Even with her mind at the mercy of the images in the cloud of smoke, Amba felt anger stir within her. Bhishma was not afraid of her being stoned to death; he was scared of what might happen if she, Amba, were to stake a claim to the throne ahead of her two sisters. With Vichitraveerya now gone, they were bound to look for a Brahmin to father the future king. It would be messy, indeed, for Bhishma and the royal house if she were to bear a child through the Brahmin before Ambika and Ambalika. If that were to happen, Bhishma and Mother Satyavati would have no choice but to accept her son as the future king, except for the fact that she had never wed Vichitraveerya. It would raise some questions that would surely be interesting; questions that Bhishma would rather prefer not to ever have to answer. It would be so much more convenient if Amba did not live in Hastinapur at all, if she were to be banished with one flimsy excuse or another.
Right now he could end this all, crown her the first queen to Hastinapur, and allow her to bear the future High King. But he would not. He would rather fight his teacher and kill his men in meaningless skirmishes with Panchala than see her ascend the throne. Why, she could not fathom. Had she hurt his pride so much when Mother Satyavati, on her behest, ordered him to release her? She had heard it being said that men least liked to give away their prizes of war. She remembered that her father had a whole palace built of marble to display the various shields and swords he had won during his conquests.
Men lived by these strange symbols of honour. Bhishma was the foremost man in the land, so his sense of honour must be tougher than most, his pride more vulnerable than most. Had she hit it on that day when she first told him about Salva? With all his talk of being the champion of Hastinapur, was he anything more than a petty man who could not rise above this disgraceful notion of nobility?
The neigh of horses and the blowing of a conch shook her and brought her eyes back to the image in front of her. Bhishma raised his bow and sent an arrow flying into the ground. ‘I still do not wish to fight you, my lord,’ he said, ‘but I do not think we have a choice, either of us.’
‘No,’ said Parashurama, tying around his forehead a thread of twine. ‘We do not.’ He picked up his bow and set an arrow to it. ‘May you fare well, Son of Ganga. We shall see how well you have learnt my lessons.’
TEN
The horses dug into the dry earth with their hooves, and at the cry of the charioteers and the crack of their whips, they charged at each other, raising a cloud of dust that shielded Amba’s view. For a while all she heard were sounds – of Bhishma and Parashurama calling out to one another: ‘Rain your arrows on me, Son of Ganga. Let me see if any of them can pierce my skin.’ ‘I am ready for you, Venerable One, my armour wishes to taste the tip of your spear.’
Then all of a sudden the mist cleared, and Amba found herself between the two chariots. She turned to face Bhishma only to see a lance being hurled directly at her. Before she could do anything other than throw her hands up in the air and shriek, the lance passed through her without hurting her and flew in the direction of Parashurama, who nonchalantly brushed it away with his mace.
The High Sage stood in his chariot with his legs apart, his chest puffed out, with all his weapons on his person. Amba saw a bow slung over his shoulder, a mace in one hand, a jagged sword in the other, a spear in a sheath of deer hide at his waist, his axe fastened to his back, and two combat knives at either wrist, ready to be drawn out of their pockets any second. But of all this, the biggest transformation was in the face. The eyes smouldered with the red fire of bloodlust, and the naked joy of a king drunk on wine, of a child at play. His arms and legs pulsated with energy, as though he could not wait to throw himself into the midst of this and draw the blood of his favourite pupil.
At this moment Amba realized what he had meant when he said he had his own demons to fight. This Brahmin, whose favourite activity ought to be the study of the Vedas and the unlocking of the Mysteries of the Goddess, loved to fight and to kill. He was a Kshatriya born in saffron clothes, a king with sacred ash smeared over his forehead and arms. His hands, which held the staff and brass vessel, wanted nothing more than to wield an axe or a bow. He always seemed to her to be out of place at the hermitage, as though his mind were perpetually on something else.
It was only now that he seemed to be at home.
