PRINCE IN EXILE (77 page)

He was too late to stop three or four others who had already swung down from their hemp-rope cradles to join their family members in the three dozen separate skirmishes raging in the clearing. But the others remained where they were, loosing arrows when they could gain a clear line of fire. 

Rama turned towards a pair of rakshasis who were fighting back-to-back against a dozen of his people, taking terrible wounds and giving back as good as they got. For each rakshasi’s death-scream, he could hear twice or thrice as many human death-cries. The situation was out of control. 

Even as he was about to join the fight against the two rakhsasis, he saw looming darkness fall across the west bank of the clearing. The three-headed general had recovered faster than expected. Rama could only watch as a sula tree, its trunk hacked partly through, was shoved over by a group of snorting rakshasas. It swayed, showering rainwater from its lush foliage, then gathered speed and fell. Its upper branches lay well across the pits, protruding into the clearing. Dark snouts raced out of the mist, pounding across the makeshift bridge. With a sickening feeling in his belly, Rama saw that the rakshasas would cross over the pits and be in the clearing in moments if not stopped. The only outlaws close enough to stop them were hard-pressed by a feral rakshasi creating havoc with her swinging chain-blades. Rama sprinted towards the fallen tree, his bow already raised and an arrow notched as he ran. 

SIX 

The crash of the falling sula tree across the clearing hardly registered on Sita’s consciousness. She had more pressing matters demanding her attention, such as the savage rakshasi who had downed three humans and wounded as many more. The creature had chain-blades in both hands, vicious crescent-shaped blades swinging from long, thin chains, and she swung them with deadly effect, taking chunks of flesh and spattering blood with every whirling turn. Close to a dozen outlaws surrounded her, their swords and spears constantly in motion, but the rakshasi was lithe and built like a human, gifted with exceptionally acrobatic abilities. She somersaulted and leaped with deadly grace, her eyes gleaming with bloodlust. Each time an outlaw tried to feint or thrust, he or she lost flesh, blood, and in one case, three fingers off one hand, while she continued her attack virtually untouched. Only one gash marked her back where Sita had succeeded in slashing her as she twisted in mid-air. Sita knew that if they didn’t bring her down soon, she would bring them all down eventually. 

Mashobra, an elderly outlaw with six grandchildren of fighting age, tried to trick the rakshasi into tangling her chains around the tip of his spear, but she responded by yanking the spear right out of his hands, flicking it away, then sent her chains back at the weaponless man. A razor-sharp blade edge slashed across his neck and shoulder, opening a terrible wound. He screamed and doubled forward, but in doing so, he caused one of the blades to catch in his flesh, stuck beneath the curve of his collarbone. For an instant, the rakshasi’s chains were still, as she struggled to whip them up and out of the falling mortal’s body. 

In that instant, Sita made her move. She had her straight knife ready for just such an opening and she tossed it without delay, relying on years of fighting experience and finely-honed instincts. The rakshasi screeched even before the knife left Sita’s hand and started to tumble backwards, intending to execute a somersault that would take her out of the trajectory of the thrown knife. But as she flipped backwards, the falling man, yanked by the force of the chain-blades to within arm’s reach, caught hold of her rising foot and gripped it tightly with his last remaining strength. That instant’s delay was all that was needed. The knife struck the rakshasi squarely in the throat, sending an arc of blood jetting over the fallen man’s body and cutting off the rakshasi’s high-pitched screech of outrage. She pitched over on her back, and by the time she hit the ground, a half-dozen arrows appeared in her belly and chest. 

Sita bent over to retrieve her blade, slashing the rakshasi’s throat in the same motion, before turning to Mashobra. The old man’s face was screwed up in agony. She tried to remove the chain-blade embedded beneath his collarbone, but he gurgled up a protest and died before she could do anything else. That was when she heard the sound of the crashing tree. 

She swung around, and the first thing she saw was Rama sprinting across the clearing, dodging around the many small skirmishes that had engaged all his people. He had notched an arrow to his bow, and as she began to rise to her feet, he loosed it. The action seemed a natural part of his running but Sita knew how hard it was to do it at all, let alone achieve any degree of accuracy. Yet Rama’s arrow flew the distance to the far end of the clearing, striking a rakshasa trundling clumsily over the fallen sula trunk, hitting him squarely in the chest. Even before the rakshasa stumbled and fell to his knees, Rama’s second arrow was notched and aimed at the next target. 

