Chapter 41 — Ravana Without Sons

The messengers did not have to say much. Their faces said enough before they reached Ravana.

Indrajit had gone from Lanka to Nikumbhila with an army behind him and ritual power before him. He had returned neither with victory nor with breath. Lakshmana had killed him.

For a time Ravana did not answer. The hall, built for command, seemed to contract around the news. Then he cried out for the son who had once brought the king of Lanka his greatest battlefield triumphs. Indrajit had been a warrior, but to Ravana he was also the child whose future had appeared to secure his own. His grief was not small because his crimes were great. It was grief, and it struck him with the force of loss. But it struck a man who had made loss the condition of other people's lives.

He called for his armor and the weapons granted through his long austerities. Rage rose where counsel had failed. He spoke of killing Rama and Lakshmana; then, carrying a sword, he turned toward Ashoka Vatika.

In the guarded grove Sita heard the movement of armed men and saw Ravana coming with his face altered by grief and fury. The death of Indrajit had reached her as danger before it reached her as news. She imagined that, having lost his son, he had come to make her bear the blow.

Suparshva, one of Ravana's counsellors, stopped him. A king, he said, could not answer a son's death by striking an unarmed captive. If Ravana meant to meet Rama, let him meet him in battle. Ravana listened. The sword remained in his hand, but he turned away from the grove.

He sent out what remained of his chief commanders. They entered the broken ground between the city and the sea with chariots, elephants, horses, and infantry, carrying the last confidence Lanka could still marshal. The vanaras met them with stones, tree trunks, and the fierce physical force that had brought them across the ocean. Rama moved where the allied line bent. Sugriva, Angada, and the others held ground that had become familiar through too many deaths.

The fighting ran through the day in dust, torn banners, and the harsh metal noise of weapons meeting. Virupaksha fell in combat with Sugriva. Mahodara fell. Mahaparshva fell under Angada's strength. The names were not only marks in a tally of victory. Each death narrowed the city behind them.

Inside Lanka, the women heard the returns before they knew whom they had lost. Doors opened onto courtyards; voices called for husbands, brothers, sons. Some had watched warriors go out in armor that morning. Now the surviving soldiers came back without leaders, carrying fear into rooms that had once expected them to be safe.

They remembered the first cause of the war. Ravana had taken Sita by force, and no victory had followed from it. Vibhishana had counselled return; Kumbhakarna had counselled it too, before loyalty took him to battle. The women did not speak as if their grief could undo the choice. They spoke because the choice had entered every house.

Ravana heard their lament. It did not soften him. He ordered the city to prepare his chariot.

When it came, it was fitted with horses, bow, arrows, and the signs of a king who still intended to command. Ravana mounted it amid the remaining rakshasa warriors. The sound of its wheels ran through the gates and over the ravaged field.

The sky seemed dim under the dust. Birds wheeled away from the walls. The vanaras saw the chariot leave and understood that the war had reached the man who had begun it.

Ravana did not go out untouched by sorrow. He went out having chosen, again, not to yield.