The Aryavarta Chronicles Kurukshetra: Book 3 (45 page)

‘Why didn’t you tell me you had a son?’ she demanded. ‘You told me all about your romance with his mother!’

Bhim said, ‘I was trying to impress you, Panchali. Admitting to having a son hardly a few years younger than you; I didn’t think that was going to work.’

‘Oh, but I am impressed! Really! You must be very proud of him…’

‘I am. I just wish I could’ve seen more of him, over the years… I was barely eighteen when I met his mother and in all honesty, not much of anything. I couldn’t dream of disobeying Dharma and my mother, of arguing with them. Of course, I may have done so if I’d known she was carrying my child. I really wish now that I’d been there for Purbaya… that is…Hidimbya…’

‘And have him turn out like you?’ Panchali tried to jest, but the words felt hollow and forced. She added, once again sombre, ‘He has come at the right time, Bhim. I’d lost courage, lost every sense of wanting to be happy again after Abhimanyu… Hidimbya brings hope to us all.’

With that bittersweet moment, the two friends arrived at the Command Tent. They entered and waited quietly, so as not to disturb the meeting in session. Panchali took the opportunity to study the newcomer whom everyone had spoken of but few had seen: Hidimbya, son of Bhim.

He was, she noted, nothing short of gigantic, but still had Bhim’s lithe, graceful manner. His resemblance to his father was unmistakable, except of course for his dark skin, and his shiny, bald pate. She tried not to smile as she thought of the nickname, she had been told, it had earned him. His upper body was bare, and coils of black rope were wound over his right shoulder and under his left arm, covering his chest completely.

As Dharma acknowledged their presence, Hidimbya got up from his cross-legged stance on the floor. ‘Bless me, Mother,’ he greeted Panchali. ‘Abhimanyu had told me about you…’

Panchali felt a lump in her throat at the mention of Abhimanyu’s name. It collided with the surge of anger that rose in her stomach at the realization that the newcomer had not been offered a seat. She bit back the urge to mention the matter, deciding to save it for another day, and smiled at the tribal chief. ‘Welcome, Hidimbya,’ she wished him.

‘There he is,’ Bhim announced as Govinda came into the tent.

‘Govinda Shauri?’ Hidimbya’s eyes lit up with excitement. ‘It is an honour!’

‘Likewise, Chief,’ Govinda returned the greeting. ‘Now tell me, how many men do you have with you?’

‘Five thousand.’

‘That isn’t much! In fact, it’s nothing!’ Dharma exclaimed. He suddenly felt crushed. He had somehow assumed that Hidimbya had brought a division or more of men, and that it would turn the tide of the battle. ‘Five thousand…’ he dully repeated. ‘And what can you do, beyond shoot arrows? Have you any elephants or cavalry?’

‘No, Your Highness. We are miners.’

‘Miners? And what is that you could possibly mine in the middle of a battle?’

‘Black nitre. We mine nitre. That is our weapon.’

Black nitre
. Hidimbya’s peculiar appearance finally made sense. Panchali had thought she recognized the nitre from its smell, but she had never seen it used this way, coated on ropes. She had always heard of it as a delicate and thus dangerous substance, but Hidimbya seemed the least concerned about it.

Once he had explained how the rope was used in battle, Hidimbya concluded by saying, ‘The effect it has on the enemy is greater the closer we are to their camp. How close can you get us?’

Govinda replied, ‘Right to their doorstep if you like. Pradymna, Daruka, Yuyudhana and I handle horses well, as do Sadev and Nakul. We will ride out as if we are carrying a warrior on the vehicle, but we should be able to fit about seven to ten of you on each rig. Maybe more, given that it is night. We can also get your men onto the field hidden in supply carts.’

‘Get us to the outer perimeter of the field, around the field. That should do. I’ll go with you, along with thirty of my best men. The rest will start from the other edges of the battlefield and work their way inwards. Remember, once we light the nitre, you lot need to get out of there quickly…’

‘What about you and your men?’

Hidimbya laid a hand on the coils of rope across his chest, ‘We have our ways of keeping safe. Besides, all of us lay out the nitre but only some of us are needed to set it alight. That is a risk we must take…’

‘It is a risk we all take, Hidimbya,’ Dharma declared. ‘Us, all the more so, for putting our faith in a measly five thousand men.’

