KRISHNA CORIOLIS#6: Fortress of Dwarka (32 page)

Rukmi hefted his sword and strode towards Krishna. His face was apoplectic with rage. Never very handsome to begin with, it was ugly with anger now. He ranted and raged as he approached, shouting loud enough to be heard by the entire assembled army of watchers. “I swear by all that is sacred to me, I will not return to Kundina without having killed you in battle, Krishna, and without bringing my sister home.”
 

Krishna sighed inwardly. “That is an oath you can never fulfill, Rukmi. Why promise what you cannot deliver?” He kept his voice just loud enough for Rukmi to hear but not the others.

Rukmi swore and ran at Krishna, swinging his sword wildly in both hands, as if intending to chop Krishna in half. Krishna deflected him with a single raised finger and Rukmi tumbled backwards, head over heels, landing on his backside. The sword flew out of Rukmi’s hands and flipped over several times before embedding itself upto the hilt in the ground before the watching kings. They balked but stayed where they were once they saw the sword was not threatening them.
 

Rukmi spat out grass and regained his feet. Unslinging his bow, he notched an arrow and pointed it at Krishna directly.
 

“I will kill you first, Yadava,” he shouted, “and then take my sister home!”
 

He loosed an arrow. Krishna deflected it and it went spinning past harmlessly, over the heads of the massed ranks of soldiers at the forest’s edge, sticking in a low-hanging branch with a quavering sound.
 

Rukmi loosed more arrows in quick succession. Krishna noted that his bhraatr-in-law was a good bowman, if only he could learn to control his anger better.

All Rukmi’s arrows ended up in trees or in the ground.
 

Rukmi roared at Krishna: “You are a coward who does not dare to fight me man to man!”
 

Krishna gestured at his wounds, healing fast but still visible as slits and nicks all over his body. “Would a coward endure a thousand arrows?”

Rukmi snarled. “They caused you no permanent harm! That is obvious. Your supermortal powers make you invulnerable to our weapons. Any craven can use such powers to fight ordinary men. If you were truly courageous and honorable you would fight me as a mortal, man to man!”
 

Krishna indicated his own body. The six arrows fired by Rukmi still remained in his flesh, sticking out at various angles. “Your arrows remain, Rukmi. I did not send them back to you as I did the others. Shall I do so now?”
 

“Send them!” Rukmi said. “Do you think I fear your powers? What you have done today has shamed my sister, my father, my family. Our honor will never be repaired unless I kill you now.”

Krishna shook his head. “Rukmi, I did what I had to for reasons too complex to explain now. But if you wish, I will sit with you and attempt to make you understand why I had to do things this way. After all, we shall now be brothers-in-law. I have sworn an oath to your sister that I will not harm you and your family in any way.”
 

Rukmi shook his head, showing his crooked tooth in scorn. “Harm? You have destroyed our family! What else did we have but our honor. You took that from us when you took our sister. Return her at once and perhaps I may yet let you live. But know this, you will never be my brother-in-law, you Gupta Ranchodri!”
 

Krishna recognized the twin insults and could guess who had put those names into Rukmi’s ears. He shook his head, attempting a smile: “We may yet repair this damage. Shake my hand and let us solemnize this match with the blessings of all Vidarbha and Dwarka combined.”

Rukmi hawked and spit on the ground at Krishna’s feet. “Never! We of Vidarbha honor our sisters. We do not make peace with those kidnap them like rakshasas. How did you become such a coward, Ranchodri? I expected better of a Yadava. Was it your birth parents who made you into a coward or was it your years living among the cowherds of Gokul and Vrindavan?”

Krishna stiffened at the words but still attempted to speak calmly. “Be careful what you say next, Rukmi. I too can say things about you and your family that you will not like. About your alliance with Jarasandha and Magadha for instance.”

