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  Ananta Varman was aware of this risk and, under his command, had around thirty of his most capable and loyal men. Harisena had another fifty so we weren’t entirely unprotected. But we still knew the danger of running into some atavic tribes armed and instigated by the Tiger King. If the raid failed and was reported back to him, he could always say he had no control over his forest folk, and that it was probably the fear of my father’s formidable law enforcement next door which had kept them from running amok all this while.

  Datta did not travel well. The breakneck speed of our journey back, coupled with her anxiety over what awaited us back home in Pataliputra, made it a tough ride for her. We couldn’t afford to give her an ox-cart litter this time around, for fear it would slow down the entire cavalcade, thus making sitting ducks out of us. So she rode with us instead. Dressed in my turban and weapon guards, she looked like a teenage boy too young to have sprouted facial hair. Harisena joked that she was too pretty to be an imperial guard but Datta didn’t rise to the bait. No one was in the mood for laughs at this point.

  The first two days were uneventful. We woke at first light, rode all day with three short breaks for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and set up camp at nightfall. We slept with our weapons in our hands and our ears out for predators, animal as well as human. Although there were no signs that we were being followed – the scouts that scoured the terrain ahead and behind our train reported nothing unusual – I felt uneasy. After years of training, I had developed a sixth sense. And it was telling me to beware.

  They say every battlefield, no matter how big or small, emits a certain smell. It is a queasy mix of sweat, blood and faeces as men fight, kill or empty their bowels. But to me, that nauseous odour is just the smell of fear. And it attacks the nostrils long before arms are drawn, as men lie in wait to kill and be killed. As I lay down next to the campfire that evening, I noted that queer battle smell. I knew there were attackers lurking in the shadows just outside our circle of light, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

  I didn’t want Datta to panic so I simply told her to lie close to me while I kept watch. Harisena immediately understood and sat down next to us, his sword unsheathed. Ananta Varman ordered his men to form a tight circle around the campfire with their shields creating a makeshift palisade around them. Everyone held on to their weapons. And waited.

  They pounced on us in the darkest hour before dawn. Soft-footed and lightening-quick like leopards, guided by the last-glowing embers of a dying campfire, they entered our dugout by slitting the throats of some guards on the outer rim of the shield wall. I saw their silhouettes soundlessly pick their way through the camp in the thinning darkness and I lightly touched Harisena. I needn’t have bothered though. He was ready, sword unsheathed, as was I.

  We looked at each other and wordlessly signalled our move. At the count of three, I leapt up and tackled the two men closest to me. I speared the first, catching him squarely in his chest and then used his slumped body as a shield to ram into his comrade. The man lost his balance and my sword had no trouble finding his flank.

  Harisena, still half-lying on the ground, used his thin knife to deftly slice the tendon on the ankle of the attacker closest to him. The man yelped and stumbled, giving Harisena the opening to rip his jugular, cleanly and nearly noiselessly. Unfortunately, the man hiccupped and fell face forward on Datta, drenching her in blood and causing her to wake up, scared and startled. Her breath knocked out by the dead weight, she pushed the body away and called out to me. I shushed her into silence immediately, but the damage had been done. The atavics knew now that we had a woman in our midst and their main body focused the attack on the three of us. The rest of our company was busy fighting off the ambush. Shields were up. Swords flashed silver in the pale grey of imminent dawn and the night air was full of gasps, grunts and the occasional death-throe scream.

  I did a quick recce and realized the tribals were actually very well positioned. Ananta Varman and his core group were engaged in fierce combat near the shield wall. The attackers had surrounded us well enough to cut off any immediate assistance from that side. I threw Datta her sword, signalling to her to get behind me. Harisena took the cue and backed in too, forming a tight three-pointed star, a classic defensive position. A casual look told me there were at least thirty men surrounding us. I knew these forest tribesmen were no match for our seasoned swordplay, but what I was worried about were their archers. Atavic tribals typically dipped their arrowheads in poison – mostly hemlock juice. If they were to let loose their arrows, we would have to defend with our shields first. Which means fighting with a handicap.

  ‘Harisena, disable the archers first,’ I whispered. ‘From what I can see, there are five of them amongst this rabble. You can spot them from the quivers slung across their backs.’

  Harisena nodded. He kept an assortment of thin knives tucked into his breastplate and arm guards. The tribals knew our archers were cut off from us, which meant they weren’t expecting an aerial assault.

  Harisena was lightening quick – in a smooth, fluid motion he plucked out the knives from his breastplate and hurled them in the direction of the two archers facing him. I heard the men hiccup and slump forward – their comrades gibbered in their strange tongue, too astonished to comprehend what had happened – and I knew my friend had found his target. Harisena slipped one knife into my hand and I hurled, cutting down the archer in front of me who was about to shoot his first arrow. Rattled, the atavics decided to dump their arrows and swamp us with their sheer numbers instead. Exactly as I had expected they would do.

