‘Yes-yes,’ the barkeep whimpered, ‘what do you want? I can add spice to your stew.’

‘Fuh! Information is what we seek, o purveyor of stale food and illicit brews. Many soldiers must come here. What’s the grapevine telling you these days, my friend?’

‘Eh, what?’

Shishupal interjected. ‘He means, what news of the siege?’

‘Not much by the looks of it. There is a lot of fighting out there. The Greeks are having to conquer every turn, every alley in the Third District. Their catapults can’t find their way into this maze. Add to that the stormy winds, so their magic fire is out. Lord Krishna has also blanketed many portions of the Second Sister and the Curfew with blankets coated with erm, something, erm I can’t remember what, but the thing is - covered under these blankets, the Walls won’t catch that blue fire.’

‘Why would they need catapults to manoeuvre the alleys? I heard they had enormous siege engines with dozens of catapults, and not to forget, archers. Even the Magadhans cannot match the Greek siege towers. They could just rain blazebane arrows from a height at the walls and beyond, no? Isn’t that what they did to burn the Third District?’

‘Aye. But didn’t you hear what Lady Jambavati did?’

And so they heard of how Jambavati had singlehandedly changed the rules of warfare. The thing was catapults hurled huge slabs of rough-hewn asymmetrical rocks up into the air. Even with the perfect angle of a finely tuned catapult on the Third Sister, the rocks would peak, stall and dip to go to a maximum of two hundred yards, where they would wedge themselves deep into the earth. Which was why the Greeks had withdrawn their siege towers three hundred yards away from the Third Sister. This was standard practice in any battle. The Greeks had to wait to conquer the Third Sister, or whatever was left of it, and then bring the siege engines into the city to take the Second Sister.

Except, Krishna had reached out to his second wife, who was some kind of genius. She replaced the rocks with balls. Hundred pound, perfectly round balls, easily produced by the local mason yards. When the first ball had arced into the air, the Greeks had laughed at how woefully short it had pitched. But they didn’t laugh when it bounced the first time, and they certainly did not laugh when it bounced again and smashed into their ranks, rolling along the ground and picking up pace, thanks to the slope. The Greeks soon discovered that a rolling hundred-pound ball cannot be stopped by soldiers, wagons, tent poles, tethered mammoths, or siege engines. Only level ground can halt it, and by then…

‘All the siege towers are gone?’ Shishupal’s eyes goggled in disbelief.

‘Aye, our soldiers took advantage of the distraction, and were able to lead a quick sortie to throw bellowers from close quarters at the towers. They may have their magic fire, but we have Mathuran munitions. Now the plan is to just to sit this one out.’