Several hundred kumbha-rakshasas lay dead, strewn in a wide sweeping arc that ranged from a yard before him to several dozen yards in every direction. The ranks of the remaining kumbha-rakshasas had been broken in places, disturbed by the bodies of those he had sent flying. They were repairing those breaks as quickly as possible, deeply entrenched military discipline keeping them efficient. But he could see from the face of their leader and from the change in the eyes—wider now, less angry, more shocked—that his unexpected superiority had not been what they had expected.
‘Rakshasas,’ he roared. ‘Once more I entreat you. Petition your master Ravana to release the lady Sita and show repentance for his transgression. Or face my wrath and see your kingdom destroyed. This is my last warning to you. I am Hanuman, servant of Lord Rama of Ayodhya.’
Again, that quivering of the hornlike mouth appendages. Now that he had engaged them in close combat, he knew that the things around their mouths were horns only in shape; in substance, they were cartiligous growths that were partly nostril-like in function and partly lip-like appendages that covered their mouths. Their appendages were quivering rapidly. He took that to mean extreme shock and outrage.
‘How do you answer?’ he called again.
Their leader answered for them all. ‘Kumbha-rakshasas!’ he thundered in a hoarse but powerful voice. ‘Kill the invader! All tribes, charge!’
With a roar of approval, the entire force charged at Hanuman.
***
Ravana threw the goblet of wine at the water-screen. The heavy gem-encrusted gold cup passed through the image of Hanuman slaying the last of the kumbha-rakshasas and flew on to strike the head of a bowing kinkara with a dull thud. The rakshasa reeled, blood streaming from his head, and fell back on the floor. His companions to either side bowed quickly, picked up their fallen comrade and removed him from the hall. Ravana failed to even notice the incident. His sunny disposition had given way to a foul mood as abruptly as hot milk curdled when sour lime was squeezed into it. Supanakha kept her distance; she knew from experience that someone would end up on the receiving end of that mood, and she had no desire to be the unlucky one.
Rising from his seat, Ravana gestured sorcerously and muttered a shloka in a tone that sounded as if he were cursing rather than incantating. The water-screen collapsed with a splash. Supanakha was far enough for drops not to land on her, but she winced anyway.
‘My lord.’
Vice-marshal Jambumali was on his feet. His face appendages quivered at the memory of the sight of his father and fellow kumbhas being slaughtered. ‘My lord, permission to go and confront the vanar.’
Ravana’s only response was to gesture, opening a portal. Jambumali went through it and disappeared. Supanakha leaped down from the dais. One of Ravana’s heads turned to track her.
‘Where are you going, cousin?’
She flicked her tail. ‘I want to see. I’ve never seen kumbhas being slaughtered like deer or rabbit. Besides,’ she licked her lips. ‘A lot of good meat will go to waste.’
He plucked a knife out of mid-air and flung it at her. She scampered, racing into the portal just before it slid shut, turning sharply to the left as she went through. The knife came with her, missed her right ear narrowly and imbedded itself in the earth with a snick.
The smell of blood assailed her senses. It was ripe, powerful, thick in the air. And it was all kumbha blood. She breathed it in, relishing the scent. It had been a long time since rakshasas had been forbidden from eating the flesh of other rakshasas, even when that act was part of a victory ritual in the time-honoured tradition of tribe wars and clan wars. And among all the tribes and clans, she particularly loved kumbha flesh. Only kinkara meat was sweeter. But Jambumali was already racing up the hillside and she wanted to see how he handled the vanar. Almost regretfully, she raced up the hillside after the vice-marshal. He reached the top just yards before her.
‘Vanar!’ he cried, his voice tinged with hysteria. ‘You have slain all my kinsmen, destroyed my entire tribe. These were the finest warriors that ever lived in all the three worlds.’
Supanakha scoured the hillside sharply, seeking out the vanar. For a moment, she almost didn’t recognise him, splattered with blood and surrounded by kumbha corpses as he was. Then she recognised the familiar proboscis shape of his mouth and the unmistakably monkey-like tail curled upward behind him, like a bow without a string. He stood as still as a statue washed in blood, amidst the carnage of his encounter with the kumbhas.
