Victory City(14)

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It wasn’t possible for the three departing Sangama brothers to leave immediately. An army took time to move. There were the traveling palanquins of the military grandees to plump and burnish so that those gentlemen could journey to their destination in comfort, and canopied howdahs had to be mounted on the backs of battle elephants so that these same high-ranking officers could ride to war while reclining on cushions and pillows, and there were thousands of elephants to feed, pack elephants and battle elephants, because elephants ate constantly, and had to be loaded with their own fodder as well as all the goods needed by the regiments, for example the massive moving parts that would later be assembled as siege engines that hurled boulders at the walls of the fortresses of the enemy. And tents had to be collapsed and loaded onto bullock-carts, along with benches, stools, straw for camp mattresses, and latrines; there was an entire armaments division to transport, so that the army’s weapons could be kept in good order, swords could be sharpened, arrows balanced and bowstrings kept taut, javelin-points checked daily to ensure that they were as sharp as daggers, and shields repaired after hard days on the battlefield; and there was a whole kitchen-city to mobilize, ovens as well as cooks, and great cartloads of vegetables, rice and beans, and caged chickens and tethered goats, too, because there were many chicken-and goat-eaters among the ranks, in spite of what their religion formally decreed; and there had to be wood for fires, and cauldrons to be filled with soups and stews; and there were other camp followers to marshal, including courtesans who would attend nightly to the needs of the most desperate soldiers. The medical equipment, the surgeons and nurses, the fearsome saws used for cutting off limbs, the canisters of salve for blinded eyes, the leeches, the healing herbs, would all be placed at the rear of the column. No soldier going to war wanted to see such things. It was necessary for them to feel immortal, or, at least, to persuade themselves that crippling injury, agonizing wounds, and death were things that happened to other people. It was important that each individual foot soldier and cavalryman was allowed to believe that they personally would emerge from combat unscathed.

And this was no ordinary army. It was a fighting force that was gradually being born. Like everyone else in the new city the soldiers woke up each day with whispers in their ears, each soldier hearing—for the first time, but as if the information had always been there—the story of his life. (Or her life. The women soldiers were fewer, but they were there. They had whispered memories too.) In that mysterious moment between sleeping and waking they each heard the imaginary narrative of their family’s fictional generations, and discovered how long ago they had decided to join the new empire’s forces, and how far they had traveled, what rivers they had crossed, what friends they had made along the way, what obstacles and foes they had had to overcome. They learned their own names, and the names of their parents and villages and tribes, and the names of love given to them by their wives—their wives, who were waiting for them in their villages, nursing their children!—and their personalities, too, dripped into their ears, they found out if they were funny or bad-tempered, and how they spoke; some were voluble, others were people of few words, and some used foul language, as soldiers often did, while others disliked it; some of them were open about their feelings while others concealed them. In this they, like the civilian population of the city, became human beings, even if the stories in their heads were fictions. Fictions could be as powerful as histories, revealing the new people to themselves, allowing them to understand their own natures and the natures of those around them, and making them real. This was the paradox of the whispered stories: they were no more than make-believe but they created the truth, and brought into being a city and an army with all the rich diversity of nonfictional people with deep roots in the actually existing world.

The one thing the soldiers all had in common, the whispers told them, was their courage and skill on the battlefield. They were a brotherhood (and sisterhood) of overpowering warriors, and they could never be defeated. Each day as they awoke this knowledge of their invincibility deepened. Soon they would be ready to follow orders unquestioningly and obliterate their enemies and march relentlessly to victory.

In the shadow of the city’s golden walls, which grew higher and more imposing every day, stood the carpeted tent assigned to the three ostensible leaders of the coming expedition. Inside these palatial quarters scattered with brocaded cushions and illuminated by filigreed brass lanterns, Chukka, Pukka, and Dev Sangama—the titular though not the actual commanders of the grand venture—could be found trying to make sense of their new world. It was plain to all three brothers that some powerful sorcery was at hand, and fear battled with ambition in their breasts.

“I have the feeling,” Chukka Sangama said, “that even though our Hukka and Bukka have put on royal airs, they are in the grip of some wizard who can make the unliving live.” He was the most confident and aggressive of the three, but at that moment he sounded shaken and uncertain.

His brother Pukka, always less brutal and more calculating, weighed up the odds. “So we can be kings,” he said, “if we’re okay with leading an army of ghosts.”

Dev, the youngest, was the least heroic and most romantic one. “Ghosts or no ghosts,” he said, “our guardian angels are ladies of the highest quality. If we can win them over to be our consorts, I don’t give a damn if they are human beings or specters of the night. Before death comes to claim me, I want to know what it’s like to be in love.”