A little apart from them stood the sorcerers Vidyujjivha and Malyavan, looking even more smug than usual after the display of their asura maya the night before—even though they were barely apprentices to Ravana’s mastery of the dark arts. Several other lesser officers of the Lankan hordes stood about, debating battle strategy, the weather, omens and portents, and even, in at least one case, whether bears were worth ravishing sexually. He allowed himself a smirk at that last query. Rakshasas would be rakshasas, after all. A flash of movement told him that Ravana’s cousin Supanakha was watching covertly, which was her usual style. Vajradanta bared his teeth, tilting his face to catch the slanting sunlight and send shards of reflections dancing across the faces of his fellow rakshasas.
It was more effective than bellowing for their attention. At once, they all grimaced and cringed as one, shielding their light-sensitive rakshasa eyes from the splinters of reflected light with paws, helms, weapons. All conversations died out, and he saw a flash of tawny fur not far behind the sorcerers as the shape-shifting yaksi came closer to eavesdrop more effectively.
He grunted and began without preamble.
‘While we await our lord, let’s apprise you of developments. As you must know already, if you aren’t deaf or senile yet, the night’s sorcery was smartly done. Our spies tell us casualties on the enemy’s side were large, as many as two out of every five of their warriors were killed by the shifting stones. And the rest of the vanars are demoralised and terrified of more sorcery, which makes them weak and nervous to fight. So the vanars are as good as minced, take it from me.’ He flashed his teeth again. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing if their marrow’s as tasty as they say it is. I wager they’ll gibber and flee at the sight of our kumbhas alone, which I propose to send in the front line of the first wave.’
‘Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t. But you can wager yourself back that the bears won’t be that much of a pushover.’ The speaker was Mahaparsva, the general who had been next in line for promotion until Vajradanta got bumped up the line by Ravana. His triple-hinged mouth flapped and unflapped, revealing the sucking maw within. His tall, slender frame belied his ramrod strength and speed in combat. He sneered disparagingly at Vajradanta. ‘And you don’t have enough kumbhas to throw at the bears as well, do you, Jaws?’
Vajradanta bristled at the use of his most disliked nickname, but knew better than to draw attention to that deliberate provocation. Returning Mahaparsva’s sneer with a scornful gesture of his own, he retorted: ‘We have something extra tasty planned for the bears, Purse. Why, would you like to go and give them all bear hugs before we slaughter them?’
It was Mahaparsva’s turn to bristle now at the use of his nickname, a reference to the folding flaps of his oral orifice. He scowled sullenly.
Virupaksa snarled and pounded his chest, issuing a subvocal roar that Vajradanta could actually feel vibrating in his teeth and inner ears. The champion almost never spoke, but he hardly needed words to express his impatience to delve into the fray and perform his usual gristly routine of separating enemy torsos from limbs with the efficiency and speed of a butcher on a feast day. His muscles—indeed, his muscles upon muscles—bulged and flexed and he gripped the edge of the rampart wall nearest to him. The yard-thick block of stone actually began to crumble at the edges under his crushing grip. The sorcerers Vidyujjivha and Malyavan sidled away from this unseemly display of brute strength, their frail, pot-bellied bodies wasted away by years of poring over forbidden texts lettered with mortal blood on endless scrolls of parchment made of mortal skin in the deep, fetid dungeons of Lanka. Their eyes shone with a rheumy, cataract-obscured feverishness that unnerved Vajradanta far more than Virupaksa’s impressive show of strength.
‘We shall leave the breaking of our walls to our enemies to attempt, shall we, Viru?’ said a clear, calm voice from above them all. Vajradanta looked up with a start to see Ravana himself, standing at the golden railing of his Pushpak chariot, his ten heads seeming to stare in ten directions at once. At once, Virupaksa released the rampart wall. Everyone else stiffened in mute attention. Ravana smiled down at Vajradanta. ‘And my dear general, before you proceed with today’s scheduled programme of slaughter, there are two useful pieces of information I think you might like to gain possession of.’
