundar’s retinue remained the same size, hunting down the few who had tried to follow him. Initially they felt Veera would hunt them all down, but then came the humiliation when the king simply ignored them, as if they were vermin. That made Sundar angrier. Treating him like an insignificant insect brushed under the carpet wounded him. He knew within that Veera’s strategy was feigned patience. He felt several pair of eyes watching him and conveying information to the palace. How he longed to do something to really infuriate Veera! But with no backing, he couldn’t do anything to either irk him or escape his might.
As Sundar roamed the forests, an exile in the land of his ancestors, he noticed large groups of people moving from the north and the north-west. He realized they had come across a group of refugees. They even shared the food they had with Sundar’s group. On questioning, they said their lands had been overrun by a mysterious invader from the north who worshipped a different god. They had subjugated both Warangal and Deogiri and were now camped in Dwarsamudra. The kings of the region – after some initial resistance – had realized that it was futile to hold on and had capitulated. Now they were vassals of a distant state.
Sundar’s eyes rolled in wonder. He saw a ray of hope, a log floating near a drowning man. He clutched at it. We have to meet their general, he thought.
Further information trickled in. The invaders were resting after attacking Dwarsamudra. They had already conquered Warangal, which now paid tribute to them. A man from the latest batch of refugees told him, ‘They don’t kill kings or molest the people – all they seem to want is gold. But then it may not be safe for long. We packed our assets and are migrating to Madurai. We hear that the king might be the best person to give solace to refugees like us.’
Little did he realize that this man with stubble on his cheeks, long matted hair, and bloodshot eyes was the brother of the king they were talking about. But Sundar was eager to know more. He said urgently, ‘Tell me about the army.’
‘They are Mohammedans from Delhi. Their leader seems to have immense powers, some say even supernatural.’ A vast power from the mysterious north wanted to place its foot in the southern lands. If they had overrun the Hoysalas, the next target would obviously be the Pandyans, who had more gold than anybody else in the world.
‘Their general, Malik Kafur, is interested only in gold,’ the man continued.
Sundar gave the man a quizzical look, which the man understood. ‘Why are we moving away then, you might ask? The fox has smelt the hen coop. Will he stay away forever? My life may not be precious but I have my sons and daughters to think of.’
‘Where is the enemy camped now?’ Sundar asked.
All of his problems seemed like half a speck now.
*
Veera was not at peace. Worry hovered at the back of his mind. Why did Vikrama’s words haunt him over and over?
A dust storm rose in the east, the horizon clouded by a pillar of red specks of sand. To the east of Madurai lay dry land and then the sea. A whirlwind from the shores would pick up columns of red dust and colour the town till the first rains of the monsoon washed it down.
Veera did not feel at ease. His nerves were on edge, some unknown fear nibbling at them. He made up his mind to go to the Meenakshi temple in the morning. Somehow, the force of Vikrama’s words resounded in his brain. Most of his soldiers did not have a single war to count as experience; they just indulged in military exercises, with soldiers laughing at each others’ misdemeanours. They wouldn’t have survived more than a minute in a real skirmish.
He brushed away these disturbing thoughts. But the worry nagged him at the back of his mind. It scratched him like a rash, gnawed like a rodent and lay smouldering like embers. Was he being warned by his consciousness of an impending disaster, a foreboding of danger in the near future to mar the illusory well-being of today?
*
The Sultanate had trampled mercilessly across Hoysala lands. The brave Hoysala king Vir Bhallala had bought peace from the invader, begging the Sultan to let him stay a Hindu and to leave his kingdom alone. He promised to fill the Sultanate coffers with gold, pledging to hand over everything he possessed except the sacred thread on his chest.
The Turks had now crossed Gujarat, Deogiri and Dwarsamudra and were at the borders of the Pandyan land. How could they fight so far from home? Sundar wondered at the source of their strength. He had been pushed too far, and like a man cornered, he took a decision. It was time he grabbed the opportunity that was within his reach. He would help the Turks to enter Madurai and then take over as king.
Veera had the support of the mainstay force and his spy network. Sundar knew every act of his would reach him by the morning. He could not win any war against him, so the only option he had was to align with the Turks. Sundar thought his plan would leave the treasury slightly lighter, but change the man at the helm. He sent his messengers to the Turks, who after initial parleys with the envoys, sent their guides to escort Sundar and a small party of twenty men to the Sultanate camp, where they would meet the general.
At sunset the next day, Sundar was on his way. Even from a distance, he could see the Turks had a huge army, with numbers he had never seen before: swelling ranks of soldiers with camels and horses and tents larger than palace rooms; cavalry numbering in the thousands, nay, hundred thousands; infantry and armour unlike any the southern kingdoms had seen. He realized the Turks meant business. If anybody could get Madurai for him, it was Malik Kafur, the Turk general he had heard so much about. I don’t mind ruling as a vassal and pay an annual tribute, if only that bastard Veera were overthrown, he thought.
As they neared the camp the smell of meat assaulted them. In the centre of the camp stood a large tent, a triangular pennant of green fluttering from the top. On it were words in a foreign script embroidered in golden thread. The letters glittered as they reflected the sunlight and the sight of them gave Sundar hope.
