Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) (31 page)

“Uninhabited,” said Parashurama. “No one’s lived there in years.”

“Lending weight to the theory that Lombard bought the land for the mine,” said Kurma.

“My thoughts exactly. Krishna?”

“On my way.”

The chariot swung out westward, heading for a rocky ridge on the horizon.

Over the other side lay the Golden Rocks Mine.
¹
It burrowed into the side of a hill, and the pithead was marked by the skeletons of old machinery – cranes, conveyor belts, crushers, hoppers, sluices – which the mining company had seen no profit in dismantling and removing. A prefabricated hut, once the foreman’s office, had half collapsed on itself. There were still deep ruts in the dirt road leading into and out of the site, from the wheels of a fleet of dump trucks.

“
Voilà
,” said Rama, pointing.

Parked just inside the mine’s mouth, deep in shadow, were a pair of four-wheel-drive vehicles, a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Land Rover Discovery. Though dusty in places, both cars were shinily, fulsomely new, in stark contrast to the tarnished, peeling relics around them.

“Bingo,” said Parashurama. “Set her down, Krishna. Not too close.”

Kurma and Narasimha went ahead as scouts. The former was the least harmable of us, and the latter had the sharpest senses and reflexes. The same applied for booby traps. Kurma was once a caver, too, so his expertise in subterranean matters might come in handy.

The mine’s mouth swallowed them up in darkness. We waited. The sun was hellish, seeming to pin everything down with an iron grip. Cicadas chirruped relentlessly in the desert shrubbery, making me think of the emergency signal from Jimmy Olsen’s wristwatch which he would use to summon Superman whenever he got into trouble:
zee-zee-zee
.

Kurma and Narasimha re-emerged shortly and reported back.

“It goes in quite a distance, maybe half a kilometre,” said Kurma. “Sheer rock. But then the tunnel shelves steeply downwards, and there’s a freight elevator. Funicular; runs on a set of tracks.”

“Does it look like a recent addition?” said Parashurama.

“Not as old as everything else around here. I’d say it’s been there no more than a few years. Five, maybe six.”

“The cars,” said Narasimha. “The Trinity’s scents were on them. Fresh. Also in the tunnel.”

“That’s the clincher,” said Parashurama. “Okay, troops. Here’s what we’re going to do. We need to get Buddha down below so that he can work his magic on the Trinity, make them ’fess up to us. Buddha’s our main asset right now. A group of us escort him. Keep him safe at all times. This all right with you, big guy?”

The Peacemaker nodded gently, eyes half-closed.

“The rest of us –”

But Parashurama didn’t get to complete the sentence.

The prefab hut exploded. Fragments of plywood framework, composite wall panelling and honeycomb insulation showered outwards.

Something uncoiled from within.

Something enormous and glisteningly loathsome.

¹
So called because chalcopyrite, in raw form, has a kind of golden sheen. But you probably guessed that already, or even knew.

36. TAKSHAKA

I
T WAS A
naga, a snake-man, but it was far larger than any of the nagas the Dashavatara had faced up ’til now. It reared erect twenty, twenty-five feet, a huge humanoid torso atop a serpentine tail as thick as a tree trunk. Its head was hooded like an angry cobra’s. Its markings were bands of red, yellow and black like a coral snake’s. Hand-sized scales reflected the sunlight dully along its rippling length.

It was Takshaka, one of the nagas’ tribal kings. I knew this because Hanuman knew it. The recognition was instant and primal. Takshaka, robber and poisoner. A nasty piece of work. The kind of monarch only snake asuras would allow themselves to be ruled by. Worst among equals.

He lunged straight for us, without hesitating, without pausing to monologue or posture. He slithered across the dry soil with sinewy contractions of his tail, bearing down on us with freight train speed and power. His maw gaped, revealing a pair of upper fangs as long as sickle blades and dozens of lesser teeth serrating his gums. Sulphur-yellow venom oozed from the fang tips.

The attack took us all unawares. He could have had his pick of any of us. His mistake came in choosing Kurma as his target. He torqued his head sideways and bit the Turtle around the middle – the one deva present who could withstand those giant fangs.

There was a loud
crunch
. Kurma’s armour buckled under the pressure exerted by Takshaka’s jaws, but held. The fangs did not penetrate. Venom squirted uselessly down Kurma’s front, sizzling in the dust at his feet.

Takshaka let go and recoiled, tossing his head, annoyed. His slitted gaze fixed on another of us, Buddha. You could see what was going through his mind.
That one
, he was thinking.
So much softer-looking. Plenty of flesh to sink my teeth into
.

Narasimha leapt to intercept.

Takshaka batted him aside with a backhand sweep. The Man-lion hurtled through the air and crashed into one of the hoppers, a massive drum which at one time would have held tons of crushed copper ore. He bounced away, stunned senseless. The impact rang the hopper like a gong.

Takshaka dived at Buddha, but now Parashurama was there to protect the Peacemaker. The blade of his battleaxe collided with the naga king’s head.

I was expecting the axe to draw blood at least, if not slice Takshaka’s brow open to the bone.

But Takshaka’s scales were made of sterner stuff, it seemed. Tougher even than tank armour.

He laughed, a gritty mocking sound like thunder in the hills, the promise of a storm.

