THE CURSE OF BRAHMA Read Online Free Page B

flashed an evil smile. He knew the Matsya formation was a deadly pattern and even large armies faced great difficulty in standing up to this particular arrangement. An army as small as Sini Yadav’s would be completely routed. Moreover, the Matsya Vyuha was the best way to combat the Kamal Vyuha selected by Sini Yadav for his troops. Somdatta had chosen the formation well. As the name suggested, the Matsya Vyuha involved aligning the troops in the shape of a fish. The lighter-armed infantry would be placed in the centre of the formation and continue forward where they would give way to the cavalry, which formed the mouth of the fish formation. The sides of the structure would comprise the war elephants, and behind these huge beasts, the archers would hide and let fly their deadly arrows. The rear end again comprised the remaining infantry troops. Their fish formation would smash through Sini’s lotus formation like an iron rod through a sheet of paper.
    ‘Charge!’ roared Somdatta standing at the mouth of the Matsya Vyuha, with Damodara by his side. The entire formation moved forward as one large entity and it was astounding to see thousands of men and beasts surging ahead as if bound by one invisible thread.
    ‘Stand firm!’ Sini Yadav shouted at the other end of the battlefield. His troops stood at their place, awaiting further commands from their senapati. The entire Bateshwar army resembled a gigantic lotus waiting for the mammoth fish-like structure rushing towards it in what seemed an attempt to completely devour it.
    ‘Steady men, steady!’ Sini said to his people, as he saw soldiers and animals getting nervous, waiting for the gigantic enemy force to hit them where they stood. The tension was palpable. It appeared that the Bateshwar soldiers had forgotten to breathe for a brief moment.
    ‘If we stand still, we can handle their onslaught better,’ Sini said turning to the archers in the middle of their formation. ‘Aim for the sky. Make sure every arrow rains down from the sky and hits their elephants like a thunderbolt. That will keep them occupied for a while.’
    His next command was to the cavalry. ‘Spears at the ready, men. Keep them pointed towards the enemy.’ All cavalry troops had arms of steel and the power of iron in their veins. They would impale the enemy’s first charge on the tip of their spears, and they wouldn’t waver. Sini knew this with the same certainty as he knew the names of each of his soldiers. To the infantry he instructed, ‘Swords at the ready. Take down the first man to come in front of you. The rest will be easy.’
    Sini wished Vasudev had been with him. His friend’s presence had the same calming effect on him as his own had on his friend. But he had agreed with Vasudev’s almost last-minute decision to not be with him at this moment. ‘I hope you were right in deciding not to be here with me, my friend,’ he thought grimly.
    Meanwhile, Somdatta had not been idle. He knew the skill of the Bateshwar archers, and he realized that if he had been in Sini Yadav’s position, he would have used his scant forces to try and wreak the maximum damage possible.
Our attack has to be swift and ruthless
, he thought grimly, as he ordered his soldiers arranged in the Matsya Vyuha to increase their speed. His cavalry rushed ahead with the speed of lightning. Somdatta’s first charge resulted in the instant deaths of scores of his best riders as they were mercilessly impaled on the spears of the Bateshwar horsemen. However, by the time Sini’s cavalrymen had recovered from the first onslaught and could re-arm themselves with another spear, the second wave of Somdatta’s outsized cavalry was upon them and large patches of Sini’s cavalry were cut down into pieces. The Bateshwar infantry tried their best to fight the enemy soldiers rushing over them on horseback, but their task was made difficult as they stumbled over the dead bodies of the fallen cavalrymen. The foot soldiers were