  I knew Harisena and I were enough to take on this semi-trained rabble in a clean swordfight, and Datta was well-trained enough to defend herself too. ‘Don’t break this formation,’ I whispered into her ear and unsheathed both my Khadga broadsword and my trusted Asi. Behind me, I heard a faint rustle that told me Harisena had drawn his weapons too. Like me, he could use both his arms, a Parashu battle axe in his left hand to hack his way through and the Asi in his right to cut down the enemy.

  ‘Harisena, NOW,’ I shouted, just as the tribals started closing in on us, their ululating battle cry catching the attention of Ananta Varman. The half-light did them no favours – I caught the first two easily, decapitating one with a mighty swing of the Khadga and disemboweling the other with a clean swipe of the Asi.

  ‘Kacha, don’t bother about protecting my flank – I can defend myself,’ shouted Datta. ‘Take them down before the surprise wears off.’

  I nodded in agreement, and Harisena and I split up to run headlong into the two halves of the tribal attack. Although good at ambushes, the tribals had never faced the kind of lightening quick swordplay that my weapons master insisted was my special forte. Their weapons too were crude – bows and arrows, clubs and spears. They had nothing to face the challenge of a beautifully made and meticulously sharpened Asi edge. Their heavier weapons made them slow and they had no idea what they were up against. This wasn’t hard work for me – hack, hack, slash, slash – I wielded my Khadga and Asi with as much speed as I could muster, creating panic and confusion amongst their ranks. From the screams and grunts behind me, I knew Harisena was doing the same thing. The tribals fought bravely but heavy weapons are difficult to control and wield with precision, so their blows seldom hit home. Nearly an hour later, I had eight dead and two gravely injured men at my feet. I turned around to find Harisena fighting off the few remnants of his group. Only six of the initial band of thirty now remained, and they were busy retreating. Datta stood with her sword unsheathed but was protected by a circle of Ananta Varman’s guards. The ululations of the tribals as they had rushed in on us caught the commander’s attention and he’d immediately sent some men across to protect the crown princess.

  Near the shield wall too, the fight was wrapping up as the tribals stepped back, looking for forest cover to retreat. The attack didn’t go well for them. A quick look around told me we’d taken down three quarters of the attacking atavic force. Stil
l, Ananta Varman wanted to take no chances. ‘Decapitate all the dead and injured and put their heads up on stakes,’ he barked out a command. I didn’t much care for this brutal display, but I held my tongue. We were still in enemy land and this would send out a strong signal to Byagra should he have any other ideas.

  Harisena walked up to me, drenched in sweat despite the chill of the late-October dawn. Still breathing heavily from his exertion and the adrenalin rush of a close combat, he looked me in the eye and said, ‘This is just the beginning. There’ll be many more, Kacha. Make no mistake.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘I am ready.’

  2

  Snakes and Ladders

  THE REST OF THE ride back to Pataliputra threw no more surprises our way. Clearly, Ananta Varman’s brutal message had hit home and the atavic tribesmen we met along the remainder of our journey were mostly harmless. Some of them were, in fact, quite helpful, offering our scouts details of the route along with game and fodder for the way.

  I had plenty of time to think things through as we rode on in companionable silence. Both Datta and Harisena sensed my mood and let me be, leaving me alone with my thoughts for a while. I was still trying to come to terms with father’s death and what that would mean for me, as well as my family. I wasn’t unprepared for the job – ever since he crowned me his tatparigrihita heir three years ago, father had been training me for this very day. It started with me attending court regularly for just over a year, followed by a ten-month stint across the provinces looking into law and order and taxation issues, and another eight months visiting our ally kingdoms to suss out anything that might have been brewing in the neighbourhood. I was ready for my destiny and father’s last words convinced me that he knew it too.

  What I was worried about was my own backyard. Court politics was nothing new to me. I grew up listening to my parents discussing Chanakyaniti and ever since my eighteenth year, I was allowed to sit in when the Council of Twelve Elders met. But my first year as a courtier, after being anointed heir apparent, was an eye-opener. I realized it was one thing to be a fly on the wall when you had no stake in the game. But quite another when the rest of the pit saw you as both predator and prey. Harisena’s response was to immediately put into place a network of informants and supporters, both in court as well as inside the palace. ‘Knowledge is power,’ he told me. ‘We need to know what’s going on so we can always be ready for surprises. To be unprepared is to sign your own death warrant.’

  Apart from Harisena’s network, I also had my mother and her Lichchavi kinsmen as fall-back options. Strong, sharp and armed with a steely will, my mother could be both a formidable friend and an implacable enemy. Unlike most women in the imperial household, she liked to keep herself both informed and invested in what was going on in the kingdom. She had her Lichchavi relations to back her up in court and she had father’s ear. Mother was not just a ceremonial figurehead; she was literally the second-most powerful person in court. And having her on my side was my biggest advantage.

  My father’s household wasn’t as elaborate as many of our ally kingdoms but it still included several minor wives acquired as a result of his neighbourhood diplomacy policies. As the Patta Mahadevi, mother outranked all of these queens, and it was her skill in handling people and power that kept these often-warring factions quiet, at least outwardly. But resentments bubbled under the surface, venom that I now expected to spill out into the open.

