Kala-Nemi stepped forward, putting Hanuman on full alert. The rakshasa did not make any move to attack or harm him in any way, merely moved in closer. Now they stood near enough that Hanuman could smell the stench of the rakshasa’s rotten breath. It stank like baboon meat ten days-old in the summer sun, so putrid and rancid that even the crows would no longer pick at it. Except that it was not baboon meat, was it? It was…human flesh? Yes. Hanuman stood his ground without blinking or wincing, and tightened his arms and back muscles in readiness for the first blow. The rakshasa’s eyes looked up at Hanuman with a malevolent glint – Hanuman was shocked to see things actually squirming and writhing around inside the sockets of those eyes! He had not known that any living being could harbour parasites within its eyes, yet apparently Kala-Nemi could and did. He tried not to look too closely at the things, yet could not help noting that they resembled millipedes with hundreds of tiny, bony thorns rather than hairy cilia. Blood oozed from their tracks as they writhed and moved inside the rakshasa’s organs of vision, like bloodshot veins in a drunken man’s eyes.
“You dearly wish to fight me, do you not? I wish I could grant you your desire, vanar. But it is not to be.”
Kala-Nemi exuded a grinding sigh of regret and began to turn away.
Hanuman made the first move. He reached out and put a heavy palm on the rakshasa’s shoulder, stopping him, “Coward! You will fight me whether you will it or not!”
Kala-Nemi chuckled again and glass shards pierced Hanuman’s hearing, as he said laconically without turning around: “I think not.”
The rakshasa burst open like an overripe watermelon.
Lakshman reacted despite himself. Of all the moves he had expected Kala-Nemi to make, this was not one of them; this was not even 100on the list! He had expected the rakshasa to use his gigantic size to rampage through the city, perhaps knock down the tower, assault the palace, create chaos and wreak havoc. Which was why, when Hanuman had expanded himself and gone to confront the beast, he had secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Almost a decade and a half of battling rakshasas had taught Lakshman one thing: however fierce, huge or powerful, all rakshasas could be killed. But if they could be killed quickly, so much the better. If nothing else, Hanuman could take the fight outside Ayodhya, reducing the collateral damage to the city and its denizens.
But this? This was bizarre!
He watched, transfixed, as the giant burst into a million tiny fragments like an overripe musk melon struck by a heavy metal-head arrow, the kind that was designed to punch through body armour. No. Not fragments. Tiny globular bits, like miniscule black spores. There were patches of mottled colour rippling through the bunched spores, as if reflecting the organic colours of the rakshasa biology of which they were part only instants ago. The entire mass hovered in the air like a swarm of hornets, still more or less occupying the same overall shape as the rakshasa in his flesh-and-blood form – if he was ever in flesh-and-blood form, Lakshman thought with a sudden insight. They swarmed and buzzed and swayed a little to one side then another, as if buffeted by an invisible wind. The top section, still coherent enough to resemble a grotesque facsimile of Kala-Nemi’s bestial features, resolved into a semblance of a grin.
“How would you fight this, vanar?” asked the thing.
Lakshman watched Hanuman reach out and try to take hold of the thing’s shoulder. It was like trying to grasp a swarm of hovering insects. The swarm slipped through the vanar’s fingers, ruffling the fur on the back of his paws, and flew around the vanar’s hand, the ‘shoulder’ now detached and hovering apart from the body itself. Then, as Hanuman retracted his paw in puzzled astonishment, that part of the swarm flew back to join the main body once more, mingling with the rest of the mass.
“What are you?” Hanuman asked with a voice filled with outrage. The vanars were not known for their love for rakshasas; least of all the more grotesque and unnatural sub-species of the race. Lakshman could imagine his friend’s horror at touching this perversion of nature.
