Even before the two arrows had struck the knoll, three more were loosed. At the same time, the men not firing realised their leader had been downed and paused, surprised and confused. A few of them could not understand how Bearface had fallen at all; they were too drunk to connect the rock thrown by Rama with the man’s fall.
Rama was still poised sideways, presenting his silhouette to the pahadis, when the three arrows left their strings. He had been looking back to see where the first arrows landed, and there was not enough time to turn and judge the trajectories of the new ones. So he did it by the sound of their loosing and the hiss of their metal heads as they flew through the air, barely audible above the roar of the Sarayu. At the same time, he completed the half-turn he had begun, now presenting his back to the men, while bending over backwards, his hands shooting up towards the sky as he did so.
He clenched his fists as if grabbing mosquitoes, then straightened up slowly, still with his back to the men.
Two arrows were clutched in his right fist, one in his left.
The pahadis blinked, astonished.
‘By the shakti of Kali,’ one of them said.
Another man dropped his wineskin. Blood-red wine splashed from the open mouth, staining the damp ground of the riverbank.
The youngster, his bow still unfired, hiccuped loudly and lost his grip on his arrow. It shot upwards into the air, arced gracefully, and fell into the river.
The other men all looked at their fallen leader, then at Rama. He turned to face them, the arrows still clutched in his fists. He tossed the single one in the air, spinning it around and catching it by the tail. He judged its heft and balance. It was a well-made shortbow arrow, about half a yard long and reasonably well balanced. He tossed it again and caught it by the head this time, raising his arm to aim it at one of the men who had shot at him.
The man fumbled at his back, his hand seeking his quiver. His eyes were still wide with shock, his drink-addled brain unable to comprehend what he had just seen. Working by instinct, he found an arrow and pulled it from the quiver. Before the pahadi’s arrow could even reach the string of his bow, Rama tossed his first arrow back at him. Thrown like a dart knife with just the right force and the perfect angle to bring it around the force of the wind blowing downriver, it struck the man in the shoulder.
His bow and arrow fell from his hands and he fell with them, clutching at his shoulder, his face contorting in a silent scream.
In quick succession, Rama tossed the other two arrows, taking care to aim only at those who had loosed missiles at him, avoiding the ones with blades who had simply swaggered and threatened.
Both arrows found their marks—one hitting its target in the ample flesh of his side, away from any internal organs, the other striking a man in his upper thigh. He was standing on a rock a yard high, which accounted for the difference.
One foolish Garhwali pahadi, still not comprehending what they were up against, spat a curse and loosed a fresh arrow, aiming directly at Rama’s throat this time. Rama snatched the arrow from the air in a gesture like yanking off a neck-chain, and tossed it back at its owner in one single fluid motion. The arrow took the man in the throat. He sank to his knees, a gurgling liquid noise bubbling from his gashed windpipe, blood pouring down the front of his chest to merge with the winestains on his wolf-pelt. He fell forward on his face and lay still.
The nine men still alive and conscious stared at Rama silently. For several moments, none of them spoke. The youngster who had shot the arrow upwards was breathing heavily, as if he had run a yojana non-stop. His panting was punctuated by hiccups at irregular intervals, large lurching hiccups that made his entire body shake. Finally, he fell to his knees and lost the contents of his stomach.
The sound of the river grew very loud.
Rama spoke to the pahadis, looking them in the eyes one by one.
‘Cast down your weapons and there will be no more bloodshed.’
The clattering of wooden bows and metal blades on the rocky riverbank made an almost musical counterpoint to the river’s sound.
***
Lakshman was less than a hundred yards from the grove when he saw the ragged group coming towards him on foot. They looked like pahadis from their pelts but he had never seen pahadis behave in that fashion. The men were walking in a straight line and displayed none of the boisterousness of mountain folk. One of them was supporting a companion who seemed to be ill. Another pair were carrying a makeshift sling between them, in which a man with an obvious arrow wound lay—even from here, Lakshman could see the shaft sticking out. At the end of the line, another pair were carrying what appeared to be a dead companion wrapped in furs. And finally, bringing up the rear was a slender young form in white, walking behind the ragged line like a govinda shepherding his bleating flock home. Except that this particular flock was unusually silent.
