He watched as the Jatarupas continued their mad antics even as the enemy host approached in their odd, shambling fashion. The distance between the two forces closed steadily—a hundred yards now, then seventy, fifty, thirty … and now the first lizard-beasts were barely twenty yards from the vanar army. He tried to estimate how much of open field the lizards had left behind them.
‘Not more than a mile,’ Lakshman said grimly, voicing his own concern.
That was not enough. He needed the lizard-beasts to clear at least three miles of open field, or he could not deploy the bear army. Bear with me just a little while longer, he said silently to Jambavan. He wished he could send a spoken message via the angadiyas as he did when communicating with the vanar forces. But as soon as the thought left his mind, he felt a tingling sensation, as if the bear lord heard him and understood, and had sent back a gruff assurance.
Then he waited for the battle to begin.
***
Angad watched as the lizard-beasts approached within striking distance of the Jatarupa army. Even now the playful vanars still continued their mad antics, leaping and whooping and dancing like a tribe drunk on honey wine at moon-feast time. He shook his head, vexed. Could they not see that these beasts were not like regular rakshasas? Had they not glimpsed how fast they leaped and how high? He wished now that he had elected to lead the Jatarupas instead of manning the much smaller force on the rampart walls. Contrary to expectations, it had transpired that the larger force was facing the greater danger.
But it was too late to change the plan. All he could hope was that Rama’s war strategy was astute enough to anticipate and adjust to all possibilities. And that the Jatarupas were able to stand up to this new breed of rakshasa better than his warriors had.
***
Too far away to participate actively in the battle, too far even to fire arrows that would be better used at closer range, Rama and Lakshman prepared to watch as the battle began.
The lizard-beasts made the first move. One moment they were all still as statues, every single one of them in sight, even their clicking communication fallen completely silent, as they stared ahead with unblinking yellow eyes, glaring with serpentine coldness at their enemy. Then, abruptly, without any warning or sign, they attacked. Not by running forward, or by charging in lines as any normal rakshasa horde would do, but by leaping high into the air, with such suddenness and force that it seemed as if they had all launched themselves at once. Perhaps they had indeed done that, their uncanny clicking communication enabling them to maintain individual independence in movement and action while uniting them all mentally. One moment the field before the Jatarupa army was filled with immobile threeyards-tall lizard-like creatures. The next instant, the air above that same field was filled with the creatures leaping with ferocious energy and momentum, all but flying through the air. That first launch carried them some fifteen or twenty yards up, and with enough force to propel them forward across the intervening distance between the armies.
In the late morning sunlight, their talons and fangs gleamed and glistened brightly.
Like a rainfall of snakes they landed on their vanar foe, rending and tearing, lashing and biting. They moved like acrobats themselves, not with the tumbling grace of the Jatarupas, but with manic intensity. Their movement seemed clumsy when seen individually, but taken as a whole group it was undeniably concerted and coordinated with perfect precision. No doubt about it, these were creatures with a communication system so flawless, they did not need to line up and march or attack in rank and file; transcending those trivial disciplines altogether, they danced a deadly dance together in battle.
Both Angad from the high ramparts and Rama and Lakshman from the overlooking hillock, watched with horror as the lizard-rakshasas fell upon the vanars like no army they had ever seen before.
The Jatarupas were no fools. Their clever antics and acrobatic leaping had served a definite purpose: they had glimpsed the enemy’s style of attack and had sought to confuse and diffuse it by leaping and tumbling about. In this manner, they hoped to dodge the leaping beasts while flying at them themselves.
