Prince of Dharma (58 page)

‘Perfectly.’ 

Bejoo watched him ride away and thought:
Methinks we’ll find the rajkumars when we find the rakshasas. And we had better find them quick. Whatever that was, tossing those hardened shit-balls at us back there, it was no siege-machine. Those balls were shaped and pressed by hands, I saw that from the indentations and fingerprints. And if they were ten yards wide at the centre, how large a creature would it take to toss them one after another like confetti? And what manner of asura would it be
? 

He had a grim feeling he would find out before too long. 

TWENTY 

‘Ayodhya Anashya
!’ 

The battle-cry resounded through the jungle, rising above the bestial howls of rage and anguish. 

It came from Rama’s throat, booming and reverberating with superhuman force. 

Lakshman echoed it as he fought, although his voice sounded shrill and hoarse after Rama’s: 

‘Ayodhya Anashya!’ 

Ayodhya the Indestructible
. 

Behind them, the sage continued his chant, reciting sloka upon sloka, the mantras seeming to change the very texture of the air they breathed, infusing their lungs with raw pure energy, drawn down from the akasa to replace the foul atmosphere of the Bhayanak-van. As Lakshman battled on, his sword driven by a shakti beyond skill or training, he felt the energy gathering around them, growing. He could see the blue glow from his eyes shining on the faces of the hybrids he fought, gleaming back from their inhuman eyes. It didn’t seem to frighten them at first, but as the fight raged on, he sensed them growing warier, more cautious. They tried to sneak to the periphery of his vision, to attack from behind, from above, from below, while fewer dared to attack full-frontal. 

He swung his sword like a farmer threshing, reaping a bloody harvest. Limbs, organs, guts, fur, talons, and items too alien to identify flew through the air as he confronted and slew one creature after another. He lost count of how many he killed, the bodies tossed back by their fellows, roaring with rage as each new corpse fell. He felt the press around him grow thicker as the hybrids crowded harder and closer, seeking a way through his defences. Even the tiniest lapse would be enough to bring him down with a slash of a razor-sharp claw or beak, or the plunging point of a pointed tail dripping venom, or the fired barbs of a porcupine-lion. But he deflected, cut down, hacked away, sliced off and dealt with every oncomer without mercy or hesitation. He was a fighting machine, as the seer had said, a battle engine driven by the shakti of the maha-mantras Bala and Atibala. And nothing could harm him. Or so he thought in those last moments of blind red rage. 

The first hint that he might not be as invulnerable as he assumed came when a cobra-bat swooped from a tree limb at the precise moment when he was battling a wildcat-boar and a bear-stag at once. He ducked in time to avoid the cobra’s lunging fangs and the creature swooped past, screeching in frustration as its venom splattered uselessly on the ground. But a searing pain raked his back and he realised belatedly that the batlike claws of the beast’s forelegs had scraped him. He felt blood oozing from the scratches and flowing thickly down his side. 

Still, it was a minor wound and he ignored the pain and fought on with greater vigour. 

‘
Ayodhya Anashya
!’ 

But then a gharial-mouthed rhino impatient to have a go at him literally tore its way through the hybrid before him— thrusting its long sword-like snout through the back of the bear-stag to emerge dripping from its belly—surprising Lakshman as it clamped its jaws on his sword hand. 

Lakshman struggled to free himself and for one suspended instant he wrestled furiously with the gharial-rhino, the dying bear-stag pressed between them, but then the wildcat-boar attacked him with the tip of its jagged horn, missing his abdomen but scratching his hip instead, and the gharial-rhino gained the advantage. 

It clenched its jaws together in a bone-crunching vice, shattering his wrist and severing two fingers. Lakshman’s sword fell from his broken hand, blood spurting from the severed arteries on to his face, blinding him momentarily. 

The next instant, the hybrids were on him, biting, clawing, slashing, tearing. He felt something cold and sharp punch through his back, cracking his ribs and driving their edges into his lungs. 

Blood gouted from his mouth even as the blunt-edged limb of another creature smashed into the side of his head, cracking his skull open. They devoured him, each beast attacking its own favourite body part, tearing him limb from limb, gobbling his organs as they steamed hot and fresh, crying out their exultation. 

He wasn’t indestructible after all, it seemed. 

*** 

Bejoo saw the gleam of water just before his horse broke through the shattered debris of the felled trees, past the bigfoot with its blood-smeared forehead and shattered head-armour. He could barely recognise the river as such, it was so thickly carpeted with moss and rot. But the treeline stopped five yards or so from either bank, forming a pathway through the dense woods, and he could see clear down the course of its flow, into the heart of the jungle. He raised a hand, bringing the Vajra to a halt. There would be no need to keep the bigfoot up front. He would lead the way from here on. 

He was about to issue the order when he heard the sounds of battle. He had been in enough blood-fights to know one when he heard it. It was the sound of living creatures locked in a desperate struggle for survival, fighting to destroy each other by any means possible. Only the sound of coupling was as arousing. Sniffing the air like a black mountain bear, he smelled the salty tang of blood from downriver and pointed his sword in that direction, yelling to his dwindled but still determined force: ‘Speed! Our swords are needed!’ 

His horse needed no mantra this time. It galloped forward of her own volition, racing downriver in the direction of the sounds and the scent, her nostrils flaring as the odour of blood reached her. As he approached the scene, he peered through the forest gloom, seeking out the source of the noises. It was a battle, no doubt. But between what manner of creatures he couldn’t quite comprehend. The sounds were like a mélange of animal noises as varied as any he’d ever heard. What in the name of the devas were the rajkumars fighting? 

He discovered the answer for himself a few moments later as he reached the site of the battle. 