As the lance fell to the dust by him, Parashurama smiled, not one of kindness that she had become used to seeing at the hermitage, but one of delight. He said something that Amba could not quite make out, and when she floated closer to him so that she could hear him better, he shot an arrow in her direction that followed her as she swerved out of the way and sliced through her with a whoosh.
Bhishma warded it off with a shield and instructed his charioteer to drive along the periphery of the clearing, raining arrows on Parashurama, shooting them such that they appeared to be flying away from him for half their flight but changed course and curved toward him. Parashurama’s chariot began to move too, in the opposite direction to Bhishma’s, and the arrows began to miss their mark now but only for a moment that it took Bhishma to adjust to the sage’s motion. Once again the arrows began to swoop in with precision, and each one fell to the ground, blunted by Parashurama’s mace or sword. Amba looked at one of the fallen arrows and found that it was curved to one side, and there was a smattering of lead on the left edge of the tip.
She had heard that archers from the Kuru kingdoms had pioneered the art of applying weight to selected portions of their arrows so that they would swerve in mid-flight if shot in a precise manner. Other kingdoms of North Country had picked up this technique by now, but no one was yet able to shoot such arrows with the skill of someone from the plains. She noticed that Bhishma was not fully drawing back the string of his bow, and that he was releasing his arrows up into the air instead of aiming them directly at the sage, and yet each one dived in with unerring accuracy and hit Parashurama’s moving chariot. And each time Bhishma drew back the string of his bow and released it, he cocked his wrist a certain way, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right.
The first rule of archery, from her own lessons as a child all those years ago, was to pull the string back to one’s ear and release the arrow at the highest speed possible. But she had heard that archers from the plains deliberately slowed down their arrows so that they would have enough time to bend in the air. Not only did this make it difficult for the target to defend himself, it enabled the archer to keep shooting for longer.
Now arrows seemed to rain down on Parashurama as he scrambled with both his weapons to mow them down. Amba could not believe that Bhishma was shooting only one arrow at a time; such was his speed. Since each arrow required only half a draw and since each one travelled only at a fraction of its highest speed, at any one time Amba saw five or six arrows in flight, each one dipping toward the sage one after the other like a group of hawks descending upon a lone, scurrying rabbit.
The sage kept up his defence admirably enough, though a few of the arrows scraped his shoulders and hips. Bhishma looked like he had just stepped off an oil bath, drenched in sweat but his armour unscathed and spotless. Even his horses and his charioteer appeared fresh and purposeful; no wonder, for none of Parashurama’s weapons had yet reached within ten feet of the regent. Parashurama hailed from the woods and the mountains; his weapons were the mace, the sword, the axe; with a bow and arrow he was no more than a journeyman, she guessed, which was why he had chosen to defend himself against Bhishma’s cunning arrows with hand weapons.
Then Amba saw that Bhishma’s arrows let up in numbers – whether fatigue had started to tell on him or whether he wanted to give his teacher a chance, she did not know. She could distinctly make out moments of silence between successive twangs of his bow now, whereas earlier it had been one continuous buzz, like a bee hovering over its comb. His chariot stopped too, and Amba saw the front two horses buckle to their knees with a short neigh and a snort. The charioteer yelled at them to get up, but they bucked and pulled with
their heads and refused to relent to whiplashes on their thick, black manes.
Parashurama recovered enough to untie his bow and quiver and shoot arrows of his own, but most of them buzzed harmlessly past the flag of Bhishma’s chariot. Amba noticed that his arrows swerved too in mid-flight, but they did not have the same merciless aim, and all Bhishma had to do to defend himself and his chariot was to stay still, watch for the rare arrow that found its target, and decimate it with short, straight shots. When defending he used another bow and arrows from another quiver. Amba guessed these were straight-flight arrows, and sure enough, this time when he drew back the string of his bow, he did so right to his ear, and took that extra half a second to aim properly. His wrist pointed dead straight, like the tip of a sharpened spear.
Not once did he miss.