Reaching down with two hands, Ravana brought up two vanars, their terrified furry faces dwarfed by the rakshasa lord’s immense handspans as he gripped them by the backs of their heads and raised them squirming for all to see. He tossed them contemptuously down to the rampart platform where they fell in two ragged heaps, moaning and crying out shrilly. Then he descended and alighted onto the rampart himself, like a lion among his pride.
TEN
The two hybrid spies writhed on the stone slabs of the rampart, prostrating themselves before Ravana. ‘Mercy, Oh Lord of Lanka, we are your humble servants.’
Ravana kicked them hard enough to draw the sharp crack of bone splintering, and one of the two turned pale with shock and pain. He ignored them both as he addressed the assembled commanders. ‘To put it briefly, it would appear that Rama’s army is falling into the very trap I had devised. At least that’s what these two buffoons learned this morning before they were exposed and sent back to us like simpering whores.’
Nobody sought to correct the king of Lanka by pointing out that the trap in question had been thought up by General Prahasta in collusion with Ravana’s own elder son, Indrajit. If Ravana chose to call it his trap, it was his trap. He strode to the edge of the rampart, gazing out across the assembled army in the valley below. ‘I see that you have aligned our hordes according to the plan, Vajradanta.’
‘Just as you ordered at our earlier conference at dawn, my lord,’ Vajradanta said obsequiously, trying with some difficulty to bow his thick, overdeveloped torso. ‘Everything is precisely as you instructed.’
Ravana was silent for a moment, seeming distracted now. Several of his heads were murmuring, one snarling, and at least three seemed to be meditating—at least, their eyes were rolled up in their sockets. Vajradanta tried unsuccessfully to avoid staring at them out of sheer curiosity. Finally Ravana nodded curtly. ‘Well done. And speedily too.’
Vajradanta blinked, surprised at the unexpected praise. He glanced around, licking his lips excitedly, to see if the others had noted this uncharacteristic compliment paid to his generalship. Judging from their dark, scowling expressions, they had. He almost grinned, but checked himself. It would not do to bare his teeth to his master and commander; among rakshasas, it was a sign of challenge. To Ravana, it would be a sign of defiance and insubordination, punishable with instant death. Nobody grinned at Ravana and lived to grin a second time. He kept his lips sealed.
Ravana strode out on to the ledge where Vajradanta himself had stood not long before, gazing this way and that, examining the troop positions and land layout with closer attention. Finally, satisfied, he nodded again, and turned back to Vajradanta. ‘Yes, well done indeed. I could not have aligned them better myself. Now we shall rearrange them all anew.’
Vajradanta blinked rapidly. Had he misheard his commander? ‘My lord?’
Ravana gestured casually with a hand whose wrist alone was as thick as Vajradanta’s shoulder, ‘I shall give you the codes for a new formation. It must be done within the hour-watch.’ He paused, reflecting, squinting at the rising sun. ‘Nay, within the half-hour. Time is of the essence. This battle should be over and done with long before noon.’
Vajradanta stared in numb confusion. ‘Within the half-hour? New formation? My lord … ’
Suddenly Ravana was all too close to him, his powerful arms within easy striking distance, his breath hot and scented with a dozen different odours—actually, ten, to be exact. He placed one palm upon Vajradanta’s shoulder; it felt as heavy as a bag full of iron ingots. One squeeze, and the general’s shoulder would be no longer a shoulder, merely fragmented chips of bone and gristle and cartilage. He swallowed nervously, carefully keeping his l
ips pressed together, to avoid showing his famous teeth.
‘Vajra,’ Ravana said quietly, with breath that was redolent of scented paan, supari nut, and something else that the general could not identify—it could not possibly be roasted mortalflesh, could it? ‘You are named for your lightning sharp teeth. Surely your intellect is not as slow as molasses?’
Vajradanta swallowed a gob of his own blood, only then realising that he had bitten the inside of his own cheek when Ravana’s hand had descended on his shoulder. ‘Nay, sire. I understand perfectly. The new formation shall be aligned as you desire within the half-hour. You have but to provide me with the codes.’