‘I think, Dharma,’ Govinda interrupted, ‘that five thousand shall more than suffice. Now, if you’ll permit us, I’d like to take Hidimbya to meet the others…’

25

‘
IMPRESSIVE
,’
GOVINDA REMARKED AS PATTERNS OF FIRE, BEAUTIFUL
and deadly, lit up the battlefield. Like dark waves washing ashore or giant flowers blooming in the dawn, the flames ran quickly up and down the landscape, following the nitre-coated ropes that Hidimbya and his men had laid out. From these waves rose a wall of heat, a slow shimmering of the air that could be smelt before it was seen. Hardly did the soldiers have time to react to the fiery air, to realize that it was burning away at their skin and hair, when the storm followed – a blast, as though the invisible walls had exploded outward, shattering fire and stone. Such, Hidimbya explained, was the effect of black nitre, burning slowly to release heat and then, expanding the air in an explosion as the blaze spread. The patterns, he added, were part of their craft – a means of ensuring the most damage to the enemy –in physical terms and also as a means of intimidation. But the patterns were not always complete or perfect. There, Hidimbya’s men had fallen, their work incomplete.

‘I lost more of my men than I’d expected,’ Hidimbya confessed. ‘It’s accepted that some fall while the nitre is laid out, but not one of those I sent to light the flint has come back alive. I guess our enemy is not that easily confounded… Speaking of which, seven-hooded Sesha save us, this man is unstoppable!’

‘Vasusena…’ Bhim informed him, following his son’s gaze into the distance.

‘He fights like a man possessed!’

‘A man scorned,’ Govinda corrected. ‘He is one of the best warriors Aryavarta has ever seen. Much has been denied him in his life…’

Bhim flinched at the statement, but Govinda went on, oblivious. ‘Aryavarta is full of men like you and him, Hidimbya; good men who’ve been wronged in the name of hierarchy and lineage.’

Hidimbya grinned, his teeth flashing white against his dark nitre-coated skin. ‘And there are men like you, who struggle to set things right.’

Govinda did not return the smile. His eyes were cold as he regarded the Rikshasa chief. ‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m a better man, a different man even. Don’t trust me more than you have to.’

‘Who do I trust then, Govinda?’

Govinda remained silent till Partha tapped him on the shoulder and informed him that Dharma and Vasusena were headed directly for each other on the battlefield.

‘Yourself, and no one else,’ Govinda said without looking at Hidimbya. With that, he and Partha rode off to Dharma’s aid.

The night passed its darkest point and though there was little light in the sky, the crisp turn of air heralded the dawn of a new day, not long away. Dharma had come off the worse for his skirmish with Vasusena. As had Partha. And Shikandin, Yuyudhana and Dhrstyadymn. Indeed, Dhrstydymn grudgingly admitted, if not for Yuyudhana’s timely intervention, he would have remained missing, decimated by Vasusena and his troops in a far corner of the battlefield. There was no doubt that Vasusena was turning out to be as great a threat as Dron – given particularly that the war had now come down to single combat. Where Dron was a master of strategy, Vasusena was simply an incomparable fighter, not just for the impressive array of Wright-weapons at his command but also for his valour and skill. Between the two enemy warriors, it seemed, Dharma’s army faced certain defeat.

‘What is it?’ Dharma wondered out loud. ‘What drives him so?’

‘The truth,’ Govinda replied before stalking off to see to his horses. His mood had improved little through the night’s battle and his weariness was beginning to show.

‘We’ve lost nearly three divisions during this day and night,’ Dhrstyadymn pointed out to Dharma. ‘We need some way of holding off till dawn, when we can hope for a quick respite.’

‘Why are you telling
me
that, muhira?’ Dharma snapped, holding a cloth up to the cut on his forehead. ‘You’re the commander of our armies; think of something! Or would you rather admit your defeat?’

‘No, Your Highness,’ Dhrstyadymn hissed through clenched teeth. He stared at Dharma’s back as the older man went off to nurse the rest of his wounds. ‘Right,’ he said once Dharma was out of earshot and threw up his hands in disbelief.

‘You know that my men will fight to the death,’ Shikandin pointed out. ‘I think we should be able to hold Vasusena off but we need to have a second line of defence, just in case. You don’t want the enemy overrunning us all the way to the camp now…’

‘I’ll hold the line myself,’ Dhrstyadymn promised.

With a nod, Shikandin was off.

Hidimbya stood around, uncertain about what he ought to do. He was now alone in the Command Tent, and had been given neither orders nor clue as to what was expected of him. And then, it dawned on him how kind the Fates had been to give him this chance of a lifetime. Smiling to himself, he set off to assemble his men.

