KRISHNA CORIOLIS#6: Fortress of Dwarka Read online

  So they continued giving chase. And Krishna continued to elude them. Days passed. Then weeks. And soon they fell into a rhythm, driven by stubborn persistence. Now that they had followed him thus far, they may as well continue until he was caught. They were far, far from Mathura now anyway. There was little point in turning back and doing so would make them seem to be foolish now to their own men. Besides, as at the beginning, Krishna continued to seem just within reach, as if they would surely catch up with him within the hour, certainly within the day.

  As the days went by this way, they knew that they were being deluded in some manner but could not tell how. Krishna continued on foot, they continued on horse back and chariot. They came close enough that they could see the individual teeth in his white smile each time he looked back enticingly, but somehow he always regained his lead and they found themselves racing merely to keep up.

  Yet they could not stop. It was as if they were under a spell. “Sorcery,” muttered the detractors from time to time. But even their objections were desultory. They were frustrated beyond measure: they wanted to see this Indian prince-god caught now. They could not sleep or eat or resume their lives as before until they had him.

  Finally, when it seemed that he would lead them on this way forever, Krishna slowed. It took them some time to realize that he was slowing because he was climbing. The landscape had changed from the vast flat plains and lush green valleys to a gradient. They were heading up into mountain territory. Soon, they saw great white-topped peaks ahead. Surely these were the fabled Himalayan mounts of which so many great tales were told? Had they come all the way here? So far up North? Surely not! Yet it seemed they had.

  Somehow, their pursuit of Krishna had led them up to the peaks of the world’s highest mountain range.

  Still, they chased him, more determined than ever to catch their quarry.

  And still Krishna led then onwards and upwards, grinning and enticing them to follow.

  6

  Something very strange was going on. Jarasandha had followed the progress of the Yavana army in their pursuit of Krishna for weeks now. By this time, only the dust cloud from the tailenders of the Yavana army procession was visible from the vicinity of Mathura. The main body was far north, moving at the same breakneck speed it had been maintaining this past fortnight or two. The trail would have been laughably easy to follow anyway but the sheer number of fallen horses, wagon-uksan, even soldiers and support staff was prodigious. A novice to the art of war and large campaigns could be forgiven for assuming that a great battle had raged along that trail: thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, lay dead of exhaustion, dehydration, illness, or from the infighting that invariably broke out when a campaign turned sour.

  This campaign had turned sour before it truly began: after the months spent traversing hostile alien lands to reach the fabled Indic continent, the harried army had been shocked by the realization that the mythic golden city was little more than a dusty collection of hovels and battered mansions. Before they could even recover from this shock they had been pressed into the pursuit of a lone enemy on foot. To what end? It was beyond madness.

  Most of the Yavana army were mercenaries who had sold every possession and property, including their spouses and children in many cases, to raise the funds required to equip themselves for this ambitious campaign. They depended on the spoils they had been promised at the end of the road. To be fed only dust and broken illusions was unacceptable. It was treasonous treachery. And their anger, rage and frustration vented itself first on their colleagues, then on their commanding officers--usually men of lineage or noble blood who could afford horses, chariots, tents and better weaponry--and if the madness of this quest continued thus, it would eventually explode into full-blown rebellion.

  An army--any army--is a monster weaned on blood and destruction. If you cannot press it into productive service and keep it occupied, it will gnaw its own feet out of frustration. When it tires of the taste of its own sour disappointment, it will turn on you, its owner, master, leader, general, king, whatever you choose to call yourself. And then it will run loose through the world, like havoc unleashed and unbounded. Then try to tame the wanton beast. Go ahead and try.

  Jarasandha’s spasas kept their distance, stomachs turned by the stench of rotting corpses and bitter disappointment that the Yavana army left in its wake like a decrepit tail. They reported back to him from time to time on its progress: the Yavanas had followed Krishna all the way to the Himalayan foothills. Now they were venturing up to the main Himalayan ranges, with winter fast approaching. Were they truly fools as all foreign whiteskins were rumored to be or merely bewitched by the Slayer? Most favored the latter rationale, especially since many of them were white-brown hybrids and their own lord Jara was the child of white western aliens. Yes, it must be brahmanic sorcery. Why else would a force of that size leave a prize like Mathura and go racing like madmen after a single man on foot? More importantly, why were they unable to catch that man on foot even after weeks of hard riding?

  “He is leading them to their doom,” they reported to their master. “Once they go into the Himavat ranges and winter falls upon them, they shall never return alive.” Jarasandha snarled and dismissed them in disgust.

  Then he strapped on his belt and armor and called for his chariot. Let the Yavanas go to their doom then. He had other business to attend to.