Ravana’s heads peered at him. It was unsettling to be gazed on from this close by that entire formidable rack of heads, their grinning, leering, scowling, chewing, abusing, suckling faces within spitting distance from his own. When one chuckled softly at last, he hardly knew which one.
‘Excellent.’ The hand on his shoulder patted him heavily, then, mercifully, was removed. ‘I knew I could count on you to be a good trooper, my toothsome friend. Here are the codes. See that they are carried out at once.’
He gestured, and a scroll held by one of the waiting vulture-handlers nearby was plucked clean out of the rakshasa’s hands and wafted in the air. In a trice, lines of instructions coded in the Lankan secret communication shorthand appeared on it magically. Vajradanta caught the scroll as it fell out of the air, and rolled it up neatly, gesturing to the same handler to come forward and take it. The rakshasa approached fearfully, all but crawling across the rampart to avoid raising his head in Ravana’s presence, and in another moment the precious instructions were being tied to the foot of a reluctant vulture. The bird bit hard at his handler’s gloved arm, squawked an ugly, resentful cry, then took off with a fluttering of its ragged wings, soaring on an air current down to the valley below.
Vajradanta gestured to another pair of handlers and quickly dictated a series of follow-up codes to his hand-picked lieutenants below which would ensure that the new instructions were carried out with the lightning speed for which he had been named.
That done, he turned smartly to his master. ‘My lord, I myself ought to descend to the valley in order to see that the instructions are carried out with the efficiency you desire.’
Ravana nodded obscurely. ‘In a moment, my lightning-toothed one. I understand. You will need to crack a barbed whip, bust a few skulls, and generally use a combination of bullying and brute force to ensure that the re-formation is carried out in time. I was once a lowly lieutenant in the rakshasa ranks too, you know. I recall how hard it can be to keep a horde in order—sometimes even to keep them heading in the right direction in a battle! But wait a moment longer. I have one last jewel of information to impart.’
Vajradanta bowed his head, straining his thick neck to do so. He waited patiently as the sun inched higher in the eastern sky, already casting its gaudy light across this entire part of the world.
‘Yes,’ Ravana said, his central head gazing dreamily into the distance, visualising something none of them could see. ‘You see, sometimes the prey that has eluded the predator long enough begins to believe that it is the predator.’
He grinned with four heads simultaneously at the commanders of his armies gathered on the rampart top. ‘It is then necessary to remind him that just because the predator chooses to prolong the hunt, that is not proof of the predator’s weakness, but of his superior skill and self-confidence. For, what fun is a hunt that is ended in a flash? The true test of skill comes only in contests of endurance.’
He effected a gesture that Vajradanta thought was directed at him. It took the general a moment to realise that Ravana was gesturing at the rakshasas standing directly behind him, the two sorcerers Vidyujjivha and Malyavan.
‘Fellow misappropriators of Brahman shakti,’ Ravana said, one head chuckling at his own wit, ‘it is about time you earned the right to the considerable fee I pay to keep you in my employ. I have a task for you to perform. Do you see these two wretches here?’ He gestured at the still prostrated vanar-rakshasa hybrids. ‘What are your names, wretches?’
The two broken-spirited creatures stared up in abject terror. ‘S … s … Suka and Sarama,’ said one, answering for both. The other merely gibbered wordlessly, spittle oozing from his mouth.
‘Suka and Sarama,’ Ravana said thoughtfully.
Suddenly he bent, gripped the two vanar-rakshasas by the skin of their necks, and with one casual flick of his powerful arms, flung them over the ledge and into the valley below. Simultaneously astonished and delighted, the two sorcerers rushed to the edge of the rampart and followed the fall of the two vanars as they hurtled to certain death, too shocked even to emit screams. ‘You see,’ Ravana said, sounding disappointed. ‘They cannot fly. I must have pigs with wings for the crucial phase of today’s plan. That is the task I entrust you with, sorcerers: Grow me enough wings to make an entire battalion fly.’