‘Right,’ Hidimbya addressed his fellow miners. ‘It isn’t going well. We need to do something, boys. We’ve come into this far too late, but if we go out with glory, they won’t forget us soon, will they?’

‘Easy for you to say, Chief!’ one of the men retorted. ‘You’ll get the pick of Indra’s nymphs in heaven, wont you, now that you’re a Kuru prince.’

Hidimbya rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. ‘Mih! Have you ever seen a nymph? Give me a full-blooded Rikshasa any day, my friend. The last thing I want is for Indra to complain I broke his fragile things in two…’

A round of raucous, whole-hearted laughter rang through the crowd.

‘Tell you what,’ Hidimbya continued, ‘You keep the nymphs, I’ll take your pretty sister instead!’

‘You’d better, Chief,’ the soldier replied. ‘You’re married to her!’

More guffaws rang out loud, this time ebbing slowly, as each man thought of his family, of those he loved the most.

When Hidimbya spoke again, his voice was solemn. ‘There are about a thousand of us alive, but we can each take down eight hundred to a thousand men. That’s more than two whole enemy divisions.’

‘But that would work only if…’

‘If it’s a powerful explosion, in a concentrated area…Look, we can die one by one; or we can die together and leave a chance at victory behind us. What say you?’

As one, the men stood up, and raised their voices in a blood-curdling war call.

‘What was that?’ Govinda muttered.

Partha said, glancing up, ‘It’s almost dawn. The first streaks of red are in the sky.’

Govinda wordlessly pointed to the battlefield ahead, where more of Hidimbya’s nitre-flowers were blooming.

‘They look different,’ Partha said. Soon, both men understood why.

In what had to be a prearranged, well-timed plan, over a hundred blasts rocked the air. Some were so strong that bodies were flung from the ground as the earth shook with the force, their lifeless blood boiling within to make the cadavers burst in mid-air, drenching all that was around in a shower of pulpy flesh and blistering blood. Fearing for their lives, enemy and ally alike tried to retreat and take shelter, but to no avail: The explosions were not unplanned, merely unpredictable, and no one close enough to feel the blast of heat could ever outrun it. It was, however, a testament to the size of Syoddhan’s forces that many remained alive as the blasts ebbed and an eerie stillness came over the battlefield. Heaving sighs of relief, the enemy survivors began to retreat, in an orderly manner. Suddenly, as the bulk of the soldiers drew closer to their camp, huge rings of fire blossomed up on all sides, cutting off their retreat and trapping men by the hundreds. Partha retched as the smell of burning flesh assaulted his nostrils.

Another round of blasts rocked the middle of the battlefield. Govinda was filled with foreboding. He immediately jerked the reins, getting his horses to rush right towards the centre of the carnage. By the time they reached the worst hit part of the battlefield, the attack was over. Their own commanders, each as surprised as the other, now joined them.

‘It’s mainly Syoddhan’s men who are dead. Nearly two divisions I think, maybe more,’ Dhrstyadymn quickly assessed.

‘Hidimbya!’ Govinda suddenly called out. He let go of the reins and jumped down from his rig. ‘Hidimbya! Hidimbya!’

‘Over here! Govinda, over here!’ Yuyudhana waved to them.

Govinda ran over to Yuyudhana. Together, the two men moved aside some debris to reveal Hidimbya’s tall frame. The debris had protected him from being charred painfully to death, but his end was clearly near. The blast had driven a sharp wedge through his chest. He bore the tell-tale marks of the enemy’s arrows and knives, the cuts now sealed shut from the heat of the flames around him.

‘Good thing…no hair,’ he gasped, as they pulled him out of the wreckage and away from fresh flames that had ignited nearby.

‘You planned this! You and your men, you planned this!’ Yuyudhana was incredulous.

The others clustered around. A distraught Bhim alternated between calling out to everyone to carry his son back to camp and barking harsh orders to fetch Dhaumya at once.

‘Father…’ Hidimbya called out.

Bhim fell to his knees and took his son’s hand in his. Gone was every bit of the bravado and strength he had shown moments ago. Now, Bhim was just a father.

‘Don’t cry for me, Father,’ Hidimbya wheezed. ‘I shall soon see my brother, Abhimanyu. We have many years to catch up on.’

‘He waits for you with a hero’s welcome, Hidimbya,’ Govinda affirmed.

‘He was a good man. It’s an honour to die to avenge him. It’s an honour to die for your victory, Govinda… Now you have a chance! Now, there is hope to win this… Fight well.’ Hidimbya reached out to squeeze Govinda’s hand with all the strength he had left in him. And then the Rikshasa’s arm was limp.