He vowed to himself silently that were Ravana or his minions to use sorcery to strike at Rama from that high rampart, he would not stand by and let it happen unchallenged: for anything that came from the sky was in his domain and he could not be expected to stand by and let death rain down around him. The ground war was off limits, but surely not the skies where he roamed. Even Rama could not find fault with that simple logic.
At present, there was no visible sign of threat from the high place. Pushpak, gleaming and resplendent in the morning sunlight, like the divine machine it was, reached the highest point of the ramparts and landed as gently as a feather alighting, vanishing beyond the crenellations that bordered the top of the fortress wall. From his present spot, he could not see beyond that point—not without flying up there and peering down, which his orders did not permit him to do. He sighed in frustration and returned his attention to his given task, watching the battle below.
***
General Vajradanta’s kumbha-sur was flying across the valley floor now at full gallop. Grinning with exultation at the sheer joy of anticipation, the general whipped his head from side to side, checking his flanks. For as far as he could see to east and west, the ground was being churned and pounded by the front lines of the rakshasa hordes. After the last trumpet call announcing the full charge, the war cries had fallen briefly silent. Now the thunder of their hoofs and footfalls alone filled the air for miles around. A rakshasa army charging at full speed was a terrible, awe-inspiring sight to behold, and he was proud to be leading this one. All the brutality, abuse and humiliation he had suffered in his centuries-long rise to this rank felt well worth it now. He commanded the greatest rakshasa army in the three worlds, the last asura fighting force left in existence, and only Ravana himself stood above him in the military hierarchy. He felt the power of his position with every bone-shuddering step, felt the exhilaration of impending combat fill his veins and organs, felt the certainty of victory over the enemy on this glorious Lankan autumn day, and urged his mount to go faster, faster.
Finally, the enemy ranks grew closer. No doubt the monkey army was loath even to attempt to match the Lankan charge, that was why they had hung back so far, compelling the rakshasa hordes to come to them. He could see them now, at the far end of a canyon that rose up to either side. Somewhere, only a few miles to the west, was Mount Suvela, the tallest peak in these parts after Nikumbhila. That was where he would have stationed himself and his most trusted commanders if he were the mortal Rama. He felt certain that Rama was there now, on the peak of Suvela, watching with growing horror as he witnessed this merciless charge of the rakshasas towards his pathetic forces. Vanars? Hah! What was a vanar before a rakshasa? No more than a pile of fur-clad bones to be easily crushed with a single blow, barely a mouthful’s worth of feeding. The spies Ravana had sent into the enemy camp— and who were now lying in blood-spattered pieces at the foot of Mount Nikumbhila—had brought back impossible counts of the enemy. A million vanars, perhaps over a million! Faugh! A quarter of a million bears! Juaaagh! There could be no more than a quarter of those numbers. At best, surely no more than five lakh vanars and a lakh of bears. And even those unlikely figures would have been greatly depleted by Ravana’s magnificent wielding of asura maya the night before. Even he, Vajradanta, had harboured great anxiety and doubts when Ravana had made vague boastful claims about how the enemy would be dealt with in the night itself, without deploying a single regiment of rakshasas! But the morning had shown Ravana’s words to be not just true, but awe-inspiring. If asura maya did not require such immense amounts of sacrifice and penitential preparation beforehand, he had no doubt that Ravana could have eliminated Rama’s forces entirely and won this war through the use of his sorcery alone.
The entrance to the canyon loomed before him. He barely had to nudge his mount to steer it into the opening. He frowned as his kumbha-sur pounded its way into the canyon’s mouth, barely a kilometre wide. There would not be room enough for the hordes to ride abreast, but that would not be a great hindrance. He had given instructions beforehand for them to fan out and ride around the canyon on either side, meeting up on the far side of these ghats and rises. He would have preferred to halt well before this spot and wait for the enemy to come forward to engage them, but Ravana’s orders had been explicit: Engage the enemy wherever you find them, do not wait a moment longer. For some reason, the lord of Lanka wished to take decisive action well before noon, although Vajradanta could not understand what the time of day had to do with anything. In any case, the enemy was not coming forward to meet them, so they had no choice but to go to them.
He led his own vanguard into the canyon, the sounds of their feet and hoofs echoing deafeningly off the canyon walls. He could see the vanar forces huddled at the far end of the canyon, bunched together in a kilometre-wide mass like a herd of sheep unaware of the slaughterer’s axe approaching. He flashed a brilliant grin. This would be a massacre of epic proportions. His enthusiasm did not flag even when he rode closer and saw the masses of brown- and black- and red- and silver-furred creatures extending far back, for miles it seemed. Yes, there certainly were a great number of them. Easily as many as the Lankan army’s own numbers. But even a vanar or bear for every rakshasa was hardly fair. They would ride those foolish monkey-kin into the dust of this canyon if they simply stood there like that, no doubt stunned into immobility by the sight of the oncoming rakshasa onslaught.
