B2B 04 – The Ten Heads of The Demon

In the land of the gilded towers, long time ago … Where blood dripped out of eyes, and tears bled from wounds … When blood-thirsty demons and uncivilised monkey-men fought to the death, and all that remained were dead humans …

We find ourselves at the end of a war, before the last battle was close to its death-note …

Wars let out blood but leave behind words,
– Tall tales of demons and humanoid birds.

Songs of victory are written for the victors’ ears,
– Glory be who defeated demons with just monkeys and bears.

Of a learned warrior king, with ten heads each of evil face,
– Or was it the combined might of ten heads of a warrior race.

Songs of victory are written for the victor’s ear,
– Glory be of the war that started with the hunt of a golden deer.

Of a truly learned devotee who helped his lord’s holy mission.
– For let the tongues be tied, which mention a brother’s treason.

FADE IN

A lightly wooded area with bunch of small tents made of animal skin, and lean-to’s made of watt-daube-and-whatever-is-at-hand. You can see a few soldiers wearing tight-fitting loin-clothes and their brightly coloured (though sweat and blood stained now) battalion sashes wound tightly on their torsos.

We see a big and hairy warrior, middle-aged but still strong, walk briskly into a tent, flanked by two stern-looking guards.

Inside there is a prince of sorts, let’s call him Peter. He is drinking slowly but inexorably from a pitcher of intoxicant. He is being given company by a nervous looking chap, let’s call him Blue. Blue is the chief of builders and sailors, the logistics man of the military campaign. Brought along neither for his fighting prowess, nor even his charming personality. He was brought for his ability to beg, borrow, steal, wrangle and build ways to make the campaign a success. He doesn’t look too happy, and Peter doesn’t look too sober. Enter a giant of a human, quite hirsute. (hairy… ok… I am trying to write an epic here!)

PETER:
Greetings Arthur, the Bear among us ape-men. Care for a tipple?

ARTHUR: (smiling in spite of himself)
Not this very instant, Peter. I am here to plan for the battle tomorrow. You being one of the commanders of the army, need to be fully versed about it.

PETER:
I am as ready to discuss “battle plans”, as our fried Blue here is to float rocks on water.

BLUE:
Now that is unasked for. Just because the foreign looking poet, Mickey, who tagged along doesn’t have the wits to make a decent story out of my long months of stress and work, doesn’t make it OK that those I consider my friends parrot his stupid ideas.

A:
Come now Blue. He calls us Apes. What do you expect of him?

P:
He calls YOU the King of Bears, my old friend.

A:
Ok. He calls us Apes and … Bears. He calls the dark-skinned adversaries Demons. He called the raggedy looking people who helped us with directions to shorter route to this place Vultures. What do you expect of him? And why should that really matter?

B:
Yes. But how can he confuse my building jetties of stone to ease the casting off of the numerous ships I built, bought and borrowed, as making stones float to make a bridge from the mainland to the island stronghold of the Old King of the South.

P:
Because Mickey may be a buffoon. His brains must have addled by the sun. He feels the need to create improbable stories to hide the truly prosaic and, if you ask me, sad way we have reduced the once-proud people of the south to a rag-tag last stand here.

A:
There is nothing that can be termed as wrong or ungracious when it comes to war. We have cut off the heads one at a time, and now is the time to finally complete this war. The last battle with the last king.

P:
Yes, that’s one more thing. Why do we have to use such flowery language to hide this simple thing. It is a war with humans not demons. The why do we reduce the status of the kings we have defeated in battle – open or otherwise – to cutting off heads off a mythical demon with ten heads.

A:
Because that’s what it is figuratively. The first – the Twin Kings of the Grass Land and Bad Lands, *Khara* and *Dushana*. They, along with their female chief of staff, were the long fingers or nails into the mainland.

P:
Aah, the Long Nailed One! Whose martial prowess will be forgotten, and all that will be remembered is the ignominy she faced in the hands of the impetuous half-brother of the Exalted One.

A:
That’s not something you want to be heard speaking of, Young Prince. Especially by us Apes and Bears!

