Bejoo had seen battle-rage before. But nothing like this. As he fought alongside Rama, he felt the raw power emanating from the prince. The rajkumar’s sword windmilled through the nightmare menagerie, and Bejoo was left with little to do except stick his sword into a few eyes and guts and lop off anything that came within his reach. He had time to glance at Rama as he fought—drawn by the eternal human fascination for all machines of violence—and what he saw chilled and awed him simultaneously. The look on Rama’s face was a grinning mask of exultation.
He enjoys it. Loves the slaughter
.
He saw now that the rajkumar was no longer just hacking down creatures methodically as he had been doing before. He was aiming to inflict the most pain possible. Bejoo watched as Rama cut down two creatures in quick succession, leaving both with terrible mortal injuries, then moving on to other prey. Bejoo dispatched both beasts, wincing as one actually bared its pale white belly to allow him to finish it off.
He’s not himself. This is not Prince Rama fighting beside me. This is a creation of the sage, a man possessed by some Brahmanical sorcery.
The battle raged on around them. His horsemen and chariots had ridden into the thick of it and were happy to be able to have an enemy they could fight face to face. Bejoo caught glimpses of spears and maces working, smashing bones and piercing hides. Cries of ‘Jai Shaneshwara!’ rang out each time a Vajra Kshatriya downed a monster. The creatures took some lives too, their bizarre anatomies momentarily catching his men unawares.
In sheer numbers, the animals outnumbered the humans, but Rama’s relentless jagganath-like slaughter rate was fast equalling the odds. What had seemed at first sight an impossible scenario now seemed a winnable battle. And the elephants were joining in now as well. They had balked at first, seeing their own species and their cousin-species among the mutated beasts, but their mahouts had used mantras to calm and convince the bigfoot and they were rallying now. As Bejoo glanced back in a respite between opponents, he saw the lead bigfoot smash his way into the thick of the fight, crushing beasts underfoot and wielding a specially designed weapon attached to his trunk: a lightning-shaped length of metal that sliced without snagging or sticking, identical to the vajra on their banner. Everywhere he looked, the asura monstrosities were being cut down and slaughtered. Rama was no longer the only one wreaking a savage toll.
As if sensing their imminent defeat, the beasts had begun turning tail, cut down as they retreated step by step into the forest. Some were agile enough to dance back and lead their pursuers on individual chases, screeching in frustration when the Vajra horsemen or chariot caught up with them.
They’re falling back. It’s over
. Bejoo fought harder than ever, the wall of fur and claws breaking before him. Beside him, Rama blazed on remorselessly, chasing down and maiming and mutilating the unfortunate beasts that tried to flee. The creatures raised a volley of heart-rending cries, dying slow, agonising deaths.
Bejoo followed in Rama’s wake, slaying as many as he could reach. More creatures were turning now, the line moving back in a unanimous retreat. His men began to raise victory cries as they saw the foe leaving the field. He rested his sword hand a moment, secretly relieved.
He had no stomach for this kind of fight. He was about to call to his men to fall back to the riverbank—they had drifted several dozen yards into the jungle—when he heard the booming.
The next thing he knew, the ground shuddered with an impact so mighty he was thrown off balance. He slipped and fell in the slimy remains of some grotesque monstrosity, cutting the back of his sword hand on a protruding row of spine-knives on the back of the corpse. But he was hardly aware of the pain. His attention was riveted on the shadow that had appeared in the sky.
Hai, Shani-deva. Save and protect us from all evil. What manner of asura have you sent against us now
?
Beside him, the slaying-machine that was Rama Chandra raised his head to glare at the thing that approached.
‘
Tataka
!’ cried the prince gleefully. ‘
At last you show yourself
!’
TWENTY-ONE
Bejoo lay where he had fallen, staring up in stunned dismay. The ground shuddered and shook beneath him, tilting him this way, then that. He could feel tiny fissures opening and spreading like spidercracks in the forest floor with each impact. He forgot that he lay in the spilled ichor of the corpse, his sword hand bleeding from the accidental slash. All he could do was lie there and stare up at the apparition in the sky.
He had heard the whispered legends of the Yaksi demoness Tataka, and the tales of the horrors that befell those foolish enough to venture into the Bhayanak-van. But no witness had faced the demoness and lived to describe her. Bejoo himself had always harboured a faint suspicion that Tataka might simply be some insane dasya woman, one of those cannibalistic thugs who had taken to waylaying travellers. Like the highway thugs who claimed to be acting on orders from the goddess Kali herself. He had held an image in his mind of a black-skinned tribal woman in a leaf skirt, body pierced in numerous places by carved bone jewellery, a stout nail-studded club in one hand, a necklace of infant skulls dangling over her naked pendulous breasts, roaring curses in her primitive tribal tongue, her rotted teeth easily mistaken for rakshasi fangs.
But the being that bore down on them now was no dasya, highway thug or cannibal tribal. What was she? The human vocabulary had few words for something of such proportions. The term giant seemed laughably inadequate. Words like gargantuan, mammoth, titanic, mountainous came to mind. Surely the apparition before him was the result of some asura sorcery? Maya. Illusion. A trick of the light. Anything but what his eyes claimed they saw.
But there was no denying it. The creature that approached, making a path of her own through the Bhayanak-van, was all too real. Her head, shoulders and waist rose well above the tops of the highest trees, which were at least a hundred yards high. She towered above the whole forest, her immense bulk blocking out what little light managed to creep through the dense overgrowth. The sun was almost directly overhead, and when her head passed before it, it was eclipsed as effectively as a snuffed-out mashaal. Her shadow was dark and unimaginably huge even in the near-noon light, racing across the forest floor, casting them all into twilight darkness. She was still several miles distant, he realised. She strode through the Southwoods like a Nandi bull moving through a wheat field. The dense woods parted before her like wheatstalks, entire tracts collapsing beneath her strides. The dust of her wake rose like a cloud into the sky, and would probably be visible for a dozen yojanas in every direction.