Sita snapped into action, shouting commands to those in the clearing as well as those up in the trees, waiting there for just this moment. Rama had known the pits would be broached and quickly, and that was why every man, woman and youth up in their tree-slings were armed with shortbows and a plentiful supply of arrows. They had been aiming at the escapees from the pits until now, shooting them the moment they had a clear shot. Sita shouted to them to focus on the enemies breaking through now, the words caught up and passed on by others until it echoed from all directions. 

Already, a dozen-odd sula trees around the clearing were shaking as rakshasas sawed away furiously at them. In moments, there would be a dozen more bridges, then a score, then who knew how many. The rest of Trisiras’s army would not be held back any longer. Their little island of turf had been invaded as they had known it would. Now, the question remained: would Rama’s ingenious planning be sufficient to forestall this enemy move as well? She pushed the thought out of her mind, and ran to Rama. 

He had dropped two more rakshasas, but a dozen were now swarming across the tree-bridge. One eager rakshasa would not wait for his turn to cross the narrow trunk, and launched himself in a lumbering leap. He leaped a goodly distance, some three yards, but the pit was all of five yards across, on Rama’s strict specifications, and the fool fell headlong into the ditch, arms and legs flailing. His frustrated howl was cut off abruptly, no doubt by the tip of a well-sharpened stake. 

Sita dropped to her knees, unshouldering her bow and notching an arrow before she yelled, ‘Rama, I have your back covered.’ 

Without glancing around, Rama dropped his bow and drew his sword, running forward to engage the rakshasas who were swarming across the trunk. Sita aimed her arrows at the ones behind, concentrating on breaking the momentum of the flow. She felt no pleasure at seeing the small spurts of blood explode from rakshasa chests and throats as her missiles struck home, only a need to do what must be done. She was conscious of Rama wheeling, his sword flashing brightly in the dull light. Rakshasas fell, roaring with pain, clutching severed limbs and pierced vitals as Rama worked his dreadful art. They fell into a familiar rhythm as they worked together to stem the onslaught at the breech, felling rakshasas more easily than the beasts had felled the sula tree. For years after this war had begun, Sita had continued to dream wistfully of Rama’s Brahman shakti, the power given by Brahmarishi Vishwamitra’s two mahamantras Bala and Atibala. But it was not to be. Even now, despite his agility, footwork and precise swordwork, Rama had sustained one, no, two cuts, one on his shoulder, the other on the side of his thigh, and with every enemy he dispatched, there was always the risk that this foe might be the one who would best him at last. 

She loosed an arrow and saw it strike the snout of a red-faced rakshasa. The creature fell, the suddenness of its fall causing two of its fellows to stumble and fall with it into the pit. Even before the thud of their fallen bodies landing reached her ears, she had another arrow on the string and was seeking her next target. Rama did not so much as glance at her to show to his appreciation—he didn’t need to. They had fought this way often enough for her to know that they were in perfect harmony. 

Even without Brahman shakti, Rama was still a formidable warrior. His years of relentless battling in this wilderness had honed his skills to such an extent that he was truly a yoddha now. A champion of champions. He moved with almost no wasted motion, seeming to almost stand still as the rakshasas rushed at him, their bulk shapes towering above his crow-black head, his sword hand slashed and spun and his feet moved in flawless rhythm, cutting down his enemies and escaping death and dismemberment at every instant. She continued to loose arrows, each one finding its mark unerringly, but her awareness was wholly on Rama, on how he stood his ground and stemmed the flow of enemies across the trunk until, the accuracy of her arrows and the lethal skill of his swordplay had downed well over a dozen rakshasas. The mistbank that had advanced to the edge of the far side of the pit bristled with tusked snouts grunting angrily at the loss of their comrades. The advance petered out as the rakshasas retreated into the gloom of the woods. After the long years of fighting, she suspected that their attitude to Rama was tinged by more than a share of superstitious fear. 

