Quarrels whistled around him, and he instinctively hid behind the second airavat. He peeked to see a squad of Mathurans battling Greeks up the sloping alley. Curiously, a circle of archers had surrounded a one-armed woman who had a satchel slung across her chest. Mathios realised that the airavat he was behind was not marching ahead. And then he saw the mahout’s body, a bolt stuck in his head. I have to do everything here. Mathios took his dagger, and pricked the beast’s leg. It screamed and charged up the street. Mathios ran behind, grinning.

MISERY felt in her satchel. She had only two cursers and one bellower left. Her squad, the central detachment, engaged the Greeks while she advanced cautiously down the slope with a score of archers encircling her, so that she could throw her munitions at the two airavats below. Calm had volunteered, but Misery was the best at rock-throwing. A bellower was, however, not something you threw into a crowded alley. She would have to find a way to make sure she hit the beasts spot on with the two cursers she had left. Considering the airavat in the lead was not moving, it might be the easier target. As if it had divined her thoughts, the hitherto unmoving airavat rampaged up the slope. It crashed into Greeks and Mathurans alike, crushing many underfoot, slicing open others with its four tusk-blades.

Misery turned to wink at Calm, and shouted, ‘Run!’ even as she felt the trunk coil around her. She took out the bellower and looked into the eyes of the airavat. ‘Eat this, bitch!’ she yelled as she threw the bellower straight into the airavat’s open mouth with an underhand throw. Finally, a hero’s death.

MENAS wondered why he was here amongst the Greeks when he was an Easterner. He had grown up loving airavats. He loved the cold of the East. The abundance of forest. His mother had told him to join the Army even if it was under a Rakshasa King. There was honour in defending your borders, she had said. So, he had done so, as a mahout. But here he was, in a foreign land, fighting men and women, who had nothing to do with him. His King had sent him to Mathura, and he had obeyed. It had been madness. Burning pigs in the air! His airavat Mavant, had been terrified. The Greeks called airavats, behemoths. So unimaginative. Yet here he was, fighting amidst them, a long way from home, and not for anything he understood or stood to gain from.