Jambavan fought both the ground rakshasas and the air ones, sometimes slashing upwards to tear the throats of swooping attackers, or grabbing a wingtip, ignoring the talons that dug into his already bleeding palms, then tearing the beast in two by ripping it down the middle like he might tear a palm frond. He kicked at oncoming ground attackers, using his lower claws to stab their groins and emasculate them. Those that came close enough to fall upon him, he bit at savagely, chomping through horned hide, muscle and bone in a single clean clenching of his mighty jaws. Around him the biggest and fiercest of the bears fought with similar frenzy, each one killing dozens, even scores, before ultimately succumbing to wounds too terrible to recover from and too numerous to count. He sensed rather than saw many old friends, lovers, blood-kin and tribe-kith fall one by one, until he began to realise that this was a battle that would end only with the deaths of them all, vanars and bears and rakshasas, all together. So be it. He would make sure to tote up a butcher’s bill so great that even Ravana would marvel at how a single bear’s life could cost so many rakshasa ones. He bit through the throat of a rakshasa bird-beast that had landed on his back, tearing into his shoulders viciously, while slashing a ground rakshasa with his lower right paw and decapitating a third with his upper left paw, all in a one-two-three sequence of actions. He had long since lost count of how many of the enemy he had downed, but it would number well over a hundred. And the battle was still young.
***
The engine of war ground its minders into bone and gristle. Nothing could stay its course, no force could give it pause. The leaders of both sides fell silent, needing every ounce of their waning energies merely to survive. Many died, or were horribly wounded and struggled on pitifully till they were overcome with particularly savage ferocity, for rakshasas considered the consumption of an enemy leader’s organs to be a vitaliser. And to consume them while the leader was still living was even more precious.
Thus, the terrible, near-silent slaughter raged on all day and well into the evening. Above the sorcerous fog-cloud that enveloped the island, the sun traversed the sky and dipped into the west, the denizens of the ocean lived and loved, mated and nursed, and wondered at the carnage that was evident even to them, for all knew of Rama’s war and Ravana’s reign of terror. The greybacks, who had worked so hard to bring the armies of dharma across the ocean, now immersed in the deep, cold waters of the northern sea which they required in order to sustain their enormous weight and bulk, knew of the carnage that raged in Lanka, if not the specific details of each battle and fight, and wept tears that were lost in the vast teardrop of brine itself.
The birds of the land deserted the country, terrified by the slaughter that raged below, the unnatural beasts that swarmed the skies, and the dark nothingness that obscured both land and sky. They flew to other climes, cawing and honking and squawking plaintively at having lost their homes. They landed on the mainland, on the tsunami-ravaged shores, and settled in the forests bordering the ocean in great multitudes, a million squabbles breaking out with their mainland cousins, but most quickly resolved as all understood that this was a temporary migration. Or so they hoped. For who truly knew what would transpire in Lanka next? Who could say that the two great hosts warring on that darkling land would not simply massacre one another and leave the island-kingdom bloodwashed and unpopulated, a ghost country haunted by the spirits of countless departed of both sides? Being birds, they did not understand the ways of mortals or asuras, and could only wrap their wings around their trembling bodies and wait for this season of death to pass.
***
For the first hour-watch of the battle, Rama and Lakshman stood side by side on the hillock immediately overlooking the northern battlefield, their bows working furiously. The faint glow of the volcano from below and the occasional flickers of sorcerous purple light in the heart of the fog-cloud above limned the silhouettes of the flying rakshasas sufficiently for them to shoot by. They loosed arrow upon arrow in unending succession, dropping scores of beasts from the sky. Those that came close enough to dare to lunge at Rama were dispatched with double fury by Lakshman, who shot unerringly at nictitating eyes, snarling mouths, or bared throats, driving these impudent ones back. Even so, as time passed and the beasts’ frenzy to kill these two warriors who were responsible for downing so many of their kind intensified, the onslaught grew to impossible proportions. At one point, the air above them was so thick with flapping wings, flashing talons and darkly gleaming eyes, they seemed shrouded in a cloud of their own. The vanars and bears on the field below glanced up at their mortal leaders and were awestruck at the number of the enemy surrounding the two Ayodhyans. But no matter how furiously the enemy tried to get at them, their fleeting arrows kept them at bay. They faced greater danger from the gore and offal splashed on their faces and bodies from the wounded and dying winged beasts. The hillock around them was littered with corpses of the creatures, their wings continuing to stir and jerk spasmodically even after the beasts themselves were dead.
