“Those are the heads of Indrapuran!” Anathapindika shouted in disbelief. Anger filled her lung, making her voice trembled. The catapult attack was occurring non-stop. Severed heads of men, women, even children were raining down Indrapura.
“I will kill every one of those damned savages!” declared Kandra Kayet with a booming voice. He then ran toward the source of the attack—west side of the city—followed by his men. Anathapindika ordered her men to march west but taking another route. Several of Narendra’s men, provoked too, without his consent, joined the attack. He then instructed his remaining men to stay calm as they have not spotted the enemy’s present yet. They trailed Kandra Kayet’s host cautiously.
The head-rain has not stopped yet. Narendra then realized why the city and the village were empty. Did they just cut every single head out of the people they met? A single ear of a Mongol has cost thousands heads of Srivijayan.
He has kept his anger unprovoked, but he grew nervous instead. Senapati Narendra had, fearlessly, fought countless battles. But this battle was different, he realized, even before facing the enemy directly. I am not battling against men, I am battling monsters.
Suddenly, something flashed in front of him. He then heard the sound of one of his men who was walking right beside him collapsed to the ground, with an arrow pierced through his ear. The men shocked and anxiously searched the source of the arrow.
“The archer must be in one of those buildings,” said one of his men. Narendra then saw they were surrounded by tall buildings two-to-three story high. A trap, he realized.
Just before he shouted command to take cover, hundreds of arrows have loosened to his army from every angle.
***
Meanwhile, in the palace of Palembang, Maharaja Sumatrabhumi seemed to be far from running out of surprises. In a council meeting, he pitched his desire to start a development of a new Candi in Palembang. Passionately, he said the new Candi will dwarf the Borobudur—Syailendran’s Buddhist Candi in Bhumi Java—and even become the biggest Candi in the world.
Though all of the Kumaramatyas—except for Sokei-An, of course—resisted the plan, the Maharaja was unmoved. When Po Nagar said that it was the wrong time to do such thing since Srivijaya was at war, he replied that it was actually the best time. He even stated that the construction of the Candi will help Srivijaya to achieve its victory.
Thus in the next day, the most skillful masons in Palembang along with some Buddhist high priests were gathered in the palace. Together with the Maharaja, they designed the Candi; from its outline to its detail such as reliefs. According to the Maharaja’s wishes, the new Candi will be ornamented with classic stories like Karmavibhangga and also the modern one like the Conquest of Champa.
The next couple weeks, the construction has taken place in a hill south of the city. A score of five hundreds men were involved in the project. They cleared the land and started to transport stones from Musi River. Almost every day, the Maharaja will ride to the construction site to personally observe the progress. However, it bothered the Kumaramatyas very much of how Maharaja Sumatrabhumi seemed to spend much of his attention to the Candi construction rather than the war.
If they can only see what was happening in Indrapura, the irony will struck them hard. When people in Palembang were busy piling stones, Mongols in Indrapura were busy piling the dead body of Srivijayans.
(Continued to Chapter VII)
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