The Peshwa by Ram Sivasankaran

Author:Ram Sivasankaran [Sivasankaran, Ram]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-12-21T18:30:00+00:00

Dabhade looked up at Anantrao. His face showed no happiness, no relief.

Nothing.

He held up his release document, waving it in the air, and asked, ‘This is not a forgery too, is it?’

Chapter Sixteen

Peace

The Satpura Outpost–at the northern border of the Maratha Confederacy

Mahesh, one of the new recruits in the Maratha Frontier Guard, had only recently been conscribed and shipped over from his hometown, Aurangabad, to stand watch at the border. Over the past many months, there had been sporadic raids on villages and towns lying along the northern frontier of the Confederacy. It was being said among the Marathas that the man who led these attacks was an unholy creature, a bloodthirsty demon who rounded up droves of men, had them fettered in chains and dragged them north to whence he came.

However, this, if true, appeared merciful compared to what he did to those he chose to leave behind. Whenever the nearest battalion of the Frontier Guard rode over, in response to reports of an incursion, to the sacked town or village, they always met with the same grisly sight. The town would be a pile of smouldering, burnt rubble. But even this would not have disturbed the seasoned warriors much if not for the bodies that were his casualties in these attacks. The monster always seemed to leave behind a strangely morbid signature. On the northern side of the destroyed town would lie a burnt heap of the grotesquely murdered—men, women, and even children. Surrounding this pile was always a ring of spears rooted to the earth and bearing the heads of some of the deceased.

It could not be said, however, that these brutal attacks always left no survivors. Sometimes, an unfortunate few would emerge alive from this ordeal. Nevertheless, the poor souls were always either too delirious or too damaged in other ways to provide any information of value to the frontiersmen who sought to debrief them. Such was the legacy of this demonic raider from the north.

The cream of the Chhathrapathi’s forces had, upon withdrawal from their campaigns here over two years ago, dispersed into their respective provinces under the standards of the many jagirdars who had commanded them. Having arrived with a contingent of close to two hundred men only yesterday, young Mahesh knew how depleted the border patrol truly was. The combined strength of the Maratha Frontier Guard could not be over two thousand men and even they were spread too thin. Under the accords with the Empire, made upon the return of the Queen Mother, both powers—Mughal and Maratha—had agreed to maintain only a skeletal presence along their “demilitarised” shared border. It was in light of this accord that the raids on the frontier towns were becoming more of an enigma.

Mahesh was a farmer’s sixteen-year-old firstborn who had neither seen battle before nor knew the fundamentals of war or fighting. Yet, they had chosen to put a sword in his hand and send him off to face the Demon from the North, as the nameless marauder had come to be known.

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