The sound of a horn awoke Jaipal from his sleep, eyes wide, chest heaving, sweat soaked hands curling by instinct about the hilt of the sword laying on the mat next to him. For a span of two heartbeats he waited, staring at the darkness above him, at the shadows cast by the nets hanging from the ceiling from the embers of the hearth, watching them dance like knives hacking at a thicket of sugar-cane, wishing, hoping, praying, that the sound would not come again. He was disappointed. Another blast, this one somehow more insistent than the last, accompanied by shouts from outside and confused murmurs from the dark shapes strewn about the floor of the hut on their own mats all around him. “Shit…” He seethed. For a brief moment, he considered not responding, considered just lying there, pretending to sleep. “Sorry nayaka, I didn’t hear the alarm!” He could say, to just let someone else fucking deal with it. “What’s going on brother?” A voice from the man besides him mumbled, the last drams of sleep dragging at his tongue, causing it stumble over the words. That did it.

Jaipal cursed and threw himself to his feet. He had slept, as he always did, with his sword belted to his waist and his dhoti bound up about his loins with a dagger sheathed in the knot. It chaffed his thighs and collected the sweat and itched something fierce, but it saved him precious seconds. He grabbed his bow and quiver and the wadded up turban he used as a pillow and looked down at the shadow swathed face looking up at him. “Stay here Sohanpal! Get some sleep!” His little brother’s eyes fluttered as if he thought himself still in a dream as another blast of the horn sounded from edge of the village. Jaipal didn’t wait to see if his brother understood him. The others were rising as well as he made his way around the hut’s central hearth, feeling for a moment the vacuous gaze of the strange, rudely carven pitrs starring from at him from its four corners. Did they begrudge his presence, those ancestral spirits of the ones whose house they had seized? Almost certainly, thought Jaipal, though he was fairly certain that neither he nor any of his fellow guildsmen had slain it’s prior occupants.

He rushed out into the night, bare feet pounding on beaten earth, stringing his bow as he ran. A tangled snarl of houses, walled gardens, and tents met him, through which armed men were running, swords and axes pounding at their hips. The horn sounded again. It came from the north, from the moat, from his position. “Arrggghh!” Jaipal snarled and tore of into the night, overtaking and dodging past the running forms heading towards the alarm. Stars twinkled like rubies in the roof of a cyclopean stupa and a gibbous moon hung low beneath them, revealing in silvered silhouette the the battlements of a fortress looming above the village. It was towards this that he ran.

It was hard to make out just what exactly was going on, but the twang of bowstring and the splash of arrow and stone upon water told him enough. Passing through the palisade of rammed earth and fire blackened stake which guarded the siege camp, Jaipal saw the moat which surrounded the town of Salwa, appearing like a glittering slick of spilled naptha in the night. Beyond the palisades which enclosed the suburb the army occupied, a semi-circle of bamboo mantlets had been erected, their faces covered with ox-hide and painted with a mix of eight-spoked wheels and rude phalli that only career soldiers would think to combine, and beyond that, the causeway, a berm of roughly piled earth and stone and brick and pottery which he and his fellow sreni soldiers had spent the last month building across the moat beneath a hail of arrows and stones and piss-pots and dead animals thrown from the town walls, and the bastard Salvi, those rebels, those miscreants, those dharma affronting dasas, where trying to destroy it!

He could see their half-naked forms in the glow of the watch-fires piled high at the edge of the moat. They must have been let down by ropes and ladders from the walls, for there was no possible way that the opening of the town’s gate would have been missed! They assailed the causeway with shovels and broadswords, while others erected mantlets of their own and fired upon his fellow soldiers! “Herakles take you all! May you be reborn as worms!” Above the tumult, Jaipal heard a booming voice cry out, and he saw a huge man kneeling behind a broad shield, firing a bamboo bow of so great a draw that he had to rest it on the ground to fire! 

“Vakpati!” Jaipal shouted as he charged and slid behind the mantlet, his words punctuated by the thunk of shaft against the siegework’s surface. “Jaipal! You’re here! I assumed you pressers would still be sleeping!” The big man smiled, his mouth framed by a wild beard. Jaiapl smiled back, though he felt not a hint of mirth. “Someone needs to make sure you stonecutters don’t mistake your own faces for shields!”. More arrows smashed into the pavise, the bamboo poles shuddering against their shoulders. “We have to move the mantlets up!” Jaipal said. “Yes I know!” “We need to take out their mantlets!” “Yes I fucking know that too!” Vakpati spat, and Jaipal drew an arrow and stepped around the shield, aiming quickly, loosing, and not waiting to see whether it had flown true, but willing it, Buddha help him, to find flesh. A slinger’s bullet smashed into the ground where he had been standing seconds later. The archers on the walls outranged them, but to have any hope of dislodging the defenders working at the causeway, they would have to advance, a maddening proposition.

