Indravarman would likely expect Jayavar to try to capture the war elephants. With such powerful beasts, Jayavar could negate the sheer numbers of the Chams. Every warrior knew that a hundred war elephants were worth a thousand men. Yet Jayavar hesitated in pursuing the elephants because it was such an obvious tactic. It would be better, he thought, to fight where the elephants would benefit neither side, perhaps in a dense part of the jungle, or the swampy borders of the Great Lake. But how to draw Indravarman away from his resources was a riddle that Jayavar could not solve.
He reached the top of the hill, which was heavily forested. Though he couldn’t see them, Jayavar knew that sentries were stationed along the spine of the hill, sitting in the tallest trees. These men had the best eyes and ears of all his troops. If the Chams came, an alarm would be sounded. Battle lines would be formed, loved ones protected.
The thought of fighting the Chams in the valley made sweat break out on Jayavar’s back. His breathing quickened. He glanced below, then to the sky. To fight here would be to die, because Indravarman would surround them, and the sheer numbers of his men would wear them down. No, the battle had to be fought to the south, within sight of Angkor Wat. At least then, when Khmers fell, they could look up and see the temple, see the place of their Gods.
Jayavar knelt on one knee. He closed his eyes and began to pray, wishing for the safety of his people, for an end to the Cham occupation, and for the well-being of his loved ones—both the born and unborn. With such focus and longing did he pray that he didn’t hear approaching footsteps. They went from soft to loud, from tentative to rushed. A sword was lifted. Jayavar opened his eyes, recognizing the Khmer warrior, seeing his own death but unable to do anything about it. The sword was raised higher. Then a spear flew from amid the undergrowth. The throw was weak and the spear wobbled. Yet it struck the dirt in front of the attacker, causing him to stumble, his sword to waver.
Jayavar spun to his right, lifting his own blade and deflecting the blow that was meant to take his head. He leapt up, his years of training and experience overcoming his fear. His sword became an extension of his arm, of his will to live, rising and falling, filling the dawn with the sound of its strikes. Screaming a battle cry, his assailant attacked with renewed vigor, but Jayavar met each sweep and thrust with his own blade. Emotions entered his consciousness. He thought of Ajadevi, and how this man wanted to take him from her. The knowledge enraged him, and his heavy sword suddenly felt like nothing more than a sun-bleached stick. The sword began to dance, to twist and leap and soar.
The assassin was struck in two places before he even hit the ground. By then he was dying. Remembering the spear, Jayavar whirled around, saw a boy, and stepped in his direction. The boy lifted his hands, screaming. Only then did Jayavar halt his blade’s descent.
For a moment, man and boy stood staring at each other, chests heaving, thoughts chaotic. Then the boy fell to his knees, bowing low. Jayavar glanced around and saw that the assassin was dead, but still he did not sheath his sword. “The spear…it is yours?” he asked, his voice unsteady.
The boy nodded.
“And this man, do you know him?”
The small head twisted from side to side.
“Speak,” Jayavar commanded. “Tell me what I need to hear.”
The boy looked up, but said nothing.
“Tell me!”
A tear ran down the child’s face. “You rescued me…Lord King.”
“What?”
“That day…in the jungle…when the Chams were chasing us. You carried me.”
Jayavar remembered the slave boy he had picked up as they had fled the Cham invasion. “But why are you here?”
“I made…that spear for you…Lord King. I wanted to give it to you.”
“So you followed me? And when the assassin was going to strike, you threw your spear?”
“Yes. But it was…a weak throw. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”
Jayavar could once again hear the sounds of the jungle. The woodpecker continued its assault. Crickets chirped and cicadas screeched. Jayavar relished the sounds. Grateful to be alive, he bent down and took the boy’s hand, helping him to his feet. “What is your name, child?”
“Bona, Lord King.”
Jayavar studied the jungle, making certain that it was free of additional threats. “Thank you, Bona. I owe you my life. But, please, call me ‘my lord.’”
