dense as the darkest moonless night.
But that was not the thing that gave him pause for anxiety.
What startled him was the other skyborne menace that was approaching from the south. This was much lower than the high cloud that was enveloping the earth, about three or four hundred yards high, the height at which Hanuman usually flew in order to maintain a clear view of the ground below as well as spy out enough of the land ahead. The height at which a flying warrior would choose to fly.
And this dense mass moving at that height was indeed a swarm of flying warriors.
Rakshasas, to be precise. Rakshasas with leathery wings on their backs, flapping with the slow, precise beats of enormous foxbats which they resembled when seen from this distance. Nowhere near as large as the vulture-beast Jatayu had been, but close enough to remind him painfully of his lost friend and ally who had died fighting Ravana in his valiant attempt to hinder Sita’s kidnapping.
An army of flying rakshasas, tens of thousands of them, filled the dark sky, coming directly at him.
At the same time, from behind him came a chorus of vanar shrieks and bear howls.
He turned to look at the battlements whence the lizard-beasts had emerged not long before. New enemies were emerging from those crevices now, brought up through the tunnels beneath the ground like their predecessors. They were huge, lumbering beasts, much like rakshasas in body, but with a distinctive feature that he could spy even at this distance. They bore faces almost recognisably familiar, even seen from afar. As he frowned, trying to make out their faces more clearly, the darkness overhead and on the ground engulfed that entire part of the island, and all was blackness.
A deathly silence fell across the world broken only by the sound of countless leathery wings beating the still air. And then, with a sound like thunder clapping in the distance, Ravana unleashed his war upon the forces of Rama.
KAAND 4
ONE
‘Anjaneya. To the skies!’
Hanuman did not need a second order from Rama. He rose like an arrow shot from Lakshman’s bow, expanding his body to a size he judged optimum for fighting the winged rakshasas. Moving up through absolute blackness did not worry him unduly; his vanar senses enabled him to scent his way just as effectively in pitch darkness. The air was thick with the rank odour of the flying beasts, and from the sound of their leathery wings beating the air, he knew they were only moments away from Rama’s position. He set his jaw and flew to meet them, guided through the utter darkness by his vanar senses, determined to ensure that far more of Ravana’s flying warriors would die in the air than reach the ground below alive.
***
King Sugreeva cursed aloud as the darkness enveloped him and his warriors. He knew he was fortunate to have been standing atop the rise, overlooking the canyon, well placed to see for miles around. In those last brief moments before the world went dark, he glimpsed the rumbling dust cloud raised by the horde approaching from the south, as well as the winged creatures in the sky. Then all vision was blocked out by a darkness blacker than night itself, leaving him staring in frustration.
‘My lord,’ someone called to him in the darkness. ‘Shall we retreat?’
‘Where to?’ he asked rhetorically. For he knew that the other armies would be under attack as well. It would not matter whether he ran this way or that, all around was enemy territory. A stab of sadness, as piercing and cold as a dagger of ice, went through his heart as he realised that all the sacrifice of the Kiskindha vanars in the first battle was in vain. Then he corrected himself: Nothing was ever in vain. Every soldier’s life well spent made possible a future victory.
He did the only thing he could as a good king and a general of Rama: he gave the order to prepare to repel the enemy on both fronts, ground and sky. And then he raised his battered pole, whose point he had taken a moment to taper into a spear-sharp tip, and waited for the charge of the armies of the damned.
***
From the dimness of the valley forest, the champions Mainda and Dvivida peered up at the sky, benighted as abruptly as if someone had thrown a rug over the world. Despite the blackness, they could still see faintly: the great volcano in the south of the island was emitting a soft glow, invisible in the bright sunlight earlier, but now sufficient to throw a candlelight’s worth of illumination upwards, casting faint highlights on anything that caught the light in the sky.
They stared up in wonderment and awe at what their enemy had wrought: would that Mandara-devi had lived to see this—or then again, better that she had not.
A constellation of darkly luminescent eyes and gleaming talons glowed dully like an alien sky filled with bizarre stars and celestial orbs. It reminded Dvivida of the time he had wandered too far into the dreaded Southwoods as a youngun and glimpsed a cluster of eyes reflected back at him by starlight. He had realised at once to his undying dismay that the rumours of a horde of grotesquely malformed asuras dwelling in those deepwoods were not rumours but truth. He shivered and wished he could flee scampering as he had on that long-ago occasion, back to the safety of his tribe. But on this occasion, there was nowhere to flee.
As they waited for the skyborne menace to fall upon them, they grew aware of another sound and scent. A great rumbling vibration filled the valley. They exchanged a look of bared teeth, knowing what that sound and vibration meant. Peering through the murky darkness, they made out the faint blur of movement, enough to deduce the rest.
An army of rakshasas was pouring down the ghats into the valley from all sides, encircling the contingent of Mandara vanars and Kambunara’s bears within the forest valley. This time they were the ones trapped and surrounded—not just on all sides, but from above as well.
