RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (17 page)

Instead of the usual crowd of goatherds, villagers with carts piled high with produce, merchants in richly-tapestried covered dolis, shyly veiled women or boisterous young men come to seek gainful employment or to make their fortune in the fabled capitol, that daily unending variety of human life that flowed like the Sarayu itself through the greatest Arya city-state, there was a sight he had never imagined he would behold even in his wildest dreams.

Not here. Not at the gates of Ayodhya.

Yet there it was. Plain as life. Real as the smooth sun-warmed stone parapet on which he placed his hand, gazing in disbelief.

An army stood outside Ayodhya, ready to invade.

SEVEN

Of all those on the avenue, Valmiki was the only one prepared for KalaNemi’s audacious move. The only one who had expected something along these lines to occur. The only one who had known before the sun rose this morning that Ayodhya would be facing a crisis of great magnitude this very day, and that before the day was ended there might not be an Ayodhya left to speak of; not the Ayodhya of yore at least. He had known these things for some time now and had prepared for them. Had the unnecessary fracas at the gate not delayed him, he would have explained what was happening and why to Rama himself, and perhaps given the city a little time to better prepare itself. But now there was no time to dwell on what might-have-been could-have-been should-have-been. There was only the here and now. And in the here and now, Kala-Nemi had disintegrated his body into crores of tiny insectile pustules or spores that were speeding across the sky to penetrate deep into the recesses of Ayodhya’s streets and houses to infect as many Ayodhyans as possible. Under natural circumstances, had an infection this virulent struck even a fraction of the populace, it would spread like wildfire, decimating the citizenry; in this case, so effective was the virus’s pollination method that it would strike down easily half the population in the first few hours, and within the day, the majority of Ayodhya’s innocent denizens would lie dead, severely ill or dying.

And that, of course, was only the first step in Ravana’s vengeance.

He had to move quickly.

“Maruti!” he cried, sprinting forward up the jagged blocks of stone and rubble that had been uprooted when the rakshasa emerged from the ground. The vanar Hanuman – also known as Maruti for his father, the Lord of Wind – was gazing with intense hatred and frustration at the seething, greenish-black mass that boiled and festered in the clear summer sky, so large now that it blocked the sun itself momentarily. “Hanuman! Raise me up!”

Now Hanuman looked down, just as Valmiki reached the top of the highest boulder that lay teetering atop the pile of rubble and launched himself without care for personal safety. The vanar blinked, seeing the little human leaping up towards him and, to the credit of his swift vanar reflexes, allowed his body to respond even as his mind played catch-up. He reached out and caught Valmiki in a furry fist just before he could fall back to ground.

“What—”
he began.

Valmiki cut him off brusquely.

“Raise me up! As high as you can!”

Hanuman stared at him for a fraction of a second. Something in Valmiki’s tone, the urgency perhaps, or maybe even the vanar’s reluctant admiration for the manner in which he had confronted the quads of PFs bare-handed earlier – Valmiki had seen the vanar’s impassive features react as he watched from behind the gate – motivated Hanuman. He nodded and swiftly raised the paw in which he held Valmiki.

Valmiki felt the breath rush out of him as he was flung up a hundred yards high. Forcing his senses to reorient swiftly, he opened his eyes. From here, Ayodhya lay like a builder’s model laid out for inspection. Far across, to the South East, he could glimpse the outer gates and before them, the other crisis that faced the city—but there was no time to dwell on that, no time for distractions. Every second was of essence.

He looked up and saw the cloud of black particles dispersing like tentacles of a deep-oceanic monster, wavering across the length and breadth of the city. Already, the tips of those tendrils were descending at great speed, almost at the rooftops now. Soon they would pour in through windows, chimneys, into doorways, and thence into mouths, ears, eyes, nostrils…every human orifice possible. Infecting. Poisoning. Killing.

“Higher!” he shouted, his voice whipped away by the strong wind that blew at these heights. The vanar heard him nevertheless and raised his hand to the limit of his reach. Valmiki looked up and saw the belly of the black cloud of seething, roiling particles still several dozen yards above him. “Still higher! I need to be above the poison cloud!” he yelled.

