KRISHNA CORIOLIS#1: Slayer of Kamsa (10 page)

He grinned, and at the sight of those brilliant white teeth flashing in the afternoon sunshine, his men stirred uneasily, already knowing his mind.

Kamsa unsheathed and raised his sword in one swift action, the steel ringing loud in the silent afternoon. He roared loudly enough to be heard from one end of the clearing to the other, before spurring his horse the few yards to Vasudeva’s cart.

‘KILL THEM BOTH!’

fourteen

Initially,
Vasudeva saw
something
occur to Kamsa, though he was not sure what it was. For an instant or two, it was as if the world went dark and a black storm surrounded him and the Andhaka prince. He saw Kamsa staring as if in a daze: wild-eyed, struggling to control his panicking horse.

So the horse can sense what Kamsa is sensing as well ... But nobody else can ... not even Akrur,
Vasudeva thought.
What does it mean?

When the booming voice began to speak, even Vasudeva was startled. It was clearly directed at Kamsa, yet he heard it too, quite distinctly. He had never encountered something of this sort before ... or perhaps he had.

He recalled the sensation that had struck him when Kamsa had flung the barbed spear at him in Mathura. The way the world had seemed to reduce to only a few yards: only he and Kamsa contained within a shell, surrounded by roaring, rushing wind. Beyond the roaring wind, he knew that the world still existed, but within that space, there was only Kamsa, he and the flying spear. And then a white streak had flashed
before his eyes, tinged with blue at the centre, and the spear had embedded itself into the light!

It struck home as hard as if it had struck flesh and bone and, for a moment, Vasudeva had thought it had hit
his
flesh and bone. He had looked down at his chest, certain he would see the spear protruding, his life-blood spilling out onto the marbled floor of the Andhaka palace. Instead, he saw the tip of the spear in the distance, captured by the white-and-blue light, as securely as a dragonfly in amber.

Then the roaring wind had receded, bringing back the sounds and cacophony of the mortal world, and Kamsa had attempted to dislodge the spear, to twist and pull and turn it – without success. And Vasudeva had known instinctively that were he to reach down and grasp the pole of the weapon, it would come free of the insubstantial light easily.

He had done so, and been rewarded with success. As he took hold of the spear, the white-and-blue light had dissipated. He saw motes of blue drifting away, sparkling like starlight on a moonless night; then they were gone.

Something similar had occurred now. Kamsa and he had once more been detached from the mortal world by some supernatural force, and he had seen that blue light glow around himself again. He had also seen fear flash in Kamsa’s hot-red eyes as Ugrasena’s son also recognized what was happening. Then the voice had spoken, urging, commanding, demanding ... and Kamsa’s fear was replaced by malevolence.

The world cracked back to life, like a tree split by lightning.

The sound of a thousand soldiers roaring with shocked emotion struck him like a wave. They were roaring, not out of battle rage, for this was no army they were facing on a field of war. They were roaring with outrage at their own prince’s actions.

Mingled with their outrage and shock was the warrior’s throaty rasp of blind rage. Theirs not to question why; theirs but to kill or die. Their
prince,
their
commander,
had spoken his orders, and with Kamsa, it was either follow and obey without question or be killed without question.

And so they all leaped forward, encircling the two unarmed and defenceless men on the uks cart.

A thousand against two.

Had slaughter ever been this simple?

Vasudeva heard Akrur’s cry of outrage and

frustration. His friend had warned him against precisely this event. He had expected no less of Kamsa. Vasudeva felt sad that Akrur had been proven right and he, Vasudeva, so disastrously wrong. Yet he took consolation from the fact that he was not the one who was wrong. It was Kamsa who had chosen to act against dharma. Kamsa’s actions here would be condemned by Kshatriyas everywhere; and after Vasudeva’s and Akrur’s death under such grossly unfair and unacceptable conditions – two unarmed men cut down by a thousand belligerent soldiers –the Suras and Bhojas would unite against the Andhakas.

The war that would follow would be to the bitter end, for no Yadava, let alone a Vrishni, could stomach such adharma. Kamsa would be destroyed in time by his own precipitous folly. And Vasudeva and Akrur would be held up as martyrs.

