KRISHNA CORIOLIS#5: Rage of Jarasandha Page 17

  ‘Loose!’ he cried.

  The volley shot skywards, streaking up in a converging pattern.

  Two hundred and fifty thousand longbow arrows, all moving in concert. For a moment, they clouded the sky and shadowed the sun itself.

  Jarasandha watched them rise, converge, and meet in a blur at the place where the two golden chariots hung suspended. The majority of them would find their mark.

  He chortled. This was great sport indeed!

  The chariots vanished from the sky.

  One moment they were there high above the battlefield, the next instant, they had disappeared.

  They winked back into existence at a point a hundred yards north of their original position.

  Jarasandha blinked.

  The storm of arrows reached the spot where the chariots had been and clattered uselessly against one another.

  Then the entire volley began to fall earthwards.

  Jarasandha lost his smile. The young fools had not been as foolish as he had thought. They had deliberately drawn his fire skywards, fully intending to dodge the arrows and let them fall back to ground—amongst Jarasandha’s own forces.

  ‘So that’s your game, is it?’ he muttered.

  ‘Shields,’ he cried.

  At once, his army raised their shields, the foot-soldiers their painted wooden boards, the cavalry and chariots their metal-plated shields.

  Jarasandha’s entourage was staring skywards, fascinated by the unusual sight of their own army’s arrows about to fall back upon their own heads. None of them had ever witnessed such a sight before. Distracted, they had forgotten that their Emperor would require his own shield. Their bald pates gleamed in the sunlight as they gazed upwards.

  ‘To me, you fools,’ Jarasandha said, then cracked his tongue like a lash around the necks of his personal aides, leaving red welts and oozing blood. The Mohinis sprang to life, racing to cover their Emperor with the great shield painted with his insignia. It required 18 muscular Hijras to raise it above his head. They were barely in time.

  Jarasandha heard the hail of arrows clatter and thud around him, several hundred striking his great shield and imbedding themselves deep in its metal-wrapped body. Despite its prodigious thickness and double-metal-covering, some arrowheads still punched through. He flinched as one slipped through and nicked his collarbone, scraping it and drawing a thread of blood. He gritted his teeth.

  Across the battlefield, several thousand men, horses and elephants cried out and screamed as their own army’s arrows struck their bodies. Arrows punched through armor and shields and even through elephant hides to maim and kill recklessly. Thousands fell, bodies turned to porcupine coats where the arrows had fallen in clusters.

  Jarasandha pushed aside the great shield and peered up at the sky.

  The chariots were descending to ground. Not just descending. They were racing earthwards like vehicles in a race to the death.

  He opened his mouth to issue orders then found himself unable to think of any order to issue.

  Seconds later, the chariots struck ground like juggernauts ploughing into the earth.

  13

  The golden chariots struck ground with an impact that was felt all across the theatre of war. Plunging down from the sky in arrow-straight trajectories, they tilted upwards at the last instant to land upright, ploughing through the ground. The force with which they plowed was sufficient to dislodge a meter-deep layer of topsoil and cause the this dislodged dirt to spew sideways and upwards in two great spumes that showered Jarasandha’s forces on either side. The unfortunate archers into whose ranks the chariots touched ground and plowed their way through were thrown along with the spumes of dirt, some chopped to body parts and shreds, other whole and screaming. Ten thousand archers died in that first impact itself, thousands more as the chariots plowed a deep and wide furrow, reaping a bountiful and bloody harvest of human lives. Their fellow archers lowered their bows, staring in horror as the dirt thrown up by the ploughing chariots pattered down around them. It did not take a strategic genius to see that the goal of the chariots was to eliminate the ring of archers shooting inwards at the city.

  ‘ARCHERS, HOLD!’ bellowed Jarasandha, the order amplified through the open mouths of his generals, lieutenants and captains around the battlefield, a supernatural device he employed when he needed an order to be relayed simultaneously across large distances and great numbers of men. The order emerged in his voice even though it issued from the throats of a thousand different officers.

  The line of archers, about to break and run for cover to save their own lives, held—shakily at first as the nerve of a few thousand broke and they had to be ordered shot down by their fellow archers—with a sword to their throats to ensure compliance. Once these bodies fell sprawling with arrows in their backs, the rest understood that their choice was to die trying to desert Jarasandha, or to attempt to fight the Slayer of Kamsa and his bhraatr. They decided that the latter gave them a fighting chance at least and held their places, keeping their arrows notched. But their eyes flicked to the spumes of dirt flung up by the passage of the celestial chariots, and the reflection of that scene on their wide-open eyes testified to their growing terror. As archers they were accustomed to doing battle from behind a longbow, firing at targets hundreds of yards away. They had no stomach to fight at close quarters—and in any case, how were they to fight such an attack?

  But their leader had realized this at once and taken charge. Jarasandha was no frightened longbow archer. The Emperor of Magadha had not become who he was in a day’s easy fighting. He had faced all manner of enemy and survived a hundred impossible situations. He was not easily cowed.

