She emerged from the shelter of the high grass all too quickly, and into the scrubby area just before the rise of the ghats. At some point, a rivulet or stream had run through this part of the valley and had dried up, leaving behind a dirt bed, like one of the raj-margs that mortals built to carry their carts and horse-mounted armies across their kingdoms back home. Nothing much grew here, except some weeds and wild flowers. She stopped upon this dry patch, within sight of the horde.
A chorus of howls and growls and roars rose from the rakshasa troops. Several hundreds stood up and hefted their weapons, their ugly orifices and snouts and jaws slobbering disgustingly as they called out resoundingly. Their general was less impulsive and much shrewder. He turned and eyed her with interest, noting Mainda and Dvivida at each of her shoulders, flanking her. He issued a terse command to a kumbha lieutenant who immediately began barking hoarse commands to the other kumbhas. Whips lashed out, containing the agitated troops even as they sought to surge forward and attack the insolent vanars who dared approach them so boldly.
She sighed inwardly. It had been too much to hope that they would all simply roar with outrage and come running at her, so she could lead them on another merry chase through the woods as she had the first bunch. This general would take some amount of finessing.
She called out to him now. ‘Rakshasa! Will you not fight us? Are you too cowardly to come and face the vanar sena of Lord Rama Chandra of Ayodhya? It would seem that his very name strikes fear into your craven rakshasa hearts, does it not?’
Howls of protest rose from across the massed ranks. For a moment, even she was awed by the sheer brute muscle power collected on the slopes. Even though her Mandaras and the bear contingent outnumbered this horde, she wondered if they could truly match them in strength and fighting power. She pushed away that errant thought, keeping her energy concentrated on the task at hand.
The general smiled at her, his bullish face beaming with jagged yellow teeth. ‘Fear? Your leader’s name brings nothing but contempt to my warriors. See even now how he sends a female vanar to do his parleying for him! He is the coward! Too craven to come himself to beg for peace and mercy.’
This time the horde roared with delight, while she sensed Dvivida step forward beside her, his muscles rippling with anger. ‘Back,’ she commanded in a low tone. ‘Let me handle this.’
He did as she ordered but she could sense his fury at having to listen to Rama being insulted thus. She shared his anger and let her own show in her reply. ‘My lord Rama asks for no mercy or parley. He is wise enough to trust his generals and lieutenants to make his battlefield decisions for themselves. I am Mandaradevi, guardian goddess of the Mandara vanars. I speak for myself and myself alone. Does your vile leader Ravana permit you such latitude and independent volition?’
The rakshasa general scowled. ‘Lanka-naresh Ravana is the supreme commander of all the worlds. None can rival his acumen in war. If he wills it, a war is already won. Such as this one. You call yourself a guardian? Then go, take your vanars home while you still can. Or my warriors will use your army’s bones to pick their teeth.’
She feigned a snicker. ‘You wish. But we shall not let you off that easily. First, I challenge your greatest champion to single, mortal combat.’
The general of the horde stared at her for a moment, silent, nonplussed.
Beside her, she heard a shocked intake of breath from both her lieutenants. Even the laconic Mainda seemed taken aback. ‘My lady,’ his voice murmured in her left ear. ‘Are you sure you know what you are doing?’
‘We shall find out soon enough, Mainda,’ she said quietly.
Aloud she challenged again: ‘Why are you silent, rakshasa? Are you afraid that I will defeat even your greatest champion and humiliate you before your own horde?’
The volume of the roar of protest that met this remark made even the general of the horde scowl. He looked around, issued a terse instruction to the two kumbha lieutenants nearest to him, and then came forward. A gruff cheer rose from the rakshasa ranks. Several slammed their bladed weapons against their helms or armour to show their approval for their leader’s move.