He seemed unimpressed by Jambumali’s words. ‘Not the finest,’ he said. Then, to Supanakha’s surprise, a tinge of sorrow flickered across his features. ‘But worthy opponents, no less. I appealed to them not to fight me. They would not heed my warning. Will you?’
Jambumali responded with a bellow of outrage. ‘My father lies there, murdered by your hand. There can be no armistice between us.’
Hanuman sighed, lowering the battered and bloodied gold pillar that he had wielded as a mace. ‘I beg you, reconsider. As a vanar, I have no compunction about slaughtering rakshasas by the thousandfold. But my lord Rama abhors needless taking of lives, and as his servant, I respect his wishes. Pray, take my petition to your lord Ravana and end this violence.’
‘Liar,’ Jambumali said, his face appendages shaking so much that ichor flew to either side like raindrops from a shaking bough. He had strung his bow while speaking and now raised it, pointing an arrow at Hanuman. ‘If you are half as treacherous as your lord Rama, then even the lowest serpent that creeps on the ground would not hold truck with your assurances. Any servant of that dastardly villain cannot be a person of any honour. In killing you, I will be ridding the world of a vile spy of the worst mortal that ever lived.’
Supanakha saw Hanuman’s eyes widen with surprise, then shock, then anger at Jambumali’s words. ‘How dare you speak of my lord Rama thus! It is your lord Ravana who is the villain. Is he not satisfied with his transgressions against my lord that he should have poisoned the minds of all rakshasas as well?’
‘Silence,’ Jambumali said, his quivering ceasing as he stilled himself in preparation for the loosing of his arrow. ‘I will hear no more lies and deceit from your monkey lips. Defend yourself if you can.’
And he loosed the arrow so forcefully that Supanakha could feel the vibrations from the bowstring ringing in her teeth. The arrow went through Hanuman’s left shoulder, its iron head striking bone with a sickening sound. Supanakha licked her lips. So the vanar’s skin could be pierced after all. How interesting. But then why had the weapons of the other kumbhas had no effect?
Hanuman ground his teeth, clearly feeling the pain of the wound, but he neither looked at nor touched the arrow in his shoulder. ‘One more time I appeal to you,’ he said, ‘and it is for the sake of my lord Rama that I grant you this final opportunity to redeem yourself. Will you not go to Ravana and tell him my petition?’
Jambumali had strung another arrow, this one with a crescent shaped head. Its sharp blade gleamed like the moon in a midnight-black sky. ‘Save your breath, vanar,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘It is the last you will breathe.’
He loosed the second arrow. It took Hanuman in the chest, embedding itself with a sound that made even Supanakha wince.
Blood flew from the wound, spattering across the vanar’s body, still wet with kumbha blood and ichor.
Still, Hanuman took no note of the arrow, even though she knew the wound must hurt him terribly.
‘You have not given me a proper answer,’ the vanar said. ‘Therefore, I still raise no arms against you. Tell me. Will you or will you not?’
Jambumali loosed three arrows at once. These were decorated with plumes, Supanakha noted with delight. They struck the vanar on different parts of his body. One hit Hanuman in the belly, another took him in the thigh, and a third struck the flesh between his neck and his shoulder. All three went deep, their plumed barbs pointed outward. Removing them would mean losing lumps of flesh, she thought excitedly. The
very idea made her giddy. She wondered what vanar flesh tasted like. Even better, she wondered what living vanar flesh tasted like.
Hanuman raised his hand, holding out his palm in the universal gesture to halt. ‘Why do you persist in assailing me, kumbha-rakshasa? I seek only to know your answer. Do you not honour the rules of war in Lanka? It is not meet to assault an opponent when he still wishes to speak words with you.’
Jambumali looked over the top of his bow, his face noting each wound on the vanar’s body with evident pleasure. ‘Do not speak to me of the rules of war and the code of Kshatriyas, vanar. You are the servant of Rama. And when Rama himself is without honour, where is the question of honouring his servant.’
He loosed four more arrows in quick succession. Each one struck Hanuman in a vital part, went deep, and drew copious amounts of blood. Supanakha could barely see a limb of the vanar that had no arrows sticking out of it now. Jambumali shouted as he loosed the arrows. ‘Still, if you still foolishly await a response, then here is my answer. No. No. No. And yet again, no.’
