KRISHNA CORIOLIS#5: Rage of Jarasandha Page 16

  Jarasandha’s archers had the rhythm now. And they loosed volley after volley after volley…

  Death rained down on Mathura that day. And even the most fervent prayers went unanswered…or so it seemed for the duration of the first terrible volleys of the Magadhan archers. For under such punishment, even a few minutes was like a lifetime in hell.

  9

  KRISHNA had spent his childhood years impatiently waiting for the time when he would go to Mathura and fulfill his destiny. Each time he heard of a new atrocity perpetrated by his uncle Kamsa, he would be filled with impotent sadness. Even though he was god incarnate he was still subject to the limitations of mortal growth and development. He knew that the time when he was to kill Kamsa was pre-ordained. Yet there were moments he chafed with impatience and longed for that time to come sooner.

  More than once he thought of simply going to Mathura and confronting his nemesis. Yet each time he stopped himself by remembering that there was a plan and it must be followed. The consequences for failing to do so could be disastrous. If he faced Kamsa too soon and failed, however unlikely that might seem, that would mean an end to this incarnation.

  Even if he did not care about death, the demise of Krishna Vasudeva would mean that Kamsa and his cohorts would continue their rampage of brutality unchecked. It could take generations for him to take another rebirth. Eons of planning and careful calibration had gone into selecting this particular age, this specific time and place, this special incarnation. He could not endanger all humanity because he was impatient. No matter how great a hero, he could not possibly save everyone nor end all evil. It was a simple fact of reality.

  Yet he could not accept that. Having been born in Nanda and Yashoda’s house, he came to understand and love these odd frail creatures named mortals very quickly. And once the emotional bond was formed, he could not accept the death or pain of anyone he loved or cared about without doing something to prevent it. So he had risked his own life more than once to ensure that not one life was taken or one person harmed while he was in Gokul and later in Vrindavan. He knew that it meant that he himself had to forego many pleasures and joys of mortal life that he could have otherwise enjoyed to the hilt. But he accepted that loss. If he could save or protect even one life it was worth giving up all happiness in this incarnation. And so he had fought asura after asura and protected those he loved from each new threat, never relenting in his watchful attention.

  And finally the day had come when he was old enough to go to Mathura. He had stood on that field and faced Kamsa at last. And he had known he was ready, more than ready in fact. The actual encounter had seemed almost simply in contrast to all that waiting. He had even found himself wondering why he had not come sooner, ended this long earlier. But he knew that it was necessary to wait this long, to be this certain, to be better prepared than was necessary. For in war and combat one is either over-prepared or not well enough prepared. There is no perfect balance. How can there be when one desires an outcome of win or lose? The whole point of combat was to destroy balance, to ensure one’s own survival and one’s enemy’s destruction. And that meant waiting until one was completely certain and ready to claim victory. And so he had slain the Childslayer and claimed his destiny. And had believed that the worst was over, that the purpose of this incarnation was fulfilled and that now he could perhaps find more purpose and meaning to life. He had saved not only the Vrishni but all Yadavas and in a larger sense, all mortalkind.

  But today had been a shock to his system. Today he had discovered that it was not over. It had not ended with Kamsa’s death. His destiny had not been fulfilled when the prophecy was realized. It had only begun then.

  For so many years, he had worked so hard to ensure that not a single life was taken or endangered. And he had succeeded.

  And today, he had watched horrified as thousands of lives were ended. Thousands of innocents were slain. Thousands maimed and wounded and disabled for life.

  And he had been able to do nothing to prevent it or save them.

  It was unbearable. It was the most pain he had ever felt. For as Himself incarnate, he possessed infinite empathy, the capacity to open his heart and experience what others were experiencing. He felt their agony. Their pain. Their suffering. Their shock at being invaded and assaulted thus in their own homes, within their own city, now of all times, when they had thought the worst was over, the Childslayer was slain, the reign of terror ended and a new era of peace begun.

  When they had believed they were protected by the true Lord of Mathura, king of mortals in all but title.

  Krishna.

  And yet, he had failed them.

  Each arrow that pierced a body or limb pierced his own.

  He felt the anguish of every man, woman, child, animal and bird. He even felt the pain of a snake impaled by an arrow and a ladybug crushed to death by an arrowhead.

  He felt everything.

  But above all, he felt the sense of disbelief that this could happen while Krishna watched over them.

  For even though he had slipped the mask of maya over their senses, preventing the people of Mathura from seeing his true divinity openly, yet the awareness of his true nature lingered, like a faint fragrance of flowers long after the blossoms had faded and been removed from a chamber. Like the memory of a dream of a divine encounter. Like a longing for darshan with an unattainable deity.

  And at some level, the people of Mathura felt…protected. It did not even matter by whom or why, the point was that they did feel protected. They were as sure of it as they were sure of night following day and day following night again.

  And that surety had been betrayed.

  Krishna had betrayed them, betrayed their faith.

  And he could not bear to let that happen.

