RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (12 page)

“Request denied,” Dheeraj Kumar’s voice announced summarily. And then followed with a barked command to his soldiers: “Apprehend and disarm!”

Valmiki sighed openly. He had expected this, but had hoped for better. He briefly weighed the option of peaceably surrendering, permitting himself to be stripped, tied, perhaps thrown into a dungeon awaiting further questioning. He rejected it at once; it would consume precious time. And time was one thing Ayodhya was woefully short of right now.

He opened his palm. The stout staff, loyal companion for hundreds of yojanas, fell to the hard-baked raj-marg with a dull thud. It drew a reaction from the approaching quads, a shiver of anticipation followed immediately by puzzled glances. They had been expecting him to use that very staff as a weapon, to wield it and whirl it wildly in a desperate attempt to keep the surrounding armed force at bay. Not to let it drop unused to the ground. That he had done so made them pause because it could mean only one of two things: Either he was possessed of more formidable weaponry than a mere staff, or he was surrendering himself without a fight.

He decided to clarify the situation.

“For the last time,” he said quietly, with the deathly excess of calm that always preceded his famous bursts of temper. “Will you let me pass as a friend or will you oppose me?”

This time, the Senapati did not even waste breath on a verbal response. He simply ignored the challenge and let his soldiers advance.

Valmiki shook his head once, regretfully.

And then he closed his palm into a fist.

Hanuman spoke quietly to Saprem Senapati Dheeraj Kumar after the visitor’s first words identifying himself and his mission. “My Lord has been made aware of this visitor. He bade me bring him into his presence.” Saprem Senapati Dheeraj Kumar responded curtly, “It shall be so.”

And immediately barked out a response to the visitor demanding that he permit himself to be searched, which he ought to have no objection to if he was indeed a friend of their lord. Hanuman knew the old PF took his job of overseeing security within Ayodhya city limits to be more than a given task; it was his dharma. The past fourteen years had seen Ayodhya tremble on the brink of civil strife more than once, not to mention the innumerable rumours of imminent invasions, attacks, incursions and even threats from formerly friendly neighbouring nations. A lot had changed since the demise of Maharaja Dasaratha and the great upheaval of the Suryavansha Ikshwaku Raghuvansha dynasty in the wake of Rama’s departure into exile. The Kosala capitol had always been prosperous and one thing that had not dissipated during this decade and almost-a-half had been its growth of commerce and accumulation of wealth through various means. Ayodhya, always a juicy plum of a picking, had grown juicier and riper in the absence of a strong overlord and due to an apparent family rift. During those difficult years, it had been men such as Dheeraj Kumar, loyalists to the bone, who had maintained the status quo and kept the heart of the nation safe and sound. The Saprem Senapati’s demand that the Maharishi permit himself to be searched was not intended as an insult, it was merely a necessary precaution. His stentorian tone was merely that of a supreme commander accustomed to being obeyed without question.

But the visitor had taken it in exactly the ill spirit that Hanuman had anticipated. His terse but still polite demand that he be permitted to see Rama at once lest the delay prove costly to Ayodhya sounded hollow to the vanar’s ears. Like the very thing a guilty intruder might say to avoid being searched. He watched approvingly as the Saprem Senapati allowed his quads to approach with extreme caution, and when the errant sage dropped his staff, he assumed that the man was finally surrendering to good sense.

He was wrong.

THREE

Bharat and Shatrugan came up Raghuvansha Avenue at a sweaty gallop. Bharat’s re-socketed shoulder joint ached with the dull throbbing pain that he remembered well from the previous two occasions on which he had dislocated the same arm. The effort with which he ignored the pain was just as familiar and easily applied. He slowed his horse as he took in the sight ahead. The avenue was curiously deserted, as was the one they had come by, Harshavardhana. The junction of both arterial raj-margs was bereft even of the vaisya merchants, munshis-for-hire and various court recorders who normally plied a brisk business in official releases, deeds of property ownership and other legal items that Bharat had never felt in the least interested to know more about; that was beyond odd, it was alarming. It usually took nothing short of a major riot to clear the avenue of those particular nuisances, slick oily-haired characters with their disarmingly polite manner and talent for counting – particularly for counting the usurer commissions and exploitative profits they all but stole from the poor, illiterate citizenry who could not negotiate the murky byways of official matters independently. Shatrugan and he reined in their horses as they rounded the final corner and came in sight of the palace gates themselves.

