THE CURSE OF BRAHMA (49 page)

‘How many of our men are dead?’ he asked wearily.

‘Ten of ours, sire! We took all of them though,’ the soldier replied proudly.

Airawat shut his eyes momentarily. The loss of his men hung heavy on his shoulders.

‘Make arrangements for each of these ten men to be taken back to Madhuvan,’ he instructed the soldier, his eyes ablaze with a rare fury.

The soldier saluted smartly, touching his right hand to the left of his chest. ‘And what do we do with this place, sire?’ he asked tentatively, motioning towards the camp site.

‘Burn it down….all of it!’ Airawat whispered in muted rage as he walked away from the site.

Vasudev tried to shake off the feeling of foreboding. They had been on the move for a while now and his men were getting restless for action. The unnatural silence around them did not do anything to improve matters. The path they had taken had soon opened into the terrifying Bhairava Van (forest), and there was no way of being certain that they were on the right course. The jungle route was hard and rocky and the men and their horses were not used to this terrain. To make the situation worse, the rocky surface made it nearly impossible to track footprints. It was only the incredible skill of their tracker which gave them some comfort that they were not moving in circles.

‘This is not normal, My Lord!’ Aniruddha said suddenly. Vasudev looked questioningly at the spy.

‘Doesn’t the complete absence of wildlife strike you as strange?’ Aniruddha asked softly.

Vasudev nodded slowly, understanding dawning on his face. It was rare not to observe any sign of an animal this deep into the forest. Even the occasional chirping of the birds had disappeared for some time now. The implications were too obvious to miss. This part of the woods seemed to have been marked by someone; someone whose presence was deadly enough to have scared away even the natural predators of the jungle.

‘The asuras are nearby,’ Vasudev whispered, more to himself than to anyone else.
And they seem to be present in large numbers to have this kind of impact on the surroundings
, he reflected, his senses on high alert.

He recalled Narada mentioning in their last meeting that there were at least a thousand asura assassins hidden away in each of the major kingdoms of Mrityulok. Judging by the strategic importance of Hastinapur, Vasudev guessed the size of the assassin module stationed in this city would be considerably larger than a thousand. Assuming that the assassins had built separate encampments, and each of the three bylanes he and his men had taken led to one of those camps, Vasudev’s men would probably be up against a force three to four times their own size.

Vasudev held up his hand and called a halt. He didn’t know how far they were from the asura site. But if they had to have a reasonable chance of surviving and possibly winning the battle, he would need a more strategic battle formation for his men. Non-verbal signals were swiftly exchanged and the hundred men under his command quietly shifted their positions till he had each warrior exactly where he wanted him. The twenty lancers were placed at the head of the formation. They carried spears extending one gavuta in length and were crafted to pierce even through heavy armour. The strongest men wielded the lances, which an ordinary soldier would have found difficult to raise with both hands, leave aside carry them in one arm, for an extended period of time. Behind the lancers came forty of the regular cavalrymen, wielding swords. They were ideal for hand-to-hand combat and each of them was capable of engaging with several opponents at the same time. The tail end of the structure was brought up by the archers. Vasudev decided they would be the ones to unleash the first part of his lethal assault on the asuras. He gave a grim smile, satisfied at last with the way his small force had been arranged.

The company of a hundred men followed the prince, the adrenaline pumping through their veins beginning to make its presence felt in the way they carried themselves. Each of the men had left behind a declaration of how their assets should be distributed in the event that they failed to return from this mission. They had nothing to fear now. They knew if they died fighting the enemy, their families would be taken care of by the king of Madhuvan. But the lure of money is not what drove them this day. While each of these men had fought earlier as mercenaries, this was the first time they were willing to fight and die for their motherland. Glory awaited them, and it banished any fear of death they might have ever had.

To Vasudev’s surprise, the forest ended abruptly and opened into a vast meadow. At the far end of the meadow, a new stretch of forest started. This one was far denser than the one they had just exited.

The tracker stopped suddenly. Something had attracted his attention at the threshold of the adjoining forest. He peered in its direction, trying to ascertain what it was. There was nothing! Then his trained eyes detected an almost imperceptible movement directly ahead of him, about five hundred paces away. His eyes widened in horror as he understood what he had seen. But the realization dawned too late. He opened his mouth to shout a warning to Vasudev but his scream was cut short by an arrow that went straight through his mouth and exited behind his neck. The tracker dropped to his knees, his sword dropping from his hands. Vasudev and his men watched mesmerized as the tracker’s head separated in slow motion from the rest of his body and rolled in their direction, coming to a stop just in front of Vasudev’s horse. Vasudev stared at the sightless eyes of the tracker, reflecting all the terror of the dead man, just before the arrow had unerringly found its mark.

Ghora prepared to string another arrow even as Vasudev recovered from the shock of seeing his tracker cut down in front of him. Ghora’s next arrow raced through the air and the impact of it threw Aniruddha off his horse. He was dead even before he fell to the ground. The arrow had pierced through the armour and gone right through his heart. Vasudev had never seen an arrow capable of piercing through armour. He knew at once that the enemy showering death on his men was no ordinary warrior. He also knew another thing—he was going to have that warrior’s head before this battle was over.

