The Rise of Hastinapur (45 page)

Spring has come and gone here in Gandhar, and midsummer is but three moons away. I have once invited you to our kingdom to join us in our festivities to celebrate the night of the solstice, but between then and now certain things have happened – things that have regrettably forced me to withdraw my invitation.

The people from the mountain have sought their price. They wish to free Gandhar of Hastinapur’s clutches, and they wish to free Gandhar’s gold from Hastinapur’s vaults. They wish for the tribute of gold to cease, and they wish for Gandhar to be declared by one and all to be the strongest kingdom of the land.

For all this to happen, my lord, the only course of action available to me is to declare war between the two kingdoms. I know not if this comes as a surprise to you; indeed, if my spies are to be believed, you have expected this outcome many moons ahead and have begun to train an army. I am certain that your spies have informed you that we have done the same. We have mined enough gold in the last one year to reduce the threat of riots and social breakdown in Gandhar if you were to throw open the empty vaults to public view. So to begin our open antagonism toward Hastinapur, I withdraw with immediate effect the tribute that we have agreed to pay you. From this month on, you shall receive nothing from Gandhar’s treasury. Gandhar’s gold shall stay within Gandhar.

Also with immediate effect, we will imprison your vault-keepers and hold them for ransom. If you wish to free them, you shall pay us all the gold that Gandhar has given you in tribute this previous year. I do not plan on keeping them alive for more than two months, though, so make your decision about them before our battle begins. I have shown mercy to their wives and children, and they will be sent to Hastinapur safely on mules. I have asked my infantrymen to accompany them, so you need not worry about them succumbing to beasts or bandits.

I shall allow the next one month for peace to prevail between the two kingdoms, in case you wish to conduct talks with me. But on the same day of the moon during the next waking cycle, I shall declare war to begin. I have informed my generals of this, and their armies are ready, eager to put their trained muscles to test. Men have also arrived from the Meru to embellish our forces, so if you feel that we could be swatted away with minimal effort, perhaps you should pause and ponder.

The people of Gandhar are aware of these developments. I, the queen, and my army, have the blessings of the people, and we shall come to Hastinapur to take back the gold that has forever been rightfully ours.

To Gandhari, Queen of Gandhar, Bhishma the Champion of Hastinapur’s throne submits his humble salutations.

I wished to invite you to Hastinapur as queen, as wife to the son of my dead brother, as future mother to the kings of North Country. But you choose the path that shall take us away from each other, my queen. Gandhar and Hastinapur ought to be entwined as one entity against the men from Meru, for it is our interests that are alike, and theirs are but mere mirages just like their lives.

But your mind appears to have been made, and you claim to have the blessings of your people. I wish it were true and that you do not say it just to strengthen your resolve, for I know from long experience in statecraft that people never, ever, wish their kings to go to war. They know what comes out of war; the promise of bounty is sweet, but bitter indeed is the fear of ruin. I have kept close watch on Gandhar for the last year, and I admit I do not know for certain if ruin is what awaits her, but Hastinapur is not the same kingdom it was forty years ago, my lady, when Idobhargava drove us out of Kamyaka and demanded tribute from us.

Now we are stronger by at least four or five times, for now we are wealthier. Our army is more powerful; no longer is it only full of skilled archers. We have spearmen atop chariots, and armour-clad elephants that trample everything in their way. We have swordsmen who are as good with two blades as they are with one.

And do not forget, if you are to take our gold – though you keep saying it is your gold, my lady, it is in our vaults, which means it is
our
gold – you must fell the walls of Hastinapur. All of this last year we have strengthened our defensive structures, and when you arrive on the shores of the Yamuna, you shall be greeted with a maze of walls and towers the like of which your soldiers have never seen. We have our best archers patrolling these, and I must tell you, Your Majesty, that I have picked them out myself from the winners of our archery competitions. Whether the target is moving or still, big or small, they do not miss.

We have trained macemen in the last ten years that specialize in killing elephants. I have seen some of these men bring an elephant to the ground with two blows, one under each eye. And for good measure they carve out the tusks and make necklaces out of them, which their wives and young ones wear. We have footmen who can strangle the swiftest horses with their bare arms.

I am telling you all this not to scare you, my lady, but just so that your generals – whether they belong to Gandhar or to Meru – would not be shocked on the day of the solstice when they do not see just a line of archers along the edge of the battlefield. Our archers are still the best in North Country, but now our army comprises of so much more.

So whoever is advising you that you must fight us, I shall be wary of them if I were you. One – of us – does not need to go down for the other to rise. That is the code of barbarians, of mindless savages. We have built kingdoms, we have tamed the water and land to our will; certainly we can think of a better way, a way in which blood does not have to be shed. Blood is blood, whether it belongs to Gandhar or to Hastinapur.

THIRTEEN

‘I
would not believe everything he has written, my lady,’ said Kubera, putting down the parchment and turning to face her. After him, Shakuni picked it up and scanned it, his left eye twitching the whole time. His hands shivered, and he seemed to her like a curious bouncing ball, forever on the verge of pulling out his sword.

