Another wave of laughter rose from the group. The youngster with the arrow aimed at Rama laughed too, evidently imitating his older companions rather than because he found Rama’s words funny. His hands were unsteady on the bow, and he almost released the arrow without realising it.
Rama called to him.
‘You, young one. Put down that bow and arrow. Right now. All of you do the same with your weapons at once. If you do not obey, this will go badly for you.’
The youngster looked uncertain. The hand holding the fletch of the arrow quivered, then eased. The bow dipped, pointing at the river. He looked around to see the response of his older companions.
They looked unimpressed by Rama’s warning. A pair standing off to one side spoke to each other and spat together into the river. They drew knives, large curved hunting knives that had been sharpened so often their blades were honed to fine needle points at the tips. They held the knives in the pahadi fashion, blade under the fist, pointed sideways.
A fat man with a head full of blond hair and a beard to match strung an arrow into his bow. ‘Methinks this will go badly for
you
, boy! You’re holding up our sport, you are!’
‘Yes,’ shouted another man, brandishing a khukhri that gleamed dangerously in the bright sunlight. ‘You move out of the way and let us have our sport with the deer. Unless you want to join in its fate, in which case we’d be happy to oblige you!’
The others all shouted similar challenges and comments, some adding abuse and insults against Ayodhyans and their city. Three more men drew bows and strung them with drunken arrogance. Rama counted seven arrows in all now pointed at him. He looked at the leader and addressed him directly.
‘Do you speak for these men?’
One of the men called out: ‘We’re free men, we speak for ourselves.’ But they all glanced up to see their leader’s response.
He stared at Rama for a moment, his eyes flicking up and down, taking in every detail. The sun caught his eyes and turned them into two pinpoints of white light, like reflections off quartz stones. He hawked and spat out a lump of phlegm streaked with blood. It travelled a good five yards to the river, and fell in, carried away by the swirling waters. Somehow, that offended Rama far more than the spoken insults and abuses. It was one thing to wash or bathe in the Sarayu, but by spitting in it the pahadi leader was mocking the entire Ikshvaku clan that had originally settled this valley and cared so well for its ecology these past two thousand years. Rama noticed the peculiar slash-shaped scars on the man’s face, the lines of shiny scar tissue and gouges where the flesh had been damaged too deeply to repair itself, and recognised them as the marks of the great Himalayan brown bear, a giant of a beast that spared nothing and nobody in its path. It was commonly known as rksaa. Looking at the man’s hideous scars, Rama wondered how anyone could have suffered such a mauling and survived. The military training ingrained in his mind concluded that a man who had faced a rksaa and lived to tell the tale would most likely make a dangerous adversary. The other men clearly looked to him as a leader, and addressed him as Bearface.
‘You go find your mother and bring her to us, boy,’ Bearface said in a hoarse rasping voice that meshed with the river’s grinding roar. ‘We’ll find something to keep her busy.’ His eyes flicked to Rama’s lower body. ‘And you as well, pretty one.’
The burst of laughter that greeted this comment was the loudest yet.
Rama’s voice was clear and unflecked with emotion, carrying across the laughter and the roar of the river.
‘For hunting the deer and refusing to put down your arms, you will be arrested and tried under Ayodhya law. The most severe punishment applicable will be meted out to each and every one of you.’ He paused and pointed at the one they called Bearface. ‘But for that last comment, pahadi, you are answerable to me.’
The fat blond man yelled exuberantly: ‘You hear that, Bearface? You’re answerable to him now!’
The leader grinned, revealing slits in the scars down his face where the skin and flesh had been torn through completely, exposing parts of his cartilage and jawbone. ‘I like that. Answerable, hey? Come closer, boy, I’ve got the answer you’re looking for right here in the crotch of my langot.’ He clutched his loincloth with a gesture that left no room for doubt.
Rama picked up a stone and hefted it in his hand. It felt just about right. At the movement, the seven men with bows grew alert in a drunken, amused way. Several of them had relaxed enough to begin drinking again from their wineskins, slopping wine down the front of their chests.
Rama shook his head regretfully. He had been taught never to fight with men under the influence of liquor; but he wasn’t being given a choice. Still, he tried once more to appeal to their better sense.
‘I ask you one last time,’ he said, his voice as calm and steady as the hand holding the rock. ‘Throw down your weapons and surrender to me and I will not pursue this further.’
This time, the laughter was ragged. The pahadis were tired of talk. One of them loosed an arrow carelessly. It shot a whole yard over Rama’s head, burying itself with a soft sigh in the grassy side of the knoll behind him. Rama ignored it.
‘Pursue that, if you can,’ the man yelled, and reached back to pull another arrow from his quiver.
Rama decided that the time for talk was past.
ELEVEN
Dasaratha raised his head to stare at the person who had so rudely interrupted him.
A man dressed in animal furs was striding up Raghuvamsha Avenue towards the palace gates, a hunting spear clutched threateningly in his hand. His dark skin and body piercings identified him unmistakably as a common hunter, a sudra no less.
Dasaratha blinked repeatedly, unable to believe that this low-caste would have the gumption to shout orders at him, maharaja of Kosala. He almost turned to look around, in case he had misheard the stranger’s impudent command. There was no need to: the broad avenue was deserted at this early hour on a feast day, except for the street sentries standing guard at intervals of thirty yards all the way down the long causeway. Raghuvamsha Avenue led nowhere except to the palaces and treasury houses. Even the tradesmen and staff used the rear entrances.
