Capítulo 24: A Man of His Own (part 4)
Becoming alert, Vajradandaka noticed that his classmates had already dispersed after reviewing and being assigned the day's training tasks. Even the loathsome Hayagriva, the second queen's son who was a year older to him, was nowhere to be seen. He wasn't so loathsome before. But around the time when Vajradandaka became a bit renowned, the boy changed. They were playmates until then, but suddenly he started looking at the little prince with a look that said, 'Only one of us gets to live till the end.' Who knows which goddamned person illuminated him so early about life and death struggles for the throne? The little prince could only brush him off as an idiot. Right now, all the brothers should be united in order to face the grand prince and his lineage. Who has time for internal struggle?
"Looks like there's a lot on your mind…" that rumbling voice spoke again.
A man in his fifties was occupying a stone crafted platform built around the tree trunk. He had deep set features and his dark hair with a few greying strands was casually tied together into a bun. He wore a simple saffron dhoti and a white angavastra. Calluses belonging to a warrior defined his fingertips and the line between his thumb and index finger. A cross shaped scar occupied his left shoulder from his earlier days of warmongering. The voice belonged to this man.
"Err….Acharya*…" the little prince scratched his ear sheepishly.
*Acharya = teacher or guru or a cross between the two.
The middle aged man laughed. He didn't admonish the prince for being distracted. "Little prince, you are finally able to complete the training set I've given you when you've first begun under me," he praised instead.
"Uh-yeah…that's right." The prince didn't realise it, so he was pleased with himself.
"It was a little later than expected…" the martial guru casually added, "Prince Anirudh could do it in twenty months…Hayagriva was even better. He only took one and half year." The man didn't mind the dark expression that came on the prince's face and continued, "Your brother. Ho-ho, he will always be my proud student. He completed the set in only six months!"
A complacent expression appeared on little Vajradandaka's face. Yeah, brother is the best!
"And you…" the martial teacher sounded a little clueless himself. "You took two years and three months."
The little prince concentrated on his fingernails, fretfully wondering where to bury his face. He was so embarrassed that even the guru found it amusing.
The older man chuckled mildly, "Alright. Let's forget about that. You are still only eight years old. There is time to work on your concentration issues. Now tell me, what all did you learn in the basic training set that I taught you?"
"Well, apart from sword practice, there is the basic workout doing squats, splits, dashes, presses, sixty-three varieties of stretches and some stances," Vajradandaka answered with a simpleton's face. All those who think of him as the genius of the century would drop their jaws to the ground if they saw his dumb look. Even the answer that he gave was unrefined and perfunctory, totally unlike his well-reasoned and well-formed statements in other subjects.
The guru didn't seem to mind however, even knowing the extent of the boy's intellect. He merely smiled and gently praised, as one would any ordinary child, "Oh? You've learnt so much? That's very good!"
"Hee-hee…" the little prince foolishly scratched his head.
"So tell me Vajra, why do we learn all these exercises, why do we perform all these activities everyday?"
"To make our muscles stronger and prepare the body for more rigorous martial arts practices."
"And what is that for?"
"To fight the enemy, to uphold the Kshatriya code of honour and the Kshatriya way of life," Vajradandaka replied in a rote-like manner.
"But you are not fighting the enemy now," Vajra's teacher said, a light smile in his voice.
"Uh…this is in preparation for when we grow up…" the little prince frowned.
"Not needed!" the teacher brushed it off simply, "You are born with superior blood of the ancient family of deities. Even if you are just a regular healthy man from a common family, I can train you in just two to three years to acquire the strong physique and skills of a warrior. Only for a prodigious person like your big brother whose talent is sought after by martial gurus of famous ancient schools, is it required to train from a young age. After all, the science taught by these gurus is profound and cannot be mastered in a short amount of time."
"So Acharya is saying…"
"That's right. If all you need is to fight the enemy when the time comes, you can start preparing when you grow up! When your body has awakened at thirteen, fourteen…or even if you start when you turn a man at sixteen, it's still not late at all! There's no need to put yourself through all this now…!"
The little prince felt disheartened. After all this effort…now you're saying this?!
"Now tell me little Vajra…why do we do this?" the guru asked smilingly.
The little prince scratched his head while looking at the crawling ants on the ground. "I dunno Acharya…" he mumbled sadly.
"Ha ha ha ha…" the older man said gleefully, "I heard in the palace that one can hear every single word in the vocabulary from the little prince's mouth, except the phrase 'I don't know'….I feel very gratified. Ha ha ha!"
The little prince screwed his eyes and threw his teacher a peeved look. His guru was supposed to be a dignified martial arts guru whose name rang through the four corners of the world. Only problem was, he teased his disciples too much.
"Alright…" as though remembering dignity, the guru assumed some poise, stretching his arms on the stone bench in a leisurely manner, "Since you admit you do not know, I will give you some pointers. Say little Vajra, you want to conquer the world…"
The little prince sat straight as though electrified. "The old man heard even that!" he grumbled under his breath.
The guru didn't care for his reaction and continued. "How will you go about it?"
Vajradandaka was confused. The guru was half-ascetic. He wouldn't care for things like this. Was he seriously discussing this topic?
The poised middle-aged man went on in his mild, rumbling voice, "You will first take Rtadhara's soldiers and conquer the lands around here. This will inevitably cause you some losses in manpower, so you will then empty the coffers to recruit more men. You will take the spoils from your war and buy more weapons. You will reorganize your army into a bigger one and go on campaigns. Yet, throughout, you will face a problem which cannot fully be solved no matter how many smart people you have under your wing. Can you tell me what that problem is?"
The little prince dully shook his head.
"Logistics," the guru said, "You are always on the move while campaigning. You do not have a fixed ground. Even if you stay some place for longer than six months or even a year, it's not enough to arrange the logistics to feed an entire army on the move for years on end. So you have to adopt the tactic to capture towns and battlements of enemy armies. You must go on raids to secure supplies for yourself. Basically, you need to think of every stopgap measure possible to find some supplies which you can spend on yourself…"
Suddenly, the little prince's beautiful dreams of conquest did not seem so shiny anymore. The little twinkles covering the four corners disappeared one after another.
"A large scale conquest that takes place in a single generation looks something like that…" the guru said, "Now, there is another type of conquest that we are more familiar with. Here, when the king conquers a bit of territory and annexes it into his own, he will allow the reign to stabilize before planning his next conquest. That way, he need not empty the kingdom's coffers to fund the campaign and he can leisurely arrange the supplies for his army so logistics won't suffer. He can repeat the same process five, even ten times in his whole life, expanding the initial territory by ten, even twenty times! Later generations can continue the quest until who knows…Perhaps they can even conquer the whole world by staying true to their ancestor's vision."
Little chin quivering, Vajra's bright round eyes watched every graceful gesture and expression of his teacher. He didn't take to heart the second kind of conquest. At such a small age, he was unable to think about what happens after a generation has passed and a new generation has taken over. He was unable to think about the great passage of time.
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