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Authors: Aashish Kaul
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and woe.
For some time an ogress had been carrying away women and children to her remote grotto. People came crying for help to the ruler who at once made off to beat the life out of her. The younger one offered to go with him. Near the mouth of the grotto, the ruler instructed his brother to watch and wait for him at the spot, and rushed into the darkness. He waited a long time and when waiting some more there was still no sign of the other, he sadly surmised that great evil had befallen his brother. Not a sound could be heard, not a howl, not a footfall. Dark thoughts gripped him and he felt heavier in his body and his shadow stretched long and trembling from his feet. Just as he was thinking what best to do, his sight fell on the ground where the mud had turned to a thick red gruel, fed by fresh drops of blood that were even then trickling out from the mouth of the cave. Dreading that his brother had perished, slipping and swaying half from fear, half from sorrow, he used all his strength to push a heavy boulder across the mouth of the grotto, buckling more than once under its weight, and returned to tell others the sad news. The very next morning he was proclaimed head of the tribe by consensus, and the same evening the elder one returned seething and quivering in rage with bloodshot eyes to find the deserter on his own throne, and assumed the worst.
In truth, the ogress had fled through a passage in the rocks while she was being pursued, and it was there, deep in the caverns, that she met her violent death. It was, in fact, the first of her thick blood that had sloped out from the mouth of the cave and had made the one waiting desperate, while the victor was negotiating one of the several passages that opened out from the accursed chamber and led straight to a dead end. By the time he stumbled upon the correct wayhe was much troubled, but his troubles were far from finished as he soon realized he had been bolted in quite thoroughly by the very person he had left behind to watch his back.
What was betrayal and cowardice to the other appeared to me from the exileâs narration simply an error of judgment, entirely free from malice, although there was something of the cowardly about it. But we judge quickly and severely, forgetting that on him who waits each passing moment falls like a hammer and in the very act itself lie the seeds of its abandonment.
The punishment, notwithstanding the justness of the otherâs anger, was too harsh, and we decided to recruit an army of men to lead a rebellion against the arrogant ruler. But the recruitment went along pitifully. What could we offer to lure anyone into our foredoomed cause? For the ruler was feared in the entire realm as possessing supernatural strength and was famed for having beaten even the demon king in his younger days. Legend had it he had received a boon from a seer that his adversaryâs strength will fall to half against him in combat. Not many, therefore, could be found who readily espoused the cause of the rebellion or did not fear for their lives at the hands of the enemy. Mostly only outlaws and petty brigands were willing to join in the hope of a later booty or reinstatement into the tribe.
But those who had been recruited stayed away from the exileâs loyal group, keeping company with their own kind and waiting for the incursion to begin. I kept a wary eye on them for they were day by day growing lazier from inactivity and dissipation. These were men whose entire lives were ruled by base drives and indiscipline, and all they looked forward to while they deferred even as they whetted their instinct for carnage was to eat and drink around campfires they built at night, telling tales which were little else than poorly culled and rehashed versions of the fables enshrined in the
Vedas
, and which they had picked up on their itinerant movements through the region from the mouths of tradesmen or gypsies whom they would first waylay and later rob and
For some time an ogress had been carrying away women and children to her remote grotto. People came crying for help to the ruler who at once made off to beat the life out of her. The younger one offered to go with him. Near the mouth of the grotto, the ruler instructed his brother to watch and wait for him at the spot, and rushed into the darkness. He waited a long time and when waiting some more there was still no sign of the other, he sadly surmised that great evil had befallen his brother. Not a sound could be heard, not a howl, not a footfall. Dark thoughts gripped him and he felt heavier in his body and his shadow stretched long and trembling from his feet. Just as he was thinking what best to do, his sight fell on the ground where the mud had turned to a thick red gruel, fed by fresh drops of blood that were even then trickling out from the mouth of the cave. Dreading that his brother had perished, slipping and swaying half from fear, half from sorrow, he used all his strength to push a heavy boulder across the mouth of the grotto, buckling more than once under its weight, and returned to tell others the sad news. The very next morning he was proclaimed head of the tribe by consensus, and the same evening the elder one returned seething and quivering in rage with bloodshot eyes to find the deserter on his own throne, and assumed the worst.
In truth, the ogress had fled through a passage in the rocks while she was being pursued, and it was there, deep in the caverns, that she met her violent death. It was, in fact, the first of her thick blood that had sloped out from the mouth of the cave and had made the one waiting desperate, while the victor was negotiating one of the several passages that opened out from the accursed chamber and led straight to a dead end. By the time he stumbled upon the correct wayhe was much troubled, but his troubles were far from finished as he soon realized he had been bolted in quite thoroughly by the very person he had left behind to watch his back.
What was betrayal and cowardice to the other appeared to me from the exileâs narration simply an error of judgment, entirely free from malice, although there was something of the cowardly about it. But we judge quickly and severely, forgetting that on him who waits each passing moment falls like a hammer and in the very act itself lie the seeds of its abandonment.
The punishment, notwithstanding the justness of the otherâs anger, was too harsh, and we decided to recruit an army of men to lead a rebellion against the arrogant ruler. But the recruitment went along pitifully. What could we offer to lure anyone into our foredoomed cause? For the ruler was feared in the entire realm as possessing supernatural strength and was famed for having beaten even the demon king in his younger days. Legend had it he had received a boon from a seer that his adversaryâs strength will fall to half against him in combat. Not many, therefore, could be found who readily espoused the cause of the rebellion or did not fear for their lives at the hands of the enemy. Mostly only outlaws and petty brigands were willing to join in the hope of a later booty or reinstatement into the tribe.
But those who had been recruited stayed away from the exileâs loyal group, keeping company with their own kind and waiting for the incursion to begin. I kept a wary eye on them for they were day by day growing lazier from inactivity and dissipation. These were men whose entire lives were ruled by base drives and indiscipline, and all they looked forward to while they deferred even as they whetted their instinct for carnage was to eat and drink around campfires they built at night, telling tales which were little else than poorly culled and rehashed versions of the fables enshrined in the
Vedas
, and which they had picked up on their itinerant movements through the region from the mouths of tradesmen or gypsies whom they would first waylay and later rob and
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