The boy lowered his gaze. “But I missed him…my lord.”
“You caused him to stumble. You gave me time when I had none.”
“He was going to kill you, my lord.”
Jayavar nodded, walking to the dead man. He examined his attacker, searching his hip cloth for hidden weapons or orders. Something hard had been sewn into the material, which Jayavar ripped open. Several gold coins tumbled to the ground.
Cham coins, Jayavar said to himself. A paid assassin. A man who would kill his king for the promise of riches. He will not be the last to come for me. But the question remains, who paid him? Someone in our camp or back in Angkor?
Jayavar mused over the matter while turning the coins in his fingers. Unable to determine an answer, he picked up the fallen spear. He inspected the weapon, tracing his forefinger along the elaborate carvings. “Did you make this, Bona?”
“Yes, my lord. For you.”
“Have you tracked me before? Weeks ago, when we first hid in the jungle? And then again yesterday?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Do not be sorry.”
“I only wanted to see you…and to give you the spear.”
“It is a fine weapon. As fine as any I’ve seen.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
Jayavar remembered how he had saved the boy and how the child’s mother had come running for him. “Are you a slave, Bona?”
“Yes, my lord. So is my mother.”
“And your father?”
“He’s dead.”
Nodding, Jayavar thought about how best to reward the child. He studied the spear, continuing to trace the intricate engravings. “Bona, would you like to be our swordsmith’s apprentice? I know him well. The fires make him irritable, but he’s a good man. He could teach you much.”
Bona looked up. “But…my lord…I’m to—”
“You’re to do whatever we agree upon this day. And if we agree that you’re to be the swordsmith’s apprentice, then that you shall be.”
The boy smiled, rising on his tiptoes. “Thank you, my lord. My mother will be pleased.”
“Go then. Go and tell her what you did today. I shall talk with the swordsmith. Find him tomorrow. His place is by a crook in the river, downstream from our position.”
“Yes, my lord.”
When Bona started to turn, Jayavar reached out to him, holding him by the shoulder. He studied the child’s face. And though it was a face that bore no resemblance to his own, he wondered if Bona had been summoned to this hill, if one of his sons or daughters had shown him the way. “Why did you come here?” Jayavar asked, his voice soft.
“I had to come,” Bona answered. “When I saw you leave the camp…I just knew I had to come.”
A half day’s march to the south of the ambush site, Voisanne followed Asal down a game trail. For most of the morning they had been quiet, and he had held his sword before him. He’d prayed for the men that he’d left behind, wondered how he would explain his flight to his king, and studied the jungle for further dangers.
Having not seen or heard any Siamese since the ambush, he’d recently sheathed his sword and begun to whisper questions to Voisanne. He asked about her family, her dreams, and her beliefs. Unlike most of the men she had known, he didn’t redirect her answers toward himself, so that he could speak about his own experiences. Rather, her answers led him to more intricate and discerning questions. He wondered what she had wondered, what she’d asked herself in the dead of night.
Between the pauses in his queries, Voisanne thought about how he had come back t
o her, abandoning his position and his men so that he could save her. Without him, her fate would have been cruel, and in all probability the Siamese warrior would have killed her. She had sensed her looming death, and now that she was alive, she realized how very much she wanted to live. Though she believed in rebirth, she longed to experience the joys of existence as she was right now—a young woman who had already seen the worst that life could offer.
“Why did you return for me?” she asked, her voice low.
“I missed your insults. It had been too long since you called me a dog or a cowardly Cham.”
“No, really. Tell me why.”
He pushed a half-fallen stalk of bamboo aside, sweat dripping from his brow. “Because, my lady, when I was fighting all I could think of was you.”
A smile graced her face. “Why me?”
“Because I couldn’t bear the thought of you being hurt.”
“I’ve been hurt before.”
“But not with me nearby.”
