RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (59 page)

The woman ran past her without even registering who she was, simply stumbling on in panic. She was already bleeding from a deep gash on her back where a sword had chopped a chunk of flesh out, and her eyes were dilated and wild with terror. For a woman who had spent years, perhaps her entire life, in silent contemplation, meditation and prayer, the onslaughter of armed horsemen seeking to slaughter you for no reason at all, was a shocking violation of her worldview. She was half-mad with terror. 

Nakhudi let her go by, standing in the path of the men following her. 

They too had eyes only for the task at hand, hunter to her hunted, and whooped and called out obscene words as they cantered down with the audaciousness of men who had no fear of anything and would do as they pleased to whomever they pleased. 

They were about to receive an object lesson in what they could not do. 

Nakhudi raised her sword and waved it at the first horseman, who was a good ten yards ahead of the others. 

“You,” she called out, “Try me instead. I’m more fun to play with.”

He blinked and grinned, noticing her for the first time. She realized that even the sword in her hand had not caused him any concern. As far as he was concerned, he was king of the world and every living thing was his to command. He was wrong, and was about to find out just how wrong—the hard way.

He swung his sword in a loping action as he rode up, not slowing a whit. His intention was to cut her down and ride on after the sadhini. 

She didn’t try to deflect his sword. Defense was not her goal. Instead, she swung higher, raising herself up at just the right moment, and hacked viciously hard at the junction of his shoulder and arm. 

Her sword, weighted one and a half times as much as most longswords, was strengthened by the rider’s own forward motion. The blade sliced through the man’s shoulder, severing armour, bone and muscle easily, and lopped off the entire arm. The arm, still clutching the useless sword, fell to the ground, and the man rode on, the fist-sized hole in his torso gushing deep crimson heart’s blood over the crushed vegetables. He made a sound that was like a child wailing, the kind of sound the youngest brahmacharyas might have made when they had been cut down mercilessly by his associates and himself. She heard him fall off his horse behind her but did not bother to turn to look. She was busy greeting the other riders. 

The second one tried to skewer her throat with his iron pike. There were gobs of flesh stuck to the point and she could smell the reek of something awful as the weapon shot out at her with deadly efficiency. 

She dodged the point, feeling it scrape the edge of her collar, and plunged her swordblade upwards, into the gap between his armour and his belt. It stabbed deep into the region of his liver, and beyond, into his vitals, and he screamed much louder than the first man, sounding more like an animal than a human, and fell sideways onto her. She had been prepared for that possibility and hurled him over, sending him sprawling on the ground with a sickly cracking of bones and more animal screaming, freeing her sword with practised effort. 

The third man shouted with anger. He had not expected to see his friends die before him, killed by a woman be probably assumed to be another sadhini from the ashram, and was furious. He was the one with the elephant mace and he came at her with a speed and ferocity that almost undid her. 

She rolled in the nick of time—across the path of his horse—and narrowly missed having her skull stoved in by the pounding hooves. But then she was up and swinging and he yelled with outrage as her sword hacked through his leather garments, severing his thigh. He swung the horse around for another pass, but she had slipped a throwing dagger into her palm from a belt at her waist, and she flung it at his throat where it stuck and cut off any further sounds of protest he might wish to produce. 

She turned just in time to see the last rider—he was in fact the third rider but he had hung back after watching her cut down the first man—raise a spear. There was no time to turn or dodge before he threw the yard-long length of wood and iron.  

EIGHT

Luv and Kush came at the ashram’s south side to see the bearkillers clashing with at least two dozen armoured mounted soldiers. The dogs ran amuck, snapping at the horse’s, panicking them into kicking and jumping, which threw the riders off their aim as they tried to hack and cut and spear the new arrivals. 

They took in the number of white clad and ochre clad corpses lying about with growing dismay, trying to spot the familiar long black-haired and red clad form of their Maatr among the dead. Both finished the scan of the visible area and shook their heads at the exact same time, knowing it did not mean that she was not dead, merely that they could not see her body. 

In their hearts, they could not bring themselves to believe she could be slain. Not her. Not Maatr. They had watched her spar with Nakhudi any number of times and both secretly thought that she was the greatest warrior that had ever lived. Only their guru’s epic poem which they had been taught to recite daily ever since they could pronounce Sanskrit, filled as it was with tales of derring-do and incredible battles, described a warrior that could match the great Vedavati’s prowess at arms. And that was the man who was both the subject of the poem as well as the architect of its greatest tragedy, Raja Rama Chandra. They felt certain that even if the legendary Rama Chandra of the poem were to face Maatr, it was she who would carry the day. 

But that did not stop them worrying. 