All this was possible because of the great store of arrows that they possessed. Cut and shaped and polished with loving care by a special contingent of vanars under Lakshman’s supervision, back on the mainland. Yet no number, however great, could last for ever. And so, as the hour-watch passed into another hour-watch, and then yet another, and the number of their victims grew from tens to scores to hundreds and thousands, that great supply finally began to dwindle.
When Lakshman knew that they were on the last bushel, he called out to Rama above the noise of flapping wings and strangely silent attacks, only the involuntary grunts and sharp squeals of the arrow-struck breaking the deathly pall that lay over them. ‘Rama, you must use your powers now.’
Still Rama continued to loose arrows and down enemies.
Lakshman called out again. ‘Rama, the gifts,’ he said this time, referring to the gifts of Anasuya.
Still Rama did not heed him and went on firing arrows with the same methodical precision.
Finally, Lakshman dropped his bow, unsheathed his sword with one hand, and gripped Rama’s shoulder with the other. The corded muscle was covered by the slimy blood of the winged beasts. ‘Rama, it is time. Use your weapons,’ he pleaded insistently.
As he spoke, he used his sword to continue fighting the beasts, for their onslaught had not slowed a whit even hours after the first wave. Only for brief moments did their attacks diminish as new reinforcements arrived in the sky above, lined up to form a substantial new wave, and then attacked. Or at times when the giant Hanuman succeeded in flaying a greater number of the enemy, shattering their attempts at forming a wave and dissipating their numbers before they could fall on those below.
Rama reached the last of his arrows and resorted to his own sword. Blades flashing, they continued to kill as many birdrakshasas as before. Now the creatures were able to come closer to their targets, but as in any attack, where a great number attack a single or two closely clustered warriors, the space of access was limited and so only a certain number could come at the two brothers at once, and even these often got their wings tangled with one another’s, or clashed in their eagerness to be the one to attack the mortal yodhas. In fact, this resulted in a different challenge and possibly a somewhat reduced one, for Rama and Lakshman had now only to wait till the creatures approached within sword-range and then lash out with well-aimed sweeps, lopping off crucial parts of the beasts. The still-flapping wings, hovering in mid-air for precious moments after the death of the creatures they bore, obstructed those behind
and above, and reduced access to the two brothers still further.
Rama still did not respond to Lakshman’s pleas.
‘Bhai,’ he shouted, more urgently this time. ‘You must use your weapons, or our cause will be lost.’
A sudden change in the atmosphere around them distracted Lakshman. He slashed at an oncoming rakshasa, its snarling face disappearing in a small explosion of blood and shattered bone as his sword flashed in the near d
arkness. Then he glanced around, trying to make out the source of the odd disturbance.
THREE
Sugreeva thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. The rakshasas that had been attacking them so relentlessly for so many hour-watches began to recede, then faded away altogether. In moments, he was standing alone in the centre of the canyon, with no foes left to fight. He lowered his tree suspiciously, looking around, then above. Surely this was some devious new stratagem of the enemy. But all around him he saw vanars fall still, peering around in confusion as they found no rakshasas left alive to fight.
He sensed movement nearby and at once raised his pole, ready to strike. What he saw instead gave him pause.
He saw the mangled body of his nephew, barely recognisable now, rise up from the ground where it had fallen. The two halves of the body were barely able to cohere together, and the unfortunate young vanar’s internal organs were all clearly exposed, most brutally severed. Yet this unlikely amalgam of body parts and limbs was rising to its feet and lurching forward with slow, drunken steps. As Sugreeva watched with mounting horror, all around him, vanars who had fallen in battle began to rise slowly, their lifeless eyes black with a soulless light that he glimpsed by the faint glow of illumination that had expanded across the world this past hour-watch. Across the canyon, his stunned warriors stared around them in shock at this bewildering development.