P:
What about the Traitor King? How we sided with the weakest member of the Southern Confederation to blind-side the other more honourable chieftains? Am I supposed to talk of that? If we counted him, then there would be Eleven Heads of the Demon. More balanced, if you ask me.

A:
I believe the word to be used is the Repentant One. He forsook the evil ways of his brothers and came to the Exalted One. He has been promised to be made the one True King of South, once all this is over. And given that your Name Father’s Kingdom would abut his, you may prefer not to call him a traitor in his earshot.

P:
Yes. The second – our nearest neighbour. The Young Prince who was killed and his kingdom annexed, when the High Chinned One went on the scouting mission. He was called *AkshayaKumar* wasn’t he, the One with UnEnding Youth. Sadly his end in the prime of his youth was one of the first. Irony if you ask me.

B:
And after that the third and fourth were *Devantaka* and *Narantaka*, the Terror of Gods and the Terror of Men. Who was third and who was fourth?

P:
Does it matter? They were small fries. Strong because part of the Confederation, alone not worth the second mention. Seems those with the least of power choose the most scary of names.

B:
But that’s not true about fifth through eighth heads of the fabled Demon of South. *Prahasta*, the Strong Hand, or *Trishira*, the Three Headed One, or *Atikaya*, the Huge Bodied One or most of all *Meghnada*, the Sound of Storm. The wars with them were long and hard. Especially with the Sound of Storm. There was a point that I believed he would be the end of the Younger Prince.

A:
Yes. That was a war to remember. And an adversary to truly respect. It is said that his valour was such that he could defeat even the King of Gods on his best days.

P:
Yes. But defeated because of his two uncles. One, who fought against him with us. The Repentant One. And another who came so late to support him that his defeat was faster than his nephew’s. His people had to ransom his remains from us. That was a shameful part I would prefer to forget.

B:
Part of the game of War. You do remember the prowess of the Long Eared One. The Penultimate Head. The Ninth to fall. He heard everything, but held back his considerable forces. Calculating till the end, if it was better to support the South and perish, or bow to the North and prosper.

P:
Yes, but at last, he decided for honour rather than for favour. And his defeat after the short but destructive skirmish earned him a few verses in the Song of the Exalted One, by our beloved Mickey, the poet with the sea-gull voice.

A:
No need to be so mean. It’s his allergies. Whatever way you see it Nine Heads of the Demon were cut off one by one. And now is the time for the Last Head to be chopped off. If I remember you had visited his kingdom earlier – in happier times – and know the citadel well. This makes you one of the foremost commanders of tomorrow’s battle.

P:
The Warrior Priest, the Old Man of The South. He had given me honour when I visited his kingdom. Even though I was there with an ultimatum to accept the suzerainty of the Princes of North. He didn’t accept the offer, but his magnanimous nature didn’t allow him to dishonour me. Or throw me out on my ear, as he should have.

A:
Now, now…

P:
It’s alright Arthur. I know what I need to do. Tell the High Chinned One that he and I have a temple to desecrate. The Old Man is quite superstitious. He offers worship to the Great Lord of All Life before every major event. And if we can disturb this ceremony of his, we shall break his confidence and make tomorrow’s battle much easier.

A: (looks shocked)
That doesn’t sound honourable.

P:
And it isn’t, Hairy One. But better a short and decisive battle where only the soldiers die by swords of steel, rather than a long protracted siege where the innocent civilians die by maces of hunger. And Blue…

B:
Yes my Prince.

P:
Tell our beloved bard Mickey, that he can come along. May be, he can write a verse or two, on how the apes dishonoured a place of worship. So that the God Princes could cut off the Last Head of the Demon. May be this last bit would somehow make those who hear of this epic war of the North and the South, think that may be… may be honour did not totally lie in the camps of North. And evil did not fully reside in the citadels of South.

PETER and ARTHUR EXIT to RIGHT.

BLUE waits awhile looking in the direction with expression hard to read and then EXITS to LEFT.

FADE OUT