In fact, Bejoo thought, it was a wonder she had never been spotted from the raj-marg or from any place north of the Sarayu before.
He watched her stride through the forest and suddenly felt foolish: the virgin denseness of this part of the woods was evidence she hadn’t been here before. The forest would have been reduced to splinters if she had.
The battle around them had ceased. The surviving beasts had fled into the jungle, and his men had stopped to stare up at the new threat that approached.
Bheriya called out excitedly to Bejoo: ‘It was no siege-machine! It was her!’
It took Bejoo a moment to understand that he was referring to the manure-boulders that had rained down on them on the outskirts of the forest. Silently, he agreed. This giantess could easily have thrown hillocks at them if she felt like it. Even a small mountain or two. Yes, there was no doubt that it had been she who had flung the balls, shaped by her own enormous hands.
Tataka came to a halt, peering down at them. The cloud of dust created by her passage rose above her head, glittering in the sunlight like a corona of smoke. Her face and body were silhouetted by the bright sun directly above her, and although Bejoo squinted hard, he could only make out her features dimly.
Tataka bent over, reaching down with hands as thick and long as wheelhouses—it was the only comparison Bejoo could summon to mind—and for a heart-stopping moment he thought she was reaching for
him
. But she stopped at the top of a cluster of trees, and parted them like a monkey parting the hair of a relative in search of ticks. She riffled through the trees carefully until she found what she was seeking. Bright sunlight shone down on Bejoo and his men as the giant exposed their part of the jungle. The Vajra’s horses reared and screamed in response, terrified by the appearance of the Yaksi. What did the bigfoot make of her, he wondered.
Seeing the commotion caused by her appearance, Tataka emitted a grunt-like sound that Bejoo thought indicated satisfaction.
Or hunger. Maybe she sees us as a tasty snack.
Grasping hold of a clump of trees, she pulled them up with little effort, uprooting and tossing them aside like a handful of straw.
An elephant was caught between the uprooted trunks like an insect tangled in the rakes of a jhadoo broom, and squealed as its feet left the ground. Thick grey legs dangling, it exploded into terrified screams that faded as it was tossed aside with the handful of trees, flying miles away before falling to earth again. When the roots of a tree were yanked out of the ground, two horses were knocked down bodily, their riders violently unseated. Another warrior was killed when his chariot was upturned. An elephant panicked and broke into a headlong run back towards the river.
With startling suddenness, the gloom of the dense jungle was dispelled and Bejoo and his men found themselves in a brand-new clearing, a circular open space about a hundred yards in diameter. The Yaksi peered down, appearing satisfied. The mortals were all exposed to her view, as puny as ants and just as helpless before her prodigious size and strength.
She bent down, her teeth flashing white in her shadowed face.
We’re lost
, Bejoo thought, scrambling to get to his feet. There was no conceivable way he could lead his men to kill such a creature. His only prayer was that he be allowed to die on his feet, fighting. He struggled to an upright posture, his sword clutched in his injured hand, feeling impotent as he stared up at the giant Yaksi.
Tataka took a single step into her newly created clearing. Her foot came down yards away from an elephant. The impact shook the earth hard enough to rattle Bejoo’s teeth. The bigfoot was thrown several feet into the air, and landed on its side, screaming, but it struggled up at once, both beast and mahout dazed but apparently unhurt.
Horses reared and wheeled, white-eyed. The surviving Vajra Kshatriyas stared up open-mouthed.
The Yaksi bent again, and this time Bejoo was certain that his time on Prithvi was ended. He had no means of defending himself and his men against this mountain of an asura. He clenched his jaw and stood ramrod steady, legs spaced apart to prevent himself from being knocked on his back again, prepared for Tataka’s attack and his own death.
The Yaksi turned her head from side to side, seeking out something.
Or someone
.
‘Rama,’ she said, parting lips large enough to swallow a pair of elephants whole.
And still leave room for celery,
Bejoo thought with dazed bemusement.
Even though spoken from a hundred or more yards high, her breath was strong enough to reach Bejoo. He braced himself, expecting a stench a hundred times as foul as that which emanated from the grotesque hybrids of her creation.
But as the giantess’s breath wafted across his face, he blinked in disbelief.
She smells wonderful
. The Yaksi’s breath carried the fragrances of a dozen pleasant things.
Definitely clover. And mint. And honeysuckle maybe
. More than the individual perfumes was an odour that he couldn’t begin to describe except to say that he knew it all too well.
She smells feminine, like a woman
. Like his wife even, although it felt insane to relate his wife to this towering mountain of an asura.
Tataka leaned down, her face looming above the clearing. As she came lower, her features grew more clearly visible, illuminated by the reflected sunlight from the ground. She crouched only a few dozen yards above the ground, her face as broad as the diameter of the clearing itself.
‘By the red tongue of Kali,’ Bejoo muttered to himself, sword clenched in his fist, the hilt slippery with his own blood.
But it wasn’t just her smell. It was the Yaksi herself. Despite her size, despite the legends, despite everything he had heard about asuras in his forty-seven years on Prithvi, Bejoo couldn’t deny the evidence of his eyes.
The Yaksi was neither ugly nor malformed. On the contrary, she was …
‘Atee sundar,’ he whispered aloud, as if speaking the words could help him believe the fact.