part0051

Sending out Shuko to see how much of the army was out there at the entrance, Kalki had left for Madira’s Chalice where everyone had gathered. There were other elders as well. The entire tavern was filled with the village folks, some worried, while some were ranting about giving up the battle. When they all saw Kalki and Lakshmi coming together, their voices grew silent.

Kalki walked forward, his arms by his side, while his impassive face swivelled to see everyone from the village. They were all frightened, worried, almost on the verge of hopeless fear.

Kalki said, “I don’t want to impose my will, but if you care about this village, detest those monsters that stand outside and then go to Indravan, stand outside the caves, and don’t let them destroy it.”

“What if they kill us?” one of them asked.

“They won’t.” Kalki licked his dry lips, his hands shaking even as he sought to continue, “If you all stand together.”

Another one shouted from the crowd, “Will you win?”

Kalki sighed. That was a scary question. He wanted to be honest and tell them it was difficult, but his hands were clasped by another pair of hands, warm and soft. They were of Lakshmi’s, who gave him an acknowledging nod.

“Yes.” Kalki had a surge of energy inside him. “The very fact that we don’t believe we will win is exactly why we will lose. We must begin to believe, in the most optimistic way, that we will rise from this darkness and beat the monsters who decided to take away our tradition.”

No one uttered another word. Silence begin to creep in. Kalki didn’t like it. It meant they had begun to believe in him. That’s what he wanted, right? Why did he immediately fear this hope towards him? Why was he so afraid of taking a responsibility? The lives of many people now rested on him, many families and their children looked up to him. They believed he could do it. The pressure was intense. There was a little part of him that felt he should go back in time and not stand on the pedestal, proclaiming his adversarial attitude towards the city royals. He was just a village boy from a small place. Perhaps he had dreamt too big.

He couldn’t have these thoughts. He tightly cupped his hands with Lakshmi’s and gave a nod at the village folks before moving inside. Time changed people, but our choices dictated whether it was for the better or for the worse.

The inside of the tavern was haphazard. Half were climbing the stairs carrying boulders, rocks and weapons, while others were mapping out, standing close to the fire lamps and candles. The smell of sweat and the palpable adrenaline was overpowering. Each volunteer gave a nod at Kalki; it was a sign of respect and admiration. He had gained a lot of that over these period of days, but they were all so young, so naïve. Would they be able to fight?

He reached the main room where Arindam sat silently in the corner. Kripa was leaning forward and tracing the map that was placed on the centre table. Devadatta was there with Arjan and Bala as well. Arjan had a new weapon: a bow and arrow, a fit choice for a lad like him. Bala had a mace now, heavier than him, but he carried it effortlessly. Devadatta didn’t carry anything, just like Kripa.

He had said to Kalki, Shambala was a village where weapons were an extraordinary overture. There was no armoury in Shambala as it was an agricultural village. Things had changed now, of course.

“Where were you, mate?” Kripa said.

Kalki left Lakshmi’s hand and made his way around the table. “All right, what do we see?”

“What does your parrot see?”

He hadn’t returned till now. Was he hit by an arrow? He hoped not.

“We checked from the top of this inn,” Arjan spoke aloud, silencing the others. “The entrance of the village is blocked completely. There are tents erected in the forest. The army, well they are quite different from what we had expected.”

“Do they have snakes on their breastplates?” Kalki recalled how there were Nagas, policing the streets in Indragarh. Perhaps they would have come all the way.

“No. In fact, there was no symbol at all. Just armour, and some of them, if I recall, didn’t have any armour at all.”

Lakshmi sat on the ground instantly, as if she had heard some terrible news. Kalki came to her rescue as he held her arm. “What happened?”

“No symbols, which means, they don’t follow a God of their own,” Lakshmi said. “That means…”

“Rakshas,” ended Kripa, with his voice grave and hoarse.

“No,” gasped Devadatta, as he cowered against the wall.

Kalki knew why everyone was worried. The most fascinating part about Gurukul was the fact that he had learnt about the Tribals, the once homogenous race that coexisted with Manavs, but who had long since been disbanded. One of the foremost men who had begun the rebellion for his fight for survival was King Dashanan of Eelam, down in the south. He was the same man Kalki had seen when he had Channeled and gone back in time. He was the man who was exiting a flying machine.

Rakshas, in the most realistic term, were ravagers. They didn’t care. They didn’t mind. They would eat their own after killing them. They had no remorse. They were creatures of the dark. And they were Tribals. But unlike Pisaches, the ones who had lost their mind, Rakshas were supremely intelligent. They weren’t pawns. They were all dark-skinned, one of their major features, and many of their names were related to their earlier chiefs. They didn’t have a God, because they believed in themselves; positing faith in war and its consequences. They didn’t have armour because they didn’t need it.

“Sarpanch ji.” Kalki turned towards Devadatta. “There are a number of people waiting outside,” he said, as he looked at the old, weak man who wouldn’t be of any use to them here. “You must guide them to Indravan, where you have to make them shield the entrance of the cave. They’ll be protected, under the wing of Lord Indra.”

Devadatta nodded. “May the thunder of Vajra be with you, son.” He nodded at everyone and briskly exited from the room.

As he did, a parrot entered from the half-opened door, gliding inside. But before he could even say anything, Arjan stormed in anger. “You made so many people go there to the one place where the enemies want to go. Don’t you understand? Has your mind been thickened with all this religious nonsense?”

An unbeliever he was, Kalki knew, but the anger was so real that Kalki had to tell him the rationale behind his action. “I sent them there, not to be in any God’s wing, but to be standing outside in large numbers, because no matter how big the army is, they will not kill anyone on a holy land.”