Mandara-devi slowly released the pent-up breath she had been holding back. For a moment, she had feared that the rakshasa general might send someone else to fight her. But she knew from Rama’s briefings that rakshasas accepted only the strongest and fiercest fighter as their overlord. This general would have proved himself beyond dispute several times before, making him the horde’s acknowledged champion. She had counted on that fact, and on his ego preventing him from applying his leaderly wisdom in this one instance. To have denied her satisfaction—a solitary, ageing, female vanar—would have been humiliating before his horde. He had no choice but to accept her challenge, no matter how much he resented it or distrusted her motives for demanding this fight. She saw it in his eyes, coldly intelligent and calculating, unlike the animalistic eyes of most rakshasas. Yes, this Lankan knew something of what she intended, and that knowledge only served to make him more dangerous, not less. For it meant that apart from being the horde’s fiercest fighter, he was also the most intelligent.
Starting to remove his helmet, he said coldly, ‘Vanar, you should know that I would normally not fight a female or an aged one. But this being war, and your kind being the aggressor who invade our noble land, I see no loss of honour in accepting your challenge. It shall cause me no regret to tear your feeble body apart limb by limb and throw the remains to my horde to feed on afterwards.’ He affected a thin smile, difficult for his features which were like that of a buffalo and it only made him look leering. ‘Or perhaps I shall throw you to them before, to feed on you while you yet live. Perhaps if you are yet of breeding age, you shall survive to bear rakshasa offspring in a Lankan dungeon.’
She snarled softly to either side, admonishing Mainda and Dvivida, who were undoubtedly livid at this insult, and curled her lip in a sneer of her own. A single glance to each of them made it clear that she would not brook their interfering in the bout to follow, no matter what transpired. Only when they looked down, acknowledging her command, did she turn her eyes back to the enemy.
She looked at the rakshasa, who was now standing only a few yards away upon the dry river bed, flexing his powerful muscles. ‘After I finish with you, rakshasa, there will not be enough of you to breed with even a scuttling insect. And the same goes for your horde, which my lord Rama will squash like a cluster of bugs underfoot.’ A cacophony of roars broke out across the slope: there were few things rakshasas hated more than bugs, or being compared to them. They had hated the dreaded pisacas, a now-extinct race of asuras who had been wiped out during the Lankan civil war fourteen years ago, largely by the rakshasas themselves.
She drew herself up and let loose with a vanar roar. ‘Now stop your idle chatter and come die at the hands of a vanar old enough to be your mother’s mother!’
And without further ado she charged at the rakshasa general.
EIGHT
Hanuman watched in amazement as Mandara-devi charged at the rakshasa general. She wasted no time with the circling and
feinting that usually preceded bouts of single combat, nor did she posture and prance around as was the custom. A glance at the northern end of the valley showed him the reason for her haste: the bear company was slowly crumbling under the sheer weight of numbers of the rakshasas in the forest. And on the high slopes bordering the valley on all sides he glimpsed tiny clues—invisible to anyone on the ground below, vanar or rakshasa—that told him that the concealed vanar and bear regiments were growing restless, wondering why their order to attack had not yet come. If she did not act quickly, it would be too late, for like a thunderbolt unleashed, an army once it began to charge could not be called back.
Again he wished he could simply dive down, like a falcon falling on a snake, and pluck the rakshasa up, crushing him like an egg. Or better yet, expand himself and land with all his might upon the entire rakshasa horde itself, crushing them a
ll like a nest of vile cobras. But as before, Rama’s orders compelled him to wait and watch.
***
Mandara-devi sprang at the rakshasa’s face, all four paws extended and teeth bared in as vicious a snarl as she could summon. It was not hard. She had resented the rakshasa accusing her of invading his land, and calling Rama a coward and a craven. As she flew at him, completely confounding any expectation he might have had that she would circle and feint for several moments before locking blows, the element of surprise worked brilliantly in her favour. The rakshasa instinctively covered his face and ducked his head, leaving his broad, hunched back momentarily exposed. She landed precisely as planned, upon that slab of solid muscle that filled the area between his shoulders and bulged in hard lumps and knobs. At once she tore into the back of his neck with her teeth, ripping so hard into the leathery flesh of his buffalo-like hide that she could feel a tooth crack and break off as it snagged on his collarbone. He bucked exactly as a bull would, and she half leaped and was half thrown off, landing on her hind feet but at an angle that twisted a muscle painfully. She ignored the pain and sprinted forward before he could take her measure, spitting out the mouthful of his fetid flesh and blood, spitting out her split tooth as well.