  Indeed, among the confused jumble of anguish, anger and apprehension with which I tried to make sense of my new reality, one thing kept nagging me: the sudden attack by atavic tribesmen was too convenient for Byagra to just be a coincidence. He’d clearly ordered his irregulars to attack because he knew there was a power vacuum in Pataliputra. But the question is, how did he know so quickly? And before I did?

  This is what I asked Harisena when we set up camp that evening. As usual, my friend told me, rather frankly, what I was trying not to admit to myself; at least not without proof. ‘There is only one possibility – Byagra knows the news about His Majesty because he has a mole in the palace in Pataliputra. A mole that is close enough to the royal family to be privy to this important piece of information. And I think both you and I know who that is.’

  I kept quiet, not wanting my ugly suspicion to be so rudely confirmed. ‘This is just conjecture,’ I said, almost to myself. ‘There’s no proof.’

  Datta, who was sitting close by and hugging herself tightly against the evening chill, looked up and caught my eye. ‘I know you bear your half-brothers no ill will Kacha,’ she said softly, ‘but you also know who you can and cannot trust. I have too much faith in your intelligence to believe otherwise.’

  Harisena nodded. ‘Remember what happened when the emperor anointed you his tatparigrihita heir? I was standing right behind His Majesty, facing you and the Council of Twelve Elders. Bhasma’s face was like a mirror to his soul – dark with the rage of unfulfilled desire.’

  ‘And he’s not the only one,’ added Datta. ‘I saw the way Jivita’s face clouded over when father called you the noblest of his sons. They are all your enemies, Kacha, because you have what they all desire.’

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to believe my worst suspicion. Almost the same age, Bhasma and I were rivals from the time we were old enough to realize how tangled our futures were. In the weapons room, he excelled with the Tomara iron club while my forte was swordplay. Born of different mothers, we grew up natural adversaries, both vying for father’s attention and approval in weapons’ training as well as at our gurukul classwork. Father loved us both equally, leading Bhasma to believe his claim to the throne was no less than mine, even though his mother was not the Patta Mahadevi queen empress. A minor Naga princess who was married off to my father as a peace offering, Bhasma’s mother Padmanaga brought neither men nor land as her dowry. Perennially overshadowed by my mother, Lichchavi-Princess Kumardevi, thanks to the importance that her family and clan enjoyed in court, Padma deeply resented her rival’s pre-eminence. Not only was my mother the Queen Empress, but father also treated her as his equal in all respects. I proudly call myself ‘Lichchavidauhitra’ and father routinely minted coins which had both his and my mother’s likeness imprinted on them.

  That, I suspected, was the reason Bhasma and Jivita grew up as messed up as they did. Padma transferred all her bitterness to her two sons, egging them on so they would get what she never did – father’s affection and the assurance that they came first. Not physically strong, Jivita was not particularly interested in weapons training. But he was the brain behind most of the schemes the two brothers hatched to take me on. Like the hemlock juice-laced Madhvi fruit cocktail I was served during the Vasant Utsav spring festival two years ago. Thankfully, I noticed there was something amiss with the taste. So I took no more than a mouthful or two, even though I was thirsty. Still, I became violently ill later that evening. However, thanks to my mother’s care and the court physician’s potions, I recovered completely in a few days.

  Harisena had no doubt the brothers were behind this poisoning but when we took our suspicion up to father, he refused to believe it. ‘They were not even in the capital when this happened,’ he told me. ‘I know you boys don’t get along sometimes, but I don’t think my sons would try to poison one another. Don’t think the worst of them, Kacha. They are, at the end of the day, still your blood brothers. And it’s best not to breed enemies in your own household.’

  I couldn’t argue with father, so I held my tongue. I knew why he said what he did – although my rivalry with Bhasma and Jivita had begun to acquire a nasty hue long before this incident, neither brother ever stepped out of line in father’s presence. They knew better.

  Privately though, Harisena, Datta and I had our doubts. I had been openly mocked in public, viciously attacked during weapons practice, and ambushed on my morning horse-riding exercises outside the city. Jivita had even tried to bend father’s ear about how I was being led astray by Harisena. On this particular o
ccasion, it was my mother’s intervention that prevented my best friend from being banished from the palace.

  To his credit, father remained determinedly unbiased all through our growing-up years. His children were given equal attention and opportunity to prove themselves. I got along well with most of my other half-brothers and sisters, even though Harisena and Datta were not very sure if the bonhomie was real or purely for my father’s benefit. But Bhasma and Jivita made no attempt to hide their hatred and resentment, often comparing the political and military heft of their maternal relations – the Naga kings of northern Panchal and Padmavati – with the Lichchavis, wondering what would happen if the Nagas formed a confederacy against the empire.

  ‘My mother is related to King Achyuta of Ahichhatra on her father’s side and King Nagasena of Padmavati on her mother’s side,’ Bhasma once said, during one of our many altercations. ‘If she wanted, she could have shown those arse-licking Lichchavis whose support is really holding this kingdom aloft. But she loves father too much to hurt him. He should know that and respect her for it.’