The brahmarishi cocked his head thoughtfully. ‘It appears that your choice of opponents may have increased to three now, rajkumar.’
Rama waited but the brahmarishi didn’t explain further.
Instead the sage added: ‘Go with my blessings.’
Rama and Lakshman shot off at a pace that made the grassy ground blur beneath their feet. They thrashed through the undergrowth, reaching the narrow hill path in an instant. They plunged into the shadowy dimness together and vanished from the sight of the procession.
Bejoo had started once again towards the front of the procession on hearing the first scream. He was almost there when the second scream erupted. The blood-chilling sound alarmed a skittish calf just ahead and the distracted young brahmacharya minding it lost his grasp on the tethering rope. The calf turned, unnerved by the violent screams, and bolted left across a downy meadow, heading for the thicket. Two of its fellows followed eagerly, their dangling nose-rings tethered by the same rope. The brahmacharya called out in alarm and leapt down from the cart to chase after them. He landed directly in front of Bejoo’s cantering horse and froze foolishly.
Bejoo pulled up sharply to avoid running him over. He held up his hand to indicate to his men following behind to halt as well, then gestured impatiently to the wide-eyed acolyte to get out of the way. A fresh round of screams from the hills confused and scared the boy further. He stayed firmly in Bejoo’s way.
‘Your calves are getting away, boy!’ Bejoo said.
The boy whooped, slapping the side of his shaved head, setting his pigtail wagging, and ran after his animals. Several other young acolytes ran to help him.
By the time the path was clear for Bejoo to ride on, the rajkumars were already sprinting up the side of the hill. He cursed under his breath to avoid offending the Brahmins and spurred his horse to a full gallop. As he rode past the seer-mage, he could have sworn Vishwamitra was smiling grimly up at him.
He veered off the path and up an overgrown hummock at the foot of the first hill. The two Vajra riders who were posted with the bigfoot regiment for purposes of coordination appeared ahead of him, still on the path.
He yelled at them to follow him and they swung their horses around with practised ease. From the thundering of hoofbeats behind him, he knew that at least half of the forty-odd horseback Vajra Kshatriyas were already riding up to take up a defensive position around the procession. Those were standing instructions.
Bejoo cursed again, aloud this time, not caring if any holy men could hear him. He had anticipated a possible ambush on their way to Mithila. But his scenarios had not envisioned the rajkumars leaving the procession to go seeking out trouble, dammit! Now he was forced to make the difficult choice of leaving either the Brahmins or the rajkumars unprotected.
He made his decision and yelled an order to one of the two horseback scouts who were on his flanks now. The man saluted and turned back towards the Brahmin procession. He would ride to the acting lieutenant of the horse squad and convey Bejoo’s order to bring the Vajra chariots up from the rear to form a picket formation around the Brahmins, thus freeing the majority of the horses to ride after Bejoo as back-up. They would be a minute behind him now, but their presence might be invaluable. Judging by the number and variety of those screams, the fight up in the hills involved a sizeable number of participants.
He rode fiercely up the hillside, thrashing through wild brush and overgrown limbs, vines and creepers. He had to leap over fallen logs, and duck and swerve to avoid being knocked off by tangled vine-webs and mossy branches. The remaining scout followed him with difficulty. Bejoo ignored the scratches and minor slashes he received, pushing his mount as hard as he dared up the overgrown hilly path. The princes had run so swiftly, he knew they must be empowered by Brahman shakti. If he didn’t make a superhuman effort, he would reach them too late to help much. He didn’t want another repeat of the Bhayanak-van battle, where he had arrived on the scene almost at the close of the fighting.
Up ahead, he heard another yell, this one less a scream than a cry of rage. Angry shouts followed. And above the drumming of his own heart and the pounding of the hoofs he caught a faint metallic sound that could only be weapons clashing. Someone was fighting up on the hill; several someones from the sound of it. He cursed again.
Why did the rajkumars have to get involved? What did they think they were doing anyway–acting as the Kosala nation’s voluntary roving police force? This wasn’t even Kosala territory. Whatever was going on up there, it wasn’t their fight. If the rajkumars were so chivalrous and eager to protect the innocent, they could simply have asked Bejoo to send a quad or two to investigate. Did they stop to think? To consult Bejoo, a much-decorated veteran and a high-ranking Kshatriya trusted by their father himself, a former teacher to them? No! They had simply discussed the matter with their new guru and gone running off into the wilderness to be heroes again.
