Chapter 38 — The Armies of Lanka

Ravana could see the bridge from Lanka, and he could not make it unreal.

He sent two spies in vanara shape into Rama's camp. They moved among the gathered forces, trying to learn who commanded, how the gates would be attacked, and whether the army's confidence was as great as its noise. Vibhishana recognized them. The vanaras seized them and brought them before Rama.

Rama did not have them killed. “You have seen what you came to see,” he told them. “Go back. Tell Ravana that his choice is before him: return Sita, or meet us.” The spies returned to Lanka carrying not only an account of the army but the unsettling fact that Rama had released them.

They went back through gates closed against every other intruder. Ravana heard their report in court: the army was too large to count cleanly, its leaders were not afraid, and its prince had allowed enemy scouts to leave with a warning. He ordered the commanders named again, one by one, as if a list might make the force outside his walls manageable.

From a high place Ravana looked over the land beyond the walls. The shore, the hills, and the approaches to the city were crowded with vanaras and bears. They were not an undifferentiated horde. Nila stood among the forward commanders; Angada, Vali's son and Sugriva's heir, commanded men who had followed his father; Jambavan led bear warriors; Hanuman moved through the force with the quiet attention of one who knew the city they faced. Rama and Lakshmana stood at its heart, with Vibhishana beside them: the king's own brother now advising the enemy.

The army took positions around Lanka's gates. At night its campfires scattered along the slopes. Inside the city, drums called fighters to armor; horses were harnessed, chariots brought out, and weapons checked in halls that had once expected no enemy to reach them. The sound traveled over the walls to Ashoka Vatika, where Sita heard preparation gathering around the city that held her.

The forces did not resemble one another. Lanka had walls, chariots, mailed fighters, and the discipline of a city commanded from its center. The vanaras had arrived from forests and mountains under many leaders, held together by their pact with Rama and by the fact that every road behind them ended at the sea. Within Lanka, families listened for the drum that would call a father, son, or brother to a gate. In the camp, fighters prepared to risk their lives for a queen most had never seen, trusting Hanuman's witness and their king's oath.

Before the first full assault, Rama sent Angada as an envoy. Angada entered Ravana's court unarmed, carrying the offer that remained possible even now: return Sita, and end what had begun.

Ravana would not hear it. His anger was not only at Rama's demand. Angada was Vali's son, standing before him on behalf of the alliance that had made the bridge and brought an army to Lanka. Ravana ordered the young prince seized. Angada broke free from the hands that reached for him and returned to the camp. The last exchange of words had failed.

Angada did not claim he had changed Ravana's mind. He reported the refusal. Rama did not send a second envoy. There are moments when further speech only lets a wrong delay its consequence, and this was one of them.

At dawn the siege began.

The vanaras came against the walls with stones and trees, climbing where they could and striking at gates and defenders. Lanka's soldiers answered from above and from the openings with arrows, lances, maces, and chariots driven into the fighting. Neither side had entered the war as an abstraction. Each had commanders, brothers, followers, and people waiting behind them. By evening the ground before Lanka was broken by weapons, torn branches, and bodies that neither army could simply count away.

The noise made direction difficult. Orders disappeared beneath drums, shouting, and the crash of stone on stone. A vanara who climbed too far could be driven back by arrows. A chariot that entered broken ground could lose the space it needed to turn. At the gates, fighters learned an opponent's name only when it was called in warning or grief. By sunset smoke lay in the low places, and the sea wind carried it back over both camps.

Ravana's defenders were formidable, and one of the most dangerous was Indrajit, Ravana's son—the same warrior who had bound Hanuman in Ashoka Vatika. He did not seek a simple visible contest. Through weapon-knowledge and concealment, he loosed serpent-like missiles at Rama and Lakshmana. The binding struck them down. Their bodies were held beneath the coils, their breath checked, and the army around them wavered at the sight.

For a time the danger seemed to reach beyond battle. Then Garuda came. The great eagle being's presence was hostile to the serpents; the binding loosened and fled. Rama and Lakshmana rose again, wounded but alive. The reprieve did not end the fighting. It made clear that Lanka possessed powers the allies had not yet exhausted.

The army gathered around the brothers as they recovered. Relief had no innocence in it. Every fighter who had watched them fall understood how quickly the campaign might collapse. Rama looked again toward the walls, and the force steadied itself because he stood.

Days of battle followed. Ravana sent commanders out one after another. The vanaras met them at gates, in open ground, and among the slopes outside the city. Some of Lanka's fighters fell to Rama's arrows, some to the weight of trees and stones, some in close struggle with men who had crossed the sea for Sita. The allies also lost fighters, and their camp learned that boldness did not make death distant.

Ravana watched reports become losses. One name after another came back to the palace without the warrior who had borne it. His confidence did not yield to counsel; it narrowed. At last, with the force at the gates still holding, he gave an order long postponed.

“Wake Kumbhakarna,” he said.

In the depths of Lanka, attendants hurried toward the sleeping chamber of the king's enormous brother. Outside, the war went on beneath the walls. Inside, a different danger began to stir.