As dawns rays wreathed the sandstone parapets of Sagala in scarlet splendor, a posse of horsemen passed beneath her arched gates. They rode on sturdy balakhin ponies, shaggy furred beasts with long manes and wild eyes which did not hesitate to bite nor kick and across whose backs were slung saddles and colorful blankets. There were more than twenty of these riders, and amongst there number were bearded parasikas and sakas with felt shields hung with strings of human teeth and balhavas with fiery suns tattooed upon their foreheads and dark atavis with bolos and nooses and great two-handed shovel-swords and disgraced brahmins who displayed their scared and shaven heads as if they were marks of honor and sindhujan pirates in loose fitting breeches who had traded the decks of a dhow for the saddle of a horse and even a few yavanas, their quivers bristling with javelins, and at their head, rode Xaravalana and Vigraha, his polished scale mail clinking beneath a long cotton khaftan, a bow at his side, a lance across his saddle.
The suburbs of Sagala extended it seemed to the horizon all around them as they rode, the well tended gardens and estates belonging to yavana kyrioi mixed with cattle-markets and riding grounds in which young kshastriyas spurred their mounts to ever greater feats as they trained with bow and lance and languid ponds filled with lilies and exotic water-fowl caught and released by the state naisadas and tusked deer captured at great expense by the veneyara and introduced here so that the ladies of the great families could paddle about in their little boats and tempt them with laughter and grain in fair, outstretched hands. There were a great many stupas, some humble and built of stone or wood, others grand, with gold plates shining upon their bulbous roofs like the scales of a snake, as well as temples to foreign gods. Vigraha and his party passed one such fane, a columned temple to the goddess Athena, where the hiereia had just begun performing the first of the days sacrifices.
The highway they trod was an ancient artery of the Grand Trunk Road, but unlike in many other regions of the former Empire, here the pavestones were slick and new and the kos markers forged of unrusted black iron, with inns and wells well provisioned and placed at regular intervals to service the weary traveler, for one of the Maharaja’s first acts up seizing the throne was to have the roads rebuilt! The suburbs gave way to immaculately cultured fields, golden stalks of barley and veridian spears of sugarcane overlooking flooded paddies fed by the bounteous waters of the Chenab and Ravi rivers, where the tips of the rice-plants had just begun to break the muddy water’s surface, all demarcated by stately rows of thorny silk-cotton trees and boundary stones with inscriptions proclaiming most of the lands to be rajasva, the personal demense of the King, with a few granted as brahmadeya, lands set aside for the maintenance of brahmins and the vedic schools they operated.
There were also ruins, burned out homes and watch-towers and the tumbled forms of old stupas, like pots kicked over onto their side, the grim leavings of King Pushyamitra’s last, ultimately failed attempt to reconquer the lands of the king he had betrayed. At the time, the land of the Five River was riven by sectarian tensions, divided since the end of the Maurya amongst ever-warring ganapadas republics, who could not even pluck their daggers from the backs of their fellows long enough to wield them in defense of the great sangha they all supposedly held in such high esteem! The reign of the cruel Shunga was short lived here, rebellion forcing King Pushyamitra’s armies to return to the east, but not before he had wrought much cruelty and cut short the natural spans of many innocent lives in his quest to extinguish the light of the Buddha completely! At least, that’s what the abbots told their parishioners.
Vigraha’s father had been a minor lord in one of those petty ganapdas, and he had told him straight. Pushyamitra had plundered the temples of all gods, burned the homes of men of all faiths, and when it came time to choose whether a horse be lent to the pulling down of a stupa or to carry looted gold from the villas of the brahmins, he had without fail chosen the later. All kings, no matter what creed they professed, would do the same. His father had lived through those terrible wars, had seen the weakness of the kings and the ganapadas both, and watched as his own father was executed in-front of him, and so when King Demetrius II had come with his army across the Khyber Pass, he had quickly sworn him his sword.