“I am what Ravana intended me to be. What the brahmarishis Vishwamitra and Vashishta condemned me to become. And what I had to turn into in order to return to this mortal realm. It was the only way – and it suited Ravana’s plans perfectly. For you see, vanar, while your great and mighty mortal master’s city-kingdom is so stupidly proud of its defences – Ayodhya the Unconquerable! – the fools fail to realize that often the biggest threat comes not from armies or intruders or weapons of metal and steel. There are other ways to wreak havoc and take lives. From the very day I came here to Ayodhya fourteen years ago, my real mission was never merely to infiltrate and assassinate! I would hardly have attempted to walk in through the front gates had that been the case. Nay! My true purpose was to be interred here, not physically beneath the city but in that sector of eternal brahman that corresponds to this city’s physical location. For every hour of these past fourteen years I have festered and fulminated, awaiting this day. And now, what you see before you is not Kala-Nemi the rakshasa who once lived. He is long gone. Only his aatma powers this thing you behold. And this thing is the most potent weapon ever to strike at the heart of Ayodhya. A weapon devised from nature itself, corrupted and befouled. A weapon of pure biological evil. For remember this always, Ayodhya: Evil never dies. It only changes form and shape!”
And with that final missive delivered, the thing that resembled Kala-Nemi roared with laughter. The swarm that still resembled him lost its coherence and disintegrated, flying upwards with a roaring rush to travel high up into the air above the city. It hung there momentarily like a giant black monsoon cloud seething and swarming. And then, as Lakshman stared up in mute horror, the cloud dispersed itself, flowing down like individual fingers and streams in a half dozen different directions, each stream splitting further and further into branches and forks, moving with malicious supernatural speed, until a network of spores descended towards every corner of the city, carrying Devi alone knew what foul asura pestilence.
Bharat and Shatrugan heard the last words of Kala-Nemi booming across the city and felt the malevolence in that final message. They glanced back briefly over their shoulders as they rode down the last stretch to their destination, and glimpsed the dark cloud of swarming insectile things bifurcating and snaking out across the city, descending with clearly malicious intent. But the task they were undertaking was as vital, and they exchanged grim glances and turned forward again, slowing to a halt and then dismounting in a single liquid move, barely acknowledging the salutes of the white-faced PF massed facing the barred gates, racing up the carved stone steps to the ramparts of the third gate…. The alarm-riders had been clear in their message – this was a crisis of the highest level possible. Every instant counted.
Even though this was in fact the main gate of the city proper, it was actually the third such gate – a triple protection designed to fox besiegers and thwart even the most determined and persistent enemy assault. Beyond it lay two equally sturdy and solid ‘front gates’ – all three built to look exactly alike – separated by the deepest and most perilous moats filled with deadly predators, and with channels ready in which to pour down barrels of oil that could be set ablaze to further deter those foolhardy enough to attempt to breach the moats. The slender bridges that spanned the outermost two moats were designed in such a manner that a single command could result in their being wrecked completely, leaving no means for any invading force to ride or march to this true front gate, the third. It was a foolproof system, and Bharat knew that no army would ever dare to attempt to breach it, which was the whole point of all this excess and duplication of defences: to make would-be invaders decide it was not worth the effort and potential cost of life. That was why Ayodhya was literally in Sanskrit A-yodha, the city that could not be fought (or defeated or besieged or conquered, etc).
But today was the day that they had all been told would never come.
As Bharat reached the top of the ramparts and Shatrugan and he made their way through the thick
throng of clearly shaken yet bravely disciplined gatewatch soldiers, he sought out the familiar clean-cut features of Senapati Drishti Kumar. The son of the Saprem Senapati, Drishti Kumar had some things in common with his father, yet was very much his own man. He turned with a curt snap of his neck to acknowledge and greet Bharat as he approached. The lack of expression on his handsome features could not mask the sickly cast that lay beneath.
“Yuvraj Bharat, Yuvraj Shatrugan,” he said crisply, saluting. “I apologize for not coming in person to fetch you. I felt this warranted my presence here, in the event…” His voice trailed off. Some things were hard enough to acknowledge or accept, let alone say aloud.
Bharat glanced again at his brother’s beefy muscled features, and saw a nerve twitch in Shatrugan’s cheek. He clapped a hand on his shoulder and nodded so discreetly only Shatrugan understood its meaning. Hold fast. We shall get through this together as we have all else. His own shoulder ached still with the memory of the dislocation, but there was no time for personal pain. He ignored his discomfort and stepped into the space cleared by soldiers who moved aside briskly to allow Shatrugan and him to have a clear view.