But the lizards’ uncanny ability to coordinate with one another rendered this useless. Rama watched as vanars flew through the air, tumbling in trajectories that should have been impossible to predict or intersect. And yet, they were intersected, by lizards that met them in mid-air and slashed them viciously, laying open their flesh, severing limbs, decapitating heads. And even before they landed again, they leaped once more with greater force, for this time they were propelled by forward momentum as well, they were clicking to one another, communicating other vanar movements, and leaping precisely to intercept those leaping vanars, only to cut them down with ruthless efficiency in mid-air. So huge was the army of lizards and so widespread that the vast majority had to leap several times before engaging with the enemy. They kept springing forward, tens of yards at one jump, and in mere moments the entire scrubland was awash with battling vanars and lizards, a bizarre dancing battle fought almost entirely in mid-air. For the Jatarupas could not alter their natural fighting style so quickly, and continued to leap and cavort and frolic in their acrobatic way even as they were being massacred by this strange, new foe.
The vanars did fight back. Angad saw several of them inflict slashing wounds and lay open the soft underbellies of the lizard creatures. But the lizards went on to leap again, undaunted by the greenish-yellow ichor oozing from these cuts and slashes, while the vanars mostly fell dead on the spot or with mortal injuries.
Simply put, the Jatarupas, with their exotic fighting method, had met a foe whose method not only matched theirs but exceeded it. To put it bluntly, and bloodily, they had been outmatched.
And that could only mean one thing, Rama thought with the cold clarity that came to him in such moments of ultimate crisis during a battle: the enemy had anticipated his move and outwitted him. That was the danger of shima: in letting the foe know your plans, you also risked his being able to unleash new alternative counter-plans of his own. Ravana had not succeeded in his attempt to outflank Rama’s armies and catch them in a hand-clapping action. Rama had rendered that impossible by splitting his army into separate forces and engaging the enemy on four different fronts, each on a ground of his own choosing and his own terms. But Ravana had outmanoeuvred him by pulling back the ordinary rakshasa regulars Rama had expected to attack from this northern rear position, and deploying these strange new creatures instead.
Rama watched as his army of brave, eccentric Jatarupas was smashed to smithereens by the lizard force.
TWELVE
Angad howled with anguish as thousands upon thousands of Jatarupa vanars were cut to shreds by the leaping rakshasa army. Now the entire lizard force had covered the scrubland, and the air and ground were thick with flying bodies. He watched in anguish as vanars were cut to ribbons by multiple lizards at once, body parts flung to the winds. Blood and gore filled the air like a macabre festival of colours, celebrated at seeding season in one of the mortal ritual holidays he had once witnessed. Instead of the powdered rang and water that the mortals threw to celebrate the colours of the coming spring and the harvest being seeded, vanar blood and gristle flew through the air. The air was so densely reddened with bloodspray that he wondered how the warriors of both sides could even see each other. It was as if a cloud of red mist had fallen upon the battlefield, engulfing both forces.
Still, he could see, the Jatarupas were not yielding quarter. They stood their ground, leaping and calling out and chittering to the last, slashing and causing as much damage as they could inflict upon the enemy. Here and there a few lizards even fell, cut open and killed by the multitude of wounds they had received from several vanars leaping upon them at the same time. In this fashion, the battle, uneven and disproportionate as it was, did continue awhile, with perhaps five or seven vanars dying for every mortally wounded or killed lizard. But the count was increasing so rapidly that were this fray to last even a single da
y, every last Jatarupa on the field would be dead or mortally wounded.
But in standing their ground so bravely, and facing the enemy despite being outmatched and outmanoeuvred, the Jatarupas had achieved the fruition of the next part of Rama’s plan.
They had left room for the bears to be set free.
