Chapter 25

In the Hornet’s Nest

The battle was raging. Something had happened that had attracted the nearby groups to the third circle. Shwet Guru and the rest of the Rakt Sainik were fighting as hard as they could. They were surrounded by at least sixty men, but there was no surrender.

Chandra and the others looked at each other, unsure of what to do. But then, Chandra saw from the corner of his eye. Pradyuman was fighting four men at once. His double swords were out and deflecting the enemy attacks easily. Chandra knew that his uncle could take ten men alone, but he was not going to take any chances. They were fighting the famed Mrityusena, after all.

Within moments, Chandra’s swords were out and he started sprinting towards his uncle. Vidyut saw what he was doing and rallied the others behind him.

Pradyuman was a little separated from the others, as if he was going away from the group when the battle began. Chandra reached him in no time. One of the men saw him and broke away from the fight to take on the newcomer. He raised his sword but Chandra was not in a mood to play.

He had trained harder than the man could imagine. Before his sword could come down, Chandra’s swords moved swiftly in a counter swing. The strike was so hard that the man’s sword flew away from his hand. Then Chandra landed a kick squarely in his chest. The man was thrown back on to a rock. Just then, an arrow flew from somewhere behind him and struck the fallen man in the chest.

Without looking back, Chandra jumped and took two men who were fighting Pradyuman down. Before the third man could understand what had happened, Pradyuman’s sword entered his chest.

Chandra quickly jumped back to his feet and stood by his uncle’s side. The odds were even now. The two men looked at this impressive duo with four swords shining in the sun between them. For a moment, they stood there thinking, but they attacked nevertheless. Chandra took the one on the right, his left sword stopping the man’s swing. He swung aiming at his belly but the man moved back and pulled his hand for another swing. Chandra’s left sword stayed high to attract the man’s eye but he ducked and thrust his right sword forward and up. As the man swung, Chandra’s right sword entered his upper arm. Before the swing was halfway, he lost the grip on his sword and screamed in agony. Chandra swung on his spot and his left elbow crashed into the man’s nose. As the man fell unconscious, Chandra pulled his sword out. He turned to see that his uncle had already dealt with the other man and the rest of his friends had arrived with Vidyut.

“Nice shot!” Chandra whispered to Aditi. He did not see her smile. His mind was too focussed now.

“I am so glad you did not stay back,” Pradyuman told him.

They had moved away from the main battle now.

“What happened here?” Vidyut asked, looking at the mayhem that had unfolded only a few paces away.

“There is no time to explain.” Pradyuman shook his head. “There is no way all of us will be able to go and fight Kaalkesh. I need you boys to find the palace and get in. Find everyone you can and come back to us. If some of us are still alive, we will find Acharya and the others.”

“They have seen us!” Parth exclaimed.

The others turned and saw that five or six fighters had broken away from the main battle and were coming towards them.

As Aditi rained arrows on them, Pradyuman said, “Quickly now. Go. We will handle them here.”

Parth looked uncertain, Jayant and Aditi were scared and Vidyut was ready to fight the incoming horde, but Chandra looked at his uncle and nodded.

“Come on! We don’t have time to lose. If they take Grahaan inside, we may never find the entrance,” Chandra said to the others.

Parth embraced his father and the four of them started moving towards the centre. Chandra saw his uncle whispering something to Vidyut but he couldn’t hear it. The commotion was too much.

The five of them quickly sprinted back where the men had taken Grahaan.

There were no Mrityusena soldiers. They had gone forward to join the fight.

“Will they win?” Parth asked his brother.

“Yes, they will,” Chandra replied with much more confidence than he had inside. But this was not the time to think of the result. It was the time to do what was right and let Lord Ram decide the fate.

They kept moving as stealthily as possible, without compromising on speed. The five of them were the last hope of finding the Demon’s palace.

Soon enough, from behind the rubble of a fallen house, rose the only standing structure in the city. The warden’s house had clearly been rebuilt. “A nice cover to hide a small entrance,” thought Chandra.

“Look!” said Jayant, pointing to something. Chandra followed his gaze to the four soldiers who had brought Grahaan, standing in the front courtyard.

“How are we going to do this?” Parth asked, looking at everyone.

Vidyut had already made up his mind. He said, “Aditi, you stay behind and wait for our signal. The rest of you, follow me. We will distract them and take them out. If there is any runner, Aditi will take him out. Once we clear the path, we will enter the house and look for this entrance that you talk of.”