There was a brief instant when his breath left his body and the sky itself seemed to shove him down brutally hard as if it intended to hammer him down into the earth like a nail hit by a hammer. Then the pressure left his head and shoulders and he blinked to see himself flying – flying!

– straight up into the air. He glanced down and saw that Hanuman had leaped up, still holding him in his paw out ahead, like a mashaal.

They rose up, up, and now they were above the seething black mass. He was looking down upon it now, and from up here it reminded him of a swarm of flesh beetles swarming over the carcass of a dead buffalo he had seen in the Tamasa river near his ashram one day.

“Release me,” he roared as loudly as his lungs permitted, and emphasized his point by digging his staff into Hanuman’s wrist. The vanar’s eyes, big as cartwheels, gazed up at him with puzzled curiosity, but obeyed at once. The furry paw grasping his torso released its hold on him and suddenly he was free-falling back to Earth, into the embrace of Prithvi Maa.

Slowly, maa, he willed, do not be in too great a hurry to hug me, I only have time enough to do this once. Just once.

To his astonishment, he felt his descent slowed to a fraction of what ought to have been its natural velocity. He distinctly felt the wind rushing and raging at his extremities slow to a gentle cushioning sigh, as if Hanuman’s own father was joining with Prithvi Maa to aid him in his attempt.

He had no time to ponder the mystical underpinning of this miracle – if indeed it was a miracle and not just an affectation of his own heightened senses. Already, he had begun chanting the Sanskrit mahamantras that he had composed for this precise purpose.

Valmiki fell to Earth, towards the seething mass of black particles,
into
the mass itself, and was lost inside it.

Bharat gripped the stone ledge hard.

Beside him, Shatrugan swore.

“How dare they!” Shatrugan said, his right fist clenching and unclenching. “This is open betrayal and treason!”

Bharat clapped a hand on his brother’s muscled back, hard enough to penetrate Shatrugan’s fighting instincts. “Be calm. This may not be what it seems. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

He turned to Drishti Kumar. “Senapati, have you received any word from them yet? Any indication of their intentions?”

Drishti Kumar looked up at Bharat. He was a tall man, his head easily visible above the ranks of his soldiers, but even so, Bharat topped him by two or three inches. He was also the fairest of his brothers; Rama was the shortest, and the darkest-skinned. The senapati’s face wore an expression of such haunted misery that it told Bharat everything he needed to know even before the general spoke.

“They have demanded that the gates be opened to them…” he paused. Bharat saw the Adam’s apple bob in the man’s throat as he swallowed, “…And that we surrender the city to their command.”

“Surrender?”
Shatrugan’s exclamation was almost a roar of outrage. “Who do they think they are?”

Bharat raised a hand, cautioning Shatrugan. “Senapati, from whom did the demand come – formally, I mean. In whose name was it made? And to whom was it addressed?”

This time Drishti Kumar’s eyes flicked sideways, toward the massed ranks of armoured soldiers beyond the outermost wall. He was not a nervous man, nor a hesitant one. Yet he was both nervous and hesitant now. Bharat did not blame him. It was an occasion that warranted such a response.

“Yuvraj Bharat, the demand was delivered only moments ago by three rajdoots representing the kingdoms of Panchala, Kuru and…” he broke off, looking away.

“Panchala? Kuru? Are they insane? They are our closest allies!” Shatrugan’s breath was hot on Bharat’s neck. Bharat held up his hand again, almost in his brother’s face, demanding silence. Shatrugan obeyed; he may be hot-headed and ever-eager for a fight, but he was also obedient to a fault.

“And?” Bharat prompted Drishti Kumar.

The senapati raised his eyes to meet Bharat’s own. “Kekaya.”

Shatrugan released a string of expletives. This time, Bharat didn’t stop him. He stared at the commander of the city’s outer defence network, feeling as if he had been punched in the gut with the blunt end of a spear.

“Kekaya?” he repeated. “Are you sure?”

The senapati nodded; his eyes said what his lips dared not. He was sorry to have to even repeat such a missive.

