RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (71 page)

He marveled at the skill and training that had gone into perfecting such a system. 

Then, after he had mulled over that for a moment, he wondered how many enemy soldiers they were actually hitting. 

SIX

Luv and Kush were a single being and that being’s entire existence was dedicated to a single task: Destruction. They had found a position on the top of the rock face above the box canyon, overlooking the valley yet still high enough to cover most of the low-lying basin. It had taken them time to climb up here carrying their heavy burden for they were carrying their entire store of arrows. Ever since they had learned to loose and Maatr had taught them the importance of replacing what they used, they had taken to crafting at least a certain number of arrows each day. They used many during their practice play each day, developing their own methods for various angles of attack, for shooting from low positions upwards and from high to low, through leaves and foliage, across water, into water, against the wind, downwind…every imaginable situation in which it was possible to fire arrows, they experimented with, mastered and then perfected. Whenever possible, they reused their arrows. But many were damaged in use or not retrievable. That was when they thought of the possibility of someday requiring a store of arrows for defending the ashram. They would require perfectly made and stored arrows, not reused ones chipped or bent or damaged in any way. And when that day came, it would be too late to start making and storing. 

So they had taken to making a certain number every day for their practice…and setting a fixed number aside. They made the best arrows they were capable of making, honing the fletching and shaft and head after much experimentation and use in various situations. Finally, they had begun saving their store carefully in bales of straw to avoid warping from moisture and then stored the bales themselves in the box canyon. They had retrieved the bundles earlier and then carried them up here to this position chosen months earlier in case of just such a contingency. At the time they had never seriously thought that they would literally be fending off an army. But just in case, they thought it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared. Besides, arrows could be sold at the city markets or to the occasional grama-train—the ones they didn’t waylay—for a small profit. If nothing else, they had intended to sell their store and buy Maatr something from the market or a trader. A new veena perhaps to replace the old molding one she played on. Luckily for them, Maatr’s naming day was a good few months away and their store was intact. 

Now, they depleted that store at a prodigious rate. They were loosing faster than they had ever loosed before, and for longer, and across greater distances and with unerring accuracy. For one thing, they had never actually aimed to kill before. They loved the creatures of the forest and could never dream of killing them for sport—or for food, which was, in a sense, worse. They had always practiced on inanimate objects, resorting to clever tricks to increase the challenge when practicing. One of them would spin a stone in the air, for instance, and the other aim at it. Or a piece of driftwood rushing down white waters served as a moving target. Or objects hung from trees a hundred yards distant. Over time, the stones flung in the air had become smaller, the driftwood reduced to a mere chip, the objects hung from trees merely dots and painted leaves. The use of natural challenges had only sharpened their skills over time. 

But killing actual living beings was a different experience. They had not anticipated the shock they felt when their first arrows punched into the throats of the first two men. This had happened immediately after the clash with Bejoo’s men, when the King’s Guard frontline had retreated to regroup and prepare for their next attack. Luv and Kush had seen their opportunity and fired their first two shots, aiming at two men standing in a clearing with drawn, bloody swords, hacking at a badly wounded but still alive veteran. The veteran wasn’t making any sound or crying for mercy and that was probably what irked the two Guardsmen. So they had taken to chopping and poking at the fallen man in a bid to evoke some response. Luv had pointed out the men using the terse short form they had developed over the years when practicing together. 

“South-south-west, one and one,” he said, naming the direction in which the targets lay when viewed from their position and the individual targets themselves. 

“I see them,” Kush replied, his bow already turned and aimed, string taut and ready to fire. “You first?”

“Loose,” Luv said and released his arrow. As he bent his hand back to pluck another arrow from the rig over his shoulder, Kush released his arrow as well. By the time Luv’s second arrow was notched and strung and ready to loose, Kush’s hand was reaching for his second arrow. 

That first time, they had paused and looked at the results of their shots. 

Both the Guardsmen clutched their throats, blood spurting brazenly between their fingers, and collapsed on the ground, the first dying instantly, the second shuddering once then laying still. 

The wounded veteran sat up slowly, staring at the corpses with arrows standing from their ravaged throats and looked around in grim amazement. He seemed almost disappointed to be alive as he staggered to his feet and hobbled towards Luv and Kush’s side of the valley. The twins lowered their bows and followed him until they saw three or four of his comrades emerge from their hiding places to assist him. Then, moving as one, they raised their bows again to seek new targets. 

Both of them paused yet again, lowered their bows completely, letting the drawstrings go limp, and looked at each other. 

Both of them had tears in their eyes. 

“I killed a man,” each of them said at exactly the same time. 

“But I had to,” each one added. 

They cried for a moment, the tears running freely down their faces. Their throats hitched once then they wiped their faces clear with the length of cloth they kept to keep their hands clean and sweat-free during their practice sessions. They knew now that this was no more a practice session. This was the real thing. It was war. They thought for a moment silently, their faces hardening, the tears replaced by a new emotion. 

“They attacked the ashram and slaughtered everyone in sight,” Kush said. 

“They would have killed every last person if we didn’t arrive with the bear-killers to stop them,” Luv said. 

“They were even going to kill the cows and calves.”

“They killed Sarama and most of her pack.”

“They wounded Maatr badly, almost killed her.”

“They mean to kill us all now. And nobody else is going to save us or stop them.”

“There are thousands of them.”

“Hundreds of thousands.”

“Crores and arbo even.”

“There are hardly any of us.”

“We have the right to defend our home, our loved ones, and ourselves by any means necessary.”

“It is the law of survival,” Luv said. 

“It is the duty of a kshatriya to take arms when needed,” Kush said. 