Parashurama was fazed. Being the Warrior, however, he swiftly adapted, altering his plan of attack. He adjusted his grip on the axe handle, spreading his hands, and the weapon became a kind of quarterstaff with which he began clobbering Takshaka from all directions, left, right, up, down, a volley of blows that drove that giant asura back, back, further back, away from Buddha.

Realising I’d never get a better chance, I leapt in and grabbed Buddha. Sweeping him off his feet, I whisked him over to Krishna’s chariot.

“You two need to make yourselves scarce,” I said. “At least until we’ve put Hissing Sid over there down for good.”

Kalkin joined Parashurama in the fight. He started hacking at Takshaka’s tail with both his talwars, although he had no more success piercing the naga king’s hide than the Warrior had.

With a lash of his tail tip, Takshaka sent Kalkin flying. The Horseman ended up like Narasimha, sprawled on the ground, semiconscious.

This asura was like no asura the Avatars had confronted yet.

This was a serious foe; one they might not be able to defeat.

Not that that was going to stop them trying.

Rama shot a flurry of arrows at Takshaka. His bowstring twanged and twanged. But the naga king was simply too tough. The arrows ricocheted off as though the Archer was shooting Nerf darts at him.

I bounded over to Vamana, who was in the throes of upsizing. When his body had finished distending and contorting and he was at his maximum height, I said, “Get me up there.”

“You what? Up where?”

“Onto Takshaka’s head.”

“How? You want me to just walk up to him and plonk you on?”

“No. Throw me.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Look at it this way. If you miss, I’ll probably end up buried face first in the hillside behind him. So you can’t lose.”

“Well, since you put it like that...”

With a cockeyed grin, Vamana picked me up and leaned back like a baseball pitcher winding up for the throw.

“Why are you doing this?” he said.

“Trusting you?”

“Not that. What do you hope to achieve on top of that thing’s head? If Parashurama can’t even put a dent in it, what difference can you make?”

“Distraction. Give someone the opportunity to hit it really hard. Someone like you.”

“
Oh.
Well then, do your worst.”

And he hurled me.

“Fastball special!” I yelled as I flew through the air like a javelin.
¹

Vamana’s aim was more or less true. I shot past Takshaka’s head, but close enough to reach out and grab the rim of his cobra-like hood. I swung round, scissored my legs around his neck, and began battering his brainpan with both fists as though drumming on bongos.

Takshaka swung violently from side to side in an effort to shake me off. He clawed at me but I clung on. The stink of him was ghastly. His hide gave off a putrid musky odour, while his venom had the acrid stench of rotten cucumbers.

I transferred my attention to his eyes, hammering them hard.

Takshaka squeezed them shut to protect them. Enraged, bellowing, he slithered blindly backwards. Together we crashed against one of the conveyor belt units. His shoulders bore the brunt of the impact, but I barely managed to hang on. He sensed this and leaned forward in order to throw himself backwards again.

Then Vamana appeared. He had wrenched off the arm of a crane and was holding it out in front of him like a lance, broken end forward.

He charged, ramming the twisted tips of the crane arm spars into the naga king’s belly. Takshaka roared in pain. Vamana drew the crane arm back and rammed it again. I heard – and felt – bones splintering inside Takshaka.

A third blow pinned the naga king to the conveyor belt. He was screaming and thrashing. Blood spurted from his maw, along with jets of angry venom.

Parashurama leapt, swinging his axe. A single, perfect strike shattered both of Takshaka’s fangs. Venom sprayed everywhere, along with fragments of dentine.

Vamana stepped back, and Takshaka toppled to the ground, sobbing in agony. I sprang away.

The giant Dwarf raised the crane arm above his head and brought it down vertically like a pile driver. The spars were impaled into the earth on either side of Takshaka’s neck. Vamana used his bodyweight to grind the arm further downwards, and the naga king was immobilised. His tail lashed, his fingers furrowed the dirt, but he couldn’t for the life of him writhe free.

Parashurama came over lugging a boulder.

Viewers of a sensitive disposition should look away now.

“This is how we used to deal with rattlesnakes back home in Wyoming,” the Warrior said. “They were a lot smaller, and so was the stone, but the principle’s the same. Pin the rattler behind the back of the head, then bash it until it stops moving.”

He pounded Takshaka’s head with the boulder until brains came gushing out of his nostrils. An eyeball popped. The naga king’s flat noggin gradually grew more and more concave until it was crater-shaped.

A full minute later, his tail finally stopped twitching and lay still.

We looked at one another, panting, sweating. None of us said what we were thinking:
That was a close one. And Takshaka may not be the only thing the Trinity have up their sleeves...

Parashurama knew a pep talk was in order. “Good work, team. Especially you.” He meant Vamana and me. “The two of you, working together. Miracles do happen.”

“Yeah, well,” grunted Vamana, “don’t expect an encore. Wouldn’t have done it, but I knew the Monkey wouldn’t manage on his own.”

“Aww, I love you too, ya big lug,” I said. “Come over here and gimme a cuddle.”

“In your fucking dreams, mate.”

“Avatars!”

The shout echoed across the pithead.

We all spun round.

Dick Lombard was hailing us from beside Krishna’s chariot. Krieger and Bhatnagar were beside him.

The chariot itself had four new occupants, in addition to Krishna and Buddha.

I recognised them. It was the quartet of shaven-headed goons who had kidnapped me off the street in Crouch End. There was Diamond Tooth, the leader of the pack, and Hillbilly Moustache, and Knuckleduster Ring, and Knuckleduster Ring’s twin.