But I do not wish to be martyred,
Vasudeva thought sadly.
I came not to die but to win peace for my people using non-violence. Is this your justice, Lord? Is this how you treat your children who desire peace? Then why should not every Arya raise a sword and let a steel edge speak instead of his tongue?

And then Kamsa came at him, standing on the stirrups of his horse, sword raised at a diagonal, the slashing blade aimed at Vasudeva’s neck.

Vasudeva raised his hand instinctively. He was unaware that he held his crook in his hand, the cowherd’s crook he carried everywhere when travelling. It had been lying across his lap on the journey here and he had used it to swish away flies from the haunches of the uks a couple of times on the way to the camp. Other than that, it merely lay there, virtually forgotten.

Now, he raised his hand and the crook rose with it.

The blade of Kamsa’s descending sword met the length of the crook. Two broad inches of finely honed Mithila steel, sharpened well enough to split the sturdiest body armour, struck an inch-thick yew stick, veined and cracked with age, for it had been Vasudeva’s father’s crook before him, and who knew

when
he
had picked up the frail branch of a tree fallen to the ground while tending to his cattle and cut and shaped it, and how many decades it had served both father and son.

The warrior’s sword met the cowherd’s stick. And the sword shattered.
For a moment, the world stood still. The roaring

of the thousand soldiers died away to silence. Each pair of eyes was transfixed. Every face turned. Every voice stilled.

As if time itself had stopped, the earth paused in its turning, the sun and wind and heavens stood transfixed as well; the sword struck the crook and dissolved. It didn’t break into pieces or shards or even splinters ...

Dust.

One moment, a beautifully lethal Mithila sword, capable of hacking easily through Vasudeva’s neck, or halfway through the trunk of a yard-thick sala trunk in a single stroke, was descending to accomplish its butcher’s work. The next instant, it had shattered to powder.

Only the hilt remained in Kamsa’s hand; and the battle cry in his throat.

The cry dried up as well.

As he swung the sword, the dissipation of the blade, the lack of impact and his own considerable strength almost toppled him off the horse. He held his seat, then stared at Vasudeva as his horse, spurred on, trotted past the uks cart a yard or three, turned abruptly and finished a complete circle before coming to a halt beside the cart. Kamsa stared at Vasudeva’s neck in stunned incomprehension.

Then he turned his eyes to the hilt of the sword in his fist. Bejewelled, intricately carved with the sigil of the Andhakas, finely worked by the most illustrious craftsmen of the kingdom.

Now merely an objet d’art, to be mounted on a marble cup and displayed in a museum, utterly useless as a weapon.

He stared at the hilt in disbelief, blinking.

All around him, his soldiers stared as well.

Then he looked at Vasudeva again, who was
lowering the crook to his lap.

A few specks of silvery dust were still swirling in
the air, and as Kamsa gazed at Vasudeva – along with a thousand Andhaka soldiers – the flecks swirled round, rose up and were carried away by the wind. They were tinted with blue, and sparkled as they dissipated.

fifteen

Fury rose in Kamsa like bile in a drunkard’s gorge.

He reached down and yanked out a javelin from its sheath. It too was finely wrought and bejewelled at the hilt, his sigil carved into the base. He always left one such javelin at the site of any place he attacked – standing on the chest of the chief or leader of the enemy as a symbol of his conquest.

He raised the javelin, hooked it in his armpit, like a lance, and kicked his horse forward. He charged at the uks cart, aiming the javelin at Vasudeva’s chest, screaming as loudly as he could.

This time, there was no answering roar from his soldiers. They were still too stunned by the shattering of the sword.

But as the point of the javelin plunged directly at Vasudeva’s chest, the cowherd chieftain raised his crook again, barely a few inches, and countered the powerful lunging weapon with barely enough force to push back a gnat.

It was force enough.

The point of the javelin shattered, the pole itself splintering into a dozen shards. The pieces fell to the ground, some knocking woodenly against the forward right wheel of the uks cart before tumbling to the ground. Only the base remained in Kamsa’s armpit – a jagged edge poking out – and a small piece in his fist. He stared at it in disgust as he rode past the cart, turning his mount around again, then tossed it aside. It was good for no more than starting a fire now. He had brought down elephants with that javelin, men by the dozen.