CHAPTER 20
A SLAVE BORN TO CONQUER
The sturdy stone fort of Warangal towered over a trail to a hunting ground that promised unfathomable treasures. But the Kakatiyas did not have shikar on their mind; instead, they were holed up inside their fort, playing a waiting game with the invaders outside the gates.
The immensely wealthy Kakatiyas of Warangal belonged to the lowest caste of Hindus – the Shudras. As a soldier under the Chalukya emperor Vikramaditya, their founder had won his laurels and a permanent tract of land. When the first Kakatiya king rebelled against his overlords, the emperor attacked the country to punish him, and the nascent kingdom was almost annihilated. But by a quirk of fate, they captured the emperor himself and thus negotiated a withdrawal of the invading forces.
Two generations of daughters had meant that queens had ruled over the land. The second queen, Rudramba, did not want her daughter to succeed – instead, she chose her grandson Pratap Rudra as the heir apparent. When Malik trained his eyes down south, Pratap Rudra had been king for ten years – in that time, he had enlarged his territory by overrunning the land of his neighbours. In fact, Pratap Rudra was himself on the verge of attacking the much-richer Pandyans down south but for Malik Kafur’s arrival at the head of the Turkish army.
As soon as the Kakatiyas got the news that the immense Sultanate army was heading for their kingdom, they withdrew into their fort and made preparations for the inevitable siege. A siege was a typical cat-and-mouse game. The invader tried to cut off the water and food supply within, while the besieged left troops outside the fort to harass the invader. The inhabitants would hastily slash and burn their crops so that the invading army was deprived of food.
On the way to Warangal, Malik noticed the landscape began to change. The green fields suddenly turned to ash-laden fields with charred crops. It seemed as if a giant hand had chosen to scorch all the land within a chosen circle. The element of surprise was important in his strategy, but this time
the enemy had been forewarned. He immediately foresaw a shortage of food and fodder for his troops.
Before Pratap Rudra’s soldiers had locked themselves in, they had stocked the fort in leisure, completing the job almost a fortnight back. They had hurriedly harvested the grain and took it, still wet, to dry inside. They had even trapped the rats inside the fort which would otherwise deplete their storage before the fort walls were closed. But the architects of the fort had gone one step ahead.
The Warangal fort had two concentric walls, one of mud and one of stone. The space between the two walls could be planted with paddy. It also had three rainwater catchments, which recharged the wells within the fort. Though this was the first time in a hundred years that Warangal was being besieged, Pratap Rudra was thankful for the thoughtfulness of his predecessors. The soldiers had commenced planting operations within the mud walls.
Malik rode into the Kakatiya stronghold at the head of a swift cavalry, ahead of the Sultanate army that would reach a day or two later. The silhouette of the fort came into view as a small line on the edge of the horizon backed by the blue of the sky. It loomed larger as he got closer and he could see that it was more formidable than he had thought. The walls, though seemingly built of mud, were of a great height, and it would be difficult to access them, especially if somebody was raining arrows from above.
Malik realized the Kakatiyas must have a secondary inner wall, perhaps more well-fortified than the outer one. He was disappointed; he had expected fortifications but not on such a massive scale. He felt nervous for the first time, knowing that if this expedition failed, he would be finished. He summoned the chief of the advance force to enquire, and found he was right: there were two walls. Malik’s eyes began darting around. He spotted a hill in the distance, an hour’s ride at the most.
‘What is that hill called?’ he queried.
‘Hanamkonda, sire.’
‘Can I view the fort from there?’ Malik asked, though he knew that he could.
‘Yes, sire, the view is good. You can see the rock wall within and details of the town too.’
The climb was a hard one for there was just a shepherd’s trail going up. As they went higher, the wind increased and their dresses flapped noisily. Halfway up was the star-shaped Thousand-Pillared Temple, dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Surya. On the pavilion outside the temple stood a huge granite Nandi, the bull. They climbed further, holding on to rotund boulders to maintain their balance. A couple of eagles nesting beneath a rock were disturbed and flew in circles around the intruders lest they harm their fledglings. But the intruders were after better prey.
From the top, the entire perimeter of the fort could be seen, with its insides clearly visible. The Kakatiya soldiers looked like ants, crawling in vast numbers on the grounds. Malik was amazed. This is how birds must view us; it puts everything in a different perspective.
The outer wall of the Kakatiya fort was made of baked mud – thirty feet tall, it ran leisurely for miles and miles. It had probably been built over a century, every generation adding to its width with wet mud and lime till it baked in the sun to turn as hard as rock. The undulating wall enclosed the area within, which had been planted with rice. The moat reflected the blue of the sky with very little algae on its surface, meaning that it had been filled recently. It supplied drinking water to the besieged population, and the rice could feed the city for nearly a year, while the invaders were constantly attacked by residual forces outside. The invader himself became the besieged here. Malik was amazed by the ingenuity of the Kakatiyas. With a few thousand soldiers, the outer walls could be protected like the boundaries of heaven itself.
