Silent wind blew through the beautiful landscape, had this been a full moon night, it would have added more to the decorum. The light breeze in the clear night swayed the lanterns atop the fort indraketu along with the chera banner of bow and arrow. There was a clean stretch of land between the fort and the forest. Hidden among st the thicket of the trees, karnan was sizing up the fort, and looking for possible points of entry into this impregnable fortress. Scouts were up on the wall, scourging for any movement on the ground. Karna could give them a slip but there was a moat; half as wide as river kaveri and let alone the crocodiles in the moat, he had a 20 feet high wall to scale. As if by miracle the soldier on the top of the wall was nowhere to be seen, knowing that his window was closing fast, karna made his move. He stood on the edge of the forest shadow, one quick sweep on the top of the wall, he made a dash towards the moat. Just as the guard came back to his position, karna was halfway across the moat, praying earnestly that the crocodile part of the moat was a myth. As he waded clear to the fort wall, he saw a ripple in the moat which he was sure that it was not of his making. Unconcernedly, he unpacked a bag he was carrying with him. It was his pet meru, a monitor lizard. He tied a rope along the mid of meru, whispered something to her and threw her on the upright wall. Meru slowly made her way to the top most part of the wall and found a cozy crack on the wall and fixed her feet tight on the crack, karna tugged on the rope to confirm it was firm, and began scaling the wall, taking one step at a time to make sure he did not loose his grip and fall back into the moat. Within a minutes delay he was on the fort battlements, he safely tucked away meru. From here he could see the lights coming from the magnificent city of vanchi, the chera capital. The fort looked menacing from the outside, but on the inside it was congested, there was literally no place to walk. He moved towards the stairwell as though he was a guard posted on the wall for the nights'duty, a pair of guards were chatting animatedly along the corridor leading to the stairwell, on seeing him approach the guards just stepped aside to let him pass. As he passed by he nodded to the guards they nodded back to him. The tired, half dozing guards didn't even notice the blood splatter and tears on the uniform karna was wearing, which he had moments earlier stolen from a corpse that tried to sound the alarm. On getting to the grounds inside the fort wall, he planted a device at the base of a huge barrel which he persumed as oil by the aroma from it, there were twelve to fifteen such containers each nearly as high as the fort walls. The purpose of such huge oil stack was a puzzle, may this be that exotic weapon that the cheras had being boasting about; karna expelled these thoughts at once,as it was not his concern not now anyway. He had to get away from the blast radius, these foreign cracker exploded with varied result, which might become even more varied considering the quantiy of oil. Karna coolly walked away from the place, just as he took ten steps someone yelled on the fort wall. Someone had spotted the guard killed by karna earlier. The alarm sounded, karna's heart began beating harder and faster. "Could he get away from this hell hole unscathed?",his thoughts tormented him, "What if the attack did not happen?","What if the chola's absconded on hearing the alarm?","Would they think that he was compromised by the cheras?"Along this thought process, came a clarity, the voice of his mentor echoed to him "Either escape or sacrifice,never submit". This thought jerked him to reality, another horrific thought pranced through his mind,"He was within the blast zone!!". He began running towards safety, he streaked past a guard who was shouting something at him, then just as aptly as silence comes before the storm, there was a volcanic sound and blinding light, with the shock wave throwing apart anything that stood in its way, karna was lifted by this monstrous blast and was thrown a good twenty feet in air, where he landed and rolled for few more feet and came to a rest. Through his blurred vision he could see the wall which he climbed had collapsed in the explosion, a wildfire ravaging the fort with clouds of dense black smoke rising for several meters in the night air. Just as he lost consciousness, he could've sworn that he heard the long blow of a chola war-conch. -to be continued 