Prince of Dharma (17 page)

Dasaratha nodded sadly. He felt pity for the man now, not anger. He turned his back on the citizen. 

‘Take him away.’ 

The sudra shouted fiercely, the veins on his neck and upper shoulders standing out with his intensity. ‘You must believe me. That man is an impostor! He is an assassin from Lanka sent to kill you before you have a chance to announce the coronation of your son Rama. Tell your soldiers to unhand me or I will have no choice but to use my powers against them.’ 

Dasaratha stopped still. For a moment, it seemed as if time itself stopped with him. 

He had recognised the hunter’s voice the moment he turned his back. It was the voice of Vishwamitra, identical in every respect. It had taken him a moment to place it, having just heard the sage himself speak for the first time a few seconds before this insolent madman had begun yelling. But once he realised the similarity, there was no doubt at all. The hunter spoke in precisely the same cultured and modulated tones as the great seer-mage himself, a former Kshatriya warrior king of a great dynasty, not like a low-caste killer of four-footed animals. 

What strange magic was abroad here? Dasaratha resisted the urge to turn back and reassess the sudra. He kept walking away. 

‘Dasaratha!’ the sudra called out again, his anger clearly audible now. ‘Do not force me to destroy your soldiers. I have sworn a sacred vow not to take a life until my tapasya is complete. Order them to move away and let me deal with the impostor. Look. Even now, he pretends to be me, the foolish creature, but his disguise is merely excellent, not perfect. Ask Guru Vashishta if you do not believe me. Vashishta! Speak and save lives!’ 

Dasaratha continued walking back down the corridor of guards. Ahead, he could see the trio of men still arranged in the same tableau. Guru Vashishta standing still as a statue, arms crossed in front of him. The sage Vishwamitra, proud profile limned against the growing light of the rising sun. And off to one side, eyes goggling at this incredible turn of events, Pradhan-Mantri Sumantra. 

‘Ayodhya-naresh.’ 

The seer-mage barely turned his head to look at Dasaratha as he approached. But the tone of hurt pride was unmistakable. 

‘Is this how you greet a visiting seer? With insults and abuse from a common citizen? I would turn my powers on the insolent wretch and reduce him to ashes in an instant.’ 

And then, with a calm that was almost preternatural, Guru Vashishta spoke his first words since emerging from the palace gates. 

‘An excellent idea, Vishwamitra. Why don’t you do just that? Use your power of atma-Brahman and punish that wretched mortal over there for insulting you. The code of the seers demands it, as you well know.’ 

In the sudden deathly silence that followed these words, Dasaratha heard a peculiar sound from behind. A sound like men grunting and choking. 

He spun around and saw an amazing sight. 

The sudra hunter had somehow managed to throw off the two men holding his arms, and they lay on their backs on the street, clutching their throats, gasping for breath. The rest of the guards surrounding the hunter raised their spears and drove them forward without hesitation. Dasaratha saw the foot-long tapered steel blades of the spears strike the sudra’s body—and break off! 

The snapping spears made a loud and shocking sound. The baffled soldiers, not quite comprehending what had happened, stared down at their broken weapons, then at the sudra. 

Not a scratch marred his bare upper body. As their unit leader shouted an order in commonspeak, the guards dropped their broken spears and reached over their shoulders for their back-sheathed swords. 

The sudra raised his palms and pushed outwards, like a man shoving at the walls of a narrow corridor. With a burst of blue light, the ring of soldiers surrounding him exploded into the air, rising up and back and falling several yards away in a stunned heap. Their armour clattered noisily on the street, leaving a clear circle around the sudra. 

He lowered his hands and strode towards the seer standing before the gates. 

‘Come on then, impostor. Vashishta speaks wisely. Destroy me. Or be destroyed yourself. But know this first: you face none other than Brahmarishi Vishwamitra.’ 

And before Dasaratha’s astonished eyes, the sudra hunter cried out a Sanskrit mantra as fiercely as a general calling out a battle cry, and in a burst of blinding blue light morphed into the spitting image of the seer-mage Vishwamitra. 

TWELVE 

Several things happened simultaneously. Rama pulled back his hand and threw the stone. It flew directly at its destination—the leader—and before Bearface could blink, it struck him squarely in the centre of his forehead with a sound like an axe striking a teak tree. Bearface grunted, his eyes rolled up in his head and he fell bonelessly to the ground. 

At the same time, two of the other men loosed arrows directly at Rama, these ones aimed to hit, not miss. Rama’s hand was still at the end of its throw when the arrows left their bows. Moving with the pull of the throw, he turned his body sharply to the right, presenting his slender silhouette rather than his broad front. Both arrows whizzed past him, the rusty iron head of the second one nicking and shredding the seam of his kurta, and buried themselves in the side of the knoll. He had judged their trajectories correctly: both were too high to harm the deer lying helpless behind him on the ground. 

Even before the two arrows had struck the knoll, three more were loosed. At the same time, the men not firing realised their leader had been downed and paused, surprised and confused. A few of them could not understand how Bearface had fallen at all; they were too drunk to connect the rock thrown by Rama with the man’s fall. 

Rama was still poised sideways, presenting his silhouette to the pahadis, when the three arrows left their strings. He had been looking back to see where the first arrows landed, and there was not enough time to turn and judge the trajectories of the new ones. So he did it by the sound of their loosing and the hiss of their metal heads as they flew through the air, barely audible above the roar of the Sarayu. At the same time, he completed the half-turn he had begun, now presenting his back to the men, while bending over backwards, his hands shooting up towards the sky as he did so. 

He clenched his fists as if grabbing mosquitoes, then straightened up slowly, still with his back to the men. 

Two arrows were clutched in his right fist, one in his left. 