They looked out across the second moat, over the second gate, then across the first moat and gate, to the place where the raj-marg that cut through Sarayu Valley broadened into a field-wide space large enough to accommodate the regular throng of Kosalans who visited Ayodhya routinely for commerce, trade, politics or personal reasons.
Instead of the usual crowd of goatherds, villagers with carts piled high with produce, merchants in richly-tapestried covered dolis, shyly veiled women or boisterous young men come to seek gainful employment or to make their fortune in the fabled capitol, that daily unending variety of human life that flowed like the Sarayu itself through the greatest Arya city-state, there was a sight he had never imagined he would behold even in his wildest dreams.
Not here. Not at the gates of Ayodhya.
Yet there it was. Plain as life. Real as the smooth sun-warmed stone parapet on which he placed his hand, gazing in disbelief.
An army stood outside Ayodhya, ready to invade.
SEVEN
Of all those on the avenue, Valmiki was the only one prepared for KalaNemi’s audacious move. The only one who had expected something along these lines to occur. The only one who had known before the sun rose this morning that Ayodhya would be facing a crisis of great magnitude this very day, and that before the day was ended there might not be an Ayodhya left to speak of; not the Ayodhya of yore at least. He had known these things for some time now and had prepared for them. Had the unnecessary fracas at the gate not delayed him, he would have explained what was happening and why to Rama himself, and perhaps given the city a little time to better prepare itself. But now there was no time to dwell on what might-have-been could-have-been should-have-been. There was only the here and now. And in the here and now, Kala-Nemi had disintegrated his body into crores of tiny insectile pustules or spores that were speeding across the sky to penetrate deep into the recesses of Ayodhya’s streets and houses to infect as many Ayodhyans as possible. Under natural circumstances, had an infection this virulent struck even a fraction of the populace, it would spread like wildfire, decimating the citizenry; in this case, so effective was the virus’s pollination method that it would strike down easily half the population in the first few hours, and within the day, the majority of Ayodhya’s innocent denizens would lie dead, severely ill or dying.
And that, of course, was only the first step in Ravana’s vengeance.
He had to move quickly.
“Maruti!” he cried, sprinting forward up the jagged blocks of stone and rubble that had been uprooted when the rakshasa emerged from the ground. The vanar Hanuman – also known as Maruti for his father, the Lord of Wind – was gazing with intense hatred and frustration at the seething, greenish-black mass that boiled and festered in the clear summer sky, so large now that it blocked the sun itself momentarily. “Hanuman! Raise me up!”
Now Hanuman looked down, just as Valmiki reached the top of the highest boulder that lay teetering atop the pile of rubble and launched himself without care for personal safety. The vanar blinked, seeing the little human leaping up towards him and, to the credit of his swift vanar reflexes, allowed his body to respond even as his mind played catch-up. He reached out and caught Valmiki in a furry fist just before he could fall back to ground.
“What—” he began.
Valmiki cut him off brusquely.
“Raise me up! As high as you can!”
Hanuman stared at him for a fraction of a second. Something in Valmiki’s tone, the urgency perhaps, or maybe even the vanar’s reluctant admiration for the manner in which he had confronted the quads of PFs bare-handed earlier – Valmiki had seen the vanar’s impassive features react as he watched from behind the gate – motivated Hanuman. He nodded and swiftly raised the paw in which he held Valmiki.
Valmiki felt the breath rush out of him as he was flung up a hundred yards high. Forcing his senses to reorient swiftly, he opened his eyes. From here, Ayodhya lay like a builder’s model laid out for inspection. Far across, to the South East, he could glimpse the outer gates and before them, the other crisis that faced the city—but there was no time to dwell on that, no time for distractions. Every second was of essence.
He looked up and saw the cloud of black particles dispersing like tentacles of a deep-oceanic monster, wavering across the length and breadth of the city. Already, the tips of those tendrils were descending at great speed, almost at the rooftops now. Soon they would pour in through windows, chimneys, into doorways, and thence into mouths, ears, eyes, nostrils…every human orifice possible. Infecting. Poisoning. Killing.