She nodded, noting animal footprints in the dried mud. Though she was no hunter, she thought the deep tracks were likely those of a tiger. “Back in Angkor,” she said, “I was making you a gift.”
“You were?”
“Yes. A necklace. I was fashioning it with a piece of jade. To show you, my lord, how I feel about you.”
“My lord?”
“If I’m your lady, then you are my lord.”
He smiled, turned, and gestured toward the jungle around them. “So we rule over this kingdom? Over plants and trees?”
“Yes, my lord. It’s our domain. Our subjects scurry about us.”
His laughter surprised her. It was deep and robust, and she had never heard it before. “And our thrones?” he asked.
“Come,” she said, taking his hand. “I will show you.”
“Please do.”
She smiled, leading him forward, feeling light on her feet. At first she walked, but then, weary of caution, she increased her speed, keeping her hand around his fingers, running along the trail. He laughed again, and she ran faster, heedless of the branches that slapped at her arms, of the monkeys that screeched overhead. She ran as she had as a child, not quickly to get from one place to another, but to feel the joy of movement, the air against her face. Bushes blurred, roots flashed beneath her feet, and still she ran, wanting him to see her strength, to realize that she was not afraid of the unknown. She ran and ran, splashing across streams, continuing to lead him ahead. A sense of euphoria filled her, though she wasn’t certain if it came from being alive or from being alone with him. While they had known privacy in his chambers, the solitude of the jungle was liberating and cathartic. No one was watching over them, listening to them. They were truly king and queen of this unrivaled domain.
Her chest heaving, Voisanne slowed her steps, sweat glistening on her shoulders. She followed a stream that led to a deep pool beneath a banyan tree. Finally releasing Asal’s hand, she waded into the pool and dived beneath its surface. The cool water was invigorating. She called out to Asal and laughed as he hurried to join her, remembered his sword, and returned to the shore to lean it against a boulder. Soon he was beside her. She splashed him, tried to escape his retaliation, and was suddenly in his arms.
What happened next surprised her, for without thought she leaned forward, wiped the beads of water from his face, and kissed him. His lips were soft, but she didn’t notice that softness, didn’t feel the water rising to her chest or the ray of sunlight that struck her shoulder. She sensed nothing but her yearning for him, and she pulled him toward her. He lifted her up—their hands clasped behind each other’s backs, her breasts pressed against his chest. Her feet rose from the sandy bottom. She was weightless and in wonder. Leaning forward, she kissed him as she had run, with a flurry of movement, with elation born from hope. He was all that mattered, for in him she had found a sense of oneness that some people called love.
Her hunger for him overwhelmed her and she continued to kiss and clutch at him. She groaned and wrapped her legs around him, pressing herself against him. Their movements became more frenzied. He stumbled, then righted himself and carried her to shore, where he tried to lay her down. But she rose to her knees, still kissing him. He leaned down and his mouth moved to her neck and then to her breasts. She arched her back, crying out as he kissed and caressed her, clutching his bound hair.
They rolled to their right and she found herself atop him. His hands eased under the backside of her skirt cloth, squeezing the firm rises of her buttocks. She moaned, then kissed his lips and neck. Her mouth opened wider, and she bit his shoulder, as if intent on consuming him. Clasping her harder, he whispered of his desire, of how he’d longed to touch her for many days and nights.
His words prompted her to move faster—her thoughts fleeing as her instincts exploded into action. Again they twisted, and suddenly he was on top of her. He broke the string of her skirt cloth and pulled it aside. Her fingers ensured that soon he was also naked.
Voisanne had always thought that rebirth would come to her after death, but as she rejoiced in his warmth, she felt as if she had already traveled from one life into the next.