There was the pattern of king, a caste-less foreigner yes, but a king all the same, who could finally bring some measure of peace to this little war-torn corner of what had once been a mighty and prosperous empire! And when Demetrius II had left to fight his brother in the north and General Menander had proclaimed himself Basileus, his father was the first to open his storehouses to the usurper’s troops. “It’s all a game my son!” He had always said. “We can never win, but we can at least stay alive to keep playing!” Well Maharaja Menander was, in Vigraha’s estimation, an even greater king Demetrius II had been, and he would do whatever it took to make sure he stayed upon his throne lest the stories of his father again become reality! Even if it meant starting a war.
The softly swaying fields finally gave way to dusty flatland, the shudras with their backs bent to the weeds to lone weeping fig trees whose low hanging boscage looked like nothing so much as the veil of a grieving widow, hence their name. A few gopalakas standing amidst their herds raised weary eyes to the riders as they pounded down the road, but besides them there were no other signs of habitation to seen. This close to the border, there wouldn’t be. After his conquest, Maharaja Menander had made Sagala his capital, a dangerous choice one would think, given how close it was to the eastern edge of the Basileus’s domain, but that was one of many reasons why Vigraha admired the King. He never shirked from danger, and he hoped he still would not when the time came.
In the distance, the squat turrets of a red-walled fort could be seen shimmering in the rippling heat radiating from the grasslands. That holdfast both guarded and marked the easternmost border of Menander’s domain, and as the zaulkika of the capital, it fell under Vigraha’s administration. But they did not make for the fort. Instead, Vigraha dispatched a single rider, a red haired tocharian with five-too-many throwing knives strapped to his chest, with whispered instructions, and led the rest of the party down an earthen ramp off of the highway, galloping with speed into the ocher sea before them.
They rode for several hours, scarring herds of gazelle who had been hiding from the midday sun in the tall grass and rousing a pair of jackals from the corpse of a beetal goat they had been savaging. They rode passed lumpen tels where once prosperous villages had stood, now given over to the grasses and the snakes and the scavengers and serving only as shelter for passing herdsmen. They rode until the sun began to set and the plains began to rise in gentle slopes, forming a low ring of hills speckled like an egg with golden splotches of dry grass and browning copses of wild chickpea bushes clinging disparately to the narrow defiles in which, when Indra’s humor was good, streams sometimes flowed. They made for one of these hills, finding a narrow, switchback trail obscured by carefully cultivated clumps of poisonous fuscia oleander whose flowers presented a strange and threatening mien in the choral light of the setting sun. Coming to the top of the hill, ruins appeared as if a veil of maya cast by some mischievous aspara had been suddenly parted.
It was the remains of an ancient hillfort, its tumbled sandstone ramparts, which always brought to Vigraha’s mind the image of a cave in skull, had been ancient even when the great Chandragupta had overthrown the Nanda and taken the throne of venerable Maghada, had been built, the locals said in hushed tones, by the first chariot born scions of that most august of aryan clans, the Bharatas, when first they had crossed the mighty Beas with naught but their cattle and swords and grinding wheels and dreams of conquest, and still haunted by the pitrs of those ancient warriors it was said to be, so that none dared bring their flocks to graze these hills for fear of being slain by those restless ghosts!
There was of course, as there often was, Vigraha had found, a hint of truth to those tales. This hill was planted with oleander, and so goats shunned it, and as for the spirits, well, perhaps they really did roam the halls of that ancient keep, but the killing was done mostly by bandits. Vigraha reined in his horse, and nodded to Xaravalana who had stopped besides him. The wily saka grunted and put his fingers to his lips and began to whistle, his shrill cry perfectly imitating the call of a falcon, a feat which Vigraha, inspite of Xaravalana’s consistent efforts, had not been able to master. Two times he called out, and two times came an answer, and then, as if by a spell, fires flared to life on the walls of the hillfort, fires which, Vigraha knew, would be completely hidden from any who prowled the plains below!