He chuckled at their stunned expressions. ‘Fear not. I will provide you with the means to accomplish it. And the mantras. It’s just that I need you to do it yourselves, as I have other business to attend to meanwhile.’ He gestured below. ‘A little matter of a battle to be won.’
Then he clapped a hand on Vajradanta’s shoulder again, almost crushing it to shards. ‘Now, my sharp-toothed friend, take my Pushpak and race down to the valley, and carry out my instructions to the letter. It’s time to show Rama and his furry companions that vanars can fly too. They just have a little trouble landing in one piece!’
***
Rama and Lakshman reached the top of the rise. Mount Suvela, as Vibhisena had called this peak, was barely worthy of the title of mountain, but it afforded the best view for yojanas around. From here, the two brothers could see the towering eminence of Mount Nikumbhila, perhaps a yojana and a half farther south, with its massive fortifications. Lakshman said he thought he could spy figures atop the fortifications, and as he watched, Rama distinctly saw an object rise and fly up into the air before dropping slowly into the valley below. From the manner in which the sunlight caught the object and reflected gaudily off it, like a lamp’s light off the jewellery of a queen, he had no doubt it was Ravana’s Pushpak chariot. And where Pushpak was, Ravana was too, most certainly.
From this vantage point, they could just glimpse the endless lines of the rakshasa forces, still tramping this way and that in complex formations, raising new clouds of dust that were quickly carried away by the unusually strong sea wind.
‘What are they doing?’ Lakshman asked, frowning. ‘They seem to be rearranging their lines. Why would they do that now?’
Rama watched the swirling dust-haze of the rakshasa army movements for several moments. ‘We must not make the mistake of underestimating Ravana. He is too shrewd to be easily duped. I wish there was some way we could know if he has swallowed the story the spies carried back to Lanka.’
Lakshman shrugged philosophically. ‘Well, it is too late to do anything now. Our forces are committed. They only await our order to cover the last mile or two before engaging the Lankans.’
He gestured to the left. ‘They look quite professional now, don’t they?’ he said with more than a trace of pride. The days of hard drilling and disciplining had borne fruit, the more so after the bitter losses suffered by the armies, for nothing toughened soldiers more effectively than sudden death.
Rama turned his attention to the armies of vanars massed in the declivity to the left of Mount Suvela. While nowhere near as organised and neatly arrayed as the armies of Ayodhya or other Arya nations, and lacking any uniformity—even of pelt colouring, height, shape or size—the vanar forces were nevertheless impressive when he recalled the ragtag swarms he had first set eyes on, when Hanuman had arrived at the northern shore. They had been akin to wild monkeys then and anyone could have been forgiven for mistaking them for their simian cousins. But now they were vanars, bearing themselves as proudly as was possible with their curved spines, th
eir tails all held upright to avoid bothering those behind and beside them, and attempting manfully to move as units, instead of scampering individually with the abandon they were so accustomed to in their native lands. Yes, Lakshman’s training had borne fruit indeed. It was testimony to the commitment and devotion of those brave little warriors that he could a ctually count the number of lines in which they were arranged.
He smiled. Despite the apparent enormity of their numbers, he knew that those were barely half the number of vanars under his command. He exchanged a glance with Lakshman and saw the glint in his brother’s eye as he acknowledged the same observation. There was neither sign nor sight of the rest of the forces, and that was most impressive of all. Yes, they were ready now for battle, or as ready as they were ever going to be.
A cheeka from behind alerted them to the arrival of Nala. Rama turned to see the spry little vanar racing up the grassy hillside. ‘Rama!’ He was glad that the bridge-builder had not been one of those who perished in the night of the killing stones: Nala was an ingenious engineer and was invaluable in calculations and plotting, as well as map-making. It was he who had translated several of Rama’s and Lakshman’s troop movements into practical deployments, and of course, without him the whole backbone of their main plan would be worthless.
If they succeeded in pulling off this bold and desperate plan today, a portion of the credit would belong to Nala.
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 65