Parth had told Vidyut where they suspected the palace was, as they had run back.

Soon they were strolling calmly in the courtyard. Chandra saw a body, his throat slit cleanly, lying on the grass.

The men in the courtyard saw them coming and came forward.

“What is happening over there?” asked one of them.

“Someone has attacked us. We have been sent to bring reinforcements,” Vidyut said, looking beyond the man as if he was talking about the men inside.

“Let us go then,” one of them said.

“What about the ones inside?” asked Jayant.

“There are only two of them inside with the commander. They won’t come.”

The statement brought doom for the man and his mates. Within moments, Vidyut’s sword was out and he attacked without hesitation. The others joined in. The Mrityusena men were shocked and unprepared. Soon they were lying on the grass.

Aditi joined, as the others started walking towards the house entrance.

Without losing another moment, they entered the place. It was huge and looked deserted. They opened the main gate that led from the entrance hall to the inner quarters. For some time, the five warriors stood at the gate thinking.

“What now? Where to?” Jayant asked, looking lost.

“Split up,” Chandra said without any hesitation.

“I will go alone,” said Vidyut. “Chandra and Aditi will take one corridor and Jayant and Parth will take the other. We will meet back here.”

Chandra nodded. He and Aditi chose the corridor on the far left. The corridor was dark; the only light that was coming in was from the small ventilators on the roof. The stone walls had become hot in the sun.

“I will stay in front,” Chandra said.

“Don’t try to be a hero. Do you think I need your protection?” Aditi said sharply.

“How can I think something like that about you? You have already saved my life twice,” Chandra said.

They were going deep inside the corridor and slowly the light was getting dimmer and dimmer.

“I have swords. I can defend us easily from a surprise attack. You will get more time to shoot an arrow if you are at the back,” said Chandra.

Finally, they reached an area where small doors opened on both sides.

“You are not as dumb as I thought you were, when we first met,” said Aditi, concealing a smile. Then she said, “Should we check the doors?”

“Yes, we should. Just see if any door is unlocked,” Chandra said as he sheathed his left sword.

Aditi hung her bow on her shoulder, pulled out an arrow, held it like a dagger, and started trying the doors. After trying all doors, they looked at each other.

“I think these have been locked since ages,” Aditi said.

“Then why make them in the first place?” Chandra stood there thinking.

They had reached the end of the corridor and it was a dead end.

“I think we should head back and see what the others have found,” Aditi said.

They started walking back, side by side.

Chandra’s mind was getting numb. Everything about this Mrityusena was such a messy web of deceit. The Demon was cunning. He believed in distraction and diversion. Every story that he had heard about this man seemed to be true—be it the attack on the ashram, betraying Suryagarh, protecting the house or building an underground palace. The bar was indeed high.

The others were already there. None of them had found anything. Just more rooms, some open and some closed.

“Did you find any courtroom? Rambh’s quarters? Guard chambers? Anything?” Chandra asked in desperation.

“I did find a rather large room. But not big enough to be a courtroom. But there was nothing there except a few old paintings and a big bed, which appeared as though nobody had slept in it for years,” said Vidyut.

“We checked three corridors. Two are still left. I want to see those paintings. Point me in the right direction and the rest of you check the other two corridors,” said Chandra.

Soon Chandra and Aditi were standing in a room that was once the bedroom of the warden. Abandoned in a city that was once ruled from that very room. A few old paintings still adorned its walls. They were of a man, a woman and a young boy. Chandra climbed up a table nearby and examined the painting hanging above it.

Aditi watched with a surprised look on his face, as Chandra jumped from one table to another, examining each painting, one by one. Just then, a voice rang out through the deserted rooms. “We found something!”

Aditi and Chandra ran out of the room together to realise that it was Parth who had exclaimed. He was running out of breath.

“We found the courtroom. And we found something else.” A smile appeared on his lips. “We found Grahaan’s dagger.”

And then the three of them ran, until they reached the hall that Chandra had wanted to see since the time he had entered the house.

“Yes, this is perfect. This has to be the place,” said Chandra, excitedly.

The hall was huge with gates on all four walls. On the far side, there was a raised platform where the throne was kept. The floor and the walls were made up of stone boulders. Small chairs were kept on both sides for the court members to sit on.

“Where did you find the dagger?” asked Chandra.

“Over here,” said Jayant, waving his hand from above the platform.

Quickly, they ran through the length of the room and jumped on to the platform.

“Here,” said Parth and pointed. A dagger lay there on the floor just on the edge.