The corpses of his dead vanar soldiers were coming back to life.
Except that ‘coming to life’ was an insufficient phrase to describe what was happening. ‘Regaining the illusion of life’ would be more accurate. For that was all that these risen corpses were, hollow shells mimicking the actions and movements of living creatures. Yet this only served to make them the more ghoulish, for to see one’s comrades, fellows-in-arms, blood-kin, kith, rise up from the dead, mangled and horribly disfigured, was worse than seeing the most grotesque rakshasa charging on a kumbhasur. Sugreeva swung around, staring with disbelief as the entire canyon was filled with the shakily rising and lurching figures of dead vanars revived to life. This was Ravana’s sorcery at work, of course, that went without saying. But to what end? What did he hope to achieve by reanimating these mangled corpses?
In a moment he had his answer. The lurching, lumbering form of Kaharimal stumbled towards him, its nearly severed head tilted at a bizarre angle, its midriff cut open to reveal every vital organ. And its arms, Kaharimal’s arms, reached out towards his uncle Sugreeva, as if seeking his blessing. But there was no mistaking the curled menace of those claws, nor the snarl that opened the dead vanar’s mouth to reveal its fangs in a dead black maw. Still unwilling to accept this evidence of his senses, Sugreeva allowed the moving corpse to come within reach of him.
Suddenly, belying the clumsy slowness with which it had moved till now, the corpse lunged at him, the twisted head and hacked torso moving at ludicrous angles as the creature attempted to attack the king of Kiskindha.
Sugreeva recoiled in disgust as the creature’s claws raked his arms, peeling off a thin strip of fur, and those snapping jaws attempted to close upon any part of his anatomy they could reach.
Moving with mechanical dexterity, his heart sinking with dismay, he brought his tree-spear up with a swift efficient action, cracking the reaching corpse’s arms like sticks, then shoving it back with enough force to send it tumbling over and over, until it landed in a heap of confused limbs and spilling vitals. Yet, after a moment, these mangled parts began stirring relentlessly and once again the whole mass struggled to move forward, to repeat its mindless attack upon its own kith and kin.
Across the canyon, thousands of dead vanar corpses were attempting the same thing.
***
The onslaught of flying rakshasas died away as suddenly as it had begun.
Rama peered up at the dark sky suspiciously. He could see Hanuman’s outline, writhing and twisting as it battled the beasts in the air—then he saw the giant vanar’s movements slow, as even his antagonists dissipated. The few remaining winged ones flew back southwards whence they had come. In moments, the sky was as empty as if they had never been there at all. Only Hanuman’s hovering figure, and the mounds of corpses all around on the hillock, and the gore and gristle coating his own body were indisputable proof that the battle had occurred.
‘Rama, look.’
He turned to see Lakshman peering down at the battlefield below. It was still relatively dark, but there was now sufficient faint illumination to see by, both from the volcano in the south, which appeared to be growing more agitated by the moment, and from the flashes of sorcerous purple-tinged lightning which flickered in the fog-cloud above.
He stared at what seemed to be an impossible tableau.
Unable to accept the evidence of his senses, he asked Lakshman, ‘What is it?’
‘The dead,’ Lakshman replied grimly. ‘Our dead are returning to life.’
And Rama looked again, and saw that it was so.
***
Mainda and Dvivida wondered at the disappearance of the rakshasas. Below them on the corpse-scattered floor of the forest, Kambunara wondered as well, sniffing a strange new scent that made no sense at all. It smelled like living dead bear, which was impossible.
Then, two tree trunks away from him, a bear he had known well and loved dearly, and whom he had seen downed after killing at least a score of rakshasas, began to regain her feet slowly. She used the tree before her to raise herself, like a sick bear would. He could hear her talons rasping on the bark of the tree, and the sound of her heavy nether paws cracking the paw bones of a dead rakshasa underfoot, but he could not hear her breathing, even though the forest had fallen deathly silent. He could not smell her breath either, nor the odour of her effusions. What he could smell was the stench of death, but mingled with another riper, fetid odour that was like a mockery of a living bear’s smell. Like flesh that was partly roasted and deliciously fragrant and partly rotted and worm-riddled.