***
Angad stared in frustration at the dark field ahead. He could see the shadowy shapes of the creatures emerging from the battlements, could see just enough by the faint glow of the volcano’s emission to make out that they were nothing like the lizard-beasts; these were some wholly new breed of rakshasas. How would they fight? What were their points of vulnerability? Did they have any? And what of the creatures above? Even if Hanuman was powerful enough to fight them, there were far too many for him to deal with all at once.
He heard the code-sounds of his angadiyas ringing out across the battlefield as they communicated Rama’s terse new orders. He admired Rama’s ability to respond so swiftly to such a drastically altered situation, and passed on his own instructions as best as he could, ensuring that Rama’s wishes were carried out efficiently, but secretly he wondered if it was possible to outmanoeuvre this move of Ravana’s. For it seemed like no battle strategy that the lord of Lanka had unleashed; this seemed like an endgame.
***
Jambavan’s thoughts, despite the yawning disparity between him and the young vanar prince of Kiskindha, were not very different. He swore gruffly as his ember-red eyes, accustomed to seeing in the lightless depths of subterranean caverns, glimpsed the first wave of flying beasts detach themselves from their hovering mates overhead and begin a sharp, plunging dive towards his position. At the same time, the newly emerged rakshasas creeping out from beneath the battlements also began striding forward, seeping across the field like viscous fluid upon a polished surface. Far in the distance, to all points of the compass, he sensed the other forces of dharma also preparing to join weapons with their nemesis in the arcane darkness. Masterfully and magnificently, Ravana had struck back at them with a war game to beat all war games. In his ancient heart, the bear lord knew that this battle just beginning would be the last battle of Lanka. Whoever stood at the end of this clash would be master of the kingdom of rakshasas henceforth.
He snarled and unsheathed his claws. At such a time there was only one thing a warrior of dharma could do. He intended to do it until the last fish-stinking breath left his burly body.
He lifted his snout and roared the challenge of the ancient ones. Around him on the benighted battlefield, the bear army raised their snouts and roare
d as well, defying any and all who dared to fight against them.
***
Across the land of rakshasas, the forces of Ravana had come into position, each poised and ready to strike at their prey, like a group of felines marking the chital they would each pounce on in a grazing herd.
There came a pause in the tableau then, as the forces of Rama and Ravana regarded each other, able to see only briefly in the flashes of lightning-like purplish illumination that flickered in the dense black sky-fog, and by the deep-scarlet hellish glow of the volcano at the far southern end of the island.
The creatures flying above Hanuman had slowed their progress to hover in mid-air, flapping their enormous wings slowly enough to maintain their height, without moving in any direction. Their hungry eyes were directed downwards at their enemy, and their beak-like mouths issued shrill cries from time to time, as they waited impatiently to attack. Now, as if receiving some inner command that he could neither scent nor hear nor sense, they issued a unanimous cry of triumph. This painfully ear-piercing shriek was followed by the thunderous flapping of tens of thousands of wings, as they began their murderous descent, breaking off in waves, like the one that Angad had already glimpsed, each group flying in a different tactical trajectory. Hanuman knew he would not be able to stop them all, but he intended to deflect as many as he possibly could before taking the offensive. He had placed his body in such a way that large numbers would have no choice but to attempt to bite and slash and claw their way through him in order to get at their designated targets.
From below, the roar of the bear lord was echoed by the thundering response of the bear army.
The sound gave him new courage and determination. Even as he braced himself for the pain he knew was inevitable, he heard the roars of the rakshasa hordes on the ground rend the air as they began their attack as well.
TWO
Hanuman roared in rage as thousands of razor-sharp beaks and claws tore into his flesh from head to toe. Sharp talons dug into the tender skin around his eyes, seeking to rip open his lids and penetrate the soft orbs of his organs of vision. Clenching his eyes shut, he felt their probing points peck even at his closed lids, felt the pain of that delicate skin being torn and slashed, penetrating through to his eyes themselves, drawing blood. He swiped backhanded, sweeping away scores from his face, some clinging on so fiercely that he tore away his own skin and flesh before they were cast away. He clapped his hands together, smashing a dozen-odd to crumpled gristle. The leathery wings continued to flap even after death, as if governed by a force not of the flesh. Sharp, needle-like talons pierced his chest, his arms, his taut muscled belly, his waist, his legs, even hacked at the makeshift langot, the strip of loin-cloth he had taken to wearing after the mortal fashion. They ripped away his fur in clumps, leaving pinpricks of oozing pain, tore his skin in swatches, needled into his flesh, gnawed on his bones, slashed at his tendons, attempted to tear open his blood vessels …
Soon, his entire body was one enormous bleeding wound. This was no fight, it was a torture session. Yet he bore the agony of it without a sound of protest—not a sound after that first enraged roar of challenge—and slapped and crushed and battered the beasts, killing them upon his own body like an ordinary vanar might do to bloodsucking insects.
***
Angad leaped into the fray, slashing at the throat of an oncoming rakshasa. He felt his claws tear at living flesh, felt also the telling spurt of life-fluid, and heard the beast grunt angrily. As he sprang out of the way of its responding blow, dodging it with a hair’s breadth of space to spare, he took comfort in the fact that these creatures bled and fought not unlike regular rakshasas. It did not make them easier to fight or kill; it merely made it possible to do so. And right now, possible was all he prayed for. The rest was ultimately up to the devas—and Rama himself.