  ***

  Soon afterwards, he entered the gates of the city that had once been Mathura.

  Once been, because whatever this place had been before, it was no longer. The empty streets, deserted hallways, desolate houses, rooftops where birds nested freely, mansions where rats and other rodents were in full occupation, the entire city laying abandoned….this was only what Mathura had once been. There were no corpses, not a single body or sign of recent violence. Every living soul had left here weeks earlier, that was evident. But how? There had not been a single moment of a single day or night that Jarasandha’s sharpest-eyed spasas had not been eyeballing this city and the entire surrounding countryside as carefully as vultures waiting for a dying tusker to fall.

  Nobody had left through the gates, over the walls, through the wells, tunneled underground, or up into the air.

  He could not even fathom when they had left!

  Had it been after the Yavana arrived? Or before?

  The Yavana had arrived on the 18th day of Jarasandha’s campaign. For the preceding 17 days, Jarasandha had battled Krishna, Balarama and the Mathuran forces daily by using his shrewd ruse of shifting them through the Vortal so they were constantly defending, always fighting for survival.

  The day before the Yavana arrived, the 17th of his Vortal campaign, they had all been here. He had no way of knowing for sure now but his instinct told him that on the 18th day itself they had gone. He had checked with his spasas and seen for himself as well: not a single bobbing head, or curious child or even a courier pigeon had been sighted in the city the day Krishna had emerged from the gates and started leading the Yavanas on their long merry quest. That was nigh impossible: surely someone or something would have been visible, if only a curious pair of eyes watching their Lord leave?

  Or least Balarama, he thought now as he dismounted from his chariot before the palace of King Ugrasena. The vast battlements were eeirily deserted, a sight that was causing his own men much discomfiture: he could hear the whispered talk of ghosts and invisible Mathurans watching. He even wondered if there could be any credence to such thoughts: could the Mathurans still be here? Somehow cloaked by an invisibility spell by Krishna? Was that why only Krishna had run out of the gates to draw the Yavanas away? Leaving Balarama behind to watch over and protect the people?

  He walked the echoing hallways of the great palace where he had once held sway through his figurehead son-in-law”King” Kamsa. Ah, he had dreamed such dreams for this kingdom. Such plans he had once had. For his future grandsons and grand-daughters to rule and reign here.

  Abandoned dreams now
. Empty houses filled with stale ambitions.

  “Where are they?” he asked aloud, his voice echoing off the high curved roof of the great sabha hall high above where only pigeons roosted now. The once-proud marbled floor was stained with bird guano, rodents scurrying openly in the corners and through holes in walls. Everything remained as it had once been: the furnishings, paintings, walls, pillars, roofs, houses, mansions, palaces. Only the occupants of the city had vanished in the blink of an eye. Overnight. Instantly.

  How? Where?

  Those were the only two questions he had. Even the first was irrelevant except if it aided him in answering the second: Where? That was the crux. Where had the people of the city all gone?

  He heard a commotion and turned to see his ally kings arriving, all looking around in frank amazement and venial covetous greed at the palatial surroundings.

  “Sire, we have Mathura now,” said one of his aides happily. “It is our’s at last.”

  Jarasandha was too preoccupied to backhand the man. He would kill him later for his stupidity, when the man was least expecting it, and when he would die without even knowing why. Idiot.

  “No, we don’t,” he said softly, heard only by himself. “We only have the empty nest. The golden peacock has flown.”

  7

  The Yavana was exultant. The weeks of futile pursuit had depleted his army, sapped their morale and driven his resources to the limit. He had thought the Indian prince would never stop! Even when the man began climbing the craggy foothills, then ascended to the higher peaks, finally climbing a sloping mountainside that seemed to rise up beyond the clouds, he seemed unstoppable, proceeding at the same relentless pace. How could any man keep running and now climbing at such a pace?

  The answer was: no man could. He was clearly the God-Child Krishna of whom so much had been narrated, much of it softly and in hushed tones of awe, to the Yavana as he had been nurtured and raised to ascend to his throne. It was common among his people of the Grekos islands to wrest power by force and from the time he had been able to walk and talk on his own, he had been prepared to overthrow the current king of his tribe and take his place.

  It was likely that the king was his father--likely, but not certain, because only the woman who had partnered with the man and who had birthed him could know for certain, and often, due to internecine politics, she might not want to tell her own children the identity of their true father. But in any case, he had been raised to kill him and take his place and had done so, listening all the while to tales of a mythic Indian child-god who grew up battling demons, dallying with comely cowherders, and had killed his own maternal uncle in a wrestling bout.