They watched briefly as the bearkillers held their own against the superior arms and number of attackers, but then began to lose ground almost at once. More and more horsemen kept coming from around the ashram, called by their comrades to join the fight, and their sheer numbers and superior arms and mounts made them impossible to defeat. They knew that they ought to leave the bearkillers to the fight and go to the canyon as they had been instructed. But they had still not seen Maatr, dead or alive, and those were their daily companions and friends and gurus lying dead there on the ground. 

With one motion, both slung their bows, notched arrows and drew together. 

They glanced sideways at each other, winked with the closest eye, and let fly. As before, their almost preternatural ability to know one another’s thoughts and actions enabled them to pick different targets. 

Two horsemen about to converge on the scar faced bearkiller from behind suddenly sprouted arrows from their throats and fell screaming and thrashing off their horses. The dogs were at their faces and feet at once, snarling and ripping and tearing viciously, showing the fallen attackers as little mercy as they had shown their victims. 

Scar face did not have time to turn and look in their direction, but he waved two fingers pressed close together in a sketch of a half-salute and they understood that he was acknowledging their help. Then he was back in the fray and so were they. 

For the next several moments, they picked out targets and took them down, each time with a single arrow. Only once did it take more than one arrow and that was because the man in question turned aside at the last instant and Kush’s arrow was deflected by the jutting metal of his helm. It clanged off and the man turned to glare at the place where the boys stood. He shouted to his comrades who shouted at each other in turn. The fight was turning swiftly. Luv and Kush alone had brought down over a dozen riders and the bearkillers and dogs had managed as many. The attackers had likely not expected such resistance and were unwilling to take such losses. Already, some of them were turning the heads of their horses and riding away. 

Luv and Kush both drew together and with concerted coordination, shot the man that Kush’s first arrow had missed. Both their arrows took him in the open mouth, silencing his angry instructions. He gurgled, blood pouring from his mouth and fell, shuddering violently, onto his head on the ground. Even the dogs gave him a wide berth as he crashed, already dead. 

After that, the spine of the attack was broken and the remaining horsemen retreated. 

But they were not to get away that easily. 

Even as Kush and Luv whooped loudly and watched the last of the intruders riding away, the sound of yells and weapons rose from the north side of the ashram. 

Again, moving as if with one body and mind, they slung their bows and ran. 

They ran past the bearkillers, who shouted at them. Ragini tried to grab at Luv as he went past, but he dodged and slipped away easily, and he heard her curse herself as he flew by. Kush and he went around the corner of the largest hut and beyond the main ashram courtyard to the north side, where the vegetable gardens and training grounds were located. 

They saw a rider about to fling a spear at a woman whom they recognized at once as Nakhudi, from her stance and the way she held her sword. She had been caught unawares and the spear would hit her squarely in the chest—or in the side if she tried to turn away. 

But another spear came shooting out of the thicket beyond the vegetable garden and strike the rider low in the belly, just as his own spear left his hand. The other spear struck just a fraction of a moment before he released his weapon, just enough to cause his aim to go awry. The spear passed within an inch of Nakhudi’s side, ripping a tear in her garment noisily as it flew past. A little blood spurted from the spot but Nakhudi didn’t even bother to react or clap a hand to it as anyone else might have done. Instead, she ran straight towards the main ashram, the expression on her face like nothing Luv and Kush had ever seen before. 

They ran out in front of her, blocking her way and for an instant, Luv thought that she would run straight at them, cutting them both down with a single stroke of her sword. Then something changed in her eyes as she registered and recognized them and she blinked and lowered her sword, slowing her pace. 

She stopped before them, the terrible mask slipping from her face and another more familiar face replacing it. This Nakhudi they knew well. This Nakhudi clasped their shoulders with great relief. 

“You are well! Kali be blessed. Where is your Maatr?”

They shook their heads. 

“Not dead,” Luv said for both of them. “We haven’t seen her body anywhere. The bearkillers said she might be dead already but we would have seen her by now.”

“Quickly, then,” she said, “she might be somewhere in the ashram precincts still. We must find her before they do!”

They needed no further urging. 

“Luv and I will search the eastern side,” Kush said. “You take the main complex. But be careful, there are soldiers there still.”

“That’s all right,” she said grimly. “I have soldiers too.”

She beckoned and the man who had flung the spear that saved her life came jogging through the vegetable garden, looking apologetic as he trod the last of the pumpkins to a pulp. Behind him came a swarm of other men similar to him, white-haired and thick with age. They ran past, following Nakhudi. 

Kush and he looked at one another in puzzlement. “Old soldiers? What can they do to help?”

They shook their heads as they sprinted to the east perimeter to search for their mother. 

***

Sarama was not an old dog but she was ailing. Constant birthing had taken its toll on her and she had produced more litters than dogs twice her age. She was very proud of that and of the size of her brood and their robust health and strength. But being a Maatr was not easy and it had drained her resources considerably. As a result she had grown as frail as most dogs twice or thrice her age. Nature had a way of balancing things out in the end. She could no longer run, jump, bark or fight even half as well as she once did. 