Vigraha lead the men through what remained of the fort’s gate-house, and there was greeted by a small hamlet of tents and partially reconstructed buildings, including a corral, in which pranced and whinnied mountain ponies even smaller than the ones Vigraha and his men rode and all the meaner for it, as well the men who rode them. Most where bhotiya marauders, hailing from the himachals, squat and stern of aspect they were, with curved sabers and clad in felt and hides and horn and armored with strange circles of iron polished till they shone like mirrors in the queer onrushing starlight of dusk. Their leader stepped forth, a man both short in stature and yet so thick of limb he looked as if he wrestled buffalo for fun, and bowed to Vigraha. “My lord. You received my letter.” He spoke, his accent thick but intelligible. “I did. Thank you for informing me Gul.” Vigraha began as he swung down from his saddle. “Take me too him.” Gul, the bandit chief, spat and gestured for his men to take care of the horses and to get the newcomers bedded down. He led Vigraha into a cellar cut into the hard-caked dust of the ruin, and in the cellar, tied to a table whose dark stains reflected the torchlight in a manner most evil, was a man.
Vigraha stopped to consider the situation. As superintendent of passports, it fell to him to monitor the borders of the capital. Most merchants, despite the repute of their profession, were of generally honorable character, and had no problem paying the appropriate tolls and signing the appropriate forms to be allowed entrance to the kingdom, and the antapala who guarded the border were, also despite their reputation in other countries, well known for their honesty and for the reasonable amounts of the bribes they demanded. They had to, for Vigraha often sent spies in the guise of peddlers to test their adherence to the laws and would have them beaten if they failed. There were of course those enterprising souls who, blinded by coins gleam, tried to skirt the toll houses. These lost souls invariable fell afoul of bandits, while those who paid never did, a curious occurrence that!
Gul and his gang were in the employ of Vigraha, and they had waylaid this poor soul strung to the table leaving the kingdom, alone and riding hard and a little too eager to avoid the Grand Trunk Road, so eager in fact, that he had tried his luck in the hills rather than the plains, and so had been captured. The man was the catspaw of the Maharaja’s chamberlain, that meddling Prithichand. He had on his person a letter written in the sannidhata’s own hand and sealed with his own seal. Prithichand’s hands were beginning to become unsteady in his old age, but there was no doubt in Vigraha’s mind that it was his hands which had gripped the pen which wrote those words. It was addressed to King Gomitra I, warning him of a plot within the Basileus’s court to instigate a war between him and the Shunga clan, a war which Gomitra’s small kingdom would be caught in the middle of! Gul said that the messenger’s name was Jairam, and that he had admitted working for the chamberlain, but did not know the contents of the letter, and had even given them the names of his family members, the dark blood drying at the end of the nail-less fingers of his right hand giving mute testimony as to how such information had been gleaned.
Vigraha sighed and shook his head. As with all clouds there was a silver lining, that being that clearly Prithichand did not know about the gang he employed. The rest of the cloud however, was dark indeed, for somehow, that damnable doyen had learned of their plot! How he did could not say. A spy perhaps? A intercepted letter? Was one of his servants a traitor? What of Diodotus, Bacchides, and Vajraditya, what of their servants? Was one of them a traitor? To tug on that thread was to invite paranoid madness, Vigraha well knew. There would be time to learn how Prithichand had discovered their plans, but that time was not now.
He knelt down till he was eye level with the servant of Prithichand. Jairam swallowed hard the throbbing pain in his hand, but met Vigraha’s gaze. There was no hate there, but there was a sort of grim determination. “So you work for Prithichand do you then?” The man nodded slowly, his eyes not leaving Vigraha’s. “And you are of the Nakai clan, yes? I know of your family. Good people, especially Nodha. He must be your uncle then? Yes, a fine lineage you were born to, and loyal. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to them now would you?” Jairam closed his eyes and clenched shut his teeth as a rattling breath shook his whole body, then he replied. “N-no.” “I know you don’t!” Vigraha rose and patted Jairam on the shoulder, who tried to flinch away as if his hand were a snake.
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“Untie him. And get him something to sleep on, he might be staying here awhile.” As the bandits moved to obey, Jairam stared at Vigraha with wide, frightened eyes. “Now look-.” Vigraha began. “You’re a loyal man. I can tell. Your only crime is in your choice of master! Though I also well understand just how little of a choice young kshatriyas such as yourself have! By the gods do I understand! You’ll need to remain here for a little while. You will be treated courteously, you have my word. Then, in a month, maybe even less, you’ll be free to go and richer than when you set out!”