Lakshman whispered to his horse, Marut, who immediately responded, slowing to a light canter. They reached the peculiar procession in moments. The pahadis stared sullenly up at Lakshman but offered no greeting or comment. Now he knew something was off here. Pahadis were notorious for their loquaciousness. Even their funeral processions were accompanied by incessant chanting and singing. Only one particularly large pahadi, the one being supported by his companion, glared hotly at Lakshman through a terribly scarred face. Bear slashes, Lakshman thought. During the years in Guru Vashishta’s gurukul, he had seen several examples of the work of the great Himalayan rksaa before, but they had all been the mauled corpses of waylaid pilgrims that he and his fellow shishyas had found on the slopes of the lower Himalayas. This pahadi had the worst scarring he had seen on a man still living.
Lakshman reached the end of the line and halted Marut.
‘Well,’ he said to Rama. ‘Looks like you’ve been busy this morning.’
Rama was holding a kairee in his hand, sucking on it with an excruciating expression on his face. He nodded at Lakshman. ‘Pass me some salt.’
Lakshman pulled out the small packet of salt that every Kshatriya carried to fend off dehydration as a matter of habit. He tossed it to Rama, who caught it and opened it one-handed, and then dipped the kairee into it. He sucked on the salt-encrusted fruit again, and this time he shook his head with delight. ‘Sundar. Ati sundar.’Beautiful. Truly beautiful.
Lakshman smiled as he turned his horse around. Rama’s fondness for sour kairee was so legendary it had made him the butt of many jokes in the past. Lakshman leaped off Marut, leading the horse by the reins as he walked by his brother. ‘So what did these scoundrels do to deserve their wounds?’
Rama shrugged, still intent on his kairee. ‘They were hunting a deer by the riverbank. I told them to stop. They didn’t listen.’
Lakshman glanced over the sullen group trudging silently towards the first wall-gate. ‘Three wounded, no, four. And one dead. And that young badmash there looks like he’s been throwing up more wine than he’s been drinking. And they all look like the nasty kind, the kind who poach on the king’s lands and don’t hesitate to murder wardens over a rabbit snack.’
Rama nodded, eyes shut as he relished his kairee. ‘Good thinking. Have some of the wardens take a look at them. They might find some familiar faces. Repeat offenders. Sumantra did say something about poachers on the king’s lands this past winter.’
‘So how did you do it?’
Rama grinned up at him, displaying lips and teeth yellowed by the sour fruit.
Lakshman sighed and nodded. ‘Ask a stupid question …’
Rama pointed down the long raj-marg. The king’s highway wound through the groves and sloping valley road of the north bank of the Sarayu for another full yojana before reaching the city gates. ‘Why don’t you ride to the first gate and have them send an escort for these wretches? Then maybe we can get to the practice session we’d planned. I bet you Bharat and Shatrugan are hard at it already. They’re determined to top us in archery as well as the chariot race.’
Lakshman snorted. ‘
They can dream.’ He took up the slack in Marut’s reins gently. ‘Why don’t you give your flock a rest for a few moments? I’ll be back before you can finish that kairee.’
Rama grinned and patted a bulge in the pocket of his kurta. ‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘I have more.’
THIRTEEN
Dasaratha was seeing the impossible. Two Vishwamitras? One claiming the other was an impostor, an assassin? What was going on? And if the sudra hunter was just an asura in disguise, how did he have the use of Brahman? Dasaratha had seen the sacred force used enough times in his lifetime to recognise that bluish light.
