Chapter 1 — His Own Sword

The jeweled necklace that Ravana had hung around his giant brother’s throat lay out on the plain with Kumbhakarna’s headless trunk now, and the King of Lanka was still touching his own bare collarbone when his three-headed son stepped up to the foot of the throne.

Trishiras waited until his father’s weeping subsided. All three of his heads stood erect, the golden diadem on each brow catching the morning sunlight that slanted through the hall doors.

“Uncle Kumbhakarna fought like a hero and fell on the field, Majesty, the bravest arm of our house, and heavy is the grief of his loss,” Trishiras said, mounting the bottom step. “Yet rouse yourself now, and put an end to weeping. Righteous warriors do not sit mourning while the battle waits. Your impenetrable mail still hangs upon its hook. Your great bow and your unerring shafts are still in your hand, and your war chariot yoked to a thousand donkeys still shakes the earth whenever its wheels roll forth.”

Ravana lowered his hand from his throat.

“In days of old, even unarmed, you humbled the gods and the danavas alike,” Trishiras went on, pointing toward the wall that faced the northern plain. “With your weapons in your hands, how can that mortal son of Raghu stand before you? Or else remain at your ease within the palace, Father, and let me go out alone to sweep your enemies from the field the way Garuda sweeps up serpents.”

Slowly the king’s broad back straightened against the cushions of the throne.

Behind Trishiras, his brothers were already shouting their assent. Narantaka, the finest horseman in Lanka, raised both fists in the air. Giant Atikaya, the tallest of them all, smote the nearest pillar with the flat of his palm until the stone hummed. From every side of the hall the others took up the cry in turn, calling out together, I too, and I, let me ride with them.

Ravana came down the steps of the dais. One by one he drew his sons against his chest, and each time he released an embrace he took a heavy gold chain or a string of gems from the open jewel-chest beside the throne and hung it around his son’s neck. Trishiras felt the weight of the chain settle cold from the box across his breastbone as his father’s hand clapped him twice, once on the shoulder and once on the cheek.

Taking Trishiras’s central face between both hands, Ravana looked into his eyes as all three crowned heads inclined toward him.

“You were the first to stand up while your father sat bowed in the dust,” Ravana said. Letting go of his cheeks, he looked down the row of gleaming throats behind him. “Go forth, my sons, and come back bearing a name.”

Atikaya touched the new chain at his collar and laughed aloud, and his brothers laughed with him.

The morning sun had scarcely cleared the eastern battlements when their column rode out through the gates of Lanka.

---

Narantaka came out on horseback, and the vanara front split open before his stallion’s chest the way sea-waves part before a leaping dolphin.

From a low hillock where he stood beside Sugriva, young Angada watched that single rider. Vanaras hurled uprooted trees and jagged boulders from both flanks, and every rock splashed into the dirt behind the stallion’s streaming tail. The rakshasa prince never swerved from a straight line. His barbed lance rose and fell at a gallop, and the wake he left behind him through the middle of the divisions was a wide lane of furred bodies, some still writhing in the dust, others lying still.

Behind the golden ramparts at that rider’s back, inside a walled grove, Ravana kept Rama’s wife under guard. For that one woman’s sake this whole army had crossed the sea, though Angada himself had never once seen her face.

Beside him Sugriva laid a hand on his nephew’s forearm.

“Do you see that rider on the horse?” The vanara king’s forefinger traced the lane of fallen bodies to its point. “Go down there, Angada, and face him.”

“At once, Uncle.”

Sliding down the bank of the hillock empty-handed, Angada neither stooped for a boulder nor wrenched up a tree. Carrying nothing save his own teeth, nails, and fists, he trotted straight through the retreating companies who turned their heads to stare as he passed, and planted both feet in the middle of the stallion’s path.

“Rakshasa!” Angada called out, waiting until Narantaka turned his head toward him. “Leave off striking those who cannot match your blows. Turn that lance of yours upon a worthier chest.”

Narantaka hauled back on the reins, making his sweat-drenched charger wheel in place, snorting. Biting his lower lip with blood-red teeth while his breath hissed short and hot through his nostrils, the rakshasa raised his barbed iron lance and hurled it with all his strength straight at the center of Angada’s bare chest.

The cast was true. Angada heard the sharp ring of the steel point striking his breastbone, followed an instant later by a louder crack as the shaft snapped in two against his ribs and dropped in two pieces between his feet.

He leaped straight at the horse.

His fist drove in between the beast’s eyes, crushing flesh and bone together, and horse and rider crashed down in a single heap. Dust billowed up. Narantaka scrambled up first from beneath his dead mount’s flank, his eyes blazing red, and his heavy hand came crashing down on Angada’s head.