“Alright, you grab the mantlet and I’ll-.” “Brother! Are you alright?” “Sohanpal?” Jaipal looked up as the young man came running up and knelt besides them, his bow-strung, his turban piled messily atop his head. He felt a sudden surge of anger, which he stifled by punching the ground. “I told you to stay in the fucking hut Sohanpal!” “You always say that!” His brother protested, his eyes laughing inspite of the missiles falling all about them. “And you never fucking listen! If I you die mother will-.” “Let the lad fight Jaipal! He’s more than proven himself! He has the Buddhas own luck! Good to see you!” Vakpati slammed an immense hand into Sohanpal’s shoulder, almost bowling the younger man over. “God fucking dammit! Fine! But you’re carrying the mantlet!” Sohanpal smiled again and touched the ground in the sign of the bhumispara. “I hear and I obey brother! I may look half-dead but I can hear you!” The little shit was almost laughing.

Jaipal growled and shook his head, then looked around. More pavises were being brought up, and soldiers were pilling up behind them, all looking around at each-other as if waiting for someone to make the first move. He took a deep breath. “Alright, on the count of three, we’ll start moving! That should get everyone else off their asses!” “Wait for Srichandra, Jaipal! Let him give the order!” Jaipal spat. “Fuck the nayaka! We need to kill these dasa fucks!” Something was building in his chest, something like a flame, and with every arrow which hit the mantlet, it was as if oil were poured upon it. “Hah! And you say I’m eager for blood! Peace Jaipal, the nayaka will have a plan!” “Well where the fuck is he?” 

As if in answer, there was the blast of a horn from their rear, and all turned to see a chariot approaching. It was not hitched to any horses, but was pushed by dasas and had a large pavise erected at its front, and flanked by other slaves cringing beneath great bamboo shields. Behind that came a troop of pakkandinos in scaled mail and masked helms bearing maces and axes, and at their head strode Srichandra, their nayaka, and behind them all, a team of oxen driven by a teamster whose inventive invectives towards the beasts he drove could be heard even over the din of battle. 

Srichandra brought a great, snake shaped, copper ramsinga to his lips and blew it, the sound booming out across the arrow studded field, seeming to set the watch-fires blazing to new heights of fury, then with a cry Jaipal could not quite make out set the dasas shield-bearers charging forward with the chariot. “He’s here now!” Exclaimed Sohanapal. The fire surged and the stars became feral in the sky and to Jaipal the moon seemed a chakram of diamond aimed at the earth itself. “Let’s fucking go! “Zeus and the Maitreya!”” “Zeus and the Maitreya!” “Zeus and the Maitreyaa!” 

The cry was taken up by all the sreni soldiers as they surged forward almost as one, a tide of shield and swords. The chariot went first, flanked by the slaves, then the soldiers with their mantlets, meanwhile a constant stream of arrow fire came pouring down on those hapless Salvi, who were forced to retreat behind their own mantlets, having made little progress on the causeway. In answer the fire from the walls became even more intense, and screams of pain rang out from amidst the assaulting soldiers. Jaipal fired as he advanced, shouting as he loosed every arrow, his quiver half dry before they reached the midpoint of the causeway, a joy such as he never felt outside of battle overtaking his heart. A man fell to his left, an arrow poking out obscenely from an eye socket, and it seemed for a moment as if the the assault might break, but Srichandra sounded again his mighty horn and Vakpati began to shout along with Jaipal and the rest of the strenibala took up their cry and within moments the chariot and the first mantlets were set within range of the walls. 

Shafts hissed like angry serpents through the air and bodies tumbled from the parapets where they were bitten to crash broken and mangled upon the ground below. Wild haired atavis, their bodies completely nude save for the blasphemous tattoos which adorned their black skin, came running forward through the lines of sreni, whooping and shouting in their strange tongue, seemingly headless of the missiles falling all around them, spinning ropes above their heads at the end of which iron hooks gleamed in the torchlight. They sent these sailing through the air to land upon the shields of the enemy, and with a crack of a whip the oxen where driven backwards and the ropes went taught and the mantlets were ripped from their stakes and the unarya dasas who cowered behind them were left suddenly exposed. They turned and ran for the walls as the whole srenibala cheered with elation and bloodlust and loosed their shafts, many of which found their mark, pinning the enemy to the ground in pools of their own blood. 

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

More shouts went up from the lines and the soldiers parted as the phalanx of pakkandinos charged forward. The enemy attempted to lower ladders of vine and rope from the walls to rescue their panicked comrades, but their efforts were hampered by the constant stream of arrows and sling bullets which came up over the walls at them. One lucky Salvi managed to grab ahold of a rope and begin to climb, but a pair of arrows took him in the shoulder and buttocks and he let go and slumped upon the earth and did not move. The defenders of Salwa turned to make their stand but by then the shock-troops were on them, and they, having no armor, were butchered like cattle at a sacrifice and the ground was churned to mud as if mixed with their blood and their bodies were dismembered so that they might be lost forever in the cycle of samsara and cast into the moat were dark, scaled shapes emerged from the putrid waters to drag them under in sprays of bloody foam.