Rukmi walked to and fro, shouting even louder now. “That is all you can do, is it not? You will not fight me like a man. You will not give me the opportunity to avenge my family’s dishonor. You will not even grant me an honorable death! After all that I have heard about you, Krishna of the Yadu dynasty, you are a sore disappointment. Perhaps you spent too much time among the gopis of Gokul! Or perhaps you were fed so much Vrishni milk from your adoptive mother’s breast that you have no blood in your veins anymore, only milk!”
 

Krishna stared at him coldly, his eyes flickering with a deep blue glow. “Stop speaking of my parents and family in that way, Rukmi. It will not be tolerated. Not another word.”
 

Rukmi showed his tooth again. “So you can insult my family but I must not speak of your’s? That is so fair and just, is it not? Is that your dharma then? And does your dharma count for more than my own? You are nothing but a cowherd who murdered his own uncle in an unfair fight. Not just a
cowherd
, but also a
coward
, like all the cowardly cowherds of Gokul!”
 

“Enough!” Krishna said, still keeping his voice at a loud but conversational level. “I ask you one last time, cease this pointless bickering and return home to Kundina. The real enemy of your people is Jarasandha, not I!”

Rukmi drew an arrow and shouted: “You dare not order me, you who dishonored your own Yadu dynasty. You are nothing but a thief and a kidnapper of women. I will kill you here and now. If you dare, then fight back and kill me like a man. Or prove yourself to be the
cowherd
you truly are!”

18

Balarama
saw brilliant yellow light scorching his vision and blinked, raising a hand to cover his eyes. Dust trickled from his raised hand onto his chest. He blinked and rose to his elbow, looking around. His head felt as if it had been struck by a gada as indestructible as his own. The yellow light was the sun, he saw now, and he was laying sprawled in the dust, some two score yards from where Jarasandha had left his chariot. But where was Jarasandha?
 

He got to his feet, shaking off the dust from his clothes. All he remembered was running directly at Jarasandha and Jarasandha running towards him. Then everything went white. He looked around, moving several yards in one direction, then the other. Finally he spotted something that he recognized at once. Except…there was something strange about it. Something not quite right.
 

It was a piece of a body.
 

He had seen enough corpses and partial pieces of corpses not to be disgusted. But this was unlike anything he had seen before in his life.
 

It was a piece of Jarasandha’s arm, the part where the arm met the torso, part of a shoulder, torn off like a joint of meat lopped off by a clean sharp blade. He could understand that happening: The full force of impact produced by Balarama running at a person could tear the body to pieces. And Jarasandha had run at him too with considerable force. Balarama had torn entire companies to shreds this way, with or without his mace.
 

But this was not a mere joint of meat with tendrils and blood oozing, torn muscle and flesh, ripped from the body. It was sliced off as cleanly as a chopped section of meat. Like a block of wood that could fit back into the larger log from which it had been chipped.
 

He looked around and saw there were other pieces laying about. Some dozens of yards away. He spotted part of a leg, another leg, a hip, a bit of torso, a belly, a neck, half a head…he blinked and stared at that one again.
Half
a head? Cut cleanly in half as if severed by an executioner’s blade.
 

How was it possible to shatter a body to pieces this way, as if it were but a block of wood or stone?
 

The answer, of course, was that it
wasn’t
possible.
 

And yet, the evidence lay all around Balarama.
 

He was still musing what to do when suddenly a golden object descended into his frame of view. He snatched up his mace, ready to fight, assuming it was one of Jarasandha’s allies or champions come to belatedly fight for their master.
 

But it was Krishna’s Pushpak. Daruka was steering it and he brought it low enough that he was hovering only a foot above ground, a yard from Balarama. Rukmini was standing behind the sarathi, in the chariot well and she looked as if she had been weeping.
 

“Bhaiya Balarama,” she said, pleading with her hands joined together, “I beg of you, please come and stop it before it is too late. Please.”
 

Balarama didn’t need any further urging. He leaped into the chariot, landing with a thump beside his sister-in-law-to-be. Normally his weight would have caused most ordinary chariots to shudder and the horses to rear in panic but the pushpak didn’t budge a fraction of an inch. Daruka steered the vehicle away, flying them back in the direction of Kundini.
 

