Chapter 13: CHAPTER 13- Actions.
1538, Dharanikota Kingdom.
One week since the 'Holi incident'.
Two young men were on horses that were trotting along a dirt road. One of them was younger than the other, and would barely qualify as a man, considering his young age. The other man was slightly older, though not by much, and a lot bigger and taller.
These two were, of course, Rudra Deva and Bashir. They have been traveling for the past few days across the territories of both the Sultanate and the Dharanikota Kingdom, after narrowly escaping the security personnel in Macherla.
Rudra had to consider himself very lucky. He would have been in a lot of trouble if he had been caught by the soldiers in Macherla. Without the rain slowing the security down for Rudra and Bashir to escape, they would have been surely caught.
Rudra was still not sure why he had behaved the way he did after entering the town. It felt like a fuse had snapped in him. All the anger and frustration that was hiding in him had flown out, mixed with a tinge of madness that he didn't know existed.
He had still controlled himself from going a lot further. He wanted to torture those people and make them beg for a peaceful death. But he kept his hand from going there. What difference would there be between Rudra and those soldiers if had descended to their levels?
One thing he did not consider when planning those murders was the mental state of those people. To the soldiers, Rudra was dead. They had watched him die. One of them even killed Rudra with his own hands.
For these soldiers, Rudra appearing in front of their eyes, hunting them down, one by one, would have been quite scary. But he deliberately kept his involvement a secret. Not because he didn't want to scare the living shit out of those soldiers, but to keep his advantage.
Information is key to winning any battle. If those soldiers knew Rudra was alive, they would try to prepare and take precautions. All his advantages would have been gone, save for the fear factor. Rudra was good, but he was not Batman good. He couldn't have taken them on if they were better prepared.
Speaking of skills, they had been quite a shock to Rudra. His reflexes had improved a lot and so did his strength. Again, these improvements were of "I can take multiple trauma-inducing hits and can still keep going, while injured" type, and not "I can take on ten people with my bare fists, come at me Bro" type.
'Still, it does not matter in the long run. No one expects a king to fight like a soldier. This meager strength improvement will not help me win any wars.' Rudra thought to himself. He strongly believed in the strength of the collective, when compared to the power of the individual.
However, it's important to note that he isn't a communist. His preferred ideology is to prioritize individualism on a personal level while advocating for collective strength within a community.
"Sss!" Rudra hissed, the pain in his ribs acting up. It was once again a reminder that he was not unkillable. Either when Ezhilan smashed him into the table or tackled him to the ground, Rudra had broken a couple of ribs. Nothing too serious as pierced lungs or something, but the healing will take some time.
How much time will it take? He didn't know. He had healed from a pierced heart, and other wounds, completely when he woke up in the forest clearing. But is it a one-time thing? Rudra did try giving himself small cuts, but they did not heal instantaneously.
He did have a sneaking suspicion that he had accelerated healing or something. The wounds certainly healed a lot faster, when compared to normal rates, from the data he recalled from his old memories. Again, accelerated as in a few days fast, not a few minutes fast.
Seeing Rudra hissing in pain, Bashir asked from atop his horse, with the little sign language he had picked up in the last few days. "Is. you. in. Paining?" The giant of a man asked while gesturing with his hands.
"It is 'Are you in pain?', Big guy. And yes, It hurts a bit. But it is not something I can't man up." Rudra spoke, as well as signed so that his new friend could observe and learn.
The prince was quite shocked by the speed at which Bashir picked up the language. Despite the initial reluctance to speak, the big man opened up, after spending some time with Rudra on their journey.
'Poor guy. Expelled from the only home he ever knew, It sucks.' he thought of the situation Bashir was in. Sethupathi, Bashir, and a few other villagers from Nadhipalle who were in Macherla were moving goods to the market when they came upon the fight in the Kallu pub.
The Big guy jumped in to help, ambushing Ranga, who had somehow woken up even after Rudra had bashed his head in. He doubted Ranga could have done any damage, considering the state he was in, but appreciated the fact that Bashir jumped in for him, in an unrelated fight.
Much to the shock of the poor villagers, Bashir snapped Ranga's neck in front of them. Before that, the most blood some of them had seen was probably from an animal. But, just in the span of a few minutes, they had seen 3 dead bodies, and the murder of two of those bodies, happening right before them.
Rudra didn't put any fault on them for reacting the way they did, after the incident. Sethupathi directly said that Bashir would have no place in their village, and Rudra could send anyone but himself to take back his collateral. Rudra would have behaved the same way if confronted by a murderer if he wasn't who he is.
Still, Rudra and Bashir were lucky, those villagers didn't rat them out to the security personnel. They were either terrified of retaliation or were afraid of being implicated in those murders.
The entire final part of Rudra's plan had failed spectacularly. When he planned to use the chaos caused by the celebrations, and the greed of the common man to mask what he was doing, he didn't stop and consider that the soldiers might not partake in the celebrations. A big mistake on his part.
When he threw those coins, If Ezhilan hadn't stepped in, both Paandu and Ranga would have been killed by him, But because of the captain's caution, he had to fight the messy battle afterward against two people. Though things worked out in the end, one wrong move and Rudra would have had the chance to know if he could die three times.
The escape that happened afterward was equally as messy. As the Macherlan security forces, didn't know who had done the murders, Rudra and Bashir had a large window of time to escape. If it were the modern police, Things would have been quite different.
After the conversation with the Nadhipalle villagers about Bashir, as they refused to welcome him back to the village, Rudra invited the big man to follow him back to Dharanikota. It also helped that Bashir was an orphan.
Rudra had to purchase two horses from a horse trader, a bigger male horse for the larger man and a normal one for Rudra. The horses were of some generic breed, not specialized in any way. Good horse breeds were monopolized by horse traders who were from either the Arabian peninsula or the Central Asian steppe.
The duo has evaded capture and escaped back into the sultanate's territory using the Krishna bridge. There would be more scrutiny at the gates leading towards the Dharanikota kingdom, as the victims themself were from there.
For the last few days, the pair had been traveling on horses covering an average of about 40 km a day, on the other side of Krishna. Traveling was a lot faster now, as Rudra had access to a horse and did not have to cross hills and forests with no roads.
The horses can be pushed to go faster, but it was Rudra's insistence to visit the villages and small towns on the way, especially after entering the territory of Dharanikota. He will not get to move freely like this when burdened with the responsibility of a kingdom.
As their destination slowly became closer, the speed at which the duo trotted along also increased. As the afternoon was slowly ending, and the evening was fast approaching, Rudra and Bashir finally arrived at their destination, the fort of Kondapalli.
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