***
Jambavan sensed rather than felt or heard or saw that it was time for him to emerge. The bear lord had sustained himself for the past several hours by reducing his breathing to a minimum, using a method that the mortal sages of the Arya world referred to as pranayam yoga. In fact, his method preceded the mortals’ form of yoga by several millennia, deriving as it did from the original yogi himself, Lord Shiva the Destroyer. In a past life, Jambavan had served his lord personally, and in exchange for that lifetime of service diligently fulfilled, he had been given knowledge of the Three-Eyed One’s most personal accomplishments in the field of self-attainment. This gift he, in turn, had imparted to his bear fellows, and on this day in Lanka, it was what had made the fulfilment of Rama’s plan possible. In fact, he himself had suggested this particular concealment, when Rama had mused about how they were to hide such large, obvious creatures as bears. He and his kind could hardly crouch between scrubby bushes or cluster in trees as the Jatarupa vanars could. Nor were the trees around here sufficiently large-trunked for a bear to hide behind effectively. So he had suggested this place and it had served its purpose beautifully, for the enemy had bypassed it without ever being aware that a whole army of bears lay concealed within its confines. Now, they would learn and see, and be fearful. But not for long. That was Jambavan’s vow. For in the infinite knowledge of his deva-granted wisdom, he had indeed heard Rama’s silently spoken missive, just as he was aware of the progress of the battle between the Jatarupas and the reptilian rakshasas.
With a great flexing of muscles, he raised his powerful paws and began to dig his way out of his place of concealment. It had taken almost an hour-watch to dig his way in, and for the Jatarupas, supervised by Rama himself, to cover him up along with his bears. Now it took only a few moments to dig his way out. They had been lucky in that this entire patch of some twenty or more square miles was all loose dirt with almost no stones or rock for several yards beneath the surface. Being barren, there were no weeds or roots to form sods either. So it had been relatively easy—no, perhaps not easy, but possible—for his army of bears to dig their way a yard or more into the ground, and then for the Jatarupas to shovel the dirt back over them and stamp it in energetically to create the illusion of a flattish if somewhat lumpy field once more. Any unevenness could be attributed to the night of the killing stones, which had disrupted the entire landscape of this northern tip already. No enemy would suspect that an army of bears could be buried under a yard of packed dirt. In fact, it was impossible to do such a thing, for how could any creature breathe and survive several hours in this fashion? Impossible, that is, for any army except Rama’s, and any host of bears except that of Jambavan’s, with his mastery of the science of yoga. Even so, he knew that a few unfortunate specimens, unable to master the art, or lacking the discipline required to sustain the art of slowing one’s metabolism and breathing to the near-death level required to survive such a feat, had choked and suffocated to death already. They were a tiny fraction of his numbers, but if they had had to spend several more hours thus, then perhaps he would have lost many more.
But now it was time. He worked his great paws furiously, digging away the dirt and then the topsoil, and finally broke free, lifting his snout to breathe in the dusty but blessed air of Prithvi once more. He gasped in great lung-filling breaths, willing his pulse to resume normal pace once again. Then, moving as quickly as was possible under the circumstances, he dragged his large, heavy bulk out of the ground and stood, examining the field around him.
Incredibly, he was not the first to emerge. He took pride in seeing several hundred bears already out of the ground, or breaking free even as he looked around. Of course, most had probably been buried a bit less deeply than himself, and so had had to dig less to get out as well, but even so, it was a mark of his achievement as a leader and as a teacher of yoga that so many were able to respond so quickly. If slowing one’s bodily functions in the shav-asana state—literally like a corpse—was hard, then returning those functions to normal pace, while not as hard, was arduous and demanding. Under the circumstances, it also had to be done quickly, for it was no use wasting precious moments on regaining one’s senses and strength. They had to be ready to fight at once.
Which made it much like rousing oneself from a state of calm to full-blown fury. For nothing could raise bodily reactions faster and more effectively than anger. But anger controlled so that it was useful, not excessive. He willed his glands to produce the secretions that would bring him to a fighting fury quickly, while retaining control over his mental and intellectual faculties.
Around him, the bears who had emerged were doing the same thing, clenching their jaws and tensing their powerful upper limbs tightly, sheathing their claws and fisting their paws to enhance the arousal.
And all the while, more and more bears broke ground and emerged blinking and breathing into the clear, bright light of day. Now there were a few thousand, then twenty thousand, then twice that number … until the vast tract of barren land was covered with an army of bears the likes of which had never been gathered before on the face of the earth, nor would ever be gathered again. For in his heart, Jambavan knew that this great army was assembled only for Rama’s cause, and no cause as great or as righteous could ever summon such loyalty, such sacrifice, such unity between species, for perhaps as long as the world existed and until the last day of Brahma ended to give way to the final tandav of Shiva as He danced to destroy the world and make way for a new one.