Balarama glanced back and saw the pieces of Jarasandha’s body still lay spread across the ground. He could not believe he had just killed the God Emperor of Jarasandha with a single impact yet that appeared to be the case.
 

***

“Enough!” Krishna said.
 

His body bristled with arrows, not just the six Rukmi had shot earlier but others he had shot now. Krishna had endured the arrows and insults until now but still Rukmi would not be satisifed. His taunts had grown more insulting, more offensive until finally, it was more than Krishna could bear.
 

He gestured and his divine Bow appeared in his hand. With one fluid gesture, he loosed a flurry of arrows.
 

Rukmi’s bow was shattered, his sword shattered, his quiver destroyed--every arrow in it shattered to bits--and then Rukmi himself was struck by arrows. One in each arm, one in each leg, one in each side. He grimaced but the wounds were all in his flesh, not one struck a vital organ or caused permanent damage.
 

There was no shortage of weapons lying on the field around them. Rukmi took up an iron mace and swung it, coming at Krishna with rage on his face.
 

Krishna loosed an arrow, shattering the iron mace into smithereens. The fragments went flying away, not one touching Rukmi directly but showering the air over the ground. They clattered onto the helmets and armor and weapons of the fallen soldiers.
 

Rukmi picked up a spear.
 

Krishna shattered the spear.

Rukmi raised a lance.
 

Krishna shattered it.
 

Rukmi took up a javelin.

Krishna broke the arrow to pieces.
 

Rukmi found a sword and came at him, Krishna bent the sword into a twisted curl.
 

Rukmi flung a shield at him, Krishna melted it like molasses.
 

Then Rukmi looked around, saw that every weapon he chose was useless, and understood what he had to do.
 

He unclipped his helmet and tossed it aside. It rolled across the grass and came to a halt by the fallen body of a horse and its ride, both pierced by javelins and arrows.
 

Rukmi unbuckled his leather-and-metal armored chestplate and let it fall heavily to the ground.
 

He removed every bracelet, chain and protective covering he had one.
 

Finally, clad in only a langot, as near naked as a man could be, he threw himself at Krishna without another word.
 

All that needed to be said had been said. Now, this was a fight to the death. He was attacking Krishna with the last weapon a man had left in battle: his own body.
 

In one smooth motion, Krishna swung around, avoiding Rukmi’s headlong rush, turned back and grasped hold of Rukmi by his hair, holding him at bay.
 

Rukmi continued to spout insults, directed at Krishna’s mother, father, friends, brother, community…

“Enough!” Krishna said.
 

He grasped a blade that lay at hand, a sword dropped by some fallen soldier. He set the edge of the blade to Rukmi’s throat, drawing blood. “Cease now.”
 

“Kill me then!” Rukmi taunted. “You chose to fight me as a god. Now at least kill me like a man!” Then he said something about Krishna’s mother that no man, god or asura could tolerate being said about his maatr.
 

Krishna paused a moment then brought the blade up and with one swift motion, sliced the hair off Rukmi’s scalp. Thick oily hair fell like sheaves of wheat to the ground.
 

The blade flashed in Krishna’s hand, again and yet again.
 

When he was done, he tossed the blade aside and rose to his feet, turning and walking away. There was almost no expression on Krishna’s face but in his eyes blue lightning flickered and in his mouth, a typhoon swirled.
 

***

“Krishna!”

Balarama leaped from the pushpak, landing on the ground with a resounding thump that the watching kings must have felt in their bones. He ran to where Rukmi lay and examined the prince of Vidarbha. Rukmi’s eyes flashed in his rage-mottled face. Trickles of blood ran down his scalp and sides of his face.
 

Krishna had not harmed Rukmi himself. He had shaved off the hair from his head and face. Shaved him clean as a son mourning for a dead parent.
 

Balarama swore and strode away from Rukmi, going after Krishna.
 

Krishna beckoned with a finger and Pushpak descended to ground level.