The young warrior visibly balked at that, his mouth wide as he stumbled to his feet, rubbing his stiff limbs. “I cannot again betray my lord!” Vigraha sighed. “You wont be betraying him. You’re a prisoner, taken in, ahh, a battle of sorts, and suffering on his behalf. How can such a thing be considered betrayal? And you didn’t betray him. Do you think were Prithichand in your place he would clamp his own mouth shut until he lost all his fingers? No! He would be the first to tell you to talk!”
Actually, Vigraha rather thought that old, stick up his ass Prithichand would allow himself to lose every finger, toe, and other extremity on his body before he gave them any information, but he kept that to himself. “Now be a good prisoner and obey your jailers. The days will pass before you know it! Do you play chaturanga? Of course you do! Surely someone else here does as well. I’ll make sure you have someone to play with.” And with that Vigraha turned and left the cellar.
Night fell upon the plains and low hills of the lands. Another group of men arrived and where admitted into the hill-fort. They were heavily armed and armored anatapalas from the border fort, their saddles high-backed and partially made from wood so that they could charge with lance couched without fear of being knocked from their lean chargers, and they brought with them several fresh pack-horses in addition to the mounts that they themselves rode. Introductions were made, and the three groups of fighters fell into easy conversation. Many of them had worked together before, the oldest having served as border-guards or brigands under Vigraha’s father! Wine was doled out liberally to grease the tongues of these new compatriots, and despite the drunkenness, there was only one fight, which ended when Gul took down both the offending parties himself to a chorus of laughter from the rest!
As the silver, crescent blade of the moon was sheathed behind the rolling horizon and the ruby discus of the sun was drawn, a shrill cry rent the air, followed by the pounding of hooves and shouts of alarm from the sentries. Vigraha rushed from the ruins of the great hall where he had been sleeping at the talons of a time-worn, falcon shaped vedi, and ran to the cellar. “Fuck!” Cursed Gul, who appeared alongside him. Vigraha sucked in his breath, resisting the urge to join his subordinate in his vulgarity. The guard who had been placed at the entrance to the cellar lay upon the steps, his throat cut, the blood trickling down to gather in darking pool on the hard-packed earth below. “You told me the little ghain wouldn’t try and escape!” Accused the raging bandit chief, rounding on Vigraha. The zaulkika turned and replied. “Obviously I was wrong.”
Gul swore again and stomped the ground. “That was Pran! He’s ridden with me for years! You better have a good blood for his wife or-.” Calm, Vigraha squared off with the brigand, and threw a kick into his knee. It was like kicking the trunk of a palm tree, and Gul did not go down, but he did waiver for a moment, flailing his arms for balance, and more importantly, he shut the fuck up. Vigraha stared the shorter man down, daring him to fight back, though all Gul could do was return his gaze with a stupid look. Unused to being challenged was Gul, for who after setting eyes on him even for a moment would be stupid enough to try?
Just then Xaravalana arrived, his tongue working overtime to stumble over the language he still after all this time in Vigraha’s employ had yet to grasp. “The prisoner! He take horse! Head east, gar, gah, guard, say!” Vigraha nodded. “Get everyone saddled up! Now!” Then he turned back to Gul and said. “You can take whatever blood-debt you wish out of Jairam’s hide, for he has betrayed my hospitality and I no longer have any duty towards him save recapture!” At that, the bandit smiled an evil smile and bowed, then began shouting instructions to his men.
In less than ten minutes the whole troupe was up and and pounding forth from the ruined walls of the fort. In the distance, a dark spot could be seen, indeed heading east, trailing a cloud of dust as it moved fast across the plain. It was Jairam, and even from this distance Vigraha could see that he rode unsteadily, as one would expect of a man who had lost the fingernails of his hand and who rode an unfamiliar horse! Descending quickly the switchback, with the peerless horseman Xaravalana in the lead, they took off in pursuit.