On the far bank of the rivulet, the most bizarre conflict he had ever seen was being waged. 

Rajkumar Rama was standing alone against an enormous mass of beasts. The creatures were so thickly crowded in their eagerness to get at him, Bejoo could hardly tell them apart. Then he realised that his first impression was not a trick of the dim jungle light; these were no ordinary predators. Bejoo’s face wrinkled in distaste as he made out the mutated shapes of the creatures his prince was battling. 

More amazing than the creatures he fought was Prince Rama himself. The rajkumar was alone, unarmoured, helmless, and armed only with a sword in one hand and a fistful of arrows in the other. Against him were at least a hundred unholy beasts, each lethal enough to strike terror into any regiment of armed and armoured soldiers. Yet Rama fought like he had an army behind him and a shield of invulnerability before him. His sword flashed with such blinding speed that he seemed to wield blue fire rather than forged steel. Everything his blade touched, it slew. The fistful of arrows in his left hand were as effective as any sword, shearing a swathe of bloody death through the pressing beasts. Encircled and outnumbered, he looked like a man wading into an ocean, parting it before him as easily as air. 

Behind him, the seer Vishwamitra stood within a column of blinding blue light that rose as high as Bejoo could see, disappearing above the tops of the trees. Golden motes of light swirled around him, like a fly trapped in amber held up to sunlight. He was chanting mantras with the steady ferocity of a general chanting a war cry. To one side of the seer lay a prone form that looked like an animal savaged by a pack of hyenas. Bejoo recognised the golden armlet embossed with the emblem of the House Suryavansha lying amid the steaming remains and realised with a shock that that corpse was none other than Rajkumar Lakshman. Nobody could be torn up that badly and still be alive, could they? His heart sank as he realised that he had already failed in one half of his sworn duty. One rajkumar lay slain, and he was to blame for not being there in time to protect him. 

Bheriya was beside him, staring at the fantastic scene across the stream. The young Kshatriya’s eyes were wide with disbelief, horror and something else.
Adoration
, Bejoo realised, knowing at once that Bheriya’s eyes were fixed on Rajkumar Rama.
He has never seen anyone fight like that. And neither have I. Nobody human at least.
He could see the rajkumar’s eyes now, blazing with blue fire, filled with the same gold motes that surrounded the sage.
Brahman power at work. What has the seer done to our prince
? 

He didn’t need to understand or make sense of it all. His warrior’s mind needed only to know two things: whom to fight and how. Understanding never made a sword sharper or an arrow speedier. Bejoo turned the head of his horse, riding to the treeline to give himself room, turned again and galloped hard to the edge of the stream, leaping clear across the water, over the raft itself, landing on the far side with yards to spare. He didn’t need to wait to see if his men were following, Bheriya had turned his horse immediately after he had. The remaining chariot and bigfoot should be able to wade right through the stream; it was only a yard shallow. He raised his sword and drove his horse forward, calling an invocation to his patron deity Saturn. 

‘Jai Shree Shaneshwara
!’ he cried, and joined the battle. 

***

||Tasmin tvayi kim viryam ityapidan||

||Sarvah daheyam yadindah prthivyamithih||

Within the cloud of Brahman, Vishwamitra vaguely sensed the battle raging around him. Such was the intensity of Brahman power: once unleashed, the user lost contact with the material realm. For Brahman was beyond space and time; beyond everything that ever was, is or will be. 

The sage had begun by chanting the sacred mantras of Vedanta; original slokas of his own composition, sacred verses composed in a metre and rhythm that infused them with the power to channel the flow of Brahman that sustained the universe. Vishwamitra was chanting the upanisad mantras in order to channel power to the rajkumars, who would use it to fight the enormous numbers of enemy ranged against them. They needed to achieve the fullest flow of Brahmanical power, and to have their atmas strengthened so they could contain and endure the rush of shakti, the way a river expanded its banks to accommodate a superior flow. 

And yet, some part of Vishwamitra’s atma, his divine deathless soul, knew that something had happened in the battle that demanded his attention. Something of great import. Something adverse. 

With a great exertion of shakti, he struggled to maintain the channelling while freeing a small portion of his mind. With only as much consciousness as was needed to open his left eye he observed what was happening around him. What he saw was not wholly unexpected. 

Rajkumar Rama was glowing with Brahman shakti, his arms and weapons driven by the immense vidya of the maha-mantras Bala and Atibala. The results were plain to see. Not one of the horrendous beasts that boiled around Rama like a plague of locusts could harm a hair on his head. He scythed them down like ripe wheat, mowing his way through the field of flesh. And now he was joined by Kshatriyas from Ayodhya, the remnants of the same Vajra they had encountered when leaving the rajmarg. The outcome of the battle had never been in question, but now it was certain it would be ended soon. Already, the hybrid monstrosities of Tataka’s creation were falling back step by step, unable to match the brutal perfection of Rama’s slaying as well as the courageous horsemen, charioteers and elephants of his fellow Kshatriyas. Soon it would be over. And Rama would be able to seek out and fight his real foe: Tataka herself. Even at the height of his meditative chant, the brahmarishi’s austere face softened in the ghost of a smile. 

Then his left eye turned and saw the figure that lay prone on the ground. So near the mandala circle in which he stood, he had ignored it at first, assuming it was just another hybrid corpse. 

Now he saw with rising disquiet that it was a human who lay there, brutally savaged. The pile of bones and flesh resembled something left on a butcher’s slab rather than a human being. 

Yet there was no mistaking it for one of Tataka’s bestial monstrosities. That pile of butchered remains was all that was left of Rajkumar Lakshman.