‘They will be forced to sail out of Lothal,’ said Dilipa.

‘Exactly,’ said Parvateshwar. ‘Since our contingent will be approximately fifty ships, they will have to match our numbers. We will make our ships wait in ambush in a lagoon far beyond the Narmada delta.’

‘And once they’ve begun sailing up the Narmada, we’ll charge in from behind and attack them,’ said Dilipa.

‘No,’ said Parvateshwar.

‘No?’ asked a surprised Dilipa.

‘No, Your Highness. I intend to send out a crack team of commandos in advance, to the Narmada. They will wait for the Naga ships to race upriver, till they have travelled a considerable distance away from the sea. Naval movements in a river are constricted, no matter how large the river. Their fleet will be sailing close to each other. Our commandos will have devil boats with firewood and flints ready for our enemies. Our task will be to take out the first as well as last line of ships simultaneously.’

‘Brilliant. They will lose their fleet, their soldiers will be adrift. Then our own fleet can charge in from the hidden lagoon and cut their soldiers down.’

‘No, Your Highness,’ said Parvateshwar, thinking he wouldn’t have needed to explain all this to someone with the strategic brilliance of Shiva. ‘Our fleet is not going to engage in battle at all. It’s only a decoy. Our main attack will be carried out by the commandos. If the first and last line of the enemy ships are set on fire, there’s a pretty good chance that all the ships in between too will eventually catch fire.’

‘But won’t that take too long?’ asked Bhrigu. ‘Many of their soldiers would be able to abandon ship and escape onto land.’

‘True,’ said Parvateshwar. ‘But they will be stranded far from their base with no ships. I had learnt at Panchavati that there is no road between Maika-Lothal and the Narmada. It will take them at least six months to march back to Lothal through those dense impenetrable forests. I’m hoping that on seeing the size of our decoy fleet, Sati will commit at least one hundred thousand men to attack us. And with those hundred thousand enemy soldiers stuck in the jungles of the Narmada, our army would become vastly superior numerically; a ratio of almost four to one. We could then attack and probably take Lothal.’

Dilipa still hadn’t understood the entire plan. ‘But many of our own soldiers will also be in the decoy fleet, right? So we’ll have to wait for them to come back to Karachapa and then...’