Chandra sat down and examined the floor. Large square boulders made up the platform, just like the floor. They were neatly cut and laid symmetrically. The floor looked beautiful.

“That is very high for a courtroom.” Vidyut had arrived too and was looking at the platform. “People sitting below will have to raise their heads very high to look at the man sitting on the throne.”

Chandra was thinking the same thing. Even kings did not sit on a dais so high. “Vidyut, come and stand near the platform. Here,” said Chandra pointing to the place where the dagger was lying. Vidyut did as he was told.

“Now take your knife and try to put it where we found this dagger.”

Vidyut raised his hand and slid his knife silently on the dais. His knife pushed the dagger and lay there.

“Grahaan is as tall as you are.” Chandra smiled. “This is the only way he could have left a trail without attracting attention of the guards. The entrance is somewhere here.” He pointed at the dais.

They all started looking, pushing, knocking on every stone and pulling every lever-like thing in the hall. After trying everything they could imagine, they gave up.

“It’s not here,” Parth said. He had been pushing a boulder on the floor in front of the dais.

“It has to be.” Chandra looked all around hoping to get a clue. It had to be.

The hall was perfect. A large vacant area was needed for an underground excavation. If the excavation was done before the house was built, everyone would have seen it. It had to be done in total secrecy; otherwise, what was the point? And this was the only hall large enough for the job.

“I guess you will have to find it then,” Jayant said and went towards the throne on the dais. “I will catch my breath.” Like a dead body, he fell limp on the throne.

No one understood what happened but everyone, except Jayant, saw it. The boulder that Parth was pushing started moving in as if something was pulling it.

Jayant jumped to his feet as he heard the sound and joined the others in watching an engineering marvel unfold in front of their eyes. The slabs of stone used in making the dais were moving back and to the side, one by one, revealing a stairway that turned somewhere in the darkness.

“What did you do?” Aditi asked Jayant, who was still looking at the stairway with his mouth wide open.

“I just sat on the throne,” he replied.

“Remind me to get you a throne to sit on if we reach Gurukul alive,” Parth said happily.

“What now?” Aditi asked.

“We go in and get my friends out,” Vidyut said and started to move towards the stairway.

Just then, there was a sound of an arrow being shot. Chandra pulled Vidyut just in time as an arrow whizzed past his ear. A voice rang out from inside.

“Did I not tell you stay outside and keep a watch? Now they know where the entrance is,” the voice said.

Another voice answered, “So, what? They are only five. We will kill them and no one will know anything.”

The five warriors stepped back. Slowly from the darkness, two men emerged in the hall. Long black hair covered their face, bows hung from their shoulders, and they were wielding axes in both hands.

***

The old man saw the battle breaking out.

He had come all the way from Suryagarh, following the direction given to him by his friends, and he had reached Sindhudurg. On arrival, he saw the Elders’ army camping outside and a city on high alert. He observed the movements of the two armies and understood that a battle was inevitable.

The Elders’ army had gotten in undetected, before two riders had exposed them. They were few in number but fighting hard. If he wanted, he could leave the children fighting and enter the house. But he needed help getting into Kaalkesh’s palace. For getting help, he needed to give help. The ones attacking Sindhudurg were fighting against odds. It was time to even those odds.

He calmly stepped over the dead bodies, picked up a fallen sword and started killing. He was going to kill every single one who had helped Kaalkesh plunder the temple that was once the most sacred place in the world for him.

***

Prastar waited for the troops to clear out. He knew the Raktsena had tried to enter the city and was discovered. The troops that had surrounded the warden’s house were moving towards the scene of the battle, away from the house.

Two soldiers remained guarding the post closest to him, while the rest joined the fight. Prastar knew this was his chance. He came out of his cover with his hands raised in submission.

“Help! Help!” he screamed.

“Stop right there!” cried a soldier.

The men had seen him and started moving towards him. “The fools,” Prastar thought to himself.

“There are more of them over there?” he said and pointed somewhere behind him just as two soldiers came within reach.

The men looked behind, their gaze wavered for a moment, which was enough for the deadly hunter.

From behind his back, Prastar pulled out a sword and moved it swiftly. The two soldiers did not see what had hit them. The pointed tip of the sword sliced one’s throat. Before the other one could understand what had happened, Prastar put his left hand behind the man’s head and thrust the sword into the man’s heart.

“Sleep now. Your work is done,” Prastar whispered into the man’s ear as he died. He then pulled his sword, sheathed it and walked calmly towards the warden’s house.