The land of the Five Rivers was as flat as any land could be, with neither great forests nor dales in which a fugitive could loose his pursuers. Slowly, not wishing to tire their mounts, Vigraha and his posse closed with their quarry. They leaped old, silt choked canals and crashed through lines of trees whose branches had long gone feral after those who had planted them had quit there fields, fields in which wild barley competed with thorny brush and breedy marigold, their flowers shining like bloated, over-ripe oranges in the morning sun.
They were almost within bowshot of Jairam now, and Virgraha could see his sweaty, panicked face in flashes as he looked behind them, then he saw something else. A great cloud of dust rising in the distance, and coming their way! Dark shapes could be seen at its head, riders, with bows and arrow-full quivers at the sides of their saddles! With a curse in his strange tongue, Xaravalana drew an arrow and loosed it. It crossed paths with the sun as it flew, seeming like some mythical garudda chasing a buffalo as it plunged down and struck Jairam’s horse in the flank! The horse whinnied in pain and finally threw its rider, and Vigraha was forced to pull his horse to a halt and his men the same as the riders who approached them formed a semi-circle centered on where the young man had fallen. A standoff ensued, with neither side making a move. Seeing all eyes were on him for guidance, Vigraha shook his head and trotted forward a bit to hail the riders.
“Who do you serve?” He shouted. The men across from him on their mounts stared out from beneath turbans and veils. They were fewer in number than his own men, and if it should come to blows, he had no doubt whose side would prevail, but it never hurt to try a bit of diplomacy first. One of the riders cantered forward as well, and replied. “Who do you serve? What quarrel have you with the boy?” He gestured with a gauntleted hand towards Jairam, who was moaning and beginning to crawl towards them. ‘Curse the wily Prithichand!’ Thought Vigraha, for these men were surely his stooges come to escort their charge once he had passed beyond the border of the Kingdom.
Vigraha began to speak, and at the same time with a subtle gesture make the sign of tarjani mudra, his index finger pointed towards the riders. That was Xaravalana’s cue to knock another arrow to his bowstring, and seeing that, the rest of his men did likewise, a virtual hedge of cruelly barbed points suddenly pointed at the enemy, some of whom shied back on their mounts. The stricken horse continued to screech, kicking like a wild thing as it galloped away in fright. Neither side paid it any head. Vigraha held up his hands in a gesture of peace as if to calm his men. “The same quarrel I will have with you if you do not let me take him. But there need not be bloodshed!”
“Let me take him, and in return you will be well remunerated! If you will but wait here, my men will return very shortly with a bag of gold for each of your saddles! I of course will remain with you while it is gathered, to ensure you of my intentions.” Some of the riders looked at each-other at that, clearly tempted, but their leader shook his head, his hand on the shaft of an arrow. “This I cannot do sir, for I have never betrayed my master, and I-.”
His speech was cut short by the twang of a bowstring. The tarjani mudra had a second meaning to Vigraha and Xaralavana. It meant negotiations were over. The arrow flew from Xaravalana, and the man ducked just in time for the shaft to whizz past his head and strike the shoulder of the man behind him, who cried out loudly. Then the air was filled with the sound of buzzing shafts and creaking bows and the stomping of horses’ feet! Vigraha kicked his pony into a gallop, making straight for Jairam, his head held held low besides his mounts neck, but the other rider was faster, and he reached the wounded messenger before him, scooping him up and raising the burnished brass face of his shield! Vigraha drew his sword and brought it down hard with a clang that he felt in his arm as well as heard in his ears! An arrow struck his torso, becoming entangled in his cloak and gambeson, and the man with Jairam pounded away.
“Shit!” Vigraha thrust his sword into its scabbard and drew his bow as his riders fanned out across the plain all around him. Their foes did likewise, every man exchanging bows and darts and javelins which fell upon the parched ground like an eagerly awaiting rain, drawing blood and curses where they found flesh. No one had yet fallen from their horse, but then the antapalas couched their lances and burst from the packs of wheeling horse-archers. Some of the enemy were too slow to turn their mounts and they were speared through with screams from their mounts as the lances cracked, driving straight through their mail, knocking them rider from saddle and pinning them to the red dirt where they did not rise. The enemy fled then, and the pursuit began anew and in far more deadly of manner!