Bharat turned and looked out again towards the outer wall, trying to see more clearly. It was not very far and the day was clear and unclouded. He thought he could make out the colours of Kekaya on a banner held ramrod straight by a frontrider at the head of a long column. Yes, that was Kekaya’s emblem, no question about it. Who was the big-built warrior sitting a massive Kambhoja stallion right next to the emblem-bearer? Was it…no, surely it could not be? But his eyes were sharp and those rough-hewn features and powerful upper body bulk were unmistakable, even at this distance. He groaned and buried his face in his hands as he recognized the man they belonged to. As if echoing his misery, Shatrugan swore yet again and put a hand on his back, speaking with a voice that mirrored Bharat’s own sense of dismay and disbelief. “That is your uncle, your mother’s brother, Bharat. Your own blood-relatives are out there too, ready to do war against you.”

And it was true.

For the army arrayed in neat columns and rows on the raj-marg, filling the length of the road down the Sarayu Valley as far as the eye could see, and no doubt extending back a good mile or two, was no asura conglomeration or rakshasa horde. Worse. Much worse than that. It was an army of their own best allies, their closest and most loyal neighbouring kingdoms, supporters and trade-sharers over centuries. There was not a kshatriya out there in those massed ranks, nor one within these city walls, who did not share either kinship or alliance by marriage or trade with someone from one of the other’s kingdoms. They were part of the great seven-nation Arya alliance that had withstood asura invasions, wars with distant lands and a hundred other crises. These were their own compatriots and friends!

And now they were here at the walls of Ayodhya, as enemies in arms.

What did it mean? How had this happened? What bizarre nightmare had overcome the world this otherwise normal, bright and sunny summer day?

Shatrugan’s voice was quiet at his side. His brother’s anger was as quick to fire as it was to quench. Or perhaps it was the shock of seeing his own kith and kin that had sobered him. “You should go out there and speak with them,” he said. “This has to be some kind of misunderstanding.”

I doubt it,
Bharat thought miserably.
Misunderstandings seldom outfit an entire army in siege gear and come marching in such numbers to one’s gates demanding entry and your immediate surrender.

He was about to reply to Shatrugan when a chorus of shouts broke out from along the wall to either side. As he was still gazing outwards at the soldiers at the outer gates, he saw even their ranks tilt their helmeted heads to glance upwards. He saw the shadow of a dark and ominous cloud spread its wings across the moat below and the one beyond.

Then he looked up and saw the horror that was unfolding in the sky.

Valmiki felt as if he had leaped from the top of a cliff and landed in a thorn thicket. A thousand tiny pinpricks attacked every available inch of his body. He attempted futilely to use one hand to cover his eyes and nostrils, but even so, the tiny spores began to push their way inside, seeking to invade his body and infect him with their foul venom. So powerful was their toxic effect that he knew he would not survive if sufficient numbers entered his biological system. Already he could feel the poison pinpricks burning in his veins as his blood was infected at a level capable of downing an elephant. His only chance lay in completing the mahamantra he was reciting and in praying that the spiritual weapon he had developed through careful tapasya was potent enough to do its work. He almost screamed in agony as several of the spores slipped past his hand and between his fingers to enter his eyes, penetrating through the outer membrane of the eyes to dissolve and mingle with his optic fluids, like tiny pinpricks of flame igniting
inside
his eyes…. It was torture, yet he forced himself to maintain the unbroken chain of recitation; it was crucial that the mahamantra be recited without pause or error.

All this while, he continued falling, and even though his descent was definitely slowed by some supernatural benefactor – or benefactors – it was only a matter of time before he would fall to the ground. The cloud of particles was descending as well, and from the keening sound they made as they flowed in their tentacles across the sky, and the brief glimpses he caught through his fingers, he could judge their movement downwards to the city. The tips of the lowermost tentacles were already at roof level and at that very moment began to snake through cracks in eaves, openings in walls, any way they could find to get into people’s domiciles. The rest he did not need to see to know: Once at street-level, the individual spores whirled around in search of human hosts, and as they found them, they slipped into their bodies through any convenient orifice or the skin itself, and began to work their deadly poison. In a few more moments, the entire cloudswarm would be amongst the populace, infecting thousands, who would then go on to infect tens of thousands more. And once that happened, no mahamantra, however potent, could possibly undo its demoniac effects. Ayodhyans would die like ants on a bonfire.