KRISHNA CORIOLIS#6: Fortress of Dwarka (2 page)

The blur that was Krishna appeared to be doing something. He appeared to be moving both arms—except that he seemed to have four arms, not two. Jarasandha scowled and cursed, wishing he could see better. Then he saw the gleam of polished metal and was alert again. Krishna was about to unleash some manner of weapon. He frowned when he caught the glint of gold off the weapons in the enemy’s hands. That could only mean gold or brass. Neither were fit materials to be used in the making of weaponry; they were much too soft. Why would Krishna bother with such devices? Unless they were show-piece weapons as some kings used, merely to play the part of waging war while their soldiers did the actual fighting. Arrows that could barely pierce a breast-bone or cut flesh, javelins that were so light they bounced off a man’s skull like a reed stick.
 

Surely Krishna could not be using such items?
 

Then again, perhaps Jarasandha had over-estimated him after all. Maybe Krishna was a better lover and fighter, as the rumors went. And Balarama was the real fighter. Maybe his energies were spent and all he intended to do now was put up a show for the watching Mathuran army to boost their morale.
 

If that was the case, then he would die on this field today.
 

Jarasandha grinned and was about to issue an order to his aides when suddenly everything changed.
 

Across the field, he saw the gleam of gold flash across the brigade of charging elephants. Krishna had unleashed his weapons, showpieces or not.
 

And then the weapons struck. And Jarasandha stopped grinning.
 

They were not showpieces.
 

They were dev-astras.
 

2

The
missile shaped like a wave of fire sprang from the bow Saranga at supersonic speed. So tremendous was the sound of its passing over the heads of the assembled ranks of Jarasandha’s soldiers that it was akin to a physical blow. The boom produced by its passing deafened many at once, their eardrums buffeted beyond endurance by the sonic implosion. They toppled off their horses and elephants and chariots, many falling to the ground, clapping their hands to their bleeding ears. The missile itself struck the twelfth akshohini of the army of Magadha, impacting with the force of a wave but unlike a wave, it did not simply batter and splash. It disintegrated flesh and bone and blood to gritty remains. So intense was the heat it produced—for it was the heat of tapas itself—that it incinerated living bodies, armor and apparel to crumbling ash on contact. The lives of lakhs of soldiers, horses and elephants were extinguished instantly. Mere skeletons were left behind, surrounded by a swirling typhoon of fire and ash.
 

The Sudarshana chakra flew in another direction, traveling across the breach and over Mathura city. The citizens stared up as the disk, brighter than the sun at noonday, flashed overhead, spinning at unimaginable speed. It swooped down with terrifying speed, attacking the Magadhan forces on the far side of the city. It struck with devastating impact, like a blade on a grinding wheel pressed to a slab of meat. Bodies were cleaved so cleanly in half, not one drop of blood spilled from the chopped halves to the ground; the two halves simply collapsed in a dead heap. Like the first dev-astra, Sudarshana too did not distinguish between man and beast, or between flesh and armor, steel and bone. It flashed across the battlefield like a smooth flat rock tossed sideways over a placid lake, severing tens of thousands of lives in a single passing.
 

The third weapon was the lotus flower. What harm could a mere lotus flower do? Yet this was no ordinary lotus flower. It was the very lotus held by Vishnu himself, plucked by his lady Sri’s own hands from the oceanic pool in which Anantha lay coiled eternally. Over millennia Anantha’s venom had infused the lotus in that pond with such a high level of toxicity, the mere fragrance could kill any living creature. Because Vishnu like all devas was not affected by mortally threatening poisons or weapons, he could inhale its sweet fragrance with impunity. Indeed, only he or devas like himself could even scent its fragrance. But to the soldiers of the Magadhan army and the beasts that bore them and fought for them, the fragrance was as toxic as the most concentrated venom ever drawn. The lotus flower passed across a section of the great army, spreading its fragrance across the assembled lines. And as it passed by, tens of thousands dropped like flies whose wings had burned off.
 