Hanuman took the arrows with the same stoic grit. But the instant the kumbha-rakshasa had finished speaking, he raised the gold pillar and said in a voice so quiet, Supanakha almost did not hear the words. ‘So be it, abuser of Rama’s name.’
Hanuman lofted the gold pillar the way any ordinary soldier might lift a javelin for throwing. He leaned back, then flung the pillar directly at the spot where Jambumali stood, some fifty yards distant.
The vice-marshal was already stringing a fresh clutch of arrows, each with different heads. The gold pillar flew through the air as smoothly and directly as any javelin. It struck the kumbha-rakshasa’s chest with such force that Supanakha could hear the very veins in the vice-marshal’s body burst. Jambumali’s body was shattered so completely that his arms, his legs, his head, all flew in separate directions. His chest was riven through and through, the pillar going through his body and passing out from the other side. His quiver full of arrows fell to bits. And still the pillar flew on, like a javelin that had merely passed through a thin sheet of parchment. Supanakha turned her head in wonder as it sped over her, and flew on across the valley. She saw it arc downwards on the far side where it embedded itself firmly in the soil there, some thousand yards away.
FOURTEEN
Ravana roared in fury. ‘Sons of whores and donkeys. Can none of you face down a single vanar? Shame on the clans that bred you all!’
Portals opened and shut constantly as the sabha hall continued to fill with new arrivals. News of the vanar’s destruction of the palace of pleasures and the prayer level, and his shocking victory over the kumbhas had spread, and all of Ravana’s ministers had come at once. The water-screen had been resurrected by the king for no other reason than the need to know what was happening. The hall full of rakshasas shuddered at the demonlord’s rage. He stalked the dais like a hungry lion, wounded and caged. His heads babbled incoherently to one another or to themselves like a roomful of mad philosophers.
‘Do none of you possess the ability to dispatch a single foe? This is but one vanar! One! What will you do when Rama’s army arrives? How will you face a million like this one?’
Nobody dared venture an answer. Finally, furious and frustrated, he turned and set his ten heads to scanning the congregation. All sat up straight and silent under their lord’s scrutiny, but several looked as though they wished they could shrink or turn invisible.
Ravana’s eyes fell upon the clutch of seven high-backed seats that bore the noble bottoms of the ministry of Lanka. They represented the seven chief tribes of rakshasas.
‘Ministers,’ he said.
The seven looked at one another with varying expressions of disbelief and shock. The seniormost among them protested in quivering tones: ‘Your majesty, we are skilled in the arts of governance, not war. We cannot—’
‘Save the craven apologies,’ he said. ‘I want to send the vanar someone capable of killing him, not boring him to death. Each of you has an eldest son serving in my armed forces. Each a champion warrior and a leader of other warriors. Send your seven sons to battle the vanar. The one who defeats him shall replace Jambumali as vice-marshal, and his father will take Prahasta’s place as marshal of the armies of Lanka.’
If there were protests on their lips, they were quickly swallowed. The rewards dangled before their greedy eyes might not have been worth risking their own lives for, but they were certainly worth risking the lives of their eldest sons. Like all the nobles of Lanka, each of them numbered their heirs in the hundreds. ‘It will be our patriotic duty to do so,’ said the spokesperson, bowing low enough to touch the ground with his split trunk.
***
She was within ten yards of him when he spoke.
‘Among my people, those who feed on the flesh of their own kind are considered worthy of only the lowest levels of Naraka.’
She stopped feeding, her mouth filled with a hunk of steaming kumbha innards, and looked up hatefully. He stood with his back to her, silhouetted against the bright unearthly sky. She spat out the mouthful. There was plenty more where that had come from. ‘I’m only eating the remains, vanar. You’re the one
who slaughtered them. Isn’t killing against your karma too?’
‘Not when it is for the sake of dharma.’
‘Dharma!’ She issued a laugh that brought out the streak of hyena in her. It echoed across the valley. ‘Is that your excuse for everything? Do anything, kill anyone, take what you like, just lay the blame at dharma’s feet? You know, the way you and your mortal masters bandy about that term, it sounds a very convenient excuse to cover up your own crimes.’
