If only dawn would break. The thought was on the mind of every soldier and general on the field. Their enemy’s attack had begun halfway through the night, growing in intensity as the crescent moon dipped down toward the west. Anticipating the night attack, Asura had placed skirmishers in black camouflage at intervals along the battle lines, but she had not expected an assault of such intensity. Apparently, the enemy was hoping that this battle would be the turning point in the long and grinding war. By the time the reports of failure from the front lines reached her headquarters and Asura was able to send out reserve forces, the enemy had already penetrated deep within her lines.
Great blades and halberds shimmered in the dark, sending up warm sprays of blood into the wind. Screams of terror and roars of rage overlapped with the shouting of men on both sides, and the soldiers mingled like fighting ants, slashing and grappling, rolling on the ground. In the dark, the psychological pressure on the defenders heightened to a fever pitch. For those who tried to flee, the darkness itself became an enemy.
If only dawn would break. Asura bit her lip and gazed toward the crescent moon, now low in the western sky. It would still be a long while before daybreak, and the tide of battle was rapidly shifting against her. The enemy had already reached the basin in front of the high ground where she now stood. A storm of arrows fell around her headquarters, sounding like a monstrous bird flapping its wings through the trembling night air.
“General Vajra, go!”
Vajra, one of her finest generals, defender of the northern banks of the Jinsha, descended from the high ground with his troops, his leather armor creaking. The soldiers moved silently, their footfalls as soft as those of nocturnal beasts drifting through the woods, until there came the sounds of violent hand-to-hand combat from midway down the slope.
Fire rose up in the deep forest to the north of the high ground, quickly engulfing the trees in a sea of crimson flame. The incessant reports of splintering trunks sounded across the intervening distance; every leaf became an arrowhead of fire, whirling up in the sky only to rain down around Asura’s camp. Soon the grass and the shrubs along the plateau began to burn. The dark silhouettes of Asura’s soldiers as they stomped the fires out looked almost beautiful, as though they had spontaneously abandoned war to engage in a great and graceful dance.
The fire wrapped around the rise, reaching the plains to the west. Their enemy was cutting off their route of escape.
Two or three of General Vajra’s men came staggering back, accompanied by a terrible smell of blood. One of them fell like a stone amongst the burning grasses. The stench of scorched flesh stung Asura’s nostrils. Now the enemy’s advance guard came dancing in among the wounded. Their silvery helmets reflected the flames, shining like red jewels. Asura cut down three of them personally with her greatsword while her guard rallied, managing at last to push the enemy back down the slope.
The white blush of dawn began to creep into the sky in the east and a chill morning wind blew across the battlefield. By now, the front lines were firmly engaged on the slopes. During the time between midnight and early morning, Asura’s ten thousand troops had been reduced to a tenth of that number, the rest killed, captured, or wounded so badly they could no longer fight.
A moist wind blew low over the field and rain began to fall. Gray clouds hung low like shredded flags, drawing a watery veil of light over the upland fields. Black smoke continued to rise through the rain, and the burning ground spat hot steam.
Now, a barrage of fiery cylinders arced through the sky, each trailing golden flame as they plunged into the high ground. Where they hit, huge gouts of flame burst up, dancing over the grasses, becoming a sea of flames too intense to face. The shock wave swept everything before it. Men ran wild like dancing matchsticks soon to be ash.
“Asura!” Another of her officers, General Tāshkand, raised a gauntleted hand and pointed. Explosives had already melted off the man’s ears, nose, and lips. “Their launchers are positioned over there!” At the base of a hill off to the right, Asura spotted a six-wheeled vehicle sporting a launching platform on its upper surface. A new salvo of twelve fire tubes had already been set on the metal wires that guided them. They were pointed straight at Asura’s position.
“General! Do we have any long-range crossbows remaining?”
Tāshkand darted out into the sea of flame and returned, carrying a crossbow in his hand. A small incendiary bomb had been fixed to the tip of the bolt. Asura raised the weapon and fired toward the launching platform. The bolt traced a line like a single silken thread through the rain, crippling its target on impact.
It would have been meaningless to remain there any longer. Asura’s front lines were collapsing; enemy forces drew closer with every passing moment. She gathered her remaining troops and began a retreat. The rain increased in intensity, turning the battlefield into a churning sea of mud. Enemies rose on all sides, and Asura’s foot soldiers fell one by one, but they left ten times their number in enemy corpses behind them.
A great rumbling sounded through the earth ahead of the retreating column. Asura wiped the rain from her face with one hand and stared. A line of shadows like small mountains were advancing through the white veil of water. This was their enemy’s main force, an armored elephant brigade. They swiped at her men with their long trunks and beat the ground with their massive feet, rumbling toward Asura like an avalanche. Crouching low, she rolled like a ball through the mud. A giant foot stomped down, barely missing her shoulder, and the shock threw her up into the air. She got to her feet, only just making it between the legs of the next elephant. One after the other the giant beasts stampeded over her. She lifted a hand to protect her eyes against the flying mud, dodging between thick pillars of gray flesh that shot past her with the speed of the wind. She twisted and spun like an acrobat, running till she was out of breath.
“Asura!” A voice sounded from far above her head. “There is no longer any escape. Abandon your cause and join me . . . or I’ll stomp you to a pulp right here in the mud.”
She looked up and spied a stern man seated in the gondola atop the clifflike flank of the nearest elephant.
Asura smiled, the line of her white teeth showing brilliantly against her mud-streaked face. “Śakra, you coward! Why don’t you come down from there and fight me, sword to sword!”
Śakra put a hand on the edge of the gondola and looked down. His silvery armor shone in a stray ray of sunlight. “Asura! Look around you.”
She didn’t have to look. She was standing in a sea of mud, a circle roughly fifty meters in diameter defined by nearly two hundred elephants standing side by side. Soldiers perched in the gondolas on the elephants’ backs leveled several hundred crossbows directly at her.
“You may possess miraculous talent in battle, but there is no way for you to escape this encirclement. You should know that better than anyone else. Well? Join my forces. It’s about time.” Śakra looked down at Asura as she stood in the muck at his elephant’s feet. “Who sent you to wage this endless war and plunge Brahmā’s world into chaos?” he demanded. “For how many years have you fought against my celestial army, never realizing the sin you wrought, not once suing for peace? Whence this ceaseless animosity you bear for me? Why continue this profitless struggle?”
Asura raised her sword, pointing it straight at Śakra’s face. “I will tell you this! I know your objectives already, you who call yourself Śakra, and even those of Brahmā who rules this world. Already you have destroyed too many civilizations. Mohenjo-daro, Sumer . . . all have disappeared into the flow of time by your design. Why? Was it because you saw in them the potential to become aware of your existence and thereby endanger your own world? Is that why you doomed their civilizations to eventual destruction? Is that why you seeded their hearts and their beliefs with pathways to ruin? Ever since you placed that statue of Maitreya deep in the Pearl Palace, you have been working to fulfill that singular purpose. And to this you added the great insult: the lie of promised salvation! Tell me, how long is 5,670,000,000 years in your reckoning? One year? One day? The merest blink of an eye? I would drive you from this world! I would destroy your world! Those were my—”
My orders. Asura snapped her mouth shut.
“What’s that?” came the voice from above. “Everything is as you say, but what were you about to say next? Having second thoughts, perhaps?” Śakra tilted his head toward her, urging her to continue.
“I . . . I . . .”
“Yes, you. What about you?”
A look of despair crossed Asura’s face as her eyes went from Śakra above her to the elephantry all around her. She was trapped, a tiny squirrel among wolves. The great sword fell from her hand.
“Cakravar . . .”