Then all thoughts, all prayers, were set aside as he gave himself over to the task of fighting for his life, as the battle disintegrated into tens of thousands of individual combats.
***
King Sugreeva swung his tree in a circling arc, feeling the bones of rakshasas crack and crunch and shatter as he struck them with just enough force to inflict telling damage but not so much that it would halt the swing of the weapon. He relished the feel of the supple, smooth hardwood in the palms of his unfurred fists, thanking the vanar ancestors who had brought him this weapon. He took satisfaction also, as had his son, in knowing that rakshasas were flesh and blood, just like vanars, and could be broken and beaten and killed. These new rakshasas had not the benefit of the mounts that the first attack had; they came on foot, and the same darkness that nearly blinded Sugreeva and his forces also impaired their vision, forcing them to come at the vanar army in the canyon with the customary slow, lumbering gait of rakshasas who had not built up sufficient running momentum. His vanars fought around him, a contingent of veterans from the first battle clustered around their king to offer him support and protection, and the darkness was rent with the screams of comrades and enemies alike.
There were no war cries issued in this dark and fierce battle, no howls of exultation. Only a desperate fighting that stole lives and shattered organs and bones, crippling and maiming and severing limbs from bodies. It was the brutal business of war, with the dark deva of death kept constantly busy slipping his invisible thread-noose around the souls of dying creatures and slipping them into his burgeoning sack to be carried back to the netherworld on his black buffalo mount. Yet Yamaraj himself might have paused a moment to marvel at this strange, silent clash beneath a sorcerously benighted sky, where great armies fought one another in a strange, doomed, desperate struggle to the finish.
A trio of vanars before Sugreeva succumbed to a new onslaught of arriving rakshasas, grunting softly with effort as they dispatched one of his most beloved lieutenants—who also happened to be his sister’s son—with a heart-rending liquid gush of bodily fluids. His nephew Kaharimal died silently, his body torn nearly in two, only yards from Sugreeva. And the vanar king of Kiskindha grieved for his lost blood-kin the only way a warrior could, by raising his tree and dealing a great deadly blow to the offending rakshasa. The beast collapsed beside his vanar victim, his misshapen skull shattered by the tree, brains oozing out to mingle with the rent flesh of Sugreeva’s favourite nephew.
***
The champions Mainda and Dvivida fought on with bitter rage, both for the honour of their fallen tribe-goddess and for Rama’s cause, for the two were inextricable in their minds now. The valiant vanars in the forest had a great advantage over their enemies in that they were in their natural environment, whereas rakshasas, having lived in more civilised communities and cities, were no longer as accustomed to forest-fighting as their kind had once been, millennia ago.
The bears had this advantage as well, and the darkness actually served to conceal them. Oftentimes, a rakshasa would strike out at what he perceived to be a bear, only to have his blade strike the hard bark of a tree; before he could free the stuck blade, a dark, towering shape he had mistaken for a tree would lumber forward, claws slashing from side to side, ending his confusion once and for all.
Kambunara enjoyed the business of slaughter for a while, as his dark fur disguised him well in the pitch black forest. Rakshasas ran into trees as they attempted to charge him, and he ran into them, wreaking havoc. A butcher in a sheep pen.
But as time went by, and the battle wore on relentlessly, ever-increasing numbers of the enemy kept pouring in from over the valley’s ridges, to replace those who had been slaughtered. The bears and vanars began to grow weary, for how long could one fight without rest or nourishment, but they knew that retreat was not an option, and so they fought on grimly. The forest floor, dried and leaf-strewn in this autumnal season, became a morass of wet gelid corpses and body parts and fluids. Soon, the bears were standing on corpses and fighting, while the vanars, swinging from tree to tree to tree, began to find even the limbs of the trees growing slick and sticky as vanars before them c
lutched them with blood-spattered palms and blood-dipped tails. The forest turned into a grisly abattoir as the long night that was in fact a day, wore on relentlessly.
***
Even Jambavan’s great heart-stopping roar fell silent as the battle wore on. The bear king’s position was inundated with the flying rakshasas. There was no longer any separation between the vanar and bear armies, as both kinds intermingled, fighting shoulder to shoulder—or bear hip to vanar shoulder, to be more exact— and combining their separate skills to maximise their killing efficiency. But the enemy had a greater advantage, dropping soldiers from the air as well as sending them sweeping across the ground. The flying rakshasas, almost as dark as the sorcerous night itself, appeared out of nowhere, snatching vanars and carrying them high, tossing them from one to another, tearing them open in mid-air. Many vanars, once tossed, twisted and turned to slash the wings of their skyborne abductors, causing the creatures to falter or fall out of the sky to crash on the ground below, often landing on warriors of both sides. The vanars in the air died one way or another, either by falling, or by being torn apart by the flying beasts. And a steady spatter of blood fell from the darkness, like the ghoulish monsoon that fell year round in the hellish realms of naraka-lok.
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 77