‘But even if some of what he says is true …’

‘I would not worry about it, Your Majesty. Your generals command a great army, and you have our own units to help. Our cavalrymen alone could account for all their archers and elephants, and your archers shall take out their macemen before they can even reach our elephants. We are every bit as good as Bhishma at battle strategy, Your Highness.’ He smiled. ‘After all, he learnt everything from teachers on the mountain.’

‘He also speaks of their defensive structures …’

‘I have only today spoken to our blacksmith, my lady,’ said Kubera. ‘He will fashion for us forty iron catapults that will fell their walls in a day, and their armour will be tinged with diamond dust, which means not even the sharpest arrows will pierce them.’ Looking at her still apprehensive face, he reached out for her hand and patted it. ‘This is how battles are fought, my lady. First they attempt to scare you, for then they have won without a hurl of a spear.’

Spread before them on the table was a map of North Country. The path from Gandhar to Hastinapur had been marked with two red lines that slithered around River Iravati and first went eastward, toward the mountains. Then it slid down from between Trigarta and Pulinda – two of Hastinapur’s vassal states, and came to a stop near the point where the Yamuna broke off from her sister Ganga.

‘On the southward bank of Iravati shall we build our camp. The people of Trigarta – or of any other kingdom – shall not see us, for we will hide under a curtain of mist. There is enough mist that settles on Iravati, so we shall have enough to use our Mystery and create a film that will hide us well.’

‘Mist in the summer?’ said Gandhari.

‘Aye,’ said Kubera, ‘the same mist that hides our trade route, my lady. We shall create more of it and build a few barracks and stables on the riverbank, for we shall need reinforcements during the battle.’ He turned toward the map. ‘We will draw them out to the clearing here.’ He carved a circle at a point next to the eastern tip of the Kuru kingdom. ‘The land there is soft and muddy, much like the wetlands of Kamyaka, so their archers will not find solid footing.’

‘And it is flat too,’ said Shakuni, ‘so they will have to shoot their arrows into the air and hope that some of them pierce our armour shields. They cannot aim at us directly like they could at Kamyaka.’

‘Yes,’ said Kubera, ‘that is so.’ He said to Gandhari, ‘I do not expect Hastinapur to fight us on open fields and win, my lady, but if at any point they take our gold mine, our reinforcements will suffer. We must prevent that at all costs.’

‘I have already stationed my best guards at the gold mine, and the towers there will not allow any intruders to pass.’

‘That is good for now,’ said Kubera, ‘but once the battle begins, we must see to it that the mine is well guarded.’ He thought for a moment, looking away. ‘Perhaps I can persuade Indra to part with a few dozen footmen. They’re the best fighters on the Meru. With them guarding your mines, you will have nothing to fret about …’

‘But you say they belong to Indra,’ said Gandhari.‘Will he allow them to guard our mines?’

‘I shall do my best,’ said Kubera, smiling and patting her hand. ‘You must not give much of your mind to this, Your Highness. You must think of what you plan to do once you recover all of your gold.’

In spite of the shadows in her mind, she smiled back. The evening heat made her vision wavy, or perhaps it was the oil that she had become used to applying under her eyelids before she went to sleep every night. She reminded herself that she must ask Kubera how it worked; even after a month of constant use, she had not seen any improvement in her sight. Her dreams had become more vivid and clear, but the figures she often looked at on the ceiling in her room still appeared as smudges. What had Kubera said when he had given her the oil box? Something about the sight of the mind – tonight, perhaps, after the lamps had been put out, he would steal into her chamber like he had done a number of times recently.

She was beginning to get addicted to his smell; no, not the smell of musk that he carried, but the light green must that tingled her nose when he held her close to his bosom. On the nights when he had slept in her bed, she had slept without dreaming, and she had woken up feeling like a lotus in full bloom.

She did not know if Shakuni guessed it, especially at times like these when Kubera did not hesitate to take her hand in his. Her wrist strained a bit when the thought struck her, and she pulled it back. But then in a flash of indignation, she thought:
So what?
How many women had he not lain with over the years? If she liked a man enough to invite him into her bed, why should she look for Shakuni’s approval? As long as the matter did not cross the palace walls – and she would ensure that it did not – nothing mattered, at least for as long as she was queen and he a mere prince.

‘I do not wish to think of a victory that may or may not come, my lord,’ she said to Kubera, not telling him that she did not dare think of the war coming to an end because that would mean it would be time for him to return to Meru. ‘All of Gandhar shall have you to thank if we, indeed, manage to win.’

‘There is no question of us not winning!’ said Shakuni, getting up and limping out to the window overlooking the mines. ‘I shall kick Bhishma’s face into the dust, and I shall bring back with me his crown. Hastinapur shall belong to Gandhar!’

Gandhari held her hands together and frowned as she looked at her brother’s face. She found herself worrying, curiously, for the welfare of Bhishma and Hastinapur.