Speaking of bears … He scanned the great mass up ahead, exerting his excellent vision to see where the bear troops were stationed. But to his surprise, he could see only those yard-tall furry creatures with their long, looped tails—all held up stiffly behind them for some laughable reason—standing in surprisingly neat rows. No sign of any taller beasts. He was not pleased at that observation, and his grin faltered briefly, for it meant that the bears were elsewhere, perhaps on the flanks beyond this canyon, and that meant that the other hordes, rather than his vanguard, would engage them first. But there was nothing to be done about it now. He would smash into the vanar lines at this furious headlong pace, cut through them like a sharpened talon through yielding flesh, and then emerge at the far end to rejoin the rest of the regiments and engage the bear troops, perhaps even outflank them and catch them in a palm-meeting-palm slap, like a fly smashed between two rakshasa paws. Yes, that would work.
He regained his grin and rode down on the vanar ranks. Still standing in immobile rows, the poor, pathetic inexperienced fools. Did they think those neat lines would make any difference to the oncoming hordes? Did they think they could withstand the juggernaut of an all-out rakshasa semi-mounted charge that way? What a novice this Rama Chandra must be, to order his soldiers thus! And what a coward, to stay high upon a mountain watching anxiously, as his forces did the real fighting down below.
Well, Vajradanta would show him a sight he would not forget for the rest of his all-too-brief life.
The general spurred his mount, which was already frothing madly at the mouth and chugging breath frantically as it rode at breakneck speed. The perfect vanar lines, looking like nothing so much as a welcoming carpet of fur laid down for him and his vanguard to ride over in their certain victory, loomed as he crossed the last few hundred yards that separated them.
‘Ra-van-a!’ he roared again, raising his twin weapons, spear in one hand, the great hacking blade in the other. The canyon walls exploded with the echo of his vanguard’s responding cry:
‘RA-VAN-A!’
TWO
Five hundred yards or less. And closing fast.
Sugreeva squinted to see through the rising wall of dust that came thundering down the length of the canyon towards his position. He resisted the urge to grimace or reveal his discomfort in any way as he realised how close the Lankan front line was now, and the fact that they were coming on with no sign of slowing or stopping. Which was all to the good, for that was how Rama had wished it to happen, and it was a happy omen that Rama’s prediction had been proved right.
Three hundred yards or less, and coming nearer every moment.
As he prepared himself to die with honour for Rama’s cause, he glanced briefly to either side. From his peripheral vision, he could tell that not one of his brave warriors had budged an inch since he had given the order to halt and stand at attention. He had no doubt that their fur was as damp with sweat as his own, their hearts pounding as loudly in their bony vanar chests, their blood roaring in their veins almost as loudly as the oncoming rakshasa hordes. But they were the pride of Kiskindha, warriors tracing their ancestry back to the earliest age. They had followed him out of Kiskindha when Vali the Usurper had wrested control of the kingdom, had lived on berries and bitter gourd in his years of exile, and had marched behind him when he returned to the city to reclaim his throne. More importantly, they had drilled on the coast of the mainland under the tutelage of Lakshman for long hours before and after the arduous bridge-building, had disciplined themselves to acquire skills that no vanar in history had ever been able to master. And master them they had; for even difficult-to-please Lakshman had finally raised his eyebrows in surprised admiration and acknowledged their progress, the very day before the passage to Lanka.
Now they stood by Sugreeva in the face of this horde from Narak, the worst of the hellish realms. Preparing to meet near-certain death. Because it was essential to Rama’s plan. That was the reason why Sugreeva had decided that he would stay with his men to the last; if the Kiskindha vanars had been chosen to shed first blood in this war—he did not count the treacherous murders caused by Ravana’s sorcery on the night of the killing stones as blood honestly shed— then he would stand with them to the end. His resoluteness had overpowered even Angad’s incredulous arguments; if anything, when he commanded his son to cease arguing and declared himself committed beyond debate, he had seen a surprised glow of pride and tearful joy in the young prince’s eyes. It had been a long time since Sugreeva had done anything to earn that look and now, as he faced the thundering whirlwind that approached at the speed of death, he cherished the memory of both that look and the tight hug Angad had given him before parting wordlessly.
Two hundred yards or less, and now picking out their targets and aligning themselves accordingly.
