The Darkness before Dawn by Ashok K. Banker

Author:Ashok K. Banker [Ashok K. Banker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Epic Mahabharata - Book II: The Darkness Before Dawn
Publisher: Jaico Publishing House
Published: 2017-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

Satyavati blinked at the name. 'Our family charioteer? Our Sarathi Adiratha?'

'The same.'

Satyavati looked around. 'I don't see him here.'

'He is away, my queen. He drove Princess Kunti to Pramankota for the day. Prince Dritarashtra and Princess Gandhari were also on the same trip. They are scheduled to return this evening. If you so command it, I will send for him at once.'

'No… it would take hours. Let us hear the matter first.'

Pradhan Mantri Shakra looked up at her. 'That is the entirety of the matter, your Highness.'

Satyavati frowned. 'I don't understand. A Sarathi's son… my personal Sarathi's son… attacked and injured a dozen young men, and a dozen or so city guards, all by himself? Is that what you are saying?'

'It is, my queen.'

Satyavati looked around, nonplussed. She saw that Devavrata was looking at her now. His face as expressionless as ever, but in the tilt of her head she thought she read his meaning. There must be some reason why he had insisted they hear this matter. She felt that he was urging her to consider it fully. She wasn't sure why. Even if a Sarathi's son had, for unknown reasons, gotten hold of a weapon and lashed out at a nobleman's son. No, there was something very strange here. Apart from the fact that a royal Sarathi was not some common vagabond going around picking street fights, there was the fact that Adiratha was a relatively young man. She hadn't even known he had a son. How old could the boy possibly be?

She realized then that she had not yet laid eyes on the accused himself.

'Let me see the accused.'

Pradhan Mantri Shakra spoke to one of the guards surrounding the accused. The guard said something in response. The prime minister looked at the distraught charioteer's wife standing nearby and spoke to her softly. She nodded. The guard gave a terse order to the four quads in the formation and with impeccable Kuru discipline, they each took a step sideways, then diagonally then again sideways, in different directions. In just three steps, the box formation opened to reveal the criminal at the center of the sixteen guards. The charioteer's wife said something to the boy and he stepped forward, guards on either side of him as well as behind him holding spears to his throat, sides and back. They had to bend the spears very low, pointing them almost downwards because the boy was so short.

No, not short, small.

The boy was shockingly small. Barely a boy, even. Practically an infant.

Satyavati was shocked.

'How old is he?'

The mother shuffled forward, hands joined in a pleading gesture that Satyavati knew all too well. The mothers, wives, sisters, daughters always clasped their hands together to plead for mercy. 'He will be five years old next masa, my queen.'

Satyavati thought she must have heard wrong. But the boy was right there and he looked exactly the age his mother said he was: Yet it was impossible. This whole situation was impossible.

'Pradhan Mantri,' she said sharply.

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