The Aryavarta Chronicles Book 03: Kurukshetra

by Krishna Udayasankar

  Hardly a muhurrta later, the eleventh day of battle began. Abhimanyu and Uttara rallied the combined forces of Matsya and the Panchala forest-dwellers with the help of Uttamaujas, Shikandin and Bhim. Dhrstyadymn had decided that the forces would march out in a half-circle formation, a tepid but not inappropriate counter to the crane attack array Dron had formed. What he intended to do eventually was to pull forward the centre of the half-circle to form a wide, straight frontline, which Bhagadatta would be tempted to run down with his elephants. Acutely aware that much could go wrong between the plan and its execution, he moved up and down the ranks on a horse, making constant adjustments for every variation of the unexpected that could possibly disrupt their plans.

  ‘Do you think Acharya Dron will…’ Uttara began, watching the obviously tense Dhrstyadymn, as she rode into formation on Abhimanyu’s rig.

  ‘He will,’ Abhimanyu affirmed. ‘The crane formation uses its head and centre – in this instance, the positions occupied by Bhagadatta’s divisions – to break through enemy lines, and then the crane’s wings swing in to trap the enemy from the side. Uncle Partha and Uncle Sadev already command the edges of our half-circle, in anticipation of an attack from the sides. As for Bhagadatta…’

  ‘He is where we want him,’ Uttara said.

  ‘Yes, but you are not. Do you really have to fight on foot today, Uttara?’

  ‘I need to be with my soldiers, Abhimanyu.’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘I’ll be fine. We may be spread wide but our lines are still more than a hundred deep.’

  ‘Which is no use if you decide to stand in front of the hundred men and not behind them.’

  ‘Stop worrying! I…’ Uttara had no more time to reassure Abhimanyu, for she could see Dhrstyadymn’s flag-bearers riding up and down the ranks, signalling for the army divisions to take their final position. She smiled and slipped over the side of his rig without another word, weaving her way through the marching soldiers to join her unit. Abhimanyu did not watch her go. He kept his eyes straight ahead, on the enemy. He knew that the best way to protect Uttara was to do his share in the battle and to do it well. Still, he could not help but send up a silent prayer for her safety. He suspected that despite her apparent unconcern, she would do the same for him.

  ‘I’m surprised he let you go,’ Uttamaujas told Uttara the moment she reached her position. The two of them were in the middle of the infantry formation, flanked by their best soldiers on either side. On them lay the responsibility of beginning and ending the deceptively simple movement of troops that would, if all went as planned, isolate Bhagadatta’s command elephant. Once that happened, Bhim, who rode along the flanks of the half-circle, would be able to cut in from the side and deal with the beast. As for the rest of the elephants… Uttamaujas smiled at the thought.

  Yet, anyone who knew the first thing about battle knew that there was nothing simple or easy about moving thousands of men in and out of formation, that too while under attack. ‘The lines must hold,’ Uttamaujas said, more as a reminder to himself than to Uttara.

  She nevertheless replied, ‘They will hold.’ Her conviction, however, gave way to a mix of doubt and irritation as she saw Dharma Yudhisthir ride up from their left and past them, till he took up a position not too far from the first line of Uttamaujas’s unit. ‘What is he doing here?’

  ‘I have no clue.’

  They did not get a chance to find out further as the trumpets trilled yet again, and the flag-bearers signalled, as had been agreed, for their formation to come to a stop. From where they were, both Uttara and Uttamaujas could see that Dhrstyadymn had brought the entire army around the battlefield and to the side so that the river was behind them. Lest Dron suspect why he did so, Panchali had suggested a feint – men had been sent well before dawn, ostensibly to dig trenches into which stakes could be placed and the river diverted.

  For a while, all was silent and still, oppressively so. There was no wind, and sweat trickled down every face, for more reason than just the warm sun. Whispers of ‘Steady, steady’ ran up and down the lines, and the soldiers’ breathing seemed loud and laboured. They waited.