Farther to the north, still a day’s journey from the temple of Banteay Srei, or the Citadel of Women as it was more commonly known, Vibol, Prak, Soriya, and Boran sat beside one another. While the Khmer warriors were scouting ahead, the family stared into the jungle toward a dead horse. The mount had been wounded by two arrows but must have thrown its rider and made its way from the site of the battle, because there were no other signs of fighting. It had died amid a group of thick ferns, either killed or discovered later by predators, for not much of the horse remained. The arrows were gnawed and bloody. The carcass was already covered with insects and soon would be no more than a scattered collection of bones.
As his mother applied a healing ointment to a cut on his forearm, Vibol thought about the horse, which had cast a pall over his family. Even so deep in the jungle, so far from the Chams, it seemed as if war followed them, creeping after them like the mist of a cool morning. And while Vibol was gladdened by the knowledge of their proximity to the Khmer stronghold, his mother in particular appeared to grow more tentative with each new step. She had told him that morning that they seemed to be marching toward death, that they should reconsider their path. When she looked at him for a reply, he nodded but said that he would go on alone.
Vibol believed that his future lay in being a warrior, not a fisherman. He had tried his hand at his father’s trade and excelled at it. But when the Chams came, a hook and net had saved no one. The Chams had killed with their strength, they had beaten him with their strength, and they must be driven from Angkor by strength.
At first a need for retribution had motivated Vibol. He’d wanted to avenge his people and himself. But now he fought for the future, because he believed that unless the Chams were forced from Angkor, his loved ones would always fear what lay ahead. They could never rest in peace if Chams were nearby. He certainly couldn’t. Not when he’d seen what they had done, the horrors that they so readily inflicted. Having the Chams as overlords was like fishing from a boat filled with snakes. Sooner or later, one would bite.
Though he was convinced of the necessity of his choice, Vibol regretted the hurt he was causing his loved ones. Prak brooded and played melancholy songs on his flute. Their mother clung to them both in ways that she hadn’t since they were children. And their father tried to learn as Vibol did, to fight with a sword and defend with a shield. But his father was no warrior. He had lived a life that depended on patience—sitting on his boat, searching the surface of the water for fish and eels. From what Vibol had seen of warfare, battle was for the quick of mind and body. His father was neither.
“I should go on alone,” Vibol said, as he had several times before.
His mother stopped tending to the wound on his arm. “Why do you say that?”
“Because all of you should stay together. It’s my place to leave a
nd yours to stay.”
Prak closed his eyes. “You think the blood of brothers is so different from the water of rivers?”
“I—”
“The water is connected. We’re connected.”
“But I don’t want to take you where you don’t want to go.”
“Don’t tell me what I want,” Prak replied, shaking his head. “Do you think that just because I can’t see, I can’t help? That I should just run away into the jungle? Am I a burden to you, Vibol? Now that you’ve found your warrior heroes, am I slowing you down?”
Their father cleared his throat. “They say that we’re only a day away from the temple, from our people. You haven’t slowed us down, Prak. You never have, and no one has ever thought that.”
“But everyone expects me to run away.”
Vibol reached out to his brother, wishing that he could see, but burying that wish deep down where Prak would never sense it. “I want you to come with me. I’ve always wanted that.”
“Maybe my eyes don’t work, but my ears do. And I don’t believe what you say.”
“Then you’re not listening to me.”
“I’m not?”
Vibol swatted away a mosquito. “No. Because—”
“Leave me be.”
“Because when we’re together, it’s your mind and my eyes that make us work. That’s always how it’s been, how we’ve caught the biggest fish, bartered for the best price, found the courage to talk with girls who live in palaces. We did all those things together, and you were just as much a part of them as I was.”
Prak turned away from the scent of the dead horse. “What do you want me to do?”
I want you to survive, Vibol thought. I want you to keep Mother strong in case something should happen to me. With you and Father beside her, her grief would pass. Maybe not in a month or a year, but someday it would. “I want you to do,” he finally replied, “whatever you want to do.”
“I want to go on. I’ve been thinking of plans, ways to attack the Chams. I want to destroy them just as much as you do.”