“They are Rakshas, they don’t believe in what is holy.” Arjan carefully settled back now, perhaps a pang of embarrassment finally breaking through his angry obstinacy.

“But the person who is leading them would believe in it,” Kalki retorted.

Bala coughed to interfere between the brothers’ quarrel. “And who would that be? Parrot, seize the moment and regale us with your unlimited vision of knowledge!”

The parrot squawked after watching everyone. “LADY! LADY! TALL LADY!” Kalki got the answer.

“Well, we know who is leading them now.” Kalki made Shuko sit over his shoulder. Arjan was still angry, while Kripa was just watching the drama around him, silently.

“Mates, today is not the day to fight amongst ourselves. We have to fight against them.”

Kalki nodded as he came to the map and began to study the in-depth cartography of Shambala.

“The entrance is here,” he pointed at the north-east end of the village, “the pillars cover the two ends. Have we blocked the entrance?”

“No,” Bala said. “But the archers are ready to hit them from far.”

“They are Rakshas,” Kripa said. “Their skins are tougher than the average. An arrow made of bamboo would do little harm to them. We need to harm them repeatedly to drive them back.”

Bala’s mouth went grim. He hadn’t expected that.

“Look at this,” Kalki’s finger danced over the long conical hillsides. The two terrains, on either side, were slanting and gave way downwards. “What if we bring two boulders on either side, and push them down? That’ll take them by surprise.”

Kripa studied the terrain carefully and gave a grudging smile. “Not bad, just like how your brother had planned, but it won’t kill many.”

“We can block their way, perhaps,” Kalki said. “And harm the others.”

“Sounds fair,” Kripa said. “What about the others who make past the boulder? You see, a war doesn’t end in a day, it goes on for quite a few days, and so they can push and break through.”

“We have people ready to throw your explosives,” added Arjan quietly.

Lakshmi had come forward, watching all the planning. “Yes, they could throw it at them from the trees that we have here and there,” she pointed at the forest that densely surrounded the place. “Rakshas are afraid of heights, right?”

“Those were the old times,” Kripa shrugged. “Many have overcome that handicap and chosen to conquer their fear.”

Lakshmi pursed her lips.

“Catapults can be used from either end,” Arjan said, pointing to the opposite side of the area where the Rakshas would enter from, and come in the main circle. “We can throw fire boulders at them.”

Kalki listened to all of those ideas. “There will be no close combat, all right?”

“Even if we wanted to, we can’t. There are too many of them and we are quite less in number.”

Kalki turned to Shuko. “How many?”

“That’s helpful, bird!” exclaimed Bala irritatedly.

“How reliable are the catapults?”

“We haven’t tried them enough,” Arjan admitted. “They have come earlier than they were supposed to.”

Lakshmi said, “The amount of resources we have would just last us for a day or perhaps two in the battle.”

Kalki shook his head. He couldn’t understand how to solve the issue. “Arjan, I want you to put most of the archers here on the east, and a few over the terrains on the west. The south will be empty as there are only huts and they don’t care about them. I would like you to send the infantry in groups of ten to each house and scout if everyone has left for Indravan. If a Rakshas finds anyone alone in one of our homes…I want fifty men, bearing axes and swords, with Lyla and Sagar leading them,” Kalki concluded. “That’ll give us a systematic way of working rather than just ramming them forward.”

“The question is why haven’t they entered till now?” Roshan Mitra, biting his nails, asked. Kalki turned to see him. Need to get into my headspace again. “Don’t you all think it’s kind of odd to not attack an unguarded entrance? I mean, they should be all over it.”

The entire room was silent.

“They can be getting their supplies, woodcutter,” Lyla spat. “Like us, they must be planning.”

“Or…” Lakshmi gasped. “I read it in a book that the war doesn’t start until…”

There was a huge bang on the door before she could complete her sentence. Kalki nodded his head, signalling to hold the thought while he went for the door.

Kalki opened the door to find a tall man, with uneven teeth, perhaps half-broken, standing outside with three more men. They were dark as coal, with hair that was unbelievably matted.

Kalki had been in Indragarh, but he hadn’t laid his eyes on the Rakshas properly, for there were next to none in the main city area. The few that were still present were in Lord Kali’s employment. By the look of the Rakshas, they were exactly what he had imagined them to be—ugly and grotesque, though not imbeciles like the Mlecchas. And they were tall; perhaps their average size was of Bala’s height, somewhat more perhaps.

“A message for you from Lady Durukti,” the messenger said, his voice having a thick Dakshini ring to it, as their origins were in Eelam, which was south of Illavarti.

Kalki opened the scroll and began to read it while Kripa just glanced at it and backed off. Bala, Lyla, Sagar and the others had lined to see the scroll each, reading it again and again to comprehend what the so-called Lady Durukti had written.

The messenger returned to his horse and looked at the tavern. He scoffed, and with his people, they mockingly laughed, speaking in their own dialect. It was said that the unrelentingly hot Dakshini sun made their skin so dark. Others gave it a spiritual spin, by ascribing it to their sinful way of living.

But even faced with the horror of their façade, Kalki knew all these tales about them being supernatural were bogus, because they were built and armed differently but were similar to Manavs, representing an entire different culture. That also means they were killable. Kalki found hope in that thought. A ghost is only scary till you see it. Then it just becomes an image.

“We do not wish to harm queer folks like you. We hope you choose the right decision,” they all scoffed in unison. And then they rode off, their retreating horses’ hooves setting into motion dust from the ground.

The scroll said: “Either surrender now, or have a close combat duel between the two best fighters from each side. Whoever wins, will seize the result without any protest.”