The temples with their conical roofs stood proudly inside, their saffron flags fluttering. The huge building with gardens was perhaps Pratap’s palace. Malik murmured under his breath, ‘Let’s see what happens to your gardens after a month’s siege. Your army will eat even the grass on it.’ He turned his eye to the trails that stretched on either side of the fort. The dust pillar rising in the horizon was the army following him. The trail on the other side led to Madurai and perhaps even the isle of Serendip. The fort seemed to sit squarely on the path to glory.
Malik needed a workable idea before the army got impatient and more importantly, hungry. He analysed the possibilities. The chief of the advance troops agreed that the mud wall could not be scaled.
There were soldiers patrolling on top of the outer wall. The king, his court and the main forces were obviously stationed within the inner walls. There was plenty of space between the moat and the inner wall, with possible encampments for the soldiers in between. Two sentries outside were armed with swords and curved trumpets. Well, there is some time for the alarm to be sounded, Malik thought.
His army arrived by that night. By then Malik had chosen the location for the main and ancillary camps. Three camps were set up around the fort, all with wooden palisades connected by trenches. The tents were laid first. Three spots were marked by the water diviners and wells were dug immediately, vital to ensure a supply of water.
Malik took a ride around the entire perimeter of the fort. Pratap Rudra had been meticulous in his preparations. There was nothing that he could capitalize on at all. But he would not lose hope. You are but a human and you would have made an error, he addressed the Kakatiya king in his thoughts.
The siege had now begun. The invader always seemed to have an upper hand over the besieged. They had the world at their beck and call while the besieged were locked up in a claustrophobic corner.
‘The fort will fall in a week,’ Ulugh Khan announced in a meeting of the generals and the news seeped down to the ranks.
*
A month later, his words seemed empty rhetoric. The Kakatiyas were still firmly entrenched inside the fort, and instead, it was the Sultanate army which was now getting restless. They were in an alien land with the very earth beneath their feet repelling them. The promised loot and plunder was non-existent. The wealth of the south was there to be taken, but behind the imposing walls of the fort. The camaraderie between the troops vanished. As long as they had marched or attacked the enemy they had been happy. Now, as food supplies slowly diminished and with plunder nowhere on the horizon, they turned their ire on each other. They didn’t need to be told that their rations were decreasing; the quantity of water in their gruel by the day told them food was running out. The neighs of their horses, starved of fresh fodder, reminded them of their own hunger.
When Malik heard the soldiers grumbling that most of the food had been reserved for the generals, he clipped the rumours with a decisive move. He started dining with the soldiers and this gesture quietened them. For a couple of days they sang praises of their commander but their songs soon drowned in the hungry rumblings of their stomachs.
The bottled irritation within the idle men – used to being on the move and in action – made them turn on each other. A fracas broke out one evening during dinner. For people used to having sumptuous helpings of meat, the soup contained only vegetables and so one set of soldiers butchered a horse for their meal. That they had chosen a horse belonging to another regiment was the cause for contention and an argument had naturally ensued. The exchange became more heated until words did not suffice and blows took over. Then came the weapons. When the altercation was finally broken up by armed horsemen, several lay dead and many more bleeding. When the madness ceased, the rest of the men realized they were still hungry and began eating even as the dead and the dying were taken away. Comradeship returned miraculously. When somebody slipped in a pool of spilt blood, everybody laughed.
But not everybody was happy. When he first heard the report about the fight, Ulugh Khan had hoped for a full-scale mutiny. He came over to Malik’s tent within the next hour with reports on the fracas. His speech slurred with every word he uttered, ‘I hope you heard about the altercation.’
Malik nodded. ‘When the sturdy are idle they fight over morsels,’ he said wryly.
‘Then why do you ke
ep quiet? They feel as helpless as puppets with strings attached to alien fingers,’ questioned Ulugh.
Malik shrugged.
Ulugh was visibly agitated and said, ‘The men are ready for the assault; we can turn their anger on the enemy. A prospective uprising can be turned into a glorious victory.’
Malik quietly refuted the argument. ‘Let’s wait for some more time, the enemy will capitulate. He is as hungry as we are.’
Ulugh Khan was exasperated at Malik’s indifference. ‘You fail to understand the psyche of the besieged. In my experience I have seen their disdain for death and they will gladly starve until there is no man inside to even open the doors for you. If they don’t surrender in the first week, they’ll never do it. In another week we will have a full-blown rebellion on our hands. If we wait, there will be no one left to fight the enemy.’
Malik disagreed, his silence punctuated by a shake of his head.
‘Why won’t you listen to me and let me put some sense into your head?’ Ulugh Khan was almost screaming.
After a pause, Malik said, ‘The Sultan has given charge of this campaign to me and only he can annul my decisions. My decisions are based on the Sultan’s motives. If you want to do something contrary to his orders, you’d better send a messenger to Delhi and wait for a reply.’ Blood drained from Ulugh’s face. By mentioning the Sultan, Malik had silenced him. Another word would mean sedition.
‘But that’ll take a month,’ he protested.
‘Forty-five days,’ Malik corrected him.
Ulugh Khan raised his hands above his head in a sign of disapproval and resignation. ‘I should never have let you out of the harem,’ the general remarked matter-of-factly, with no distaste in his voice.
Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai Page 34