He roared, furious at the pain as well as the humiliation of losing first blood to her. But even in his anger, he was shrewd enough to glean her intention and dropped at once to his front paws, kicking back with his powerful haunches and hind legs in a startling display of reflexes. His hind feet were sheathed in ingeniously designed armoured shoes that expanded their size and added jagged metallic edges and barbs to the kick.
She had intended to sprint around him and then launch herself once again, but his reaction was so quick, his judgement so true, that one of the flailing warboots struck her a glancing blow. It was only a nick really, but the barbed edge was deadly sharp and rusty as iron left on a seashore, and it tore a chunk of flesh from her sensitive behind. She faltered, fell, rolled, and then regained her feet.
To find him turned around, anticipating her, and ready to lash out. He released a second kick, this one with all his strength behind it, a mighty bull-kick even greater than the one the other bull-rakshasa had launched back in the woods. If that had been sufficient to fell a latsyoa tree, then this kick was certainly enough to fell a vanar.
She flipped herself backwards, somersaulting over and over, and over again. The lethal edge of his warboot passed over her head, close enough for her to feel the wind of its passing. She continued to somersault, the momentum too great to halt at once. The disadvantage of such a move was that it took her away from her combatant, whereas a vanar’s advantage lay in leaping on one’s opponent and getting close enough to bite and scratch and tear. When she landed on her feet, he was already up on his hind legs again and charging at her. She barely had time to collect her wits and did the only thing she could do: she leaped as high as she could manage.
He was anticipating that as well.
Instead of charging head down at her and blundering past, leaving his flank open for her to slash and tear again, he leaped too. His bulk and weight made it impossible for him to spring up as high as she, but his powerful hind legs and forward momentum gave him enough push to reach her lower limbs. He slashed out viciously with a gloved arm bristling with shiny, metal blade extensions to his own claws, and with a sensation like an umbilical cord being severed, she felt her tail, the pride of any vanar, cut in two, close to her rear. Another blade slashed her upper thigh, opening a wound that spurted blood. A third caught the edge of her fur on her back and tugged it hard enough to rip a patch of her pelt right off, taking skin and flesh with it as well.
Both vanar and rakshasa fell to the ground—the vanar bleeding and wounded in three separate places and having lost a part of her anatomy as essential to maintaining a balance as a foot was to any biped.The rakshasa, on the other hand, had only been wounded the once, though his wound was still bleeding profusely and, from the angle at which he held his head, hurting badly as well.
She stumbled, trying to stay upright, and fought back the impulse to simply roll over and clutch at her lost organ, for to a vanar, even losing an arm was preferable to losing its tail. She thought absurdly that her grandchildren would no longer be able to play with that slender velvety tail now, or tug on it mischievously or entwine their own little furry tails with it while sleeping blissfully in her lap.
The thought made her grin savagely, blinking back tears of pain and determination.
Out of the corner of her field of vision, she saw Mainda and Dvivida, seething and barely able to restrain themselves. She snarled briefly in their direction, reminding them of her order not to interfere. Then she looked again at her opponent and showed him her wide-open, blood-smeared mouth, for the hole left by the lost tooth was oozing blood and pain as well. She feigned a careless laugh, ignoring the agony and shame of her severed tail.
‘Are you ready to yield yet, rakshasa?’ she demanded.
He stared at her with cold curiosity. ‘Yield? You are brave and foolish, vanar leader. You should have stayed in the forest and died along with the rest of your monkey companions.’
She laughed. The sound seemed to startle him. ‘Actually,’ she said, pausing to spit out a mouthful of blood and a tooth fragment, ‘that’s what I had in mind for you.’
With a yell like a monsoon cyclone wind, she launched herself at him again.