“Higher!” he shouted, his voice whipped away by the strong wind that blew at these heights. The vanar heard him nevertheless and raised his hand to the limit of his reach. Valmiki looked up and saw the belly of the black cloud of seething, roiling particles still several dozen yards above him. “Still higher! I need to be above the poison cloud!” he yelled.
There was a brief instant when his breath left his body and the sky itself seemed to shove him down brutally hard as if it intended to hammer him down into the earth like a nail hit by a hammer. Then the pressure left his head and shoulders and he blinked to see himself flying – flying!
– straight up into the air. He glanced down and saw that Hanuman had leaped up, still holding him in his paw out ahead, like a mashaal.
They rose up, up, and now they were above the seething black mass. He was looking down upon it now, and from up here it reminded him of a swarm of flesh beetles swarming over the carcass of a dead buffalo he had seen in the Tamasa river near his ashram one day.
“Release me,” he roared as loudly as his lungs permitted, and emphasized his point by digging his staff into Hanuman’s wrist. The vanar’s eyes, big as cartwheels, gazed up at him with puzzled curiosity, but obeyed at once. The furry paw grasping his torso released its hold on him and suddenly he was free-falling back to Earth, into the embrace of Prithvi Maa.
Slowly, maa, he willed, do not be in too great a hurry to hug me, I only have time enough to do this once. Just once.
To his astonishment, he felt his descent slowed to a fraction of what ought to have been its natural velocity. He distinctly felt the wind rushing and raging at his extremities slow to a gentle cushioning sigh, as if Hanuman’s own father was joining with Prithvi Maa to aid him in his attempt.
He had no time to ponder the mystical underpinning of this miracle – if indeed it was a miracle and not just an affectation of his own heightened senses. Already, he had begun chanting the Sanskrit mahamantras that he had composed for this precise purpose.
Valmiki fell to Earth, towards the seething mass of black particles, into the mass itself, and was lost inside it.
Bharat gripped the stone ledge hard.
Beside him, Shatrugan swore.
“How dare they!” Shatrugan said, his right fist clenchin
g and unclenching. “This is open betrayal and treason!”
Bharat clapped a hand on his brother’s muscled back, hard enough to penetrate Shatrugan’s fighting instincts. “Be calm. This may not be what it seems. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
He turned to Drishti Kumar. “Senapati, have you received any word from them yet? Any indication of their intentions?”
Drishti Kumar looked up at Bharat. He was a tall man, his head easily visible above the ranks of his soldiers, but even so, Bharat topped him by two or three inches. He was also the fairest of his brothers; Rama was the shortest, and the darkest-skinned. The senapati’s face wore an expression of such haunted misery that it told Bharat everything he needed to know even before the general spoke.
“They have demanded that the gates be opened to them…” he paused. Bharat saw the Adam’s apple bob in the man’s throat as he swallowed, “…And that we surrender the city to their command.”
“Surrender?” Shatrugan’s exclamation was almost a roar of outrage. “Who do they think they are?”
Bharat raised a hand, cautioning Shatrugan. “Senapati, from whom did the demand come – formally, I mean. In whose name was it made? And to whom was it addressed?”
This time Drishti Kumar’s eyes flicked sideways, toward the massed ranks of armoured soldiers beyond the outermost wall. He was not a nervous man, nor a hesitant one. Yet he was both nervous and hesitant now. Bharat did not blame him. It was an occasion that warranted such a response.
“Yuvraj Bharat, the demand was delivered only moments ago by three rajdoots representing the kingdoms of Panchala, Kuru and…” he broke off, looking away.
“Panchala? Kuru? Are they insane? They are our closest allies!” Shatrugan’s breath was hot on Bharat’s neck. Bharat held up his hand again, almost in his brother’s face, demanding silence. Shatrugan obeyed; he may be hot-headed and ever-eager for a fight, but he was also obedient to a fault.
RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA Page 13