The srenibala returned to the siege-camp in triumph. The rest of the army, the bhrtaka and the mitra troops, strangely, had stayed in their quarters, though many did come out to greet the guildsmen with cries of triumph and prayers of thanks to the Buddha. Vakpati cursed the apparent indolence of their comrades, but Jaipal just shook his head. Every branch of the army had its own causeway to guard, and so it had been the srenibala’s charge to repel the attack upon theirs, though he did wish to ask the nayaka about it. He did however curse the unnatural energy of his compatriots. 

There would be no sleep tonight. Their casualties had been few, only two dead and a score wounded, and the enemies many. Slaves were rousted from their sleep to start the cookfires early and casks of palm wine were uncorked and the looted swords of the enemy were broken and bent and slathered with oil and the petals of flowers and thrown upon the sacrificial fires which day and night burned in the camp as in glorification of the Triple Gems and as a yagni to the gods of the yavanas and arya both! Vakpati was dragged away by his fellow stonecutters, and Sohanpal by his own guild-mates, and so Jaipal sought out Srichandra, who he found in the village square, squatting beneath the limbs of a garland laden shisham tree whose shadow cast upon the mud and daub wall of a nearby house in the blaze of a sacrificial fire looked like nothing so much as the multi-hooded head of some great naga prince, amidst a knot of his fellow nayakas, both sreni and not. Jaipal stopped to make an offering of rice to the Triple Gems, but by the time he had made his way through his fellow soldiers and thrown the grain to crackle and pop in the flame, a man bearing the fly-whisk of a royal messenger had appeared and lead the assembled captains hurriedly from the village. Jaipal could only narrow his eyes as he watched them disappear into the dark, but he found himself to tired to ponder the import of such a scene and so turned and make his way back to his hut through the press of bodies and amidst the chanted prayers of the monks and the rapidly slurring songs of the soldiers and the lilting twang of a veena, avoiding with mounting annoyance the drunken entreaties from his fellow warriors to join them.

Jaipal ducked into the hut, sighing with unrestrained relief when he saw that it was empty. He unstrung his bow and untied his turban, then brought out a bronze lamp shaped like the flower of a lotus. The fire in the hearth had gone out, and the faces of the pitrs carved into its walls seemed to stare in mute accusation as he filled it with ghee. His hand slipped and some of the ghee fell down, splashing against his leg, and without thinking Jaipal drove a fist into the hearth, with an enraged shout, wincing and flexing his hand a moment later. He had not managed to bloody himself in his rage, but the he knew well enough that his knuckles would bruise, and it seemed to him in that moment that the faces carved into the hearth wrought no small measure of satisfaction from the pain of one who had so dishonored their descendants. The rage was subsiding, and with it, the afterglow of the battle. His comrades songs and ribald conversation reached his ears through the curtained doorway of the hut. He wanted them to shut up, he wanted to join them, he wanted them to be gone, he wanted them to never leave, he wanted… 

 Jaipal didn’t know what he wanted. Had never known, he reflected. All his life had been spent as a barge-hand caught in a swift current, drifting here and there as the tides of suggestion and duty carried him to and fro. He finished filling the lamp, lighting the wick, then washed his feet and face and hands in its warm glow, shutting his eyes as he sat before it to pray. “Goose! There you are!” He opened his eyes, stifling a groan of annoyance. Sohanpal had come looking for him, as he always did. 

“What is it little duck?” He replied, stretching his neck as he did so. Sohanpal threw himself to the ground besides him, his bow resting on his lap, and began digging around through the sack which held his possessions, probably for some of those damned cosmetics he was so fond of. “Unstring it. Always unstring it after battle. How many times have I told you? Did you check the limbs for breaks?” Sohanpal scoffed and shook his head. “Not yet.” He said with a petulance long familiar to Jaipal, but he did as he was told. He always did. Almost. “That was quite a fight!” The young man began. “I think I got one goose! A dasa! I sent him to the next world!” Jaipal did not answer. There was a glee, a satisfaction, in his brothers voice, which set his nerves on edge. “When do you think the siege will be over? Will the King arrive soon and-.” “Why didn’t you wait? Like I told you to.” Jaipal snapped his head towards his younger brother, trying, not entirely successfully, to keep his voice level. Why did his hands shake so?