Bejoo cursed once more and rode harder. An instant later, he broke out of the tortuous path and found more open ground. The going became a little easier as he rode on upwards through what seemed to be an ashwood grove. He was almost at the top now.
Bejoo knew this region. It was notorious for its high incidence of highway robberies and ambushes. After the last asura war, several Kshatriyas of the armies of the united Arya nations, exhausted by their ordeal, had forsworn their oaths and taken to the hills. Usually they would be considered deserters, but the aftermath of the war had left everyone disturbed and confused and it had been decided to simply let them go their way and live their lives as generation-exiles, meaning that even their progeny could never claim citizenry of any Arya nation ever again.
The authorities had assumed the deserters wouldn’t last long in this wild land anyway. That had been twenty-something years ago, back when the Bhayanak-van, whose still-smouldering ashes were situated only a few miles to the south-west, was still rife with asuras, and this whole region had been desolate and uncharted. These hills had been so insignificant, they hadn’t even been named.
As ashrams sprouted up across the southern boundaries of the nations and this route had slowly come into use, stray incidents of banditry had been reported with increasing regularity from the unnamed hills. But it hadn’t been worth the manpower or effort to clean the place up. Besides, the hills were a no-man’sland, belonging neither to Videha nor to Banglar. And they were certainly no concern of Kosala.
So what am I doing, riding up a hillside after two princes of Ayodhya on a sunny spring afternoon? Exercising my Vajra? Something like that, Bejoo guessed.
He spurred his horse up a last bank, her hoofs scrabbling briefly. To her credit, she never made a sound of protest, just kept her head down and worked her way up with the bit held tight between her teeth. He breached the rise and gained relatively flatter ground running east by north-east. Sounds of weapons and angry cries were clearly audible now, coming from up ahead, and Bejoo led his horse that way.
He rode through shadow and clear light, tree shade and open patches, across a hard-packed coppery soil strewn with old leaf-fall. To his left, winking through gaps in branches, in a winding valley almost a thousand feet below, the placid waters of the River Shona gleamed silvery blue in the afternoon sunlight.
The sounds from up ahead grew increasingly strange and incomprehensible. As he caught echoes of unmistakable animal grunts and cries, Bejoo flashed back to a memory of the battle in the Bhayanak-van, when he and his men had finally caught up with Rama, Lakshman and the brahmarishi, battling hybrid asuras in the deep Southwoods. That incredible sight would haunt his dreams for ever.
The memory reminded him of Bheriya for some reason, bringing an unexpected twinge of regret to his heart. Bheriya was gone, really gone. The man he had considered his surrogate son was dead. He brushed the thought aside fiercely. This was no time to think of dead surrogate sons. He had a duty to perform and two princes to protect, dammit!
Then he burst through into a clearing and his horse reared in alarm as
they came across a sight almost as bizarre as the one they had encountered back at the Bhayanak-van. He reined her in with difficulty.
‘In the name of Shani!’ Bejoo exclaimed in sheer amazement. What had the rajkumars got him into this time?
Rama felt the surge of power in his veins as he breasted the top of the slope. He felt as if he had merely climbed a ten-yardhigh hummock rather than a three-hundred-yard hill. Lakshman was right by his side.
‘Which way, brother?’ Lakshman asked, scanning the thickly wooded hilltop.
Rama replied by putting a hand to his right ear, miming listening. Lakshman nodded, listened, then pointed right. They sprinted that way.
Bright diamonds winked up at them from the valley to the left as they ran: the River Shona. Rama could see why travellers were tempted to cut across the hills. It was such a short way over. Besides, the hills–or at least this one thus far–seemed quite placid and tranquil. But he knew that was deceptive. Already, his awakening Brahman-attuned senses were growing aware of a peculiar sensation. It was like a creeping, crawling itch on the back of his neck, like a thousand very tiny pinpricks being inflicted all at once, too tiny to do harm individually, but infuriating in sum. He sensed watchers in the woods, eyes gleaming darkly from treetops, behind trunks, even from loose soil and leaf-fall mounds on the ground. The population wasn’t as sparse as first appearances suggested; they just didn’t wish to show themselves to these two-legged intruders.