The enemy turned about in their saddles to fire in the manner of parasikas, for they were not wanting for skill nor courage, only numbers, and Vigraha’s band fired back, the press of arrow-fire leaving a trail through the grasses marking the path of the warring parties! Vigraha fired upon one man, watched as the shot hit his doffed shield, then aimed and fired again, the arrow finding the rider’s sternum just beneath his cuirass, and the man fell and was trampled beneath shod hooves! An arrow came at him and he ducked away from it, loosing his own shaft against the one who had fired it, pinning the mans thigh to his saddle with a squirt of blood!
The trees began to grow thicker and greener, and in the distance, the very sky seemed to blue in the toss of spray, for they had nearly reached the banks of the Ravi river! Cries of alarm could be heard in the distance, followed by the blowing of horns, for there was a village upon this stretch of the Ravi, a village which operated a ferry, which Vigraha instantly knew to be the objective of the riders! Their leader gave a shrill whistle, and suddenly two branches of his cavalry split off, turning about and swinging their mounts so that they threatened to gallop around and envelope Vigrahas men! “Gul!” Vigraha shouted. No further instruciton was needed. The squat thug whooped and hollered and his men joined his ululating cry and they drew their sabers and dashed straight for the mercenaries who had tried to encircle them, the bodies of horsemen coming together with like two waves with a great crash and the screech of metal on metal and screams of blade upon flesh!
Vigraha did not stop. He found himself besides Xaravalana and his lancers, barreling through tea fields as shudras scrambled to escape all around them. The village ahead was comprised of low stone houses, built to closely together that they formed a series of walls, and the leader of the enemy made straight for the single, unpaved street which ran through it. With an arrow each Vigraha and Xaravalana dispatched the two men flanking him, their bodies crashing into a low wall of unmortared stone dividing a field as their horses continued on scattering peasants in their wake. They jumped the wall, then Vigraha’s brow furrowed in consternation as he saw that the villagers rushing to push a pair of carts to block the street.
Propelled by desperation, the rider with Jairam clutched to his chest on the saddle spurred his mount to its greatest speed, and without checking it, launched himself at the carts, his horse’s hooves just barely clearing their tops. More cries from the peasants, some of whom had armed themselves with bows, but none who dared to shoot at any of the riders, for it had become apparent to them that this was no raid but something far stranger, and they knew not which party they should support. Vigraha gritted his teeth and looked over to Xaravalana. The grim saka raider merely looked ahead, his face the picture of concentration, and sped towards the carts, and Vigraha, who had imbibed practically everything the man could teach of horsemanship, urged his horse on besides him. The two of them jumped over the cart, landing in the center of the village with a jolt to his nethers which Vigraha was sure his future children would feel!
The rider with Jairam was almost to the ferry now. In the village square, several baskets of fruit and flowers had been scattered in his passing, and a he had somehow cut down a heavily laden clothesline as well! “Move! Get out of our way!” Vigraha shouted, brandishing his bow to encourage action from the villagers who had stooped to collect their fallen wares. Weaving between startled forms, the two men bore down on the rocky shore and the little dock where a panicked ferryman was looking desperately from an approaching Vigraha and Xaravalana to Jairam and the rider, who was waving a sack of coin above his head as if it were Hanuman’s own gada!
“Stop! I can pay more! I can pay more!” Vigraha shouted. Just then, Xaravalana loosed a shot, and in one of those fateful mistakes which seemed to strike even the masters of their craft at the most inopportune times, missed, the arrow sticking with a wooden thud into the deck of the ferry right by the ferryman’s foot! That seemed to make up his mind, and the man began to tug desparately at the rope spanning the river, pulling away from the dock just as Vigraha and his bodyguard came with hooves skidding on gravel right up to it! Xaravalana raised his bow again, and Vigraha batted it away in irritation, for the rider had crouched beneath his shield with Jairam in front of the ferryman, and there was little hope of hitting him as the distance between them and the shore increased. The old raider had at least the grace to look embarrassed, but Vigraha waived that it was alright, struggling greatly to conceal his annoyance, but quickly mastering his emotions. It was alright, he realized, for now he wanted them alive!