The pahadis blinked, astonished. 

‘By the shakti of Kali,’ one of them said. 

Another man dropped his wineskin. Blood-red wine splashed from the open mouth, staining the damp ground of the riverbank. 

The youngster, his bow still unfired, hiccuped loudly and lost his grip on his arrow. It shot upwards into the air, arced gracefully, and fell into the river. 

The other men all looked at their fallen leader, then at Rama. He turned to face them, the arrows still clutched in his fists. He tossed the single one in the air, spinning it around and catching it by the tail. He judged its heft and balance. It was a well-made shortbow arrow, about half a yard long and reasonably well balanced. He tossed it again and caught it by the head this time, raising his arm to aim it at one of the men who had shot at him. 

The man fumbled at his back, his hand seeking his quiver. His eyes were still wide with shock, his drink-addled brain unable to comprehend what he had just seen. Working by instinct, he found an arrow and pulled it from the quiver. Before the pahadi’s arrow could even reach the string of his bow, Rama tossed his first arrow back at him. Thrown like a dart knife with just the right force and the perfect angle to bring it around the force of the wind blowing downriver, it struck the man in the shoulder. 

His bow and arrow fell from his hands and he fell with them, clutching at his shoulder, his face contorting in a silent scream. 

In quick succession, Rama tossed the other two arrows, taking care to aim only at those who had loosed missiles at him, avoiding the ones with blades who had simply swaggered and threatened. 

Both arrows found their marks—one hitting its target in the ample flesh of his side, away from any internal organs, the other striking a man in his upper thigh. He was standing on a rock a yard high, which accounted for the difference. 

One foolish Garhwali pahadi, still not comprehending what they were up against, spat a curse and loosed a fresh arrow, aiming directly at Rama’s throat this time. Rama snatched the arrow from the air in a gesture like yanking off a neck-chain, and tossed it back at its owner in one single fluid motion. The arrow took the man in the throat. He sank to his knees, a gurgling liquid noise bubbling from his gashed windpipe, blood pouring down the front of his chest to merge with the winestains on his wolf-pelt. He fell forward on his face and lay still. 

The nine men still alive and conscious stared at Rama silently. For several moments, none of them spoke. The youngster who had shot the arrow upwards was breathing heavily, as if he had run a yojana non-stop. His panting was punctuated by hiccups at irregular intervals, large lurching hiccups that made his entire body shake. Finally, he fell to his knees and lost the contents of his stomach. 

The sound of the river grew very loud. 

Rama spoke to the pahadis, looking them in the eyes one by one. 

‘Cast down your weapons and there will be no more bloodshed.’ 

The clattering of wooden bows and metal blades on the rocky riverbank made an almost musical counterpoint to the river’s sound. 

*** 

Lakshman was less than a hundred yards from the grove when he saw the ragged group coming towards him on foot. They looked like pahadis from their pelts but he had never seen pahadis behave in that fashion. The men were walking in a straight line and displayed none of the boisterousness of mountain folk. One of them was supporting a companion who seemed to be ill. Another pair were carrying a makeshift sling between them, in which a man with an obvious arrow wound lay—even from here, Lakshman could see the shaft sticking out. At the end of the line, another pair were carrying what appeared to be a dead companion wrapped in furs. And finally, bringing up the rear was a slender young form in white, walking behind the ragged line like a govinda shepherding his bleating flock home. Except that this particular flock was unusually silent. 

Lakshman whispered to his horse, Marut, who immediately responded, slowing to a light canter. They reached the peculiar procession in moments. The pahadis stared sullenly up at Lakshman but offered no greeting or comment. Now he knew something was off here. Pahadis were notorious for their loquaciousness. Even their funeral processions were accompanied by incessant chanting and singing. Only one particularly large pahadi, the one being supported by his companion, glared hotly at Lakshman through a terribly scarred face. Bear slashes, Lakshman thought. During the years in Guru Vashishta’s gurukul, he had seen several examples of the work of the great Himalayan rksaa before, but they had all been the mauled corpses of waylaid pilgrims that he and his fellow shishyas had found on the slopes of the lower Himalayas. This pahadi had the worst scarring he had seen on a man still living. 

Lakshman reached the end of the line and halted Marut. 

‘Well,’ he said to Rama. ‘Looks like you’ve been busy this morning.’ 

Rama was holding a kairee in his hand, sucking on it with an excruciating expression on his face. He nodded at Lakshman. ‘Pass me some salt.’ 

Lakshman pulled out the small packet of salt that every Kshatriya carried to fend off dehydration as a matter of habit. He tossed it to Rama, who caught it and opened it one-handed, and then dipped the kairee into it. He sucked on the salt-encrusted fruit again, and this time he shook his head with delight. ‘Sundar. Ati sundar.’
Beautiful. Truly beautiful. 

Lakshman smiled as he turned his horse around. Rama’s fondness for sour kairee was so legendary it had made him the butt of many jokes in the past. Lakshman leaped off Marut, leading the horse by the reins as he walked by his brother. ‘So what did these scoundrels do to deserve their wounds?’ 

Rama shrugged, still intent on his kairee. ‘They were hunting a deer by the riverbank. I told them to stop. They didn’t listen.’ 

Lakshman glanced over the sullen group trudging silently towards the first wall-gate. ‘Three wounded, no, four. And one dead. And that young badmash there looks like he’s been throwing up more wine than he’s been drinking. And they all look like the nasty kind, the kind who poach on the king’s lands and don’t hesitate to murder wardens over a rabbit snack.’ 

Rama nodded, eyes shut as he relished his kairee. ‘Good thinking. Have some of the wardens take a look at them. They might find some familiar faces. Repeat offenders. Sumantra did say something about poachers on the king’s lands this past winter.’