She turned, twisting her snout from side to side, as if seeking something out. But she neither sniffed nor looked with her eyes, for he could sense that they were both stuck shut by a great quantity of blood that had washed on her from the rakshasa who had dealt her the killing blow and whom she had pulled down with her own claws, embracing in death. Then, as if sensing him out, she began lurching in his direction. With a sickened heart, he understood what was happening. Moments later, when he was forced to defend himself against her clumsy yet heartbreakingly determined attack, he saw her rise yet again— and again, and again—and he knew that nothing that Ravana had done before or would do after this could be worse than this one act of sorcery. For what could possibly be worse than being pitted against your own beloved comrades and forced to fight them for your survival?
***
Across Lanka, vanars and bears found themselves faced with the same situation. As their rakshasa foes vanished, retreated, withdrew, they were replaced by their own fallen dead. It was not that this new enemy was particularly proficient or dangerous—their mangled condition and lurching, mindless movements made them easy enough to repel—rather that they could not be stopped and kept on coming and coming. For how could you kill something that was already dead? And there was also the fact that the armies of Rama had no stomach to fight their own kind, that too their own kith and kin and warrior comrades. They fought, to survive, but there was no heart in their fighting.
***
The battlefield was filled with lurching, mindless shadows battling improbably with Jambavan’s bears and Angad’s vanars. Lakshman turned away from this heart-sickening sight and faced Rama.
‘My brother,’ he said in a voice of steel. ‘This time you will not let our followers be massacred. You will use the dev-astras and turn the tide of this war. I ask you this not to save myself or even you. I ask you this in the name of dharma.’
‘But what good will it do to use them now?’ Rama asked. ‘Against our own dead?’
Lakshman made a sound of exasperation
. ‘This is a ploy of Ravana. After this round, he will send another wave of new foes against us. And he will keep sending more and more surprises and shocks to us, until our great armies are whittled down to nothing, and our spirit is broken.’
‘We can withstand everything he throws at us,’ Rama said. ‘We can win this war honestly, without the use of maha-shakti.’
Lakshman shook his head. ‘This war can never be won honestly, Rama. Can you not see that? How can it, when Ravana himself uses asura maya against us?’
A rush of wind indicated the arrival of Hanuman. The vanar was still in the process of reducing himself as he landed—he was twice his usual size when he bowed to Rama with a look of some agitation. ‘Rama, I fear Ravana has some new terror he plans to unleash upon us. Our forward armies are in no condition to withstand yet another sustained assault.’
Rama was shocked at Hanuman’s condition. The vanar’s body seemed to be one continuous open wound, the skin flayed as if it had been peeled off meticulously by some cruel interrogator. But the very agitation and energy of his friend reassured him; if Hanuman could be concerned about others, then he himself must surely be capable of continuing. ‘Yes, my friend, we are aware of Ravana’s latest sorcerous trick. He uses our own dead against us.’
‘Nay, my lord, I speak not of that. I speak of the new attack that he is preparing to launch at us from the gates of Lanka.’
‘New attack?’ Lakshman stared at Hanuman. ‘What have you seen?’
‘When the winged creatures retreated, I flew after them, thinking to bring down as many as I could. I pursued them to the gates of the city, where I saw a great new host assembled, led by the rakshasa who bested me on my earlier trip to Lanka, Ravana’s own son, the one named Indrajit. He was so named because of his once legendary defeat of the king of devas, Lord Indra himself. Do not take this new challenge lightly, Rama. He wields the weapons of the gods themselves, the legendary dev-astras. No living being can survive his assaults. On that day when I permitted him to ensnare me, if I had chosen to resist I cannot say for certain that I would have survived the encounter. And I can say with absolute certainty now that if he unleashes dev-astras at our forces, they will be slaughtered to the last vanar and bear.’
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 78