But there was one thing she could do as well if not better than ever. 

Scent. 

Even as the rest of her body and senses shrivelled away and weakened, her sense of smell remained strong. In fact, due to her eyesight fading and her other senses failing, she had come to rely almost entirely on that sense of smell, and used it to great advantage. Where other dogs would use a combination of sight and hearing and smell to make decisions, choose directions and otherwise pursue various courses of actions, Sarama relied mainly on her nose to lead her through the last remaining months, perhaps years, of her life. Dogs that grow blind or deaf will often do the same, coming to rely on the one sense their kind trusted the most. For eyes could be deceived by illusions, sounds could resemble one another or be mistaken, but smells were pure and perfect. No scent was quite like another, and even groups of scents, while sharing an affinity and similarity, were easily discernible from one another. To a dog, the world was a world of smells, each to its own. Not a black and white world but a universe where each and every scent was an unique, distinct shade of colour. Sarama often confused men with one another, or even with trees and horses, and she would puzzle over sounds for hours sometimes, unable to fathom their meaning, such as the nasal reptitive sounds recited over and over by the little humans in the ashram each day, but she never confused smells. Smells were sacred. Thus had the great creator of dogkind made all her followers in Her image. Go forth and scent the world, it is your’s to sniff and snuffle to your nose’s content. 

It was this sense of smell that told her that the good Maatr was in trouble. 

She milled about at the edges of the fight in the ashram grounds, barking mostly and snarling and nipping a little, but mostly keeping away from the flailing limbs and hooves and nasty metal cutting things that humans used to harm one another. Her brood was doing admirably well, participating and assisting their human friends with great enthusiasm and success. She was very proud of them. But she knew better than to try to fight as they fought, for if she received so much as a cut to her vital organs or a hard blow, she knew she would not survive it. The last litter or two had taken a heavy toll on her. Three of her pups had been born still-born and of the remaining four only two survived beyond the first year, and even those two were relatively frail and prone to illness. 

Also, there was a constant pain in her birthing chamber that only worsened as time went by, and she sensed that this pain was caused by some inner canker that would ultimately be the death of her. She knew this and accepted it with the equanimity of all animalkind, for life and death were one and the same thing, and this world or the next, they all belonged to Pashupati, lord of animals. Not understanding names or the human words by which they called to their own kind as well as her kind, she did not know that she had been named after the great Sarama herself, matrix of all dogkind. But even so, she knew that all dogs, good or nasty, smelly or sweet, toothless or sharp-fanged, must lay down someday, never to rise again. So it was to be with her and so it would be with every living creature. 

But there was nothing wrong with her sense of smell. On the contrary. And as a downwind from the east brought a fresh batch of scents to her keen black nostrils, she became aware that the Good Maatr, the one who lived in a kennel apart from the others, with her two little pups, all three of whom were exceedingly kind and generous to Sarama as well as her brood, and who had nursed her and many of her offspring through many ailments and injuries, that good matriarch was in trouble. She could smell the scent of her blood and her sweat, ripe with fear and anger, the peculiar mixture of the two that exuded from a being when it was on the verge of death. She knew that scent well, she knew she would smell it on herself someday soon. And it was not right that Maatr should be exuding that scent. 

Barking loudly, she tried to attract the attention of some of her brood. But some of them were busy finishing off the metal-furred men that had fallen off the backs of their horses, and the rest were chasing after the ones who were trying to ride away. The humans she and the other dogs had accompanied here were busy fighting and chasing too, and paid her no heed. She was, after all, just one of thirty dogs barking and running around!

So she turned and made away on her own. 

She did not have far to go. In moments, she found the spot from which the wind had carried the Maatr’s scent to her. It was a little enclave set off from the main ashram, and as such not directly visible from there. 

The scenario was bad, worse than she had expected. 

There were several of the horse-riding bad men here, waving those horrible metal things that cut and hurt terribly and that dogs must avoid being struck by at all costs, on pain of death. A few of them lay dead or mortally wounded on the ground, their horses milling about or slipping away into the woods to try and find their fellow equines. But a pack of more than one paw’s worth and less than two paws’ worth still surrounded the tree before which the Maatr stood, defending herself with her own metal thing. 

It was good that Maatr had a metal thing to defend herself. But Sarama sensed that Maatr had been up on the tree not long before, and from that position had shot those flying wooden missiles that hurt from afar. That was how she had killed so many of her attackers already. But apparently she had run out of wooden things to shoot and had been forced to use the metal thing and now she was at a grave disadvantage. For there were many of the men and only one of her, and they were clad in that iron-scented metal fur which no dog could bite through for fear of breaking her teeth, and they were very vicious, snarling brutes who seemed to want nothing more than to tear her throat out and rip out her guts. 

Sarama did not wish to see Maatr lay down here and end her life. She loved Maatr and her young cubs.