Scion of Ikshvaku (4 page)

Dashrath was bristling with fury even as the day drew to a close. ‘I will personally chop up his body and throw it to the dogs!’ he shouted.

Kaikeyi sat impassively as her seething husband paced up and down the royal tent of the Ayodhya camp. She always accompanied him on his military campaigns.

‘How dare he speak to me like that?’

Kaikeyi scrutinised Dashrath languidly. He was tall, dark and handsome, the quintessential Kshatriya. A well-manicured moustache only added to his attractiveness. Though muscular and strong, age had begun to take its toll on his well-built physique. Stray streaks of white in his hair were accompanied by a faint hint of a sag in the muscles. Even the Somras, the mysterious anti-ageing drink reserved for the royals by their sages, had not been able to adequately counter a lifetime of ceaseless warring and hard drinking.

‘I am the emperor of the Sapt Sindhu!’ shouted Dashrath, striking his chest with unconcealed rage. ‘How dare he?’

Even though alone with her husband, Kaikeyi maintained the demure demeanour normally reserved for her public interactions with him. She had never seen him so angry.

‘My love,’ said Kaikeyi, ‘save the anger for tomorrow. Have your dinner. You will need your strength for the battle that lies ahead.’

‘Does that outcaste mercenary even have a clue as to who he has challenged? I have never lost a battle in my life!’ Dashrath continued as though Kaikeyi hadn’t spoken.

‘And you will win tomorrow as well.’

Dashrath turned towards Kaikeyi. ‘Yes, I will win tomorrow. Then I will cut him to pieces and feed his corpse to mongrel dogs and gutter pigs!’

‘Of course you will, my love. You have determined that already.’

Dashrath snorted angrily and turned around, ready to storm out of the tent. But Kaikeyi could no longer contain herself.

‘Dashrath!’ she said harshly.

Dashrath stopped in his tracks. His favourite wife used that tone with him only when necessary. Kaikeyi walked up to him, held his hand and led him to the dinner table. She held his shoulders and roughly pushed him into the chair. Then she tore a piece of the
roti
, scooped up some vegetables and meat with it, and offered it to him. ‘You cannot defeat that demon tomorrow if you don’t eat and sleep tonight,’ she barely whispered.

Dashrath opened his mouth. Kaikeyi stuffed the morsel of food into it.

Chapter 3
FlyLeaf.ORG

Lying in her bed, Queen Kaushalya of Ayodhya appeared frail and worn. All of forty, her prematurely grey hair seemed incongruous against her dark, still gleaming skin. Though short in stature, she’d once been strong. In a culture that valued women for their ability to produce heirs, being childless had broken her spirit. Despite being the senior-most wife, King Dashrath acknowledged her only on ceremonial occasions. At most other times, she was relegated to obscurity, a fact that ate away at her. All she desired was a fraction of the time and attention that Dashrath lavished on his favourite wife, Kaikeyi.

She was keenly aware that giving birth to an heir, hopefully Dashrath’s first son, had the potential to dramatically alter her status. No wonder then that today her spirit was all fired up, even though her body was weak. She had been in labour for more than sixteen hours but she barely felt the pain. She soldiered on determinedly, refusing the doctor her permission to perform a surgical procedure to extract her baby from her womb.

‘My son will be born naturally,’ announced Kaushalya firmly.

A natural birth was considered more auspicious. She had no intention of putting the future prospects of her child at risk.

‘He will be king one day,’ continued Kaushalya. ‘He will be born with good fortune.’

Nilanjana sighed. She wasn’t even sure if the child would be a boy. But she wouldn’t risk the merest flagging of her mistress’ spirits. She administered some herbal pain relievers to the queen and bided her time. Ideally, the doctor wanted the birth to take place before midday. The royal astrologer had warned her that if the child was born later, he would suffer great hardships throughout his life. On the other hand, if the child was born before the sun reached its zenith, he would be remembered as one of the greatest among men and would be celebrated for millennia.

Nilanjana cast a quick glance at the
prahar
lamp, which measured time in six-hour intervals. The sun had already risen and it was the third hour of the second
prahar
. In another three hours it would be midday. Nilanjana had decided to wait till a half hour before noon and, if the baby was still not born, she would go ahead with the surgery.