  It began as a sound, an even beat that should have been soothing in its consistency but for the fact that the very earth echoed with its force. Uttamaujas, Uttara and their men felt it first in the pit of their stomachs. Then it rose up as fear, pure fear, to race in their hearts. Nearby, a soldier let out a whimper of terror, and another began a loud prayer. Gritting his teeth, Uttamaujas began to tap on the ground with the butt of his spear with all the courage he could summon. Next to him, Uttara joined in beat for beat, till one by one every soldier around them had taken up the defiant rhythm, a song of valour to accompany their stand. A trumpet trilled yet another command, but it was lost in the surge of noise that followed.

  A wave-like boom, but not quite, as though it was thunder that flowed and not the sea. The earth shook, first in the fearful imaginations of men and then in indisputable reality, and the best of soldiers quailed as the situation became apparent: Dron had given Bhagadatta the orders to charge down the enemy. The smell of urine filled the air, as did the stink of vomit. A brief cry went up as a soldier fainted. Uttara barked an order to the rest to stand firm. Uttamaujas smiled to himself as he heard her cursing like a hardy soldier. And that was all the levity they had time for.

  ‘Forward!’ They heard Dhrstyadymn shout out the command in the distance. It was taken up by the heralds and echoed over the entire army.

  ‘Forward! Forward!’ Uttara and Uttamaujas rallied their units to rush ahead till they heard the command to stop. With a precision that would have been the envy of the best-trained armies in the realm, the combined forces of Matsya and the forest-people came to a halt. The half-circle had extended into a single straight line. They were close enough to hear the orders being called out on Bhagadatta’s side, to spread out the elephants and crush the entire enemy front at one go. And then the penultimate signal as the mighty tusker Supratika rallied his elephantine kin with a trumpeting call that rumbled through to each corner of the battlefield.

  ‘Stone and Tree protect you, Princess,’ Uttamaujas said, smiling at Uttara for what he knew might well be the last time.

  ‘Rudra protect you…Prince,’ she replied, enjoying the look of surprise it brought to his face. She added, with affection, ‘Fight well, my brother.’

  And then the elephants were upon them.

  Even a man of the forests such as Uttamaujas could not help but feel frightened at the sight of the solemn, heavy beasts charging at him. He found himself thinking, in a detached way, that there was a more primal and real quality about this fear than what one otherwise felt in battle. It grew as a single elephant filled his field of vision, charging down barely a spear’s throw away. He could see the bull’s eyes, reddened from the liquor it had been given to spur it on. The animal’s trumpeting call filled not just the field outside but shook through Uttamaujas’s body as though he were hollow.

  ‘Hold! Hold!’ Uttamaujas urged his soldiers. He knew it went against their every instinct to not let their weapons loose against the mammoth, but they had to wait till it was too late for the enemy to see their plan.

  Just as he feared that even his disciplined forces might lose their nerve, he heard Dhrstyadymn blast the arranged signal on his war conch. ‘Now! Move, move!’ Uttamaujas urged his men to move right, while Uttara got her troops to move left. All over the battlefield, the widely spread troops of Dharma’s army parted, clustering together in planned precision to create hundreds of corridors that would let the line of elephants through.

  It did not always work perfectly, and Uttamaujas heard the gut-wrenching screams of those who met their death under an elephant’s foot. Those at the very front of the formation, especially, had little time to get out of the way. The smell of blood and freshly crushed flesh spurred the animals on further in their maddened run, and their riders’ efforts to control them, to get them to move sideways int
o the clustered flanks instead of along the corridors between them, went completely in vain.

  Uttamaujas began running towards the battlefront, as he knew Uttara and other section leaders were doing, all over the battlefield. They had one more important task to finish before this part of the plan would be complete: Bring down the enemy soldiers on as many charging elephants as possible. That way, left to their devices, the animals would run through Dharma’s army, into the open space behind them and right to the river’s edge. There, the elephants would stop. Their war-rage spent, they would slowly return to the natural, peaceful state of their kind. After that they could be easily captured or, as Uttamaujas hoped, led back into the wild.

  But first, the soldiers, Uttamaujas reminded himself. Seeing his chance, he flung his spear at the mahout guiding the elephant nearest him. The man took the spear in his chest and toppled over, but one of the six archers on the elephant’s back immediately took his place. Cursing, Uttamaujas reached for his bow and let fly three arrows in quick succession, two of which found their mark.