Sohanpal starred back at him, then shrugged. “You always tell me to do that.” “And you only sometimes listen!” Snapped Jaipal. “I’m a soldier! Like you! How can I run and hide every time the enemy fills their quivers?” “We’re not soldiers duck! We’re oil pressers! We’re srenis! Our place is not to kill, not to enjoy it anyway! Our place is to fight for our King when called to, to bring honor to our guild and our varna, and nothing more! Shit! I should have sent you home already! If any harm were to come to you, mother would-.” “Why didn’t you go home then?” “What?” Jaipal could only stare. “Why didn’t you go home? With Narpal? When the levy was done? Our obligation is forty five days. You’ve been here how long goose?” “I…” Jaipal had no answer. It was a question he had asked himself many times. Why did he stay, when his other brother, and so many of his fellow guild mates and sreni, had served their term and returned home?

“I need the money. Our family, needs the money.” Was the only answer he could muster. “Our family needs you more.” Countered Sohanpal. “But the guild, our father, you know, always wanted to open a press in Mathura! And you know, we always talked about getting a horse-.”  “Ohh fuck that Jaipal! That’s dogshit and you know it.” “Watch your fucking tone!” He growled. “Or what? You’ll hit me like our father did?” Sohanpal stood. Jaipal found suddenly that he was standing too. “I’ll never be like him.” He spat, looking his brother in his eyes. “So you say, but you don’t know what it was like! When Narpal returned without you! We thought you had been killed at first! Mother started to cry the second she saw him walking on that road alone! Then he told us you had signed on for another term! So we waited, and that term passed, then another, and another! You didn’t write! What were we supposed to do? Leave you out here all by yourself? Of course I had to come! You’re not the only one mother will kill!” Jaipal clenched and unclenched his fists. He did not know what to say. 

His brother was right. He had stayed behind. Willingly. Again and again and again resigning his contract. The first term was their duty as vaishyas and sreni to the King. The money only came afterwards. Yes, that is why he had stayed, or so he told himself, that and it was his duty! The Salvi were traitors, despoilers of the perfect rajadharma cultivated by their King, it’s shade like the very bhodi tree the Buddha himself had sat under! To serve the King was, he thought with a desperate fervor, to be a protector of the dharma, and the recalcitrant ganga sangha of the Savi was its foe, a foe second only to that fiend, that burner of monasteries, that killer of monks, that usurper of the Maurya, King Pushyamitra the accursed! And Pushyamitra, may grace ever elude him, was rumored to be a supporter of the rebellion! So he had to stay and fight! How else were he to escape the the eternal chase of his sins? And his sins were many…

“And you have a fucking wife to think about Jaipal!” Sohanpal continued. Jaipal blinked and shook his head to clear it. “So does Narpal!” He rejoined. “Yea, and he returned to her! I don’t! If anyone should be out here its me! I’m not fucking married! How do you think Bauladevi feels with you gone? She’s completely alone!” Bauladevi… A vision of his wife, his beautiful wife, swam before his eyes. He saw her as he had seen her last, smiling with tears in her dark eyes, a golden bulak in her nose and a silvered net resting upon her long dark hair and bangles clanking upon her wrists and legs as she waived to him goodbye, the basket from which she had withdrawn the garland she had placed upon his shoulders as he left clutched against her waist. They had not been married long, nary more than a fortnight had passed from their wedding and the end of their period of observed marital austerities when his sresthin, the master of their guild, had received the call to arms from the king. How long had it been since he had seen her? With a start, Jaipal realized he did not know. A year at least. 

“She’s-.” Sohanpal broke off, something like regret, or perhaps fear, flashing across his face. Jaipal felt suddenly alarmed, the hot night air suddenly no so easily passing into his chest. He took a step forward. “She’s what? Is she okay?” Sohanpal was silent. “Tell me brother!” “It’s just… You just need to return, alright! Surantrana treats her like his slave Jaipal! And mother, fuck, you should see her! Any time they’re in the same room it’s like a mongoose possess her! Anything and everything Bauladevi does around the house is wrong somehow, and she lets her know! She acts like like she’s some courtesan trying to poison her prince!” 

Jaipal slapped him then. He hadn’t even realized he had done it till he felt the sting of flesh against his palm. He blinked. Sohanpal staggered back, a hand clutched to his cheek. He regretted it immediately, knew he had to apologize, but he only warned. “Don’t talk about our mother like that!” His little brother shook his head, straightening himself up. “That’s why you stay brother. You tell me not to enjoy the work, but you enjoy it more than anyone. That’s why you’re in here praying. You always say you’ll never be like father, may he find his peace, but you’re more like him than any of us.” And with that, Sohanpal turned and left the hut. Jaipal reeled as if struck, then fell to his knees. He lay there for he knew not how long, long enough for the lamp to burn down and the first of his guild-mates to come stumbling back as dawn rays began to filter in through the palm-leaf roof, and finally, without ungirding his dhoti, Jaipal lay on his mat to sleep.