The man who said he was the real Vishwamitra stopped a few yards from the first Vishwamitra, the man whose feet Dasaratha had been about to wash with holy Ganges water a few minutes ago. He raised his hand and Dasaratha heard a whooping sound, the sound of heavy wildwood whipping through the air. He turned to see the sudra hunter’s spear, which had been lying on the street beside the stunned guard who had confiscated it, flying through the air towards its owner.
As it flew, making that whooping sound, it transformed into a hefty wildwood staff, identical to the one in the hand of the first Vishwamitra. The staff reached its destination and the man who claimed to be the real Vishwamitra raised it in a threatening stance at the amazed soldiers blocking his path.
‘Move aside, Ayodhyans. I have no wish to harm you. My business is with that impostor over there. He is the intruder and a threat to your king and city, not I.’
The soldiers looked at their captain uneasily. Dasaratha knew that scenarios such as this were not part of their training. He himself had never seen anything like it before. To his credit, Captain Drishti Kumar, swallowing his obvious puzzlement, shouted to the men defending the maharaja and the gates to hold their positions. Then he barked an order to the rest of the platoon to attack the stranger without hesitation or mercy. Dasaratha nodded approvingly. This was the result of his training, his army.
A moment later, he lost all faith in his own experience.
The challenger, seeing that his warning hadn’t been heeded, calmly sketched two half-circles in the air with his staff.
An explosion of blue light filled the avenue, visible for a mile in every direction.
The entire contingent of soldiers blocking his path, some forty-odd hefty armed men, were thrown up into the air like a child’s rag dolls. They flew to either side like sods in a field riven by a plough, and fell in a crumpled heap of tangled spears, armour and bruised limbs. Even in this moment of crisis, Dasaratha’s battle-hardened eyes noted that none of them were actually harmed by the sorcerous bolts. But if he could do that to them, he could easily have killed them too. He recalled what the sudra hunter had said about not wanting to break his tapasya by taking a life, and the first seed of real doubt began to sprout.
Now, nothing stood between the challenger and the first Vishwamitra. The man whom the sudra hunter had accused of being an impostor had turned to face his accuser. Dasaratha saw that the moment his back was turned, a quartet of soldiers rushed up and escorted Pradhan-Mantri Sumantra aside, out of harm’s way. The prime minister was trembling like a leaf. Dasaratha had seen Sumantra fight like a veteran in the heat of battle, but sorcery of this magnitude was any Kshatriya’s nightmare come true. Flesh and metal were poor armour against seers’ sorcery.
The soldiers did not attempt to lead Guru Vashishta aside. If there was anyone here who could deal with the situation, it was he, Dasaratha knew. Why had he not acted yet? It was this rather than anything else that made Dasaratha himself hold his tongue and wait before giving another order. He needed to hear the guru speak again.
Preternaturally sensitive to the maharaja’s mind as always, Guru Vashishta spoke again into the thick silence that followed. He addressed his words to the man who stood before him, the first Vishwamitra. His tone was calm, almost casual, as if he was discussing the weather and harvest with his seer colleague.
‘There seems to be a question of identity, my esteemed friend. This man has challenged your authenticity. Aren’t you going to respond in some way?’
The man whose feet Dasaratha had almost washed with his own hands looked at the guru silently. Then, with a perceptible reluctance, he turned and faced his challenger.
‘I am Vishwamitra. You are the impostor.’
The challenger smiled grimly at those words. ‘You will have to do more than claim now, assassin. Prove it!’
The seer-mage looked at him intently. ‘My word is my proof. Now be gone or be ruined.’
If he was acting, Dasaratha thought, it was one hell of a performance.
But then the other Vishwamitra spoke.
‘I cannot perform an aggressive act, impostor. It will negate my entire penance. I have not endured two hundred and forty years of tapasya in the fetid swamps of the Bhayanak-van just to be tricked by a shape-shifting asura such as yourself. As I did with the soldiers, I will only defend myself. Unleash your black sorcery. Do your worst.’
Guru Vashishta nodded and looked pleased, speaking again.