  ‘DEFENSIVE MANEUVERS,” bellowed Jarasandha’s voice through a thousand different throats. And like a flock of migrating birds following their leader, the archers turned their arrows to point sideways, at the two golden chariots ploughing their way around the circle of invaders.

  From Jarasandha’s position, the chariots could be seen barreling through the ranks of archers with the speed of an eight-horse team racing for its life. Spumes of dirt and bodies flew to either side, like the wake of water thrown by a chariot racing through a shallow stream. When the chariot struck bodies, the spume turned deep red, as if the stream were filled with crimson water. The debris of blood, bone and flesh rained down across the rest of Jarasandha’s army, driving the elephants and horses into a frenzy, shocking even the most hardened of his veterans. They were prodigious fighters one and all, but they had grown accustomed to winning, to their master’s supernatural abilities and arcane knowledge of potions and alchemy tipping the balance in their favor. They were used to being the side that watched and cheered lustily as their champions plowed through enemy ranks, reaping bloody whirlwinds of slaughter. It was unnerving to see that same level of power turned against them now.

  Yet their lines held and they stood their ground, watching with grim fascination as the two chariots reaped their scarlet harvest. The golden chariots were washed red with the blood and offal of fifty thousand archers already and yet their momentum seemed only to increase. Their movement through the ranks of bowmen produced a peculiar organic sound. Fond of food and all the processes that its preparation involved, Jarasandha recognized it as the sound of a hand-wound churner grinding meat into mince. The smell that rose into the air matched the sound. His forked tongue flickered between his lips, hissing as he watched with cold anger. He was not defeated yet but he could not help marveling at the sheer power on display.

  Then the chariots increased their pace, and whole bodies began to fly to either side and up into the air, flung by the impact of the grinding chariot wheels and undercarriage. It was fortunate that these celestial vaahans were not drawn by horses for no breed of equine could possibly have survived such an advance. Jarasandha saw half-severed bodies fly hither and tither, and the torso of a bowman, his severed longbow still clutched in one whole hand, came flying through the air to crash into two of his personal Mohini gu
ard, killing them on impact. The air was filled with flying debris and he snarled as he ordered the hijras to shield him again. Then he changed his mind and waved them away. It had occurred to him that the sight of him shielding himself and simply watching would not be good for the morale of his men. He was Jarasandha, Emperor of Magadha, king of the known world. He could not simply cower beneath a shield held by Hijras. He had to do something. He had to stop the Yadavas brothers before they wiped out his entire archery brigade.

  ***

  Balarama grinned with wolfish joy as his chariot slaughtered the archers who had been raining death upon his fellow Yadavas in Mathura. The celestial vaahan threw up a protective shield that was not visible to the naked eye, guarding its occupants from any debris or weapons. He had not used it earlier because it would have been less than honorable to have used celestial protection when fighting an enemy. He used it now only to keep himself from being constantly barraged by the offal of the slaughtered archers and only after he sensed Krishna using it first. Krishna used it to protect his sarathi Daruka. While they could endure the barrage of offal and body parts and other debris, the charioteer was mortal.

  At first, Balarama relished the satisfaction of destroying the archers that had caused so much suffering and death in Mathura only moments earlier, but as their chariots worked their way steadily in an arc around the circular ranks of the invading force, Balarama itched to do battle with his own hands. He heard the taunts and cries of outrage from the other enemy forces as they decried the slaughter of the archers, demanding the opportunity to fight by more direct means. He sent a message to his brother through their inaudible means of communication.

  Bhraatr, let me dismount and fight the enemy hand to hand. It does not seem honorable to continue this way for so long. We are more than capable of battling our foe face to face.

  You speak truly, Balarama bhaiya, I shall grant my sarathi power to control the chariot and we shall both dismount and fight the enemy at closer quarters.

  Balarama sent Krishna a mental emoticon that expressed his pleasure at Krishna’s response: :-)

  ***

  Daruka was pleased when Krishna offered him the reins that controlled the chariot. He had appreciated Krishna’s need to master the celestial vehicle himself during the last maneuver but was pleased to be entrusted to do his job independently. “Here, good sarathi,” Krishna said, “I am giving you control of not only this vehicle but my brother Balarama’s vehicle as well. Can you manage both chariots at once?”

  Daruka sent his mind outwards, feeling for the other chariot’s controls. The celestial vehicle responded at once, turning ever so slightly at his command, changing its course by a fraction of a degree. He brought it back on track. “I can, my lord. You need have no doubts on my account.”

  Krishna smiled. “I have no doubts at all, good Daruka. Only great expectations.”

  “I shall endeavor to fulfill them and create newer greater expectations, great one.”

  “I shall see you soon. When you have finished destroying the ranks of the archers, you may retreat with both chariots up into the sky to watch the rest of the battle from a safer vantage. It may get too hoary here on earth to risk being on ground level.”

  “As you command, sire,” Daruka replied.