Rama sheathed his sword. ‘Sita, a hand.’ 

She saw what he required and went to him. Together they tried to lift the sula tree. Sita’s forearm was raked by a clawing branch as she bent to get a grip of the tree trunk. The rakshasas had chosen wisely, the sula was the only tree with a trunk less than a foot thick, yet strong enough to bear rakshasa weight. But that still didn’t make the whole tree easy for her and Rama to lift. As she struggled, Sita kept watching the forest across the pit. The mistbank was rolling out of the woods now, one of those dense hazes that engulfed the whole forest and brought the temperature down sharply. The far side of the sula trunk was buried in a thick, soupy haze. Then she saw the unmistakable gleam of several rakshasa eyes, too many too close together, and she knew that Trisiras was out there, watching them. 

‘Rama,’ she said urgently, keenly aware that were the enemy to choose this moment to attack, they would be dangerously vulnerable. 

‘Lift!’ 

Something brushed past her abruptly, and she almost lost her grip on the trunk, starting to reach for her sword. Then she saw the familiar outline of Lakshman’s profile as he bent to grasp the trunk. He was accompanied by a half-dozen others. Lifting together, they raised up the sula, dragged it sideways, and heaved it into the pit. It fell with a crashing of branches and shirring of leaves, splashing mud and rakshasa blood across Sita’s face. She wiped it away with the back of her hand carelessly. 

A lull had fallen over the clearing, one of those moments of stillness that fell during all battles. The various skirmishes had subsided, most of the escapees from the pits put down. She saw an outlaw drive his spear into a moaning rakshasi that lay on her belly, struggling to rise. The rakshasi flopped down, shuddering. 

Several sula trees on the periphery of the clearing creaked and teetered but did not fall yet, as if the rakshasa horde had taken a collective pause to reconsider their options. Sita tried to make out how many of her people were alive and well. She noted with a prickle of sadness that several familiar faces were missing, but there was no time to think about that. Not now, not yet. The lull continued, growing into an unnatural stillness as the mist crept into the clearing. 

Sita and Rama looked at each other. 

His eyes acknowledged her anxiety. 

He turned and spoke quickly and quietly to Lakshman and Bearface and the others nearby. They nodded and moved away, passing on instructions to their fellows in quiet voices that carried easily across the clearing although the words were indistinguishable due to the dense, smoky mist coiling and undulating around her waist. This was no passing fugue seeping down from the redmist ranges to the west. It was a foe in itself, a wraith army, invading and conquering all, both rakshasas and mortals alike. She did not know what it would spell for their chances now. How it would change the odds. She prayed that Rama did. 

His hand touched her shoulder gently, conveying affection and strength in that tiny action as only Rama could. 

‘We regroup on the mound,’ he said. 

She nodded, seeing the sense in that. As they moved back to the centre of the clearing, she was surprised to see figures swinging out of the mist and dropping lithely onto the ground. She recognised the unusually fair skin and blond hair of the Gandhari brothers, glimpsed the hefty outlines of the Solankis, and other figures appeared from out of the rolling cloud that now engulfed the entire clearing. 

‘Rama, the outer line of defence?’ she asked, genuinely puzzled. Those appearing out of the mist were all tree-slingers. ‘Why are they leaving their posts?’ 

‘On my orders,’ he said. ‘They are no longer safe outside the clearing. Trisiras has a new strategy planned. That is why he waits now, for the mist to blanket his next move.’ He added as they sprinted together. ‘In any case, their arrows are useless in this mist.’ 

She knew he was right. But the move touched off her anxieties once more. The plan had been that those in the tree-slings would release the hammers, then fire away at the rakshasas as they struggled to breach the pit. They were ensconced safely, high up in trees too thick to be easily felled and the boar-clan rakshasas were too heavy-set to climb trees. 

But it still chilled her to the bone. Because it meant that yet again, their elaborately laid plans would come to naught. She wished she had Rama’s capacity to constantly regroup his wits and adapt to each new challenge that circumstances threw at them with vicious regularity; it was that trait, among others, that had kept them alive this far. She had no choice but to continue trusting that quality.