In case he had any doubt, the man spoke again, even louder and more forceful in his exhortation this time.
‘Dasaratha! Rise to your feet at once! Do not debase yourself by bowing before this vile filth. Rise, I command you!’
Dasaratha stared at the man in stunned silence for a moment. His upper lip trembled with sudden anger. He rose to his feet, joining his hands together before the seer-mage who still stood awaiting his arghya.
‘Shama, mahadev. Forgive me for pausing in my hospitable duties. But I must deal with this insolent intruder who so rudely interrupts our ritual.’
Vishwamitra nodded, his eyes seeming to stare distantly at some point above the maharaja’s head. Dasaratha was relieved that the seer hadn’t taken offence at the interruption—not yet.
Dasaratha took three steps sideways, to face the rude stranger directly, and pointed at the hunter who was approaching at a steady pace. He was still a good twenty yards away when Dasaratha summoned up his most imperial voice to issue a command.
‘Guards! Stop this man and put him on the ground on his belly. He has interrupted the sacred arghya reception of our noble visitor. By committing this violation of our ancient ritual, he has forfeited his rights as a citizen. Arrest this man at once!’
Even as the words left his lips, the alert palace guards ran forward in perfect unison. In scant seconds, they had fanned out into three main formations: four quads of four men each encircled their king, walling him inside four concentric squares, a formidable defensive wall that would have to be hacked down a man at a time before they would allow any harm to come to their maharaja.
A second unit spread across the avenue in a V formation designed to catch the hunter at its lowermost point, wrapping themselves around him in seconds, closing the gap behind him until he was enveloped by hard flesh and sharpened steel. And a third unit, made up of two additional platoons which had been brought up the minute Dasaratha stepped out of the palace gates, blocked the way to the palace, shutting the gates with quick military efficiency to prevent any risk of intrusion.
The trumpeting of elephants and rumbling of chariot wheels grew audible and Dasaratha knew without looking that reinforcements had already been summoned. In moments, a force capable of resisting a small army would take up defensive positions all around the palace, in the event, however unlikely, that this commoner’s challenge might herald a larger threat. For all its open spaces and free access, Ayodhya was nevertheless a formidable fortress designed to withstand any violent assault, large or small.
A conch shell sounded behind the barred palace gates, and Dasaratha knew that it was heralding the first alarm. Three miles away, beyond the great games field, the army cantonment would be put on first alert. Ayodhya city itself maintained a standing army of four akshohini. If a second conch sounded, all four divisions would mobilise within the hour: close to half a million foot soldiers, a quarter of a million armoured cavalry, a hundred thousand archers on chariots, and over eighty thousand war elephants. And if Ayodhya were under invasion, the rest of the army would arrive within days, summoned from garrisons at various strategic points across the kingdom.
But this was no invasion. There would be no need for a second alarm. Even the first was only sounded as a matter of routine. All because of a lone sudra hunter! Some insolent fool who had drunk too much bhaang too early on a feast day and had some petty grouse against his king. Dasaratha would sort this fellow out in a moment, punish him for his impudence—after he made sure the man didn’t have any companions as unpatriotic as himself following close behind—and resume the arghya he had been about to perform.
Dasaratha looked at the chief of the quadrant immediately surrounding him. The captain standing before him was a pleasant-faced young fellow whose face suggested he was related to an old and illustrious senapati who had led part of Dasaratha’s army in several campaigns.
‘Drishti Kumar—it is Drishti Kumar, isn’t it?—I wish to speak with him for a moment. Please make way.’
The man saluted. If he was pleased at being recognised and acknowledged by his king, he did not waste time showing it now. ‘Maharaj, may I advise that you and your esteemed guest retire to the safety of the royal palace. We shall interrogate the low-caste commoner and bring you full details within minutes.’
Dasaratha shook his head impatiently. ‘Thank you for your concern, captain. But this is just some bhaang-drunk citizen with a grouse. I can deal with him myself. Move aside.’
Reluctantly, the captain issued a secret signal and a corridor appeared before Dasaratha. He walked down the gauntlet of gleaming spears until he found himself within sight of the sudra.
The hunter was still encircled by soldiers, but Dasaratha could see him well enough.
‘Citizen, who are you and why do you dare to address your king so insolently?’
The sudra hunter took a step forward, unmindful of the spears fencing him in. He spoke in a voice that was strangely familiar. Completely unlike the western plains accent that Dasaratha would have expected, based on his appearance and caste marks.
‘Dasaratha, listen very carefully. That man standing over there is an impostor. I am the real Vishwamitra.’
Dasaratha resisted the impulse to laugh aloud in disbelief. Was the man completely insane? He clearly needed some straightening out and quickly. Keenly aware that he was being watched by over a hundred of his personal palace guard, Dasaratha replied in his most formidable baritone.
‘Insolent man! Do you wish to be put to death right here on the street?’
‘Dasaratha, look at me closely. I changed my bhes-bhav to enter the city without attracting the attention of your enemies. I did not know that this foul demon had already preceded me here by scant moments. If I had not come in time, you would be lying dead right there before your own gates. Even now, I urge you, step away from him!’
At the mention of harm coming to the king, the soldiers guarding the sudra moved forward. Their training demanded they deal with the stranger as a hostile traitor now, and they quickly disarmed him and twisted his arms behind his back. He made no move to resist, as if he had been expecting this action.
‘Maharaj,’ said the captain’s voice from behind Dasaratha. ‘This man is ranting. Let us take him to the dungeons where he will be suitably
interrogated
. He may be part of a conspiracy.’