  10

  JARASANDHA laughed. Rarely did the Emperor of the Magadhan Empire permit himself to display such effusive emotion on a battlefield. The over-wrought melodramatic pageantry of most monarchs did not appeal to him. He understood that such displays served to boost morale and inspire awe but he had never felt the need for them. His entire approach was dependent on under-estimation. The enemy always under-estimated his abilities and resources and he always used that to his advantage. The rare times when an enemy king or army actually respected him enough to engage his attack skillfully, he simply exceeded even their wildest expectations, resorting to shock tactics or horrific displays of power that they could never possibly match.

  He had known from the outset that Mathura would be unique as an enemy. He had been proven right. The divine powers of the Slayer and his bhraatr had turned his first strategy to disaster. While Balarama demolished his entire regiment of empowered fighters, Krishna’s celestial weapon had dug a ditch that not not be breached by any siege force. The frustration of seeing his entire force of supermortal champions destroyed in a short time by a single enemy as well as the thwarting of his brilliantly conceived and executed circular advance upon the city had driven Jarasandha to a cold silent rage. He had even lost his appetite for the battlefield savories he enjoyed so much while watching his forces in action.

  But he had come prepared for such resistance. After all, he was no Kamsa! He did not under-estimate his enemy. He had known that Krishna-Balarama’s first objective would be to keep his forces from invading the city. He had not known exactly how they would accomplish this but he had come prepared for several eventualities. One was the possibility that they would somehow bar him entry into Mathura completely. And they had done just that.

  So he had instantly put his counter-strategy into play. One out of ten of his infantry forces was assigned to a longbow garrison. With 109,350 foot-soldiers in each of the 23 akshohini he had on the field today, that meant 251,505 longbow archers. This did not include the shortbow archers in his cavalry or the shortbow archers on chariots and elephants. These were specially selected and trained longbow archers, each armed with yard-long metal-tipped arrows of willow woodstock and longbows crafted by the
finest makers in the Arya nations.

  Due to the great distance across which they were loosing, neither his archers nor Jarasandha himself could see the results of their volleys.

  They did not need to.

  The cries and screams from the city filled the air for miles around, leaving no doubt about the efficacy of the assault. Besides, now that the dust cloud was clearing, he could see the most recent volley falling well within city limits. He did not need to actually view the damage firsthand to know how bad it was. Like all Arya nations, the Yadavas were accustomed to the rules of combat. No invading force attacked the citizenry when its army was still on the field. It was just not done.

  Except by Jarasandha.

  Echoing the lamentations from the city were the cries of anguish and rage from the Mathuran forces as well. The soldiers of Mathura watched helplessly as volley after volley flew overhead and fell into their homes. They could only guess at the damage and loss being caused by such lethal assaults. The pain they felt was unbearable. Every last soldier raised his weapon and roared with rage at the Magadhan forces, eager to join swords and unleash vengeance for such a brutal betrayal of kshatriya dharma.

  ‘Cowards! Craven! Fight us if you dare!’ cried the Mathuran army across the ditch. ‘Fight us, you demons!’

  And that was when Jarasandha laughed. He threw back his head and roared with laughter. For the very strategy that kept him from taking his forces into Mathura also frustrated the Mathuran army itself! Krishna had drawn a ditch preventing him from engaging with the Yadava forces—and the Yadava forces from engaging with his!

  The Mathuran army could shout and rant all it wanted: they could no sooner touch Jarasandha’s army than Jarasandha could send elephants leaping across the ditch.

  So he laughed and laughed to his heart’s content. As the volleys of deadly longbow arrows continued unabated. Slew after slew of lethal missiles winging their way skywards and falling into the proud capital of the Yadava nations. Wreaking untold destruction and loss to life and property.

  It was almost as good as actually invading Mathura!

  In a sense, it was an invasion of Mathura. For the arrows went where even men could not seeking out and taking lives with deliciously random abandonment.

  Jarasandha laughed and relished the moment.

  Ah, mortals could be such fun to kill!

  11

  BALARAMA did not roar with rage as his fellow Yadavas were doing. Normally, he would have been roaring the loudest, raging the most. Just as he was fair-skinned to Krishna’s dark-skin, so also he was loud to Krishna’s soft, a dhol-drum to Krishna’s flute, counterpoint to his point. But this dastardly act of Jarasandha had infuriated him beyond the point of tolerance. This called for more than a mere showing of emotion. This called for retaliation. Not just wrathful retaliation as every Mathuran soldier on the field was crying out for but cold-blooded vengeance. What Jarasandha had done was a breach of kshatriya dharma and the Arya code of ethics. He had broken the primary rule of war: fight only with one’s equal. To rain down volleys of longbow missiles on an unarmed civilian populace was not an act of war; it was an act of murder. By doing so, Jarasandha had declared himself a criminal of war.

  He had removed any need for Balarama and Krishna to abide by the normal rules of war.