  ‘Get down!’ Uttamaujas felt Sthuna’s hand on his back, pushing him aside just as an arrow shot through the air where his head had been but moments ago.

  More arrows rained down on him and his men, released by the surviving men on the nearest elephant, as well as the archers on the other four elephants that had charged into the corridor formed by his and Uttara’s troops.

  ‘Let go of me, Uncle!’ he shouted, and jumped back on to his feet and into the fray. ‘The riders, get the riders,’ he cried out, reminding and rallying his men at once. Then he began exchanging arrows with the enemy.

  Two of the elephants on Uttara’s side of the corridor were now riderless. It did not take long for Uttamaujas to see why. Uttara was sacrificing her men, ordering them to set up a continuous barrage of arrows at the moving targets instead of pausing to take aim. Immediately Uttamaujas turned to the forest people around him. ‘Stand firm. Shoot at will. Don’t stop!’ He took a position right at the very edge of the flank, setting arrow to bow with a will. He was vaguely aware that Sthuna was next to him, but there was far too much tumult for him to make out anything more.

  A cheer further down the line told him that the strategy had worked. Two more elephants were now riderless, and the beast that had led the charge had cleared the ranks completely. Soon, the bull would reach the river’s edge, where the waters would cleanse his blood-stained tusks and addled mind. With a renewed vigour Uttamaujas began running behind the last remaining animal. Many of his soldiers were with him, as were some of Uttara’s men. It was then that he realized with a shock that Sthuna was not among them.

  Uttamaujas slowed down a little, his concern taking the edge off the fight for a moment. But before he could turn back or scan the mass of bodies of the living and the dead for his uncle, he heard Uttara shouting to him to leave the last elephant to the others and get back to the frontline.

  Uttamaujas turned and began moving towards the front, counting his remaining arrows as he ran and then, with a curse, strapping away his bow away and drawing his sword. Without breaking his stride, he pulled a spear out from the flesh of a dead soldier – one of his own men – but went on without sparing regret or remorse. The battle was far from over, for they had yet to face the greatest of dangers: the might of Supratika.

  15

  THERE WERE ELEPHANTS, AND THEN THERE WAS SUPRATIKA. BARDS all over Aryavarta had sung of the majestic tusker’s allure, but in a rare twist of reality, truth had outdone imagination and praise. Even at a distance, Supratika took one’s breath away, not just by his size and presence, but an air of nobility that was distinctive among men and unparalleled amongst beasts.

  Bhim, Uttamaujas and Dharma, all three stared wide-eyed at the gigantic bull-elephant, no exception to the awe he inspired. Bhim, on the left flank, was the first to react. He instructed his rig-driver to speed in from the side, right into Supratika’s path, just before the elephant could enter the human corridor and lay waste along it. It all happened very quickly after that. Bhim’s horses neighed in fear and tried to bolt; the rig hurtled through the air to land, overturned, in the charging elephant’s way while the rig-driver was caught under the debris.

  Supratika’s great tusks tore through two of the trapped dapple-brown horses while the third came under his mighty feet. With a jerk of his head, the mammoth threw the impaled horses high into the air. The stallions were dead when they hit the ground. Tusks red with blood, the smell further fuelling his battle-craze, Supratika brought down one giant foot on the overturned chariot-rig and then the other, crushing wood and metal as though they were chaff, leaving no trace of the rig’s former occupants. Trumpeting loudly, the pachyderm kicked the debris out of his way and headed right into the heart of their army, turning Uttamaujas’s orderly unit into a mindless, fearful mob rushing to get out of the tusker’s way.

  ‘Bhim!’ The name sounded out as an otherworldly shout, one that held loss, disbelief and inestimable pain. It came from none other than Dharma Yudhisthir. He stared at the remains of Bhim’s rig, at the dead horses and men strewn around it, and at the brave but helpless Uttamaujas, who was trying valiantly to rally the soldiers. His gaze finally came to rest on the blood-maddened Supratika.

  ‘Stand firm! Stand firm!’ Dharma blazed with a sudden fervour, as though his brother’s fall had brought forth in him a new fount of courage. He guided his rig through the dispersing men, gathering them to him into a simple but defiant wall that he meant to place in Supratika’s way. ‘Spears! Man your spears! For Bhim! Fight for Bhim Vikrodara!’ he cried out.