***
Hanuman stared in disbelief and awe as Mandara-devi threw herself yet again at the rakshasa general. This time, she barrelled into him at ground level, the complete opposite of what he had been expecting. Prepared to meet a vanar’s leap, he was met instead by a creature one-third his height scurrying between his legs. He corrected himself and bent down astonishingly fast for a creature of his size and bulk, but she was faster, and his blade-tipped paws grasped only a snatch of her fur which ripped away in his clutch. Mandara-devi, racing between the rakshasa’s legs, slashed upwards with both paws, talons drawn and held at an angle designed to cause maximum harm. She cut into the general’s most tender organs with ferocious strength, using the one advantage of a vanar to its utmost, then, as he bent over, partly to attempt to grab her, and partly to reach for his ruined organs, she caught hold of the back of his armour and pulled herself onto his back, spreading her limbs and clinging on with all her might.
The rakshasa howled with an anguish that was echoed by his entire horde. It was a cry of such typically masculine disbelief and agony that even Hanuman shuddered. For all his earlier bluster—for their words had been heard clearly by the flying vanar—it seemed the general would not be begetting any more offspring, whether on vanars or any other species. Hanuman admired Mandara-devi’s audacity and ruthlessness.
Clinging to the enraged, agonised rakshasa’s back, Mandaradevi felt a pulse of triumph. She had injured him deeply, if not mortally. He would not recover from that injury, for she had not only ruined his organs of procreation, she had effectively emasculated him. That was one rakshasa who would never boast of raping vanars. As the pain-maddened rakshasa swung round and about, attempting to dislodge her, she used one claw to slash into the tough hide of his back, seeking out his spine. He howled again, fathoming her intent, and threw himself upon his back.
The impact of a hefty rakshasa weighing some three hundred kilos land upon her with all his force shattered every major bone in Mandara-devi’s body and crushed several of her organs as well. Blacking out for a moment she barely knew when she released her hold on her opponent. She lay on her back on the gravelly ground, as the rakshasa general rose again and took a brief moment to bend over and peer down at his own severed and damaged organs, whimpering once in shock.
Lying there, the sun felt warm and comforting upon her face and body. She had no sensation from the waist down, which was a good thing, for she was certain that her legs were horribly crushed and she would never walk again, not with all the healing in the world. She enjoyed that brief moment
of respite, the sun a luxury to one who had spent almost her entire life in the silver mines of her land, taught from birth to both fear and respect that blazing orb that rode the skies by day and was swallowed by the land and the oceans by night. Rama had said there was no truth in the myth that exposure to the sun would kill her or her Mandaras, and she believed him, but now it hardly mattered. Henceforth, Mandeha legend would forever record that she had exposed herself to the sun and had died that very day. For she knew that this was to be the day of her death.
As the rakshasa general roared again, unable to believe how irrevocably she had damaged him, she sensed Mainda and Dvivida bounding towards her. They knew she was mortally injured and barely able to lift a paw, let alone defend herself, but she croaked out an admonishment to them. ‘No!’ she said as sternly as she could manage, spitting up blood and fluids, for her ribcage was a tangled thicket of splintered bones and mashed lungs. ‘Remember why … Finish it. For Rama.’
***
Hanuman watched with unspeakable sorrow as Mandara-devi used her rapidly ebbing strength not to curse her fate or beg for
help, but to order her lieutenants to fulfil Rama’s orders. After all, that was why she had sacrificed her life so bravely this morning, to ensure that Rama’s orders were carried out to the letter. He watched as the two burly vanars chittered with dismay at one another, while the rakshasa general regained his senses and stumbled back to where his opponent lay dying, grimacing and grunting at the agony of his ruined manhood. Then the bull-rakshasa turned, and aimed a kick with his hind legs directly at his fallen opponent. From the anger on his bullish features, it could be seen that he intended to finish her off with this kick. Hanuman almost wished he could avert his eyes, but still he watched as the shockingly brief and sudden combat reached its finale: for even they who only watched served Rama.
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 72