A spear rammed hard into the side of the chariot.
Dasharath stumbled, and this time it took him several moments to regain his balance. As I twisted around to check on him, I realized—I was wasting time. I was helping our men, yes. But the battle would only end when Sambarasura was defeated.
I kept the chariot moving at a steady pace, searching for only one man who mattered. Fallen standards kept catching my eye, but none of them were Sambarasura’s. Of course he had not fallen—we would not be so lucky, nor his men still fighting were that the case. Some banners still whipped in the wind, but most were our own, the brilliant gold stark against the pale sky.
Dasharath’s men were gaining the upper hand, and the field was scattered with broken chariots. For several moments, my focus was fully directed to navigating around the dead and the dying. It was almost frightening how quickly I had acclimated to the suffering. I lifted my gaze once more, sweeping across the battlefield, and something caught my eye. I flicked the reins, pushing the horses to move more quickly, and a standard came fully into view. It was the enemy’s: embroidered with the snarling face of a tiger but dyed in a deep green that made it stand apart. Sambarasura.
We raced toward him, and I knew that Dasharath immediately understood my plan. He loosed an arrow at Sambarasura that barely missed when the enemy’s charioteer swerved at exactly the right moment. We careened toward each other, and just as I put Dasharath within spear range of Sambarasura, our opponent hurled his own with a triumphant cry.
The spear glanced off one of our wheels with a crack, and the horses reared in fear as the chariot came to a bone-halt. I do not think it would be arrogant to say that with my driving, Dasharath’s chariot itself had become a brutal weapon. Sambarasura had not been trying to kill us, not yet. He had been trying to stop us.
“Get down!” I cried, all decorum lost in the face of danger. I crouched low as the horses’ hooves churned the ground.
“I’m not a coward,” he called back. He drew his khanda with a rasp of steel.
“Get down!” I repeated, but he was a raja under no obligation to listen to his charioteer—or his wife. Sambarasura’s chariot raced toward us. The warlord hefted another spear in his hand and, with a great cry, sent it soaring through the air.
Time seemed to slow, then came rushing back far too quickly as the weapon pierced Dasharath’s chest.
Never take your eyes off your enemy, Yudhajit’s voice cried in my ears. So I did not turn to help him.
Instead, as Sambarasura drew closer, preparing to finish us, I pulled off my helmet for a better view of the whole field. I could see his eyes now and watched with a grim sense of satisfaction as they widened in surprise. A woman charioteer was not a common sight.
And then he made his last mistake. He hesitated.
Take the opening, Yudhajit said, but I did not need his advice.
Holding the reins of the horses firmly in my left hand, I reached behind me and grabbed the smooth wooden shaft of one of Dasharath’s mighty spears. Relying on instinct, on the muscle memory of years of old lessons, I adjusted my grasp on the haft, finding the center of gravity. I threw, my breath rushing out of me in a shout.
By the time obsidian-tipped death found Sambarasura, piercing his neck and shoulder in a deadly blow, I had jumped down from my injured husband’s chariot to examine the damage, conscious it was our only form of escape.
My hands shook as I examined the smashed wheel, two spokes broken, the whole thing fallen off its axis. Steel clanged behind me, the shouts of fighters mixing with the cries of dying men. My magic could not help me now.
“Indra, please,” I whispered, desperate.
Indra was the god of charioteers and had long been considered a protector of Kosala. Perhaps he would help me to save a favored raja. “Guide my hand.”
No inspiration struck me. Maybe the gods were punishing me for joining the fight after all. And Dasharath… He might already be dead.
I grabbed the bottom of the wheel and tugged with all my strength, trying to push it back into place. My shoulder blade pressed back into the splintered spoke. I strained with the effort, eyes clenched shut, until a battle cry sounded too near for comfort.
Never take your eyes off your enemy!
I opened my eyes as the wheel popped back into place. A soldier lunged toward me, sword ready.
I rolled out of the way and he buried his blade into the earth as I swung myself back into the charioteer’s seat. If only Yudhajit could see me now—he would laugh and call me as agile as a monkey for clambering back up so quickly. I spared a moment of gratitude for my brother’s words, for they had kept me alive. Then I snapped the horses into motion, barely hearing the soldier scream beneath the wheels as I carved a path away from the battlefield, my mind fixed firmly on my husband.