With Parashurama’s growing anger she felt restlessness well up within her too, and she wished she could take arms and support the sage. She flew close to Bhishma and stood in front of his arrows, hoping to disturb him in some way, but neither he nor his arrows saw her or stopped for her. Parashurama’s chariot stopped now too, and his charioteer panted, nursing the bruises on his arms and chest caused by Bhishma’s arrows. His horses did not buckle, but their breath came in hard, heavy bursts. One of them had a long, curved arrow sticking out of its side. These horses and the charioteer must have been loaned to Parashurama by Bhishma for this fight, so he would not kill them, Amba thought; but he would certainly cripple them as much as needed to win the duel.
‘Let us fight on land, Devavrata!’ cried Parashurama, setting his bow aside and raising his hand.
Shooting down the last of his teacher’s arrows, Bhishma said, ‘Yes, my lord, our horses and our men need rest and nursing.’ He was just being polite, thought Amba. His man and horses did not need nursing; they would be ready to fight after a few minutes of rest. But Parashurama’s horses needed to be tended to, and Bhishma knew that the sage wanted to draw him out of the chariot onto the ground. And yet he agreed. How confident must he be that he would win? All this was just a game to him. After all this, not one mark on his body, not one scratch on his armour, whereas Parashurama appeared as if someone had sucked out all the air from within him.
They descended from their chariots and stood by them for a few moments. Parashurama gathered his weapons and made his way to the center. Bhishma carried a mace and sword in either hand. His sword was not jagged like Parashurama’s was; men from the plains fought with light, smooth-edged swords, and their maces were light too. In hand-to-hand combat they relied on defence and endurance. Her archery trainer had once told her that the Kuru princes trained with maces for days on end at a time, without stopping for food or for water. Amba wondered what that meant during this battle, both for her and for Parashurama.
As they approached each other, Amba thought she saw a hint of a smile on Bhishma’s face as he looked at the sage, haggard and sweating. ‘Let us not fight over a woman, my lord,’ said Bhishma, extending his arm towards the sage. ‘What you ask of me, I cannot do, and you are no longer the warrior you once were.’
Parashurama spat at the ground. ‘I am still the same, Devavrata, but you seem to have grown into a man since the last time I saw you. Do you remember the bouts we used to have on the slopes of the Meru, by Vasishtha’s hermitage?’
Amba hovered from one to the other, listening but still thinking of how the regent had twice appealed to Parashurama to not fight over a woman. Yes, she thought, a woman was not worthy enough to be fought over, and yet this man had once done the same thing when he wanted a queen for his city. One rule for Kshatriyas then, and another for the rest of the world. Amba wished she could pick up the sword in Parashurama’s hands and slit Bhishma’s throat then and there. Hastinapur would be truly without a protector, she would get revenge, North Country would have its emperor in Drupad, and all would be well with the world.
‘I do, my lord,’ said Bhishma, ‘but then I was but a boy and you were in the prime of your age. Now – now I do not think it fair that I should take up weapons against you. The gods know that I have sinned enough today by taking up arms against a Brahmin. Do not make me strike my teacher too, I pray of you.’
Parashurama stood up to his full height – and when he did, he stood almost eye to eye with Bhishma – and said, ‘You are not the only one that has words to keep, Son of Ganga. I give promises too, and I must do my best to keep them, whether you allow me or not.’
Bhishma turned to look in Amba’s direction, and for a moment she wondered if he could actually see her. Then he turned away from her and reached for his mace. ‘If that is so, High Sage,’ he said, ‘let us both keep our words and do what is right.’
ELEVEN
All sages trained themselves in the craft of weapons, though it was not their primary goal. Their daily lives – in the midst of forests and mountains teeming with wild animals and game – were much more eventful and prone to accidents than those of kings, and it was only prudent that they equip themselves with skills to defend against chance encounters with hungry predators. It was part of folklore that they cursed animals and intruders with death and disease, but a curse would only come true in due course of time, at Mother Nature’s own slow pace. For immediate dangers a curse was useless.
This fact did not surprise Amba. Upon some thought, it only seemed natural. If kings broadened their minds by the study of religious scriptures, why should Brahmins not educate themselves in the art of warfare and weaponry? She had heard that Vasishtha, the first High Sage of them all who tutored Rama and his brothers all those years ago, was a fine hand with the staff and spear.