“It is our dharma,” they said together.  

Then they raised their bows as one. 

Tracked and found targets. This was easy because the valley was crawling with hundreds of easy-to-spot targets. While the soldiers might be partially covered by the trees and foliage when seen at ground level, from this vantage point they were as easily visible as carved bone shapes on a chaupat dice board. 

At first they called out targets to one another:

“North by north east.”

“Due west.”

“West by south west.”

“South by south east.”

After a while, they stopped calling out targets. It seemed pointless. By then, they were in the grip of battle fever. Their hands, their shoulders, their back muscles, their eyes, their necks, all moved in concert as an unified whole. Like a single organism dedicated to only one function, they aimed and loosed, aimed and loosed, aimed and loosed, over and over again. 

They kept count silently, only because they had been taught that as well by Maatr as well as by Nakhudi. It was part of the lesson on war which began:
Know Thy Enemy
. Knowing the enemy included knowing his strength in numbers and by extension, how many of that number your forces had succeeded in killing. 

***

Aarohan stared down at the Valley, speechless with rage. The runner who had just come up the hill to bring him word stood several yards away, out of sword reach. The man was familiar with Aarohan’s temper. 

“How many did you say?” he asked again. 

The man glanced around nervously, then said, “Over four score dead or dying in the first clash. And now, another three score downed by arrows.” The man paused then cleared his throat. “And as Sergeant Manasvir said to tell you, the arrows are taking lives at the rate of one every few seconds.” 

“Yes, I heard you the first time,” Aarohan said, then seethed silently for a moment. He saw a flurry of movement in a cluster of trees then had an unmistakable glimpse of a man collapsing. The man’s limbs fluttered then ceased movement. That was deadly accurate shooting. Whoever was loosing this barrage of arrows, they had the aim of an eagle-hawk swooping down on prey. Aarohan had once worked for a great lord of the desert who bred eagle-hawks. The desert lord had trained the birds to fly over his city of tents when he camped in an oasis for a few weeks at a time. The birds would fly so high overhead, one had to constantly keep looking up at the sun to spot them, and even then they circumscribed such enormous arcs that one could never locate the camp just by looking up at the birds. But if any stranger made the mistake of coming to close to the desert lord’s camp, and if the stranger and his entourage met certain requirements—such as a large number of men bearing metal weapons—the birds would swoop down on them and attack. The clincher was in how they attacked: the birds were trained to swoop down and pluck out only the left eye of each man then fly back to their master and present him with the ripped-out eyeballs. Aarohan had witnessed the birds attacking a caravan in which he was traveling once and it had seemed as if a gust of wind blew out of a clear sky, tore out a man’s eye and carried it away. The bird itself was barely a blur of feathers and talons and beak. 

Now, for the first time since that day he saw another creature at work with the same deadly efficiency. An archer who possessed the ultimate level of perfection: the ability to spot a target, judge distance, bow-pull, pressure, wind, and then loose a killing shot…all within the space of half a heartbeat. It was impossible. No archer he had ever heard of possessed such speed and accuracy. It must be a platoon of archers. A company of archers, perhaps even a whole regiment, taking turns to loose, while spotters called out targets to them. But he knew that too was impossible: No group of archers could be loosing with such perfect repetition, over and over again. No, this must be a small band of truly gifted bowmen. A handful even. Perhaps even…

“Two young boys!” he said, and his mouth stayed open with awe and amazement. He felt a rush of excitement such as he had not felt in years. The sons of Sita! They had to be the archers responsible for this killing wave. He had seen them briefly in action and they had certainly been quick enough. He had not thought them capable of such a concerted attack—nor of taking so many lives with such impunity. But apparently they were and could. Yes. It had to be them. 

“Backtrack,” he told one of his aides curtly. The man nodded and rode off downhill to do as he bade. 

“Pull back and use tree cover. Lay low until I give further orders,” he barked to another aide. This man too rode downhill at once. His aides were the men who had stayed the longest with him in service. And nobody stayed in service with him for long if they were prone to arguing or debating his orders. 

Aarohan leaned over the rock on which he had been standing, peering down at the far end of the valley. It was too far to see clearly but he thought he could faintly glimpse the thin lines of the arrows as they streaked down towards their targets. He could certainly see patches of foliage where the arrows cut through leaves and twigs to reach their mark. He estimated the shooting range to be at least four hundred yards, perhaps even five hundred.
For arrows to cover that distance and still punch through armor and bone…no,
he corrected himself…
not armor and bone, merely flesh and cartilage. That’s why they’re aiming only at throats. So long as it arrives with enough force to punch through the larynx and sever the main blood vessels, it would be fatal everytime.
He admired the strategy and the execution both.
They must be firing from a high position, someplace from where they can see the whole valley and glimpse my men moving through the forest. And they must be standing and aiming downwards, with heavier-weight arrowheads, to give their arrows sufficient momentum and accuracy to cover such a long distance.
But no amount of calculation and positioning was worth a pie if the archer’s hand and eye were not perfect enough. To shoot ten or twenty times in a row with such accuracy was impressive. To do so three score times and more was unheard of. And that had been the tally several moments ago when the runner was despatched up here to bring me word. In this much time, their tally must be twice as much! 

Even if they missed occasionally, which was inevitable, it still meant that they were reaping a terrible toll. The olduns had put up stiffer resistance than he would have expected—not that he had been expecting them at all. Their very presence in this fray was a surprise. But the fact that they could hold their own against his Thousand was even more surprising. Still, more than half of them had been killed or severely wounded in that first clash. The second wave of attack would have finished them off. They would have been rolled up and packed away without further ado and his men could have taken the canyon thereafter.