Jambavan felt the power of all his strength, all his will, and all the shakti of his yogic knowledge and mastery, as well as the fury of outrage of Rama’s suffering, well up inside him, awakening every cell, every pore, every vessel of every organ in his body and mind, until he was in full battle rage, ready to unleash the power of the bear army.
He raised his snout and roared. Then lowered his head and lumbered forward to the attack.
***
Rama watched with pride and an unnameable emotion as the bear army stood on the plain, tens of thousands upon tens of
thousands of great hulking, shaggy, furred beasts, each a formidable force individually. A small contingent of their number had been dispatched earlier to aid the Mandaras in their forest valley battle. But the bulk of his bear army was right here, kept in abeyance until this crucial moment. And seeing them rise up out of the ground, he felt that he had done exactly the right thing. For could any force withstand that great army led by Jambavan?
As Jambavan roared and thundered forward, the massive bear force lumbering with him, the lizard-beasts ceased their fighting and dropped to the ground, falling still and silent once more. The Jatarupas, having the advantage of knowing about the bears, used this brief respite to hack and slash and cut the enemy, slaying several hundreds as they stood motionless, eyes opening and shutting but without moving any other muscle in their long reptilian bodies.
Then, as the bears’ lumbering run accelerated into a full-blown charge, the lizards moved as one, a great swivelling and turning that brought them all face-to-face with this new enemy that had appeared so unexpectedly while they were busy battling the vanars, and their clicking began anew. But this time, Rama felt, there was a difference in the pattern and pitch of their communication. He could not be certain of course, but he sensed a faltering in the rhythm of their clicking, a dulling of volume, a hesitant, uncertain start-and-stop pattern that he had not heard before. If their earlier communication was a confident, aggressive, bold outburst of chatter, the equivalent of a mortal roar of ‘attack and destroy’, then this new sound was more akin to a curious cry of ‘What is this now? What should we do next?’ He had no doubt that given even a few
moments longer, they would regroup and figure out some way to deal with the new threat, and their skills would be almost as devastating as against the vanars.
But they did not have the luxury of those few moments. The ploy of burying the bears and then recalling them so suddenly, and of trapping the rakshasa force between two armies—of outflanking the very force that was intended to outflank his forces—paid its dividends now. As the lizard-beasts stood in stunned confusion, unable to decide how to deal with this unexpected new enemy, the Jatarupas realised what was about to happen and quickly and quietly pulled back, leaving the reptilian creatures standing alone and defenceless before the oncoming bear charge.
With a sound like a great fist driven into living flesh with the force of a hammer, the bear army slammed into the lizard-beast army.
***
The lizard-beasts, formidable though they were when attacked, were not built for defence. Like the natural reptilian species they resembled so vividly, they possessed the same soft underbellies and vulnerable under-jaw. When attacking, their powerful leaps and slashing talons negated these disadvantages. But when standing still in stunned confusion, as they were now, they made soft, easy targets.
Jambavan rammed into a lizard headlong, ripping into its belly with his right fist, tearing open the soft flesh with such impact that a great gush of ichor spewed out like vomit. He saw the beast’s enormous mouth, as flat as a crocodile’s but with high fangs placed like a snake’s, open as if to issue a sound of anguish, but without a word or even a click, it collapsed in a gelid heap at his feet. He was already moving on to the next, swinging his great fist to slash it viciously across its thick reptilian throat. The joining of its head to its body was too solid and fleshy for him to actually decapitate it, but he ripped it sufficiently so that the head sagged limply to one side as the creature fell with a soft thud upon the ground. In the time it took to fall, he had moved on and killed another of its fellows. Around him, bears were finding their own chosen targets just as easy to kill.
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 75