The seer had seated himself for a while upon his mandala. Now, he rose to his feet, using his staff for support. ‘Numbers are not always a true indication of an enemy’s strength, rajkumar. These beasts you felled were immature and the weakest of the litter. Also, they were the lesser miscreations of Tataka’s unholy experiments. The berserkers that will attack you in this next wave will be more powerful than anything you have faced or heard of before. These will be mixes of the larger, more lethal predators. Elephant and hawk, lion and rhino, shark and falcon, panther and scorpion, piranha and tiger, vulture and hippo. And besides these hybrids, there will be tribrids and quatribrids and even pentabrids too, the engineering so complex and mangled that Tataka herself barely knows the full capability of those new breeds, and keeps them caged. Even as we speak, they are being freed.’
Lakshman swallowed. ‘Parantu, mahadev, we do not have that many arrows in our quivers! How will we face such vast numbers?’
Vishwamitra gestured impatiently. ‘Arrows? Do not concern yourself with such trivial matters, Rajkumar Lakshman. I have seen to it that your quivers shall never go empty. This is the advantage of being in a place where the laws of nature are so disrupted. Even as it makes it possible for Ravana to work his vile sorcery, it also makes it easier to channel the flow of Brahman. I have used a mantra that ensures that your arrows are replaced faster than you can loose them.’
The sage fell silent for a moment, his eyes shut, listening intently although Lakshman could hear nothing. He saw Rama’s eyes turn sideways for an instant, as if sensing something approaching from that direction. Lakshman looked too, but saw nothing. The jungle stretched yojanas in every direction, seemingly devoid of life. Not even insects or birds stirred. At the very edges of his hearing, he thought he heard something, a very faint sound, like an intensely high-pitched drone. It was more an auditory disturbance than a sound.
Rama’s bow turned away from Lakshman, aimed now towards the south-west.
He hears it clearly, while I can barely sense anything.
The motes in Rama’s eyes increased their pattern of motion, swirling faster. His eyes glowed bluer, seeming to send out twin searchlights into the gloom of the thick jungle. His lips parted, revealing blood-smeared teeth in a snarl that was so wholly un-Rama-like that Lakshman wondered for a moment what creature this was that had replaced his brother.
The seer opened his eyes and spread his arms wide, crying out. Lakshman saw that Vishwamitra’s eyes were bright blinding blue now, like Rama’s, and flecked with those same swirling golden motes. The motes rose into the air, in the pillar of sunlight that encased the seer’s mandala, spiralling towards the top of the towering trees, reaching for the sky. The sage began reciting a mantra in a piercing tone, shattering the silence of the forest.
||Andh tam pravishanti yeh avidyam upaste||
||Tatho bhuya eeva tey tamo ya u vidyayam ratah||
As the last syllables of the mantra faded away, travelling with shrieking penetration into the depths of the jungle, Lakshman heard the ground-shaking thunder of the next wave approaching.
He fell to his knee, bow in hand, arrow ready, and refocussed his attention on the battle at hand.
***
The screams of dying men almost drowned out the screams of their horses. Almost. Bejoo saw horses and riders go down beneath the descending missiles, smashed into ragged fragments of bone, flesh and gore. Chariots shattered. A chariot struck at the back was upended like a child’s seesaw, the horses thrown backwards into the air, their rigging snapping like cheap thread. They landed with a ripping sound in a thicket of thornbush, impaled on a thousand needle-sharp thorns, and lay screaming and flailing wretchedly, their skin hanging in flaps, crimson flesh bared and bristling with snapped-off thorns. Everywhere lay the stench of manure, the inhuman fetor of waste matter like nothing Bejoo had ever smelt before.
He had his sword in hand, unaware of when he had drawn it. He almost tossed it away in angry despair: how could you fight missiles from the sky with a sword? Even Kosala steel was useless against this onslaught.
Shaneshwara-deva
, he cried silently, praying to his patron deity, the god of chariot and vehicle, ship and wagon, He whom the Greeks named Saturn after the great planet ringed by the dust of a thousand shattered worlds.
Mighty Shani-deva, grant me a chance to fight the craven perpetrators of this onslaught. Give me death if you will, but a Kshatriya’s death. Not this defenceless butchery.
As if in response to his plea, he heard a new sound from behind, accompanied by a trembling sensation in the ground. It was the trumpeting of elephants.
He turned and saw Bheriya riding hard at the head of the elephant squad. The young lieutenant’s face was dark with fury as he surveyed the ruins of their proud Vajra. Behind him, the bigfoot squad’s lead elephant mahout spurred his beast on with a vigour rarely seen.
Now we have a fighting chance! Thank you, Shani-deva
!
Bejoo leaped back on to his horse and raised his sword high, pointing it at the dense woods, shouting to be heard over the noise and confusion.
‘Bigfoot
!
Into the jungle
!
’
The lead bigfoot thundered past his horse, its eyes rolling, trunk swirling from side to side. It led its fellows in a headlong charge at the trees. The sound of it striking the first tree-trunk was almost drowned out by the crashing of a new wave of missiles. A razor-sharp fragment of a shield from some unfortunate charioteer whisked past Bejoo’s ear, nicking off the lobe. He wasn’t even aware of the blood pouring down the side of his head. He only had eyes for the elephants’ charge.
Let it work, Shani-deva. Let the bigfoot break through. Much as I hate to die this way, yet I will choose to die here beneath this assault than retreat and leave my duty unfulfilled.
The lead elephant struck the first trunk with a loud crack like a twig breaking, or a spine snapping. The tree keeled over easily, bringing down a ragged line of its fellows with it, raising a cloud of dust and leaves that enveloped the animal. Missiles continued to rain down, claiming more lives and limbs. Without waiting for the dust to clear, Bejoo raised his sword again and repeated his cry, this time for his horsemen and charioteers.