His feet pumping rhythmically beneath him, Rama dodged rabbit-holes, snake-holes, ant-hills, tree trunks, and a surprisingly large number of enormous beehives that hung low, almost at eye-level beneath the mishmash of banyan, oak, ash, pine and bitter elm trees, while his mind analysed the messages his other senses were receiving. What had the guru said? Remember the tiger. Restraint. A chisel, not a hammer. True enough: why use the hammer of Brahman when his Kshatriya skills might be enough to deal with the situation?
A part of him wanted to use that hammer, to give in to that electrifying surge of Brahman shakti. To feel that numbing shock of divine effulgence passing through his cells, the indescribable ecstasy of drawing upon a power so vastly infinite, it could destroy universes and reshape existence itself. Not just that; he wanted to use the dev-astras again. To unleash forces so immense, they were named for their divine destructibility. Devastras: literally weapons of the gods.
He wanted to yield to the flow of Brahman, to awaken the other Rama, the one who was a fighting machine, an unstoppable engine of destruction. And once unleashed, that Rama would not stop until every living foe in sight was dead. He forced himself to exercise self-restraint, to obey his guru’s order.
The words of his first teacher, Guru Vashishta, rang in his ears like a mantra. First, assess. Then negotiate. Only when all else fails, resort reluctantly to violence. And even then, never strike the first blow.
The sounds from ahead grew louder. Rama had returned his arrow and bow to the rig on his back when Lakshman and he had begun running. Now, he drew his sword in a smooth motion, lopping off a tree trunk looming in his way. By the time the severed limb fell to the leaf-thick ground, he was twenty yards ahead. Lakshman followed him, perhaps just a stride after his brother. At Rama’s current pace, that meant Lakshman was all of three yards behind.
Rama didn’t know why his brother wasn’t as empowered as he was by the shakti of the maha-mantras, but it was so. He accepted it just as he accepted the surge of energy that flooded his muscles, accentuating that indescribable feeling of … invincibility? Godlike power? Whatever it was, he was starting to like it now, and liked the way it made him feel, the way it made all other normal everyday considerations seem trivial and distant. Karma and dharma. His eagerness to return to Ayodhya. His concern for his mother’s unexpectedly renewed relationship with his father. His father’s fading health. His own approaching coronation. The real reason for this unscheduled detour to Mithila. All of it faded before the shakti of Brahman like a trickle from a cupped hand drowned out by the roar of a waterfall. Right now, the only thing that mattered was sword and muscle. Blood and bone. Life and death.
Rama drew in a breath and leapt an enormous, impossible leap. He arced up, up to almost five yards height, slashing easily at obstructing leaves and branches, scything his way through into the clearing ahead.
He exploded into the clearing like an apparition out of thin air, releasing an ululating cry that carried for miles around, and landed with an impact like a small tornado. A cloud of dust and leaves swirled around him.
‘Ayodhya Anashya!’ he cried. Ayodhya the Invincible!
Lakshman put every last bit of energy he had into keeping up with Rama, and found he couldn’t. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t run as fast, it was as if Rama was just physically so much more powerful that it was pointless even trying to keep up with him.
Lakshman guessed that he was running at a pace of at least ten yojanas an hour. Ninety miles an hour! That was amazing by any standards. But even so, he seemed to be struggling to catch up with Rama. His brother’s legs were treadmilling as effortlessly as a sprinter doing a practice run on a training exercise, and even as he ran, Rama’s head turned sharply this way, then that, scanning, observing, scouring the wooded slope like a tiger exploring its territory with preternaturally developed senses. Rama was changing again, he knew, into the killing machine he had become in the battle.
Somehow, that didn’t make Lakshman feel very glad. For some reason, the sight of his brother transforming from a mild, soft-spoken, dutiful young Kshatriya into a savage fighting machine beyond human comprehension disturbed him profoundly. But he could feel the Brahman shakti throbbing in his own body and experienced a sense of overwhelming super-confidence. His doubts melted away as he entered a similar trance-like state.