Kaushalya was stricken with another bout of dilatory pain. She pursed her lips together and began chanting in her mind the name she had chosen for her child. This gave her strength for it wasn’t an ordinary name. The name she had picked was that of the sixth Vishnu.

‘Vishnu’ was a title given to the greatest of leaders who were remembered as the Propagators of Good. The sixth man to have achieved this title was Lord Parshu Ram. That is how he was remembered by the common folk.
Parshu
means
axe
, and the word had been added to the name of the sixth Vishnu because the mighty battle axe had been his favourite weapon. His birth name was Ram. That was the name that reverberated in Kaushalya’s mind.

Ram… Ram… Ram… Ram…

The fourth hour of the second
prahar
saw Dashrath battle-ready. He had hardly slept the previous night, his self-righteous rage having refused to dissipate. He had never lost a battle in his life, but this time it was not mere victory that he sought. Redemption now lay in his vanquishing that mercenary trader and squeezing the life out of him.

The Ayodhyan emperor had arranged his army in a
suchi vyuha
, the
needle formation
. This was because Kubaer’s hordes had planted dense thorny bushes all around the Karachapa fort. It was almost impossible to charge from the landward side of the port city. Dashrath’s army could have cleared the bushes and created a path to charge the fort, but that would have taken weeks. Kubaer’s army had scorched the earth around Karachapa, and the absence of local food and water ensured that Dashrath’s army did not possess the luxury of time. They had to attack before they ran out of rations.

More importantly, Dashrath was too angry to be patient. Therefore he had decided to launch his attack from the only strip of open land that had access to the fort of Karachapa: its beach.

The beach was broad by usual standards, but not enough for a large army. Hence, Dashrath’s tactical decision to form a
suchi vyuha.
The best troops, along with the emperor, would man the front of the formation, while the rest of the army would fall in a long column behind. They intended a rolling charge, where the first lines would strike the Lankan ranks, and after twenty minutes of battle slip back, allowing the next line of warriors to charge in. It would be an unrelenting surge of brave Sapt Sindhu soldiers aiming to scatter and decimate the enemy troops of Kubaer.

Ashwapati nudged his horse a few steps ahead and halted next to Dashrath.

‘Your Highness,’ he said, ‘are you sure about this tactic?’

‘Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts, King Ashwapati!’ remarked Dashrath, surprised by the words of caution from his normally aggressive father-in-law. He had been a worthy ally in most of Dashrath’s conquering expeditions throughout the realms of India.

‘I was just thinking we will not be using our numerical superiority in full strength. The bulk of our soldiers will be behind the ones charging upfront. They will not be fighting at the same time. Is that wise?’

‘It is the only way, believe me,’ asserted Dashrath confidently. ‘Even if our first charge is unsuccessful, the soldiers at the back will keep coming in waves. We can sustain our onslaught on Kubaer’s eunuch forces till they all die to the last man. I do not see it coming to that though. I will annihilate them with our first charge!’

Ashwapati looked to his left where Kubaer’s ships lay at anchor more than two kilometres into the sea. There was something strange about their structure. The front section, the bow, was unusually broad. ‘What role will those ships play in the battle?’

‘Nothing!’ dismissed Dashrath, smiling fondly at his father-in-law; while Dashrath had had experience of a few naval battles, Ashwapati hadn’t. ‘Those fools haven’t even lowered their row-boats from the vessels. Even if they have a reserve force on those ships, they cannot be brought into battle quickly enough. It will take them at least a few hours to lower their row-boats, load their soldiers, and then ferry them to the beach to join the battle. By then, we would’ve wiped out the soldiers who are inside the fort.’

‘Outside the fort,’ corrected Ashwapati, pointing towards Karachapa.

Raavan had, strangely, abandoned the immense advantage of being safe within the walls of the well-designed fort. Instead of lining them up along the ramparts, he had chosen to arrange his army of probably fifty thousand soldiers in a standard formation
outside
the city, on the beach.