They sized up the situation at first glance. It was fairly obvious.

A man – apparently a rishi from some forest hermitage – stood weaponless and bare-handed a short distance from the palace gates. At least four quads of PFs were converging on him with martial stances that left their intentions in no doubt. Several more fully armed and alert PFs stood ready in the human wall formation devised by Saprem Senapati Dheeraj Kumar, who himself stood before the towering gates, beard bristling in that upturned-face expression that his men secretly referred to as the general’s ‘this-means-war’ look. Bharat had just enough time to note the furry outline of Hanuman beside the general, and then time and the universe stuttered and came to a grinding halt and all known natural laws of the world as he knew it ceased to exist.

“Looks like—” Shatrugan began, and suddenly broke off to exclaim, “Sacred Aditi, Mother of gods!”

The sixteen prime examples of Ayodhya’s final line of defence moved as one man, polished speartips glinting in the morning sunshine as the weapons moved together to fence in the intruder like the jagged rows of teeth of some wild beast closing its mandibles upon a choice item of nourishment. The converging circle of speartips left mere inches of room around the bare torso of the half-naked hermit. If he were to move suddenly, he would find his flesh ripped open in a half-dozen places; move with force and speed, he would be impaled to death. The precision of the four quads and the firm line of the inward pointing spears were impeccable. Only a rank idiot would attempt to resist that deadly circle of spearpoints.

Yet the sadhu moved – nay, he didn’t just move. He
whirled!

And whirling, he spun like a human top, perfectly in place.

At the same instant, his bare feet struck the dirt floor of the avenue with powerful, precise force, pushing his body upwards. Later, Bharat thought he might have actually heard the thud of the sadhu’s feet striking the ground, so intense was the force of that double-kick.

And like a dust-dervish, he rose, still spinning madly –
above the circle of lethal spearpoints!

It was a move so audacious, so impossible, Bharat’s breath caught in his chest. Shatrugan’s involuntary exclamation mirrored his own silent hitch of awe. What immense bodily control, muscular strength, mindand-body coordination it must take to achieve such a move! It was swift yet graceful, as powerful and sudden as a dancer’s step, and no less beautiful to watch.

Shatrugan and he tightened their grip on their reins without being aware of their doing so. Both horses turned their heads to snort in protest.

The brothers felt their hearts leap in their chests. For all their battle experience – and there had not been a year in the past fourteen when relentless blood-battles had not dominated their waking lives – they had never seen this particular move executed. That it was executed by a man who appeared to be nothing more than a half-starved sadhu or rishi only added to their shock and awe.

The rishi rose, spinning, as perfectly straight as a pillar – a few scant inches to any side would mean terrible wounds, dismemberment or death

– and reached the apogee of his launch some five feet above the ground. He seemed to hover in mid-air for a brief fraction like a hummingbird working at its nest, then his thin yet tautly muscled legs, gleaming with a dusty film of sweat clearly earned from days of hard walking, shot out like the yawning pincers of a stone crab Bharat had once seen at the moment it closed upon its prey.

At that instant, had the sixteen soldiers simply jerked their weapons upwards or even slashed randomly, they would surely have ended the impossible dance of the rishi. But so swiftly had the man moved, so daring had been his gambit and so unpredictable his action, that all sixteen of them were still staring dully at the space the intruder had occupied only moments earlier. A space that was now devoid of his presence, which meant that they were all staring at one another’s startled faces like a circle of maidens come together on a festival only to discover that they were all clad in exactly the same festive garbs. The expression on their weathered young faces was a sight to behold!