The fourth and final weapon was the conch shell. Ordinarily it did serve the purpose of alerting the assembled armies on the battlefield that the day’s warring had commenced—or ended. But when blown by its master in a certain way, it could produce a very different sound and result. Krishna blew into the conch shell in that certain way now, as the first three weapons spread their waves of devastation across the field. The sound produced by his blowing was nothing like the loud resonating trumpeting that it usually made.
 

This was a subsonic scream so low-pitched, it vibrated at the same frequency as the molecules in the body of a living being…and then stopped. When it stopped, which was when Krishna stopped blowing it, of course, all those molecules simply stopped as well. He blew it outwards, aiming the sound in the opposite direction to the breach and Mathura city on his right hand, to ensure that no friendly soldiers or citizens could come to harm.
 

The effect was even more devastating than the slaughter of the first three astras. The cessation of the conch shell sound stopped the hearts, brains, blood flow and every cell in every living body. The result was that the bodies at whom it was directed, regardless of their clothes, armor or other accessories, crumpled inwards like thin wooden boards. Bone structures, flesh, organs…everything was pushed inwards upon itself, forced into destruction by the cessation of the natural motion of their molecules. The tissue itself collapsed

When each weapon had completed its task in one cardinal direction, it returned instantly to its owner. Even as he blew the conch shell with one hand, the weapons had already returned to the other three hands of Vishnu.
 

And when all four had completed their tasks, he deployed them again. And again. And again.
 

3

In
the end, the only warriors left standing were Jarasandha and the last remnants of his Mohini Fauj. Seeing the utter devastation wrought by Krishna and Balarama he had descended quickly from his raised viewing platform, boarded his chariot and started to flee the battlefield. Now, he was a mile or so and gaining speed. And Balarama was giving chase.
 

Even the fastest horses in the world were no match for the celestial chariot. Balarama’s vaahan swooped low over Jarasandha’s contingent, startling his horses into bucking and drawing the nervous shrieks of the Hijras. The horse team, already confused and maddened by the sight and scent of so much death and struggling to avoid the many obstacles posed by carcasses and torn remnants of armor and weaponry, caught its feet on something and tumbled. The chariot rose bodily in the air and broke free of the reins and horses. As the horses themselves tumbled, breaking legs and screaming pitifully, the chariot somersaulted and struck the ground, bouncing once, then again, before coming to a halt in upright position once more, a shattered wreck with a shaken yet largely unharmed Jarasandha huddled in the well.
 

Balarama landed his chariot beside the wreck of Jarasandha’s chariot, leaping to ground while his vehicle was still several yards in the air. The Mohini Fauj, reduced by now to barely a hundred of the Emperor’s immediate bodyguards, rushed forward with pitiful gallantry. Balarama raised his mace and swung it in a great swinging arc, letting his body swirl with the force of the blow, like a man about to release an iron ball held by a long chain. Instead of releasing the mace, he continued to swing around, reaping Hijras like cornstalks. In moments, the entire Mohini Guard lay dead on the grassy knoll. He took another moment to smash the shrieking horses out of their misery, then he strode over to the well of the shattered chariot with Magadhan markings.
 

Jarasandha crouched in the well of the broken chariot, staring numbly into the distance. He did not even look up as Balarama approached.
 

Balarama reached forward and grasped Jarasandha by the back of his neck, the way a lion seizes another lion. He lifted him up easily, despite the difference in their age and sizes. Jarasandha hung absurdly from Balarama’s grasp, like some pitiful puppy helpless and unable to fight back.
 

“Magadhan,” Sankarshan said softly. “Where did you think you would run to? Even if it was the ends of the earth, we would find you. Don’t you understand that by now?”

A faint disturbance in the air was the only indication of the arrival of the second celestial chariot. It descended smoothly and silently on the knoll beside Balarama’s own chariot. Krishna descended, tucking away his weapons. As he stepped towards Jarasandha, the Magadhan had a brief glimpse of the being he truly was…then in place of that being, he saw the boy Krishna with two slender arms and a normal human body, approaching him with a grim look on his youthful face.
 

