The Southern Cattle Raid

The spies of Duryodhana came home to Hastinapura empty-handed. They had walked the roads of the earth for a year, searching the hermitages and the market towns, questioning ascetics and caravan masters, and they brought back no trace of the sons of Pandu. But they brought one piece of news that made the Kuru hall go quiet. In the kingdom of the Matsyas, they said, Kichaka the commander, who had never been thrown by any wrestler living, had been killed in a single night in a darkened dancing-hall, and his hundred kinsmen with him, and the people were saying it was the work of invisible gandharvas.

Duryodhana turned that news over in his mind the way a man turns a coin to catch the light. "Who kills Kichaka?" he asked. "Not gandharvas. There is one pair of arms on this earth that could do such a thing in the dark, and I know whose shoulders they hang from."

Among the kings who sat in that hall was Susharma of Trigarta, and no man in the assembly had more reason to smile at the death of Kichaka. Trigarta lay along the Matsya border, and for years Kichaka had driven Susharma's armies back, burned his outposts, and taken his cattle. He rose now and spoke plainly.

"Kichaka is ashes," said Susharma. "Virata is old and his shield is gone. His southern pastures are fat with cattle and thin with spears. Let me strike them, and let the Kurus follow a day behind me and take the northern herds while Virata's army chases me south. If the Pandavas are hiding there, they must fight or be forsworn, and we shall see them. If they are not there, we shall still be richer by sixty thousand cattle."

Duryodhana laughed and struck his thigh, and the raid was agreed before the lamps were lit.

The Trigartas came down on the southern cattle stations at dawn on the eighth day of the dark fortnight. They swept the herdsmen aside, cut down the few who stood, and drove the lowing herds westward in a rolling cloud of dust. One cowherd, bleeding from the shoulder, ran the whole distance to the capital and fell at the foot of Virata's throne.

"The Trigartas, great king," he gasped. "Susharma himself. They have taken the cattle of the south. If you would not lose the wealth of the Matsyas, ride now."

Virata called for his armor and his brothers and his son Shatanika, and the war drums went up across the city. Then Kanka the dice-player rose from the courtiers' benches, the mild brahmana who amused the king with the fall of the ivory pieces.

"Great king," he said, "I am no soldier by trade, yet in my youth I learned the handling of a bow, and I have some little skill. Take me with you. And take also your cook Ballava, who wrestles tigers for your amusement, and Damagranthi who keeps your horses, and Tantripala who counts your cattle. They are strong men and they eat your bread. Let them earn it."

Virata looked at the four of them, at the cook's shoulders and the quiet dice-player's steady eyes, and being a generous man he laughed and gave them leave. The royal armory was opened, and mail was fastened over servants' cloth.

Bhima's hands closed on a bow, and for a moment his whole face changed, and Yudhishthira coughed quietly and he remembered himself. They mounted the chariots given them, four men who had once ruled from Indraprastha, riding out under borrowed names in the tail of an old king's army to fight for another man's cows.

The two hosts met in the late afternoon, and the fighting went on into the dusk. The Matsyas were brave enough, but Susharma had brought his brothers and the flower of the Trigarta chariots, and he had come to win. Arrows fell like rain driven sideways. Chariot wheels locked and splintered; elephants screamed and turned upon their own lines; the dust rose so thick that men struck at shapes.

Kanka fought at the king's right hand and fought well, and no one had time to wonder where a brahmana dice-player had learned to loose arrows in that flat, unhurried rhythm. Ballava fought at the left and broke whatever came near him. But Susharma had marked the royal standard from the first, and he drove for it through the press with his brothers around him like a wedge.

He came upon Virata as the light was failing. Their chariots ran together, wheel scraping wheel. Susharma shattered the king's bow, killed his horses in their traces, and cut down his charioteer, and when Virata leapt to the ground with a mace in his hands, the Trigartas came at him six to one. They dragged him down, bound his arms, and heaved him into Susharma's own chariot, and the cry went up along the Trigarta line that the king of the Matsyas was taken.

The heart went out of Virata's army in a moment. Men who had been holding turned and ran, and the whole southern flank came apart. Susharma wheeled his chariot to carry his prize away.

Yudhishthira, seeing the standard fall and the line dissolve, called across the dust to his brother in a voice that carried no farther than it had to. "Bhima. The king is taken. If Virata dies today, the Matsyas are finished and our shelter with them. Bring him back."

Bhima roared once, and it was the sound the forest had learned to fear. His eye fell on a great tree standing alone at the edge of the field, thick as a temple pillar, and he leapt from his chariot and set his hands upon it. He meant to tear it out of the earth by the roots and go through the Trigarta army with it as a man goes through standing grain.

"Bhima." Yudhishthira's voice cracked like a whip. "Let go of that tree."

Bhima turned, his arms still around the trunk, his chest heaving.

"There is only one man alive who uproots trees for a club," said Yudhishthira, "and every soldier on this field knows his name. Throw that tree and you throw away thirteen years, and Draupadi's silence, and everything we have swallowed. Take up the bow. Fight like a man of arms, and let them see nothing but a cook who shoots well."

For one long moment Bhima did not move. Then he let the tree go, and it stood, and he took up his bow instead and went after Susharma.

What followed was terrible enough without the tree. He drove through the Trigarta rear, killing the horses of the chariots that turned to face him, until he came alongside Susharma. He shot the king's four horses dead in a single sweep, cut down his charioteer, and split the chariot's yoke, and as the vehicle slewed to a halt he sprang across and pulled Virata bodily out of it, bonds and all, and set him on his feet behind the Matsya lines.

Then he came back for Susharma. The lord of Trigarta ran, and Bhima ran him down on foot, caught him by the hair, and lifted him off the ground like a man lifting a sheaf.

Bhima carried him back through the wreckage and threw him at Yudhishthira's feet, and set a foot upon him, and there was murder in his face.

"Say it," Bhima told him. "Say what you are. Say, I am Virata's slave."

Susharma, with the dust in his mouth and that foot on his back, said it. The lord of Trigarta, who had come at dawn to take a kingdom's wealth, lay in the field of his own defeat and called himself a servant.

"Enough," said Yudhishthira. "Let him up."

Bhima stared at him. "He would have hanged the old king from his gate."

"He is a king who has been made a slave in front of his own army," said Yudhishthira. "There is no death you could give him that would cost him more than the walk home. Let him go." He looked down at Susharma. "You are released. Go, and be a free man, and be ashamed."

Susharma got to his knees and muttered, "I am freed," and did not lift his eyes, and went. His army was already streaming west without him. The cattle were turned and driven back to their pastures before the moon was high, and not one animal of the Matsyas was lost.

Virata rode home with his hand on Kanka's shoulder, and in the joy of the night he offered him everything. "Half my kingdom," said the old king. "Treasure, chariots, women, whatever you name. You and your cook have given me back my life, and I do not know how a brahmana who plays dice comes to fight like that."

"Only be pleased with us, great king," said Kanka, "and send riders ahead to tell your city that you are coming back victorious."

So the messengers rode, and the city hung out its garlands. And while Virata was being crowned with flowers in the south, the northern pastures lay open under the stars, unwatched, and the Kuru host was already moving.