‘Into the woods! With me, into the woods!’
He rode into the cloud of dust after the bigfoot, into the Bhayanak-van.
***
They came slowly this time, seething like a living, writhing carpet across the jungle floor. Lakshman saw how easily they clung to the soft rotting soil, their jagged claws and talons digging deeply without effort. They could have burrowed under like their siblings had done in the first wave, tunnelling down and then upwards again until they exploded from the surface.
But they chose to show themselves, seeping across the forest like a plague of termites. The seer had spoken truly: compared to these ones, the earlier beasts had been balaks, mere babes. These were much bigger, some towering three and four yards high at the head, their snouted grey heads reflecting their elephantine parentage. Even the smaller ones moved with powerful ease, their actions and features more mature, more sure. They seemed unafraid of his arrows, and even though he sent a flurry into their midst, most only snarled and kept on coming. He pierced both eyes of a beast that was part-stoat part-gharial, but it continued to writhe silently towards him, flicking its leathery tail from side to side, yellow pus-like emissions seeping from around the arrows embedded deep within its sockets. He downed a couple or three, aided more by blind luck than skill. But the wave of furred and carapaced monstrosities seethed on relentlessly, coming closer by the yard.
He took a moment to glance over his shoulder at Rama. His brother was firing with deceptive calm, each arrow carefully aimed. His bolts unerringly found the vital spot in their targets, making the animals turn belly up and bleating, or fall gasping in their tracks. Every arrow ended a life. Rama shot with a patience that was marvellous to watch; as if the oncoming beasts were merely straw dummies on which to practise his aim. He seemed not to care or fear how little his accuracy was thinning their numbers.
Lakshman glanced at the seer. The brahmarishi was silent now, as if waiting for something, his eyes staring at a point above the heads of the approaching beasts.
They slowed to a halt. The entire line of bizarre hybrids stopped at a distance of about ten yards from where the princes and the seer stood. They formed a perfect unbroken circle around them.
Their snouts, tentacles, trunks, faces, mouths, maws issued small grunts and moans and snarls of anticipation. Spittle dripped on to dry leaves.
Lakshman realised with a start that the corpses of the earlier beasts had almost all vanished.
When and how had that happened? He saw a creature pick up a fox-cat corpse in its mouth and fling it back overhead. It was tossed and passed back along the seething ocean of hybrids to the very back of the mass, where it disappeared, probably thrown back behind their line. They were clearing the circle in preparation for their attack. In moments, the ground around them was clear, the hundred-and-fifty-odd corpses disposed of. Then they were ready.
Lakshman had already dropped his bow and reached for his sword. The steel glimmered faintly in the dim light, reflecting the blue glow that emanated from both the sage and his brother. He caught a glimpse of a reflection in the mirror-sharp blade and glanced at it quickly, alert to attack from above. Instead, he saw two blue eyes staring back at him. They were his own, glowing now like the eyes of his companions, though not as strongly. He felt the rage of blood-lust come over him again, and raised his sword as the seer began a new mantra.
||Asuryah namah tey loka andhyen tamasavratya||
||Tan asthey preytyabhigshanthi yeh keych atmahanah janah||
Vishwamitra’s chant hung in the air for a moment, like a cloud of dust motes suspended in sunlight. Then, as its echoes faded away, the army of beasts charged on the two princes.
***
The trees were as rotten as they looked. Their trunks shattered like dried gourds when struck by the charging elephants. The large bigfoot leader roared in exultation as he smashed and brought down one towering tree after another, clearing a swathe through the forest wider and more accessible than the overgrown pathway they had followed down the side of the cliff that morning.
Bejoo rode his horse in the wake of the last elephant, careful to keep it close enough to use the bigfoot’s bulk as protection against falling trees and yet not so close that the bigfoot itself trampled them under. He slowed his horse as he saw Bheriya riding back to speak to him. The young Kshatriya’s face was still a mask of rage and shock; he hadn’t yet digested the sight of so many of their finest men and horses shattered like clay dolls.
And for what? For nothing. They never had a chance to draw sword or bow. They died without taking down a single shatru. Ah, the shame, the shame.
‘How many?’ Bejoo’s voice sounded nasal and strange to his own ears, the peculiar fetid air of the jungle distorting it, corrupting his senses. He was asking how many of the Vajra’s number had survived the sky assault.
Bheriya’s face looked ten years older. ‘Sixty horse, eight wheel, and fifteen bigfoot. We lost one to a missile before she could enter the woods.’
Bejoo nodded grimly. The stinking assault had stopped the moment they entered the forest; the attackers, those craven wretches sitting in their cosy nooks, undoubtedly knowing that the tall trees would blunt and deflect their missiles. But the relief he felt when the shower ceased and his pleasure at penetrating the jungle were both cut short by the cold shock he felt on hearing the count of his survivors.
‘That’s more than half our horse and wheel lost,’ he said, his voice trembling with rage. ‘Someone’s going to pay for this. The cowardly bastards, skulking in their crannies!’ He roared a cry that rose above the trumpeting of the bigfoot and the shattering of tree-trunks. ‘Show your faces, you craven scum! Fight us face to face if you dare!’
There was no reply. Bheriya wiped sweat from his face, smearing a bloodstain. ‘What now? Our bigfoot are doing well enough, but they cannot maintain this pace much longer.’
Bejoo restrained his anger and thought his strategy through with icy determination. ‘We scout ahead to find the river. We follow its course until we find the rajkumars and the sage.’ He grabbed hold of Bheriya’s arm. ‘And hear me well. I don’t care if those bigfoot bash their bloody brains out breaking through these wretched woods. We stop only when we find the rajkumars. Or until we encounter the bastards who were pelting us. Do you follow?’