‘It is the strangest tactic I have ever seen,’ said Ashwapati warily. ‘Why is he giving up his strategic advantage? With the fort walls being right behind his army, he does not even have room to retreat. Why has Raavan done this?’

Dashrath sniggered. ‘Because he is a reactionary idiot. He wants to prove a point to me. Well, I will make the final point when I dig my sword into his heart.’

Ashwapati turned his head towards the fort walls again as he surveyed Raavan’s soldiers. Even from this distance he could see Raavan, wearing his hideous horned helmet, leading his troops from the front.

Ashwapati cast a look at his own army. The soldiers were roaring loudly, hurling obscenities at their enemy, as warriors are wont to do before the commencement of war. He turned his gaze to Raavan’s army once again. In sharp contrast, they emanated no sound. There was no movement either. They stood quietly in rigid formation, a brilliant tribute to soldierly discipline.

A shiver ran down Ashwapati’s spine.

He couldn’t get it out of his mind that those soldiers were bait that Dashrath had chosen to take.

If you are a fish charging at bait, then it usually doesn’t end well.

Ashwapati turned towards Dashrath to voice his fears, but the emperor of the Sapt Sindhu had already ridden away.

Dashrath was on horseback at the head of his troops. He ran his eyes over his men confidently. They were a rowdy, raucous bunch with swords drawn, eager for battle. The horses, too, seemed to have succumbed to the excitement of the moment, for the soldiers were pulling hard at their reins, holding them in check. Dashrath and his army could almost smell the blood that would soon be shed; the magnificent killings! They believed, as usual, that the Goddess of Victory was poised to bless them.
Let the war drums roll!

Dashrath squinted his eyes as he observed the Lankans and their commander Raavan up ahead in the distance. Molten rage was coursing through him. He drew his sword and held it aloft, and then bellowed the unmistakable war cry of his kingdom, Kosala and its capital city, Ayodhya.
‘Ayodhyatah Vijetaarah!’

The conquerors from the unconquerable city!

Not all in his army were citizens of Ayodhya, and yet they were proud to fight under the great Kosala banner. They echoed the war cry,
‘Ayodhyatah Vijetaarah!’

Dashrath roared as he brought his sword down and spurred his horse. ‘Kill them all! No mercy!’

‘No mercy!’ shouted the riders of the first charge, kicking their horses and taking off behind their fearless lord.

But then it all began to unravel.

Dashrath and his finest warriors comprised the sturdy tip of the Sapt Sindhu needle formation. As they charged down the beach towards the Lankans, Raavan’s troops remained stationary. When the enemy cavalry was just a few hundred metres away, Raavan unexpectedly turned his horse around and retreated from the front lines, even as his soldiers held firm. This further infuriated Dashrath. He screamed loudly as he kicked his horse to gather speed, intending to mow down the Lankan front line and quickly reach Raavan.

This was exactly what Raavan had envisaged. The Lankan front line roared stridently as the soldiers suddenly dropped their swords, bent, and picked up unnaturally long spears, almost twenty feet in length, that had been hitherto lying at their feet. Made of wood and metal, the spears were so heavy that it took two soldiers to pick each one up. The soldiers pointed these spears, tipped with sharp copper heads, directly at Dashrath’s oncoming cavalry. The pointed heads tore into the unprepared horses and their mounted soldiers. Even as the charge of Dashrath’s cavalry was halted in its tracks and the mounted soldiers thrown forward as their horses suddenly collapsed under them, Lankan archers emerged, high on the walls of the Karachapa fort. They shot a continuous stream of arrows in a long arc from the fort ramparts, right into the dense formation of Dashrath’s troops at the back, ripping through the Sapt Sindhu lines.

Many of Dashrath’s warriors, who had been flung off their impaled horses, broke into a fierce hand-to-hand battle with their enemies. Their liege Dashrath led the way as he swung his sword ferociously, killing all who dared to come in his path. But the Ayodhyan king was alive to the devastation being wrought upon his fellow soldiers who rapidly fell under the barrage of Lankan arrows and superbly-trained swordsmen. Dashrath ordered his flag bearer, who was beside him, to raise the flag as a signal for the Sapt Sindhu soldiers at the back to also break into a charge immediately and support the first line.