Angada’s sight went dark for the space of a breath. When the light cleared, he was down on his knees in the dirt with blood running from his temple to the corner of his mouth, and the rakshasa towered over him with his arm raised for a second blow.

Angada rose faster than that falling arm. His second blow struck harder than the first, and Narantaka dropped beside his dead horse and did not stir again.

Along the hillsides the vanaras who had been running away halted in their tracks and stared at the horse that did not rise. Out from the rakshasa line went up an angry roar as three giant figures charged toward Angada at once, one swinging an iron mace on foot, one riding high atop a war elephant, and behind the pair of them Trishiras drawing his bow.

Still bleeding from the brow, Angada wrenched up the nearest tree and hurled it. Before the trunk could cross half the gap, Trishiras’s arrows sheared it in two in midair so the pieces dropped weakly onto the grass. Angada cast a boulder, then a second tree, only for the foremost rakshasa’s whirling mace to bat them aside.

Now the war elephant was right on top of him. Ducking under its swinging trunk, Angada struck out with his fist, and the great beast reeled sideways and crashed down into the dust. Seizing one of its long ivory tusks in both hands, Angada wrenched it clean out of the skull.

The tusk was heavy and slick, its root still red with blood. Swinging that curved ivory beam like a club, Angada struck the mace-wielding rakshasa once, twice, and again. The giant staggered, caught his breath, and then blows began raining down on Angada from every side. A mace caught him across the back. A lance grazed his forearm. His knee touched the dirt.

He rose again with that bloody tusk still locked in his fist.

Leaping forward, Trishiras loosed his string with a sharp twang. Three iron shafts stood planted in a neat row across Angada’s forehead, and blood ran down into his eyes.

Looking out through that red veil, Angada saw two figures come bounding toward him from the vanara line. One carried a jagged hill-crest hoisted on his shoulder. The other, larger still, carried nothing in his hands at all.

---

Hanuman reached Angada’s side at the exact breath Nila hurled his mountain peak.

Seeing the mass of rock coming, Trishiras nocked an arrow, loosed, and nocked again, every shaft striking the boulder before it could descend. Cracked apart in midair and glowing with sparks, the hill-crest rained down onto the turf as smoking gravel and ash.

The mace-wielding rakshasa raised his iron weapon against Hanuman. The son of the Wind God did not wait for the mace to fall. His open hand struck the side of the giant’s head like a thunderbolt, stretching his foe lifeless on the grass with the mace still locked in his fingers.

Though an arrow from Trishiras’s bow stood planted in his ribs, Nila tore up a small hillock complete with the trees growing on its crest and brought it crashing down atop the elephant-rider until the earth around the mound ran red.

Only Trishiras remained.

The three-headed giant raised his javelin high. The new gold chain across his chest flashed in the sun as his arm swung back, and the spear shot toward Hanuman like a meteor falling at noon. Shifting one pace aside, Hanuman let the point hiss past his shoulder, caught the shaft in midair before it could touch the ground, and snapped it in two across his knee.

Trishiras drew his sword.

Short and bright as a mirror, the blade bit deep into Hanuman’s chest before the vanara could step back again. Hanuman staggered. Warm blood soaked the fur over his breast, and for a breath his feet scarcely knew where they stood.

Then he raised his wide palm and slapped the giant across the face.

The crack of that blow rang loud across the field. Letting out a single long shriek, Trishiras crashed flat on his back. His sword flew from his fingers and landed in the grass between the two of them.

Hanuman stooped and picked it up.

The hilt was still warm from its owner’s grip. Looking down at the prostrate giant, at his three necks and his three crowns, Hanuman swung Trishiras’s own blade in one clean arc and sheared all three crowned heads from his shoulders.

Across the headless chest, the jeweled chain Ravana had hung around his neck in the hall still lay bright and whole.

Behind Hanuman’s back the dry grass crackled. Another rakshasa stood there, older than the rest, and he did not shout. He looked down at the bodies on the grass and raised his black iron mace in both hands.

A great vanara named Rishabha leaped between them, and the mace came crashing down against his chest.

Knocked flat on the turf, Rishabha lay still for a long count, and then rose again. As the rakshasa drew his heavy mace back for a second stroke, Rishabha clamped both hands around the black iron on the backswing and wrenched it out of his grasp.

He swung it once.

The rakshasa’s jaw shattered under the iron head. He toppled into the dirt and did not move again, like a mountain crag split by the lord of the sky.

Whirling the captured mace overhead, Rishabha charged into the rakshasa ranks while Hanuman walked over to where Angada knelt with three arrows still jutting from the brow of Vali’s son. He was just stooping to draw them out when Angada raised a hand and pointed past his shoulder toward the gate of Lanka, where a golden chariot was rolling out behind a team of a thousand horses.