“Shall I kill him here, bhraatr, or shall we do it before the people of Mathura?”

Krishna replied. “We shall not kill him at all.”

Balarama’s head jerked. “What?”

“Release him.”

Balarama stared at his brother then turned back to Jarasandha, dangling from Balarama’s left hand. The Magadhan was tall enough that his knees dragged limply on the grass but he made no move to try to break free of Balarama’s grasp. “We cannot release him. We must kill him. We have the right under kshatriya dharma.”

“Kshatriya dharma forbids an honorable warrior from killing a helpless one.”

Balarama frowned. “He is not helpless. He is an asura in mortal guise. He is capable of fighting both of us at once and giving us a little trouble before we despatch him. I would call that a worthy adversary, not a helpless one. The rules of war fully justify us killing him when we get the chance, right? Well, this is our chance.”

“No, bhaiya, we shall release him. Let him go.”

Balarama still remained adamant. “Do you know what he meant to do? He brought an army of 23 akshohini to destroy Mathura and wipe out the Yadava race from the world. Never before has he invaded any nation with such a huge force. His intention here was not to conquer or merely subjugate, it was to eliminate. To wipe us out of existence.”

“And instead, we wiped his army of 23 akshohini out of existence.” Krishna’s voice was calm. “They pose no further threat to us or any other nation of the world.”

“Even so, he is still alive!” Balarama said. “And he remains the greatest threat Mathura has ever faced.”

“That is why he must remain alive,” Krishna said.
 

“That makes no sense, bhraatr. If he stays alive he could well raise another army. And return to try to do again what he tried today. Don’t be fooled by the way he looks now,” Balarama shook the Magadhan viciously, making Jarasandha’s limp body flipflop absurdly. “He is in shock, terrified beyond words of us now, but in time he will regain his hatred and lust for vengeance and raise a new army to invade us.”

“Who will follow him into battle?” Krishna asked. “His entire power and domination was due to his great army and superior fighting power. Now he has nothing. By leaving him alive, he remains humiliated, a perpetual reminder to our enemies of the might and power of the Yadava nation. Wherever he goes, whatever he does—or tries to do, people will laugh at him openly or snigger behind his back and remind each other that we cared so little about him that we let him live after wiping out his army. No soldier will respect him anymore. Even his slaves will feel superior to him.”

Balarama stared at Krishna for a moment. He absorbed the implications of his brother’s words. Then slowly, he turned and looked at Jarasandha. The Magadhan’s eyes were closed but there was dampness around the dark thickly lashed eyes. He was crying.
 

Balarama opened his fist. Jarasandha dropped to the grassy knoll like a sack of vegetables and lay sprawled there on his face. Balarama wiped his hand on his anga-vastra, even though the anga-vastra was more bloodied and filthy with offal than the hand that had clutched Jarasandha. “You are right, bhraatr,” he said. “After such a defeat, to be allowed to live is a far greater loss than to be killed. He will never survive such a humiliation.” He chuckled. “Besides, his enemies will now be baying for blood, eager to take revenge on him for all the abuse he has meted out over the years. They will fall on him like crocodiles on a wounded buffalo.”

Balarama kicked Jarasandha on the softest part of his rear side. “Get up! Rise, Magadhan and leave this kingdom. Never show your face anywhere near Mathura or to any Yadava for as long as you remain alive. On pain of death. Come on! Get going!”

He had to kick the fallen Emperor a few more times before the broken wreck that was now Jarasandha finally managed to get to its feet and stumble away. He shambled over the land strewn with the remnants of his once-great army and it was difficult to believe that this broken being that stumbled into the horizon had until this morning been the most feared conqueror in the known world.
 

4

Jarasandha
did not laugh out loud in typically villainous fashion. He was not Kamsa. Even in this moment of utter desolation, he still retained his famous dignity and gentlemanly composure. He merely chuckled. Yet so unexpected was that action that it filled the quiet tent, silencing every last one of the kings present. He threw the second boot on the ground and grinned up at them.
 

“You fools. You simple-brained dolts. You idiots without a grain of sense in all your collective skulls.”