  The legendary Slayer of Kamsa, Flute of Vrindavan, Lord of Mathura, and many other titles by which he was renowned, was a highly regarded figure among the Yavana peoples: both for his ferocity as a warrior and reputation as a lover but also for his inscrutability. To kill a man who might or might not be one’s biological father in order to ascend to his throne was politics: to kill one’s own uncle and then put his father on the throne was mystical! It was this kind of exotic behavior that intrigued the Yavanas and other western peoples. What sort of land was this Indus? What sort of people were these? What was this morality they called Dharma?

  Krishna was clearly a god.

  Even if the self-titled Prince of India had had any doubts before crossing the Indus River, he had none now. After weeks of riding on foaming horses and having steed after steed collapse and burst their hearts from exertion without being able to catch up with a man on foot--not even running, merely walking at a brisk pace--was beyond impossible. It was divine intervention.

  Yes, Krishna was definitely a God. He was certain of that now. And despite what his aides and followers thought, it was neither madness nor sorcery that had brought him all the way here on this insane quest.

  He desired to kill the God.

  For once did this, he would surely be the Prince of India. Or even the King of India.

  After he killed the greatest God in this god-full land, even the people of the Indus must bow down and acknowledge him in reverence.

  That was why he had pursued Krishna so relentlessly. Bringing his great army in his wake, pushing them to the limits of endurance, suffering more casualties from exhaustion and exertion than he might have in an actual pitched battle or siege.

  And now, as he climbed the mountainside, far ahead of even his fittest aides and champions, he knew he was close. Soon he would have Krishna cornered, in a place from which he could not elude capture. And then he would have his opportunity: to face and fight the God-child Himself. Swayam Bhagavan as he was reputed to be. God Incarnate.

  His breath wafted out in visible white puffs now, and he could hear the gasping and rasping of his followers as they struggled to keep pace. But he had grown up among the mountain tribes of the north-eastern mountains of his island-kingdom and climbed as surely as a billy goat. He relished the physical exertion after months of sitting his ass on a horse’s backside. He enjoyed the crisp bracing mountain air. The epic view of the great northern range. The sound of his own heart beating, the loudest audible evidence of life.

  And the sound of his quarry only yards ahead and above.

  Finally, the chase ended.

  He came out onto a ledge large enough for a dozen men to stand or a chariot to be turned. Not that a chariot could be brought all the way up here. He glanced back down. From the antlike specks that his army had turned into far down below, he estimated that he was some ten thousand yards above ground. The mountainside was dotted with only a few thousand of his men, those still able to climb after the long and brutally wearing chase and journey. The nearest ones were still a hundred yards below and struggling, their upturned white faces pinched and ruddy with effort.

  He smiled and turned back to the ledge. A few steps, crunching underfoot because there was frost here at this height, and swirls of powdery snow in the chill winds that wafted, curling icy fingers down his neck and licking the warm fat sweat drops, and he found himself at the mouth of a cave.

  It was pitch dark inside and curved. Once he went in, he would not return without having accomplished his purpose. Nor would the Indian prince-god. Only one of them would come out alive.

  The Yavana believed it would be he.

  He hefted his sword in a powerfully muscled hand and started walking. Yards inside, the cave swallowed him whole. Snow swirled on the ledge outside as the wind quickened. In moments, there was nothing to indicate any living being had ever been here or would be again.

  8

  The Yavana prince gave himself time to let his eyes adjust to the gloom inside the cave. Only when his eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness did he proceed deeper. The cave walls curved and turned inwards upon themselves and he might have knocked himself senseless or injured his limbs had he just gone on without caution. But as a mountain boy, he knew well enough not to rush in. He used his sword as a probing device, holding it out and turning it this way and that, using its tip to feel for the walls and roof of the cave.

  Before long, he found the curved walls straightening and then all of a sudden found himself in a straight stretch. Although there was no light here, he found he could make out the outline of things dimly. He knew that there were lichen and mosses growing in deep caverns that exuded a kind of luminescence that might be used for light. Not enough to see by clearly but sufficient to make out one’s surroundings. He guessed that some must grow here on these walls, kept warm by some inner current of moist air.

  He could make out the curved upper portion of the cave, some yards above his own head. It opened wider and taller here, and he guessed that this was the largest part of the cave. He sensed rather than saw a dark background some ten yards further on and knew that it was the back wall of the cave. He did not know if there were tunnels or passageways leading further inside or doubling back. But from what he could see now, it appeared that this was the extent of the cave.

  He moved s
lowly through the darkness, sword raised. Ready for anything. For he knew that the child-god who had slain his own uncle would not lure him all the way here merely to converse. He did not expect words, only violence. It was the language he spoke most fluently.