And as if proving the very rightness of his choice, he had felt the years of self-pity, misery and frustration melt away like the frost on the firs in the northern ranges when the first thaw came. He had experienced a straightening of his age-bent spine, a quickening of his snail-slow pulse, a tightening of his sagging muscles, and most of all, a resoluteness that was as solid as iron forged and smelted and beaten in the furnace, as the mortal blacksmiths did to shape their sword weapons. As a king, he had done many things that could be termed morally ambiguous. His rivalry with his late brother Vali was the most questionable of all, morally speaking; he had, in a sense, been the first to usurp Vali’s throne, and the guilt of that had weighed heavily on him, even though he had known he was doing the right thing in law and the people themselves needed him to be their king. He had never thrown off that guilt entirely, and it had aged him greatly, as had the long, bitter struggle that had followed, ending only in the death of his brother at Rama’s hands. A part of him had been lost as a result of that bitter conflict, for no fight was as debilitating as a fight against your own kith or kin. Emotionally and morally speaking, there was no winning that struggle, not for him personally.
But this, what he was doing now, was righteous and right in every sense. He was standing on the floor of a great canyon in the feared land of rakshasas, heading the entire contingent of Kiskindha vanar warriors against the vanguard of Ravana’s army. It was an act to be proud of, that his grandchildren would speak about reverentially to their own grandchildren some day. It was the stuff of which legends were born, and about which histories were penned. And it was right in every way, unassailable morally. In the end, he realised, as an errant tear escaped his left eye unexpectedly and rolled down his age-lined snout, a king’s job was so fraught with compromise and moral ambiguity that there was only this one thing he could do without compromise or self-doubt or debate: he could stand with his people and die with them.
Less than a hundred yards, and now looming as large as nightmares viewed under the influence of an excess of honey-wine.
‘Time,’ he said softly, then repeated it louder. ‘TIME!’ he said as forcefully as possible, and was surprised to hear that it was far louder and far more commanding than he had thought he could sound any more, as inspiring an order as he had ever given, audible and rigid as smelted iron even above the drumming madness of the oncoming rakshasa hordes.
At once, his loyal, disciplined vanars did as they had been instructed. Every second warrior in each line leaped upon the shoulders of the warrior in front. The warrior in front crouched slightly, to balance himself, and then braced his body by reaching out with both paws to grasp the shoulders of the vanars to either side. The vanars on the outermost lines, near the canyon walls, braced themselves by reaching forward and gripping the shoulders of those before them. Forming a simple but effective two-layered grid. The vanars poised on top of their fellows crouched low, baring their teeth and tensing their lithe muscles in preparation for their next move. The entire process was accomplished in a fraction of a moment; leaping up was to a vanar what taking a step was to a mortal. Once aligned, they let go of one another’s shoulders and prepared to leap literally into the jaws of death …
Forty yards … thirty-five … thirty …
And now there was no time left to reflect any further, no time for regrets, sorrows, memories, guilt, or forgiveness, no time for tears even. He dabbed fiercely with the back of one hirsute paw and braced himself. The vanar beside him, his general Sarabha, said urgently, ‘My lord … if you will.’ Meaning that he should leap upon Sarabha’s back. For in the plan they had developed, the vanars in the top layer would almost certainly have a substantial advantage over those on the bottom. They would at least have an opportunity of dying fighting, while those on the ground were unlikely to even survive the first impact— especially those in the front rows. But he shook his head fiercely, disdaining the offer, and stood his ground resolutely, paws held ready by his sides, claws arched to strike, teeth bared. A snarl rose from his throat and he felt that old friend of all warriors, regardless of race, species, skill or age, arrive to take over command of his faculties: battle rage was coursing through his veins now. He felt the same rage ripple through t
he massed ranks behind him, felt their readiness to die—but to die killing rakshasas—and suddenly he was a young vanar once more, barely a few summers of age, facing his first battle, a clash with
vetaals in a dark forest clearing just before dawn.
Fifteen … ten … nine … eight …
He raised his voice one last time in a battle cry that was the only departure he had ever made from the Kiskindha screech.
‘For Rama!’ he shrieked.
The cry was all but lost in the terrible, unspeakable impact as the two armies collided.
***
Hanuman cried out in outrage.
Suspended directly above the canyon, barely three hundred yards overhead, he was low enough to smell the sweat and rancour of the rakshasa hordes and their vile mounts, as well as the familiar musky blood odours of his Kiskindha comrades. He saw the pre-planned manoeuvre executed with astonishing perfection mere moments before the Lankan front lines struck, the vanars leaping upon one another’s shoulders too late for the rakshasa general to slow or halt his army’s onslaught—not that the shiny-toothed fool would deem vanars leaping on one another’s shoulders to be any kind of threat—and heard the last cry of King Sugreeva, shrieked a fraction of a second before the first mounted rakshasas struck the vanar lines. With his preternaturally enhanced senses, Hanuman could see clearly every detail of his king’s snout, even the track of the single tear that had escaped his rheumy eye and travelled through the dust that had settled there. His heart swelled with pride. He had never in his own lifetime seen King Sugreeva stand so tall, look so strong, so resolute, so invincible …
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 67