Shooting out, the two thin long legs spread like a mallakhamb artist’s to stretch beyond the deadly speartips above the wooden shafts of the spears. For a moment seeming to hang suspended at that outstretched angle, the rishi resembled a bird of prey at the instant in which it pounced upon its landlocked prey.

Then, in a follow-through move even more audacious than the earlier actions, Valmiki landed
upon the shafts of the spears
.

The tight-armed firmness with which the PFs had held out the spears to enclose him in the circle of lethal points now served to support the rishi’s not-very-considerable weight. As Bharat watched with growing incredulity, the hafts of the spears dipped downwards even as the soldiers holding them reacted with their own shocked expressions, but in another fraction, the rishi had used the brief contact to propel himself upwards again.

Upwards and outwards.

In a somersault that flowed into a vaulting movement, the sage’s athletic form flew over the heads of the men who only moments earlier had seemed certain of entrapping him or ending his life, to land in a half-crouch on Raghuvansha Avenue with a dust-raising thud.

Startled though he too must have been by the suddenness and dexterity of the rishi’s actions, Saprem Senapati Dheeraj Kumar had already recovered sufficiently to bark fresh orders at his men. The four quads reacted with a swiftness born of endless drilling and training. They swung their spears overhead as their bodies turned to face outwards – swinging sideways at such close quarters would have caused casualties to each other – and the circle of spears rippled outwards in an impressive display of martial coordination. The deadly points that had hemmed in the intruder only moments ago now pointed outwards and were carried forward to create a rapidly expanding ring as the soldiers ran forward and away from the centre of an imaginary circle. It was a brilliantly devised counter-manoeuvre superbly executed. At the same time the other quads standing by moved in with equally ferocious speed. The outward-expanding and inward-enclosing rows of spearpoints moved towards one another. Valmiki ought to have been caught and impaled between the two lines in that moment.

But Valmiki was no longer in the space between the rows.

The instant he had landed in a half-crouch, he had taken one, two, then a third long step, like a stork preparing for flight, and launched himself once more with the same powerful springing leap like a snake uncoiling to strike, this time to fly upwards and forward
above the helmeted heads of the inward-approaching quads
. Again, being mortal and subject to the call of gravity, he was forced to touch down – this time doing so upon the helmets of the approaching soldiers! Touching down delicately as a cat in flight, he launched himself yet again, landed on the next row of helmets, then fell forward and somersaulted. Clutching his own ankles, head bowed to touch his own knees, he whirled twice — no, thrice, Bharat noted, for the movement was so quick as to blend seamlessly — in mid-air for another moment, before landing once more with a solid thud on the avenue. Two puffs of dust rose from beneath his feet. Bharat saw the rishi’s piercing eyes seek him out and pin him and Shatrugan down momentarily. Before the dust could settle around his feet, he had spun around to face the gates once more and only the rippling muscles of his powerful lean back and sinewy thighs were visible.

This is the man I want teaching my children the arts of war,
Bharat thought silently, elated.

“Stop now!” the sage cried out, even as the PFs milled about in confusion, most still unable to see where the enemy had vanished – one of the hazards of closely bunched formations. “I do not wish to spill Ayodhyan blood!”

The only answer from the gates was a bellowed curse. Dheeraj Kumar was not a man to relent to warnings and threats. Nor was he a man to underestimate an enemy once outmanoeuvred. This time, he took no chances. He raised one powerful hirsute arm high above his own head, then dropped it in a practised gesture.

Bharat knew what the gesture meant. Shatrughan and he had stopped far enough away from the gates for that very reason, maintaining a safe distance as protocol demanded. Princes were not excepted from the rigorous routine of tri-weekly defensive drills.

The distance was essential for their own safety. The archers of Ayodhya were deadly accurate but once loosed, arrows could not differentiate between friendly and unfriendly flesh.