He turned to look at her. But there was no anger in his eyes, only the sadness she had seen earlier when he had finally deigned to defend himself against Jambumali. It startled her. She had seen that exact same look in Rama’s eyes once. ‘What is your role in this, shapeshifter? I do not think you serve Ravana because you need to. You pursue some other agenda, do you not? What is that? What is it you really want?’
She laughed again, this time nervously. She had not expected such a personal observation. ‘I want what every rakshasa wants. Wine, sex, meat.’ The answer sounded weak even to her own ears.
He watched her with narrowed eyes, a new look coming over his face. ‘Power. I think it is power, is it not? Ravana is beholden to you for some reason. That is why, at your urging he came to Panchvati and kidnapped my lady Sita. He is responsible for the crime, but you are responsible for instigating him to commit it. Why did you do that?’
She spat out a morsel of gristle. She hated gristle. ‘I don’t have time to teach you history, vanar. Perhaps someday, if I decide to compose my memoirs … ’ She smiled artfully. ‘Though I doubt you will live long enough to hear the full story.’
He watched her with a bemused, half-distracted expression. ‘It is Rama himself, is it not? In your own way, you are as besotted with my lord as I am. And your obsession has somehow infected Ravana as well. What was once a simple antagonism has turned into a personal vendetta for the lord of Lanka. That is why, even though he possesses Sita, he will not rape or harm her bodily. Because it is not Sita he desires at all. She was only the means to an end, suggested by your devious mind. It is in fact Rama he wishes to draw here, using Sita as the lure. You have infected your cousin. Now he too is obsessed with Rama and his obsession drives him to any lengths.’
She snarled. ‘You babble too much, vanar. It shows your monkey roots. Go hop on a tree and pick your fleas. Better yet, pick up your tail and take your tall tales back where you came from. Go! Shoo! Leave me to my feast!’ She dipped her head to the open belly of the kumbha she had been feeding on.
She felt the rumbling through her paws and at first she thought it was he, finally losing his temper with her and pounding his way nearer, to kill her. But when she looked up, she saw him gazing towards the west, at the ridgeline over the hills. A dustcloud was growing larger. She flicked her ears and caught the sou
nd. ‘Chariots. It seems I might get vanar flesh to feed on after all. Unless you decide to take my advice and leave Lanka first.’
He did not reply. She felt chagrined that he would turn his back on her so carelessly. It gave her half a mind to sneak up and leap at him. But then she recalled the way he had withstood the temptations of the palace of pleasures, and the power of the Pushpak as well as Ravana’s sorcery. That had impressed her far more than his prowess as a fighter. She had seen enough great warriors to know that the greatest battles were fought in the mind and spirit, not on the battlefield. Besides, he had come close to the truth when he said that she was not a servant of Ravana, even though she happened to serve him. That subtle difference had also earned her grudging respect for the vanar. Let Ravana’s many minions throw themselves at him. She would watch. And maybe feed on the spoils later.
She bounded away, finding a sala tree several dozen yards away onto which she climbed easily, creeping to the end of a branch and perching there, her whiskered chin on her claws.
***
Hanuman tried to feel some regret at this turn of events. It had not been his mission to come to Lanka and slaughter rakshasas. But he kept recalling Sita’s lean, starved appearance, her bony aspect, her pale, shocked face, those blankly staring eyes, the scores of tiny marks all over her arms. She had suffered. Not a direct assault or ravishment, it was true, nor even physical torture of the nailbeds-and-wheels variety, but that did not diminish her suffering one whit. Her mind and spirit had been battered. The Sita he recalled from Janasthana was a proud, vigorous, warrior-queen in exile. Capable of facing ten thousand rakshasas and battling them, shoulder to shoulder with her husband and brother-in-law. That Sita had been under great duress too, in exile, deprived of her rightful place of luxury and power, constantly on the run from demons, constantly battling the wilderness, the rakshasas, her fate. But she had been happy. Healthy. Vigorous. Strong. He could picture her crowned with the coconut-shell tiara of a queen of Ayodhya—or whatever mortal queens wore to signify regency—seated beside Rama on the Sunwood throne of that great Arya nation.
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 38