  Krishna turned away and leaped from the chariot. Even though the vehicle was moving at blurring speed, Krishna seemed to leap away from it as easily as a man stepping off a stationary carriage. Then the flurry of debris and dirt churned up by the chariot’s passage obscured him and Daruka had to concentrate all his energies on keeping both vehicles on track. He kept them moving steadily around the vast moat dug up by Krishna, destroying the last ranks of longbow archers that threatened Mathura.

  14

  The brothers landed within yards of each other, twin puffs of dust raised by the impact of their landing. It so chanced that they landed near the elephant brigade of an akshohini. Over twenty one thousand elephants were assembled in this brigade alone, each armored and clad in the dark foreboding colors of Magadha, their mahouts seated aboard and armed with shortbows and light throwing spears. Their captain had tracked the approach of the enemy and reacted the instant both brothers touched ground.

  “Hathi-fauj!” he cried, his command instantly echoed by his lieutenants across the line. That command alone drove icicles into the hearts of the enemies of Magadha for to face a charge by an akshohini’s contingent of battle elephants was a formidable thing. Twenty one thousand eight hundred and seventy armored battle-trained elephants made an army unto themselves—even Jarasandha’s own champions with their potion-hardened bodies had faced enemy elephant brigades and had their work cut out for them. The sheer onslaught and driving force of those many ton-heavy bodies rolling in seemingly endless waves made an elephant akshohini no less daunting than battling the ocean itself—or the wind, or the rain. One could fight as fiercely and bravely and for as long as one could stand without achieving victory.

  Jarasandha’s army had 23 akshohini, each with its elephant brigade. With 21,870 elephants in each, that totaled five lakh three thousand and ten elephants. With their armor, mahouts and weapons, that added up to over a million tons of killing force.

  When the captain of that first elephant brigade shouted “Hathi-fauj,” he was sounding the death knell for most enemy armies. Even rapacious Jarasandha rarely sent in his elephant brigades—they caused too much wanton damage and friendly casualties and were often impossible to control and curb. On occasion, when he needed to show strength or ‘use the hammer’ as he called it, stamping out an entire city or punishing a populace for resisting his siege for too long or too bravely, a single elephant brigade was more than sufficient to do the task with formidable results. As the captain of the first brigade called his “Elephant army” to order, the other elephant brigades were alerted and stood by as was their duty but none expected to see combat. Most smiled on hearing those fateful words. “Hathi-fauj” was the most dreaded cry in Arya battles. Even Jarasandha’s brigade of champions, while devastating and seemingly indestructible, could not rival the terrifying visual spectacle posed by tens of thousands of armored elephants trumpeting and stamping their feet, frothing as they champed their lipless mouths and stared with wild rolling eyes.

  “Charge!” roared the captain of the first akshohini. The sound of a conch shell being blown by his aide sounded across the battlefield, alerting the mahouts atop the elephants. And with a rumbling and thumping that caused the ground beneath their feet to shake, the twenty one thousand eight hundred and seventy elephants trumpeted one last time, lowered their heads and began lumbering towards the two solitary men standing a mere two score yards away. They had been inflamed and excited by the scent of blood and adrenalin for the past hours and were eager for action, for Jarasandha had his mahouts feed their beasts choice treats after a battle, and even their normal feed only after a rigorous bout of training. The pachyderms knew that the more fiercely they fought and stamped and gored, the better they would be fed. The males who caused the highest death counts would be permitted the privilege of mounting as well as other perks of victory. And those who remained stubborn, sat down on the battlefield (even if wounded) or otherwise failed to discharge their duties would not be fed or watered or cared for at all. They knew these things and knew that their comfort and survival depended on their performance in battle and hence they looked forth to proving themselves.

  They began slowly as always but within a few yards they picked up speed—goaded by wickedly hooked prod rods and barb-tipped lashes—and were thundering with lowered heads, sharpened tusks held at an angle of attack. Even their miniscule brains and tiny eyes could not help but feel astonishment and pity for the two mortals who stood before them. Was this their only opposition? Was it a jest or a game? Surely this could not be the extent of their enemy’s resources? Why, this was work for a single baby bull, not even an adult male, leave alone a whole battle-herd! This was almost beneath their dignity, contemptuous.


  Yet it was not their place to question or pause once the order and physical motivation to charge had been given. All they knew now was they had to destroy those standing before them by any means possible and their task would be done.

  ***

  From across the breach, the generals of Mathura watched in stupefaction as the first akshohini’s elephant brigade bore down on the brothers Balarama and Krishna. Word rippled back through the Yadava lines that the Slayer of Kamsa and his bhraatr had re-entered the fray. Mathura and its army waited with bated breath to know the outcome. Even those wounded or who had lost loved ones or friends in the hail of arrows paused in their misery to send up a prayer for their savior, the Deliverer. The necessity of the game of gods might have clouded their awareness of Krishna’s full divinity yet no power in existence could entirely fog the mind of a true devotee of the Lord’s greatness. In times of distress, people were wont to attribute godlike qualities even to mortal men—champion fighters, warriors, generals and kings. Krishna and Balarama were of a status elevated beyond all those things. To everyone who knew them and loved them, they were no less than devas. They did not need a certification of proof to sanctify their belief.