  A pained yell sounded in the distance, where Hidimbya and his people faced two more elephants that charged headlong in the space between their ranks. Dharma did not understand who shouted out or why, but between their call and his, the forces from the Eastern Forest rallied once more. They clustered around him in a narrow but deep formation, one that would certainly slow Supratika down, though at the cost of a great number of lives. It was an opportunity, one that could not afford to be wasted.

  As awareness of the fact dawned on him, Dharma raised his war-conch to his lips and let out a series of long and short blasts that echoed across the battlefield in a call for assistance. Confident in the knowledge that others would certainly finish what he now started, he drew his bow and began to engage Bhagadatta. It was not, Dharma mused in that detached way of a man who knows his death is imminent and so has nothing left to fear, a dramatic battle. All he had to do to get to the Pragjya king was release arrow after arrow and bring down the guards clustered around Bhagadatta in the turret mounted on Supratika’s back. In the meantime, Supratika continued to storm ahead, picking off men and beasts at unexpected leisure for his enraged state.

  ‘You must leave now, Your Highness. I’ll hold the line.’

  Dharma turned at the voice in his ear, to see Uttamaujas, his hair matted with blood, his dark skin beaded with sweat, next to him on the rig. Drawing his simpler bow, the forester repeated, ‘If your life is lost, Your Highness, all this will have been for nothing. Bhim’s death will have been for nothing. Please…I need you to move out. Now! A horse waits.’

  ‘Two bows are better than one,’ Dharma replied, and turned back to the enemy. Supratika was close enough for the two of them to smell the tusker’s musk, the salt-and-earth tang of his temporal juice and the blood of men. It was intoxicating and frightening at once.

  ‘Your Highness…’ Uttamaujas protested again, but he was cut off by another voice.

  ‘He’s right,’ Govinda said, pulling up behind them, ‘Two bows are better than one, but better still are three.’

  ‘Especially,’ a dour Partha added, notching an arrow as he spoke, ‘when it is our dear brother we avenge.’

  Dharma did not reply, but grunted with satisfaction as the Gandiva’s rhythmic twang filled the air.

  The flurry of arrows the three archers set up slowed down Supratika but did not stop him.

  ‘I can’t
see Bhagadatta,’ Uttamaujas suddenly said, ‘What if… what if he is not there?’

  ‘He is, he must be,’ Govinda replied. He sat back, his rig now a stationary object in the charging elephant’s path. His eyes flickered, sad, over the wounds on Supratika’s body, the pain in the elephant’s red eyes.

  ‘It’s too late…’ Partha said. ‘I don’t understand how…’

  He did not have to explain further, for they stared, astounded, as a new kind of activity on the turret answered the incomplete question: Men, dead from well before Dharma and Partha’s arrows had pierced their bodies, tumbled off Supratika’s back like humansized dolls, pushed by their comrades, who had remained hidden from sight and protected from shafts by the closely-placed cadavers of their fallen fellows.

  ‘It’s a trap!’ Dharma exclaimed.

  ‘An old trap indeed,’ Uttamaujas said. ‘And one I should have foreseen. We of the forests are not strangers to this trick.’

  ‘Nor are we of the Central Lands. But to hide behind the dead is…’

  ‘Ingenious,’ Govinda completed.

  They watched as Bhagadatta’s archers took their positions and notched arrows to their bows. ‘We can still get them!’ Partha cried out, and began to let loose his shafts at great speed. Dharma and Uttamaujas followed suit, and the latter called out to the men to release arrows, spears, whatever weapons they bore, at the enemy.

  Supratika let out a blaring call that knocked Uttamaujas down with its sheer force. The heat of the tusker’s breath was upon them like a formless flame, an overwhelming wind. Dharma shouted, wordless and defiant as a mighty trunk snaked towards them, filling his entire vision. Partha let fly a last, desperate arrow, and Uttamaujas closed his eyes as a smile spread on his face at a final thought of his home. Govinda grit his teeth as he remained motionless, gazing into Supratika’s eyes, his own shifting shades as a host of thoughts flashed through his mind. He gasped out loud as he noticed the immeasurable pain that flooded the elephant’s red eyes.