As they approached the site of the disturbance, Lakshman watched Rama crouch low like a cheetah preparing to spring, then leap impossibly high into the air. He watched in admiration as Rama flew through the trees, sword slashing at obstructions, and disappeared from view.
Lakshman put all his effort into one final burst of speed, and exploded into the clearing ahead just in time to see his brother standing half crouched in the midst of a bizarre tableau, the air swirling angrily with the dust and disturbed leaves of his landing.
The reverberations of Rama’s war cry rang through the air and Lakshman echoed him.
‘Ayodhya Anashya!’
NINETEEN
Prime Minister Sumantra scrutinised the young Vajra Kshatriya standing before him. The soldier was clearly the worse for wear, his face revealing the rigours of his long, hard ride and his slashed uniform and blood-spattered limbs leaving no doubt that he had recently been at arms. He bore the three bands that marked his lieutenant rank, below the jagged lightning-slash symbol of the maharaja’s Vajra regiment.
Sumantra didn’t know Bheriya personally. His duties as prime minister of Kosala covered the entire gamut of administrative and governmental matters. Military affairs were only one part of his enormous responsibility, and while he was aware of every nuance of the overall picture, he could hardly be expected to know every soldier on sight. But Mantri Jabali, the minister for defence and military administration, recognised him and that was good enough for Pradhan Mantri Sumantra.
‘Well met, Lieutenant Bheriya,’ Mantri Jabali was saying now. ‘Your appearance testifies to your need for rest, refreshment and, um, hygiene. But circumstances demand that you delay those graces and deliver your missive first.’
Vajra Lieutenant Bheriya inclined his head formally. ‘Mantriji, I would have it no other way. My message is of far greater urgency than my personal needs. I am grateful to you and to Pradhan Mantri Sumantra for granting me this immediate audience.’
The prime minister nodded, acknowledging the man officially. ‘Go ahead then, Lieutenant. Deliver your message. We are as eager to hear your words as you are to speak them.’
Bheriya looked up at Sumantra, who was standing at his forma
l post to the right hand of the sunwood throne of Ayodhya.
The throne itself was empty, and the vast parliament hall nearly so. Sumantra, Jabali, Bheriya himself, Rajkumar Bharat, Rajkumar Shatrugan and an unusually large number of palace guards were the only persons present.
Bheriya bowed his head regretfully. ‘Pradhan Mantriji, forgive my inability to fulfil your command. My message is for the ears of Maharaja Dasaratha alone. This was my captain’s explicit command. To disobey it would be to dishonour my caste-oath.’
‘Lieutenant,’ Sumantra said with a trace of impatience, ‘I understand that you would violate the oath of the Kshatriya by not following your superior’s orders. But Mantri Jabali is the minister in charge of military affairs, which makes him superior in authority to your Vajra captain. And I myself am prime minister of the kingdom of Kosala, entrusted by the maharaja as well as the people of this nation with the governance not just of the seat of Ayodhya, but of the entire Kosala nation. Your captain would not regard giving us your message to be a violation of his orders, let alone your caste-oath! Come now, time is wasting. Speak your message and I shall act on it immediately if so warranted. This is a direct command, good Bheriya. Speak!’
But the lieutenant shook his head regretfully. ‘Pradhan Mantriji, once again, I beg your forgiveness. My master’s orders brook no re-interpretation. Either I speak with the maharaja alone, or I do not speak at all.’
Sumantra was growing angry, a condition that wasn’t common to his calm, measured disposition. Rajkumars Bharat and Shatrugan, who had escorted the lieutenant from the first gate to the palace for this audience, exchanged a glance. They had already told Sumantra about the man’s refusal to speak to anyone but the king. But Sumantra’s orders were equally clear: until prince-in-waiting Rama returned from the Southwoods, or Maharaja Dasaratha recovered enough to attend to his courtly duties, he was the one charged with governing the kingdom. Of course, he would not take any major action without consulting the maharaja himself, or at the least Guru Vashishta, to whom Dasaratha invariably turned for advice, but it was ridiculous to expect the maharaja to rise from his sickbed to attend to everyone who brought a vital message meant for his ears only.
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