‘Shield your bodies!’ he shouted to his men as a hail of arrows descended on them. He watched with grim satisfaction as his men rasied their massive shields to protect themselves from the deadly enemy projectiles.

‘Agneebaan!’ he bellowed to the archers, even as the asura’s arrows rained on them from all sides.

The formidable archers of the Madhuvan task force dipped their massive arrows in portable cauldrons of fire; and stringing them on their mighty bows, they let loose their Agneebaans in the direction of the enemy forces. The arrows, laced with oil, erupted in fire even as they left the bow. The archers had fired the arrows in an upward arc, aiming their missiles at the trees which shielded the asura assassins. The dry leaves and wood on the trees served as combustion material and there was a conflagration as the fire spread from tree to tree. The archers continued to fire the Agneebaans and as they descended on the enemy, it looked like the gods were raining down their wrath on the assassins.

Vasudev heard screams of unbearable agony as the assassins poured out of the blazing forest into the meadow. A significant number of these men were half-burnt and would die a torturous death. Vasudev disregarded them for the moment. It was a mistake he would soon regret.

Looking in the direction of those assassins who had somehow miraculously escaped being burnt, he roared a command to his lancers. ‘Spears at the ready men!’ he bellowed. ‘Take the largest of the assassins first.’ The lancers raised their spears in front of them and galloped towards these men.

Vasudev looked on as the asuras rapidly re-assembled their badly depleted forces under the command of their leader. He estimated that the forest fire had probably cost the asuras more than half their force. But he could still make out at least four hundred of them. Even with close to a hundred in a burnt state, that still left three hundred enemy survivors; three times the number of his own unit.

Vasudev was too far to see the leader’s face but he noticed the calm and assured way with which the man carried himself. He watched with incredulity as the assassin’s leader instructed his half-dead men to cover their unharmed comrades. He realized what the asura leader intended to do but it was too late. His lancers were too far and riding too fast for him to shout a warning. He watched as the incredibly strong lancers smashed their way through the enemy wall. But the major share of their charge succeeded only in giving a quick death to the asuras who were already half-dead. By the time, the lancers were done with their charge, more than a hundred asuras lay dead on the ground, their bodies broken by the force of the assault. Unfortunately, this was an empty victory for Vasudev as the asura leader had used his already dying men to exhaust the strongest portion of Vasudev’s unit—his lancers. And now the lancers were encircled on all sides by the assassins.

Vasudev realized his twenty lancers stood no chance against the three-hundred-odd assassins who had them surrounded. Without waiting for the rest of his men to follow, Vasudev goaded his horse in the direction of the enemy. The leader of the asuras, astride his own horse saw him coming. He calmly picked up his bow and even as Vasudev looked on, he shot five arrows in quick succession. At first, Vasudev thought the asura had badly miscalculated his aim. Each of the five arrows landed harmlessly in the ground, ahead of him. In the very next instant, he realized that he had deliberately fired the arrows to fall short; they now stood firmly in the ground, arranged horizontally and blocking his way. Too swift to stop in time, Vasudev’s horse crashed into the barrier formed by the arrows and he was thrown off his mount. He staggered to his feet and in the distance, saw the asura leader smiling serenely at him.

Vasudev gasped. The man who led the asuras could not have been more than nineteen. His face displayed a vulnerability that was at odds with the calculated brutality he had demonstrated. The contradiction was confusing and terrifying at the same time. The manner in which he had toppled him off the horse told Vasudev this was a master archer; a formidable warrior. And it was in that moment that he realized he was staring at the man who had killed his tracker and Aniruddha.

Ghora smiled unruffled as he felt Vasudev’s gaze upon him. He knew he could have easily shot the commander of the Madhuvan force instead of dislodging him from his horse. But he did not want to give him an easy death. Six hundred of his companions had perished in the fire and another one hundred brave men had been cut down by this man’s lancers. He would give him a death that the warrior’s people would remember for ages, when they spoke about this battle. But first, he had to deal with the lancers who had ruthlessly killed his men.

‘Cut off their heads,’ he said softly, as his assassins circled the lancers.

Even as Vasudev jumped on the back of his horse, he saw with horror a horde of assassins descending on each of his twenty lancers. The Madhuvan men fought valiantly but in a matter of seconds, the sheer strength of the enemy’s numbers took its toll on them. Twenty heads rolled to the ground, in quick succession.

Vasudev’s swordsmen were already engaged in fighting a separate battle with the rest of the asuras. His archers, who had exhausted their supply of arrows in the previous assault, had also taken out their swords and were bravely fighting for their lives and for the honour of their motherland. But it was a futile effort against the superior numbers of the asuras, and Vasudev’s men were being killed with frightening speed.

Vasudev knew the battle would be over for him and his men within the next few minutes. But he had a vow to fulfil before he died. He wanted the head of the asura leader; now more than ever before. He nudged his horse in the direction of the enemy.

A loud roar of ‘Har Har Mahadev!’ temporarily halted the uneven battle between Vasudev’s rapidly diminishing force and Ghora’s horde of assassins. All eyes turned to see where the deafening war cry of Madhuvan had erupted from. Vasudev breathed in relief as the two battalions swarmed out of the forest behind them, with Airawat and Tantra in the lead.
Thank God they made it in time
, Vasudev thought with grim satisfaction.