  Until now, Balarama was bound by dharma to fight only those opposing him on the field of battle—such as the supermortal champions who had been sent to attack him—or his equal and opposite number amongst the enemy. This rule meant that foot-soldiers could attack only foot-soldiers, cavalry only engage with cavalry, elephants with elephants, chariots against chariots, and so on. Naturally, one could not be held accountable for incidental deaths or injuries caused in the chaos of battle but nobody, general or foot-soldier alike, could knowingly breach this law. It was the cornerstone of pitched battle among the Arya nations.

  Until now, Jarasandha had abided by it in all his previous conflicts—or at least, he had done so to the best of Balarama’s knowledge.

  But now, he had openly defied kshatriya dharma and Arya law.

  He had attacked an unarmed populace, bypassing the enemy force entirely.

  That was not merely a violation of the law and dharma, it was heinous, dastardly behavior.

  It was a crime against humanity and civilization itself.

  It was an act so immoral, it deprived the criminal of all rights and privileges deserving of a fellow Arya, or even of a mleccha, as the barbarian races of the west were called. To the best of Balarama’s knowledge even the white-skinned mleccha invaders with their jaundice-color hair and discolored eyes did not resort to such tactics. They understood the ethics of battle and the importance of mutual respect among warring forces.

  What Jarasandha had done today was unforgivable.

  And by doing it, he had given Balarama free rein to do as he pleased.

  Now, nobody could cry foul or blame Balarama for anything he did to Jarasandha’s forces.

  Nobody could point a finger and tell him he went too far.

  Jarasandha had just signed his own death warrant and that of his entire army.

  And Balarama intended to execute that warrant.

  BHAI, he cried out mentally as he picked up his celestial mace, swinging it over his shoulder to warm his tired muscles. YOU DARE NOT STOP ME NOW. I WILL NOT STAND BY AND LET MATHURA BE RAVAGED THUS.

  The response came almost instantly, in a mental voice that was as cold and deadly as his own: STOP YOU? I WILL NOT STOP YOU, BHRAATR. I WILL JOIN YOU. COME, LET US SHOW JARASANDHA THE PRICE FOR TAKING INNOCENT YADAVA LIVES.

  Balarama grinned, pleased at his brother’s answer.

  He swung his mace one last time and sprinted forward, into battle.

  12

  JARASANDHA rejoiced as volley after volley rose up into the air, falling toward Mathura city. The screams and cries of the civilians struck by the deadly rain was music to his ears. He stored the sounds in his memory to play back in his mind’s ear at leisure and savor. He was a connoisseur of pain and often enjoyed having prisoners tortured as he dallied during his leisure times. The sounds enhanced his pleasure in almost every pastime from eating to consorting. But the sound of Mathuran women and children dying in agony was the sweetest raga of them all. ‘

  Again!’ he cried to the senapati of his archers. ‘Again! Again!’

  He would make them continue thus until their store of longbow arrows was depleted. That could take hours since each archer was equipped with ten score arrows and the elephants in each akshohini carried replenishments as well. By the time he was done with Mathura, the brothers would be begging him to let them surrender.

  The cloud of dust raised by the digging of the ditch had finally begun to settle. The upper part of the cloud had dissipated, blown away by the wind. Now, as he glanced up at the latest volley, he saw the central mass of the dust cloud billowing outwards, boiling and seething like smoke.

  He was still laughing when the dust cloud parted to reveal two golden chariots, gleaming and flashing as they caught the sunlight. The chariots flew out of the heart of the dust cloud and the cloud itself dissipated around them, vaporized in moments, melting away into obscurity to reveal a clear cloudless day. Against this starkly brilliant blue sky the two celestial chariots shot upwards. Each contained a single rider, one as dark as a crow’s feather, the other as fair as milk.

  Jarasandha chuckled. So. The shattered chariot had somehow restored itself. Well, after all, it was a celestial vehicle. And the brothers had decided to rejoin the fray. Good. He could do with some sport.

  As he watched, the two chariots reached a height of less than one hundred yards, then halted, hovering in the air. He grinned. Fools! Youthful inexperienced fools. No doubt they had paused to take stock of the enemy forces and arrangements, not realizing that by staying in one place they had made perfect targets of themselves.

  ‘Archers,’ he cried. ‘Aim at new target. Chariots in the sky!’

  The s
ound of his voice was carried to the far side of the great siege circle. At once, every single longbow turned and directed its aim at the two golden chariots.

  ‘But my lord Jarasandha,’ said the senapati in charge of the longbow garrison. ‘Some arrows may fall back upon our own forces.’

  The senapati who spoke was mounted on a horse some ten yards away from Jarasandha’s chariot.

  Jarasandha’s tongue shot out like a frog’s across this distance, like an arrow shot from a bow. At the very last instant, it split at the tip, each of the two points forking out a few inches apart. They pierced the eyes of the senapati, turning both his visual organs to pulpy ooze. Jarasandha retracted his tongue, licking the residue as the body of his slain general tumbled off the horse.

  ‘If I wanted suggestions, I would have asked for them,’ Jarasandha said.

  There were no further suggestions. The archers had all taken aim and the points of their arrows were following the sky chariots which remained stationary in the sky as if stranded.