‘Well said, old friend,’ he said approvingly. The guru’s voice turned harsh as he turned back to the first Vishwamitra standing barely a yard before him. ‘It is time to show your true self now, impostor.’ And with a penetrating, bone-chilling cry, he uttered a mantra: ‘Reveal yourself, rakshas!’
With a shock, Dasaratha realised the guru was siding with the second Vishwamitra! Vashishta believed that the insolent sudra hunter was the real seer-mage! Which meant the other man was the impostor. Dasaratha watched, transfixed, as the drama at the gates took its unexpected new turn.
Just at that moment, reinforcements arrived. Out of the corner of his eye, Dasaratha could glimpse a senapati shouting orders to a quartet of elephant-mounted spearmen, while several chariot-borne archers blocked every ingress and exit. A second squadron of his personal guard began to ring Dasaratha, eager to spirit him away from this incomprehensible but obvious threat. It took two successive orders from the maharaja, spoken quietly but firmly, before they reluctantly settled for a defensive position around him. Dasaratha twisted and turned to get a better view. The sound of armour rattling and feet running echoed from all around. Whatever the impostor’s goal may have been, he would not get into the royal palace now. Not without killing several thousand of the finest warriors in the Arya nations. Behind the palace gates,
Dasaratha saw a crowd of servants and staff being kept back at a safe distance by guards, while at the far end of Raghuvamsha Avenue a growing crowd of citizens had begun to gather and were similarly being kept behind a line of spearmen. Word spread fast in Ayodhya, especially when the army alert was sounded. By now, the entire city would know that a crisis had arisen at the palace gates—a crisis involving their king himself.
The man who was the centre of all this attention, the first Vishwamitra, slowly raised his staff.
For a moment Dasaratha thought he was about to sketch a mantra in the air, blasting the other Vishwamitra to ashes, proving his own authenticity.
But with a tired sigh, the man simply threw the staff lightly up into the air and caught it. It was the gesture of a court juggler and it had the same effect. For an instant, every pair of eyes followed the rise and fall of the staff, shifting away from its owner.
In that instant he changed back to his true form.
FOURTEEN
A medley of gasps and exclamations rose from the massed soldiers surrounding the avenue. Dasaratha heard his own voice uttering a hasty invocation to Lord Indra, patron deity of warriors, general of the army of the gods.
The thing standing before Guru Vashishta was no longer a man, let alone a legendary seer-mage.
It was a rakshas. A demon from the netherworld, the third and lowest plane of existence, of which Lanka was the capital city and gateway. Its blackish-red skin, garments made of human skin, necklace of human infant skulls, wild snake-mouthed hair and blood-red eyes left no doubt at all. No seer would assume this form, even in jes
t. This was a born rakshas, and from the size of its horns, two-yard-long antlers formidable enough to match the headgear of a Himalayan black stag, he could see that it was a very aged and powerful rakshas. It towered at least thrice as high as Guru Vashishta, and the guru himself was over six feet tall.
The rakshas laughed, revealing a mouthful of splintered black fangs. The sound it emitted was nothing like human laughter.
Dasaratha’s hair curled and his teeth keened at the sound. Somewhere beside him, a soldier moaned and uttered a brief prayer. Dasaratha added his own, but silently.
Guru Vashishta was the only person on the avenue who seemed unperturbed by the apparition that had appeared before him. The fact that the creature was barely a hand’s reach away didn’t seem to bother him in the least.
He spoke, cutting sharply through the demon’s laughter.
‘Kala-Nemi, it’s been a while since we last met.’
The rakshas turned to look at Vashishta. His antlered head was too heavy even for his bulky muscular body, and the action was slow and deliberate. Dasaratha realised with a surge of disgust that the rakshas’s skin was alive, a crawling carpet of living tissue that bulged and boiled and seethed like the surface of a volcanic mass rather than an epidermal covering. And there were things living inside the beast’s body, he saw, their blind white worm-like forms snaking into and out of his flesh, his form undulating as they writhed.
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