And yet his arm and body thrummed as if he had struck against a stone wall. His fingers were numb from the impact, his armpit and shoulder sore from the force of the strike. He had struck armoured shields with lances at top riding speed and experienced less pain than with this impact.

He stared at Vasudeva in fury. The Vrishni had an expression of frank wonder on his face, as if he too could not understand how what was happening was happening. Kamsa desired nothing more than to smash that face, demolish that expression.

Kamsa turned to look around. He saw a mace in the hands of one of his soldiers, a burly, muscled fellow who had been exercising with the weapon as his men often did, swinging it round over their head to build upper-body bulk and strength.

Kamsa rode over and, without a word, snatched the mace from the man’s hands. The soldier stepped back to avoid being knocked down by Kamsa’s horse, lost his balance and fell into the mud. Kamsa turned back, the soldier already forgotten, and hefted the mace in his left hand – the right was still numb and senseless from the impact of the javelin.

He roared with rage, and rode straight at the uks cart. He saw the whites of the eyes of Vasudeva’s friend, who was as shocked as Kamsa’s soldiers, but with a notable difference: the soldiers were merely watching as spectators; Vasudeva’s companion was in the firing line of Kamsa’s assaults. Kamsa saw the man flinch as he rode straight at the cart, swinging the mace overhead in a classic mace attack approach, then flung and released it.

The mace flew through the air barely three yards or so.

It ought to have caught Vasudeva in the chest, neck and jaw, shattering bone, smashing flesh and battering the heart to pulp. It was meant to be a death blow. The mace weighed no less than half a hundred kilos. Flung with that force from a galloping horse, it would have struck Vasudeva with ten times that weight on impact.

Vasudeva raised his crook just in time to meet the oncoming mace.

It turned to pulp.

Kamsa saw the solid metal crumple as if striking against a house-sized boulder, heard the sound of the metal being crushed, and saw the mace wilt like a flower sprayed with poison. It thumped to the ground, no more than a piece of twisted metal.

Kamsa roared his fury.
 

Then he turned and pointed at the company
of archers who stood staring in disbelief at the extraordinary proceedings.

‘ARCHERS! RAISE YOUR BOWS!’

He had to repeat the order twice more before they obeyed; even so, they moved sluggishly, like men under water. One of them remained gaping open-mouthed and Kamsa vented his fury by pulling out another javelin from its sheath on his saddle and flinging it at the man. The javelin punched through the archer’s neck and came out the other side in an explosion of blood and gristle, almost decapitating the man. His body fell, shuddering and spitting blood from the horrific wound for several moments, accompanied by a wet gurgling sound as the air in his lungs was expelled out of the severed throat. After that, the archers moved more efficiently, their years of training and relentless discipline taking over their numbed minds.

‘AIM!’ Kamsa shouted. The target was obvious.

The officer commanding the company of archers called out in alarm. ‘Sire, if we miss our mark, we shall hit our own!’ The danger was obvious: in a field crowded with their own compatriots, the arrows were bound to overshoot their mark and strike friendly bodies.

Kamsa didn’t care.‘LOOSE!’ he cried.

White-faced and blinking, the archers let loose their arrows.

Over three dozen longbow arrows flew through the air at Vasudeva and his companion. This time, Vasudeva did not even bother to raise the crook. There was no way he could block forty arrows with a single stick.

But he faced the barrage calmly. His face had progressed from the expression of wonderment that Kamsa had seen earlier to a look of acceptance. It was almost beatific in its calmness.

The arrows shattered in mid-air as if striking an invisible wall.

Blue light sparked where their points struck nothingness.

Vasudeva’s companion flinched, then stared around in amazement as splinters fell around them in a harmless shower.

Kamsa screamed with frustration. ‘AGAIN!’ he cried.‘LOOSE AGAIN!’ Another barrage. The same result. Kamsa lost his senses completely.

He pointed at the cart, yelling, ‘ATTACK! KILL THEM BOTH!’

But not a soldier moved on the field. The archers lowered their bows, ashen-faced. Those nearest to the cart gazed up in amazement. Several joined their palms together in namaskar, as if paying darshan to a deity in a temple.