Because they lived in places dense with rocks and trees, and because they wanted to defend themselves against animals, they wielded hand weapons like knives and axes. Parashurama’s axe had been the biggest she had ever seen in her life, and if legend were to be believed, it was with that weapon alone that he went on his killing spree, wiping out the bloodline of the Kshatriyas twenty-one times.
Now it was the blade of the same axe that Amba saw glisten in the afternoon sun as the two men, Bhishma and Parashurama, circled each other, one holding the axe, the other a mace with the tip pointed at his adversary. She felt as though she were standing close enough to reach out and touch either of them, and yet she saw only in grey smudges and dusty shapes which threatened every minute to crumble to powder if she so much as made a quick movement.
The first salvo came from the sage. He held his axe in both hands above his head and jumped high into the air in Bhishma’s direction. The latter took a step back and warded him off with a deft block. Parashurama turned a full circle to aim at Bhishma’s unprotected ribs, but he only met his pupil’s forearm that absorbed the full force of the blow, then pushed it down to the ground, throwing him off balance and sprawling in the dust. Amba thought this would be the best opportunity for Bhishma to keep the sage down on the ground, but instead he pulled back a couple of paces and waited, breathing evenly.
He is only playing with him, she thought bitterly, and willed the sage to his feet.
Parashurama sprang up with his axe in one hand, and with the other he drew a hand knife. Watching him, Bhishma transferred his mace to one hand and kept the other free to defend himself. A mace was traditionally a weapon used to overwhelm enemies with weight and momentum, and it was generally accepted as a weapon of choice for men with thick heads and broad shoulders. Perhaps the Kuru line of kings was the first to wield the mace in one hand and use it as a defensive weapon. In hand to hand combat the men from the plains all behaved the same way – they never struck first, preferring instead to wear out their opponents and wait for the right moment to strike.
Parashurama lunged at Bhishma, showing his axe but attacking with the knife, but Bhishma was equal to both, knocking off the axe with one hand and letting the knife fall on his metal wristband with a clang. When it slid off the polished metal and scraped his forearm, Bhishma cried out, and punched the sage with his fist full on his le
ft cheek, sending him reeling onto the ground.
Amba began to realize that this was no match. Even though Bhishma looked slender and graceful, his closed fist resembled the paw of a grown panther, and the way in which he waved the mace with one hand bespoke the strength he held within his shoulders and arms. Where Parashurama was dragging his axe with both hands, Bhishma just lay in wait, watched, and swatted him away. This had never been a match, she thought sullenly; apart from feeding the sage’s ego, this fight was not going to accomplish anything – besides, of course, distracting Bhishma from the northern stone quarry where Jarutha was right now driving Hastinapur’s miners away.
Parashurama got up to his feet again and shook his head this way and that, and Amba saw that his right cheek had swollen to twice its size. Standing a good ten feet away from Bhishma, he reached for his spear and threw it at him. Bhishma caught it, broke it in two over his thigh, and cast it away.
‘You have become too strong for me, Devavrata,’ said Parashurama, panting. ‘But I shall fight you to death.’
‘No, my lord,’ said Devavrata. ‘I shall not let you.’
Amba stopped feeding the block of wood to the fire and got to her feet, turning her head away in disgust, allowing the image to fade away into the shadows of the gathering dusk. She had not eaten the whole day, but she was not hungry. A dull thud knocked at her head from inside, and she felt like screaming out at the top of her voice. With a grunt, she hurled the piece of wood against the mud wall.
She went to the window and looked up at the black, moonless sky. Today was meant to be the day Bhishma would be vanquished. Today was meant to be the day on which all her wrongs would be righted, said the sage. But how pitiful was his duel! Was this the same man who had once single-handedly vanquished the whole race of kings? How could he be defeated by his own pupil with such ease? Perhaps it was true what they said: Bhishma was invincible.
The Rise of Hastinapur Page 8