The Vana Durga (the wild forest of the crags) clung to the eastern slopes of Mount Mahendragiri like an overgrown wall of green rot and black stone.
Ancient sal and pine trees grew sideways out of the cliffs, their roots locking into deep rock crevices.
Vines thick as a man’s thigh hung from the dark canopy, tangling with sharp thorn bushes that choked the earth.
The air was damp, thick with the smell of wet mold, rotting leaves, and the faint musk of mountain predators.
Vidhar stepped into the green gloom.
He wore only his pale saffron dhoti, the grass belt tight around his waist.
The forty-kilogram black Sharnga (composite horn bow) was strung in his left hand, the braided silk bowstring humming faintly as low branches scraped against the wood.
At his right hip, the three-and-a-half-kilogram steel Parashu (battle-axe) hung secure in its leather loop, cold against his bare skin.
The quiver on his back carried fifteen heavy ironwood arrows.
Bhagavan Parashurama stood three paces ahead on a moss-covered boulder.
His dark hair was tied in a tight topknot, and in his right hand he held a simple two-meter pole of fire-hardened bamboo.
“Here, the open ground is gone,” the Teacher said, his voice quiet, cutting through the drip of forest water.
“A flat terrace gives you a level floor.
The wild forest gives you nothing.
The leaves steal your sight.
The roots grab your feet.
The hanging vine deflects your arrow head.
If you loose a shaft without knowing where the wood ends and the air begins, you give away your life for nothing.”
Bhagavan Parashurama pointed with the bamboo pole toward a steep ravine path twenty meters below them.
Suspended from the high branches above the trail were five heavy timber logs, each a foot thick and two meters long, bound with thick hemp vines.
They hung hidden among the hanging leaves, counterweighted by rough boulders resting on trigger ledges.
“You will navigate forty paces down that trail,” the Teacher commanded.
“When the trip-cords snap, the deadfalls swing.
Two will sweep low from the flank.
Three will drop from above.
You do not stop.
You do not retreat.
You will loose on the drop, draw the steel, and cut your way through the timber before your feet clear the moss.”
From a high branch of a rotting birch tree, a dark shape shifted among the leaves.
Kakbhushundi hopped onto a damp knot, shaking rainwater from his black feathers with a sharp rustle.
“Swinging deadfalls of wild oak,” the crow croaked silently into Vidhar’s head, his beak parting in a dry grin.
“One tap from those logs will crush your ribs into a wet paste.
The Teacher has decided to turn his student into tree fertilizer.
Try to duck fast, scribbler.
I would hate to pick grains out of a crushed corpse.”
Vidhar tuned the crow out.
The cold moisture soaked into his bare soles.
He pulled the chill air deep into his belly, awakening the steady flow of Prana-Vayu (the vital breath of nature).
His lungs cleared, and the ache in his legs melted away into light, coiled tension.
Through Kala-Drishti (seer’s sight), the dim forest resolved into lines of mass and gravity.
He saw the tension in the hanging vines, the balance of the counterweights on the high ledges, and the greasy film of wet rot covering the shale below.
“Go,” the Teacher commanded.
Vidhar broke into a sprint.
His bare feet hit the muddy incline, digging the pads of his toes into the slippery soil.
He leaped over an exposed pine root, ducked under a hanging curtain of wet thorns, and hit the trail.
SNAP.
His shin brushed a thin hemp vine hidden in the fern bed.
Above him, the first counterweight dropped.
A two-meter oak log, studded with sharpened branch stubs, swung down from the right canopy like a giant pendulum, screaming through the damp leaves straight toward his ribs.
Vidhar did not freeze.
He dropped flat into a sliding knee-drop, skidding on the wet leaves.
The heavy oak log whistled inches over his head, the wind of its passage tearing loose leaves from his hair and smashing through a sapling on the far side of the trail.
Before the slide stopped, Vidhar reached for his shoulder.
His fingers snatched a black arrow, laying the ironwood shaft across the horn bowstave.
He kicked off the mud with his right heel, snapping his torso upright while staying low.
Above him, the second and third logs released together, plunging straight down like falling pillars.
Vidhar hauled the silk bowstring back to his jaw.
He didn’t aim at the heavy logs—wood was too thick to shatter with an arrow.
He aimed at the hemp vine holding the left counterweight.
TWANG!
The forty-kilogram horn bow roared.
The heavy steel arrow head cut upward through the leaves, slicing clean through the braided vine thirty feet above.
The counterweight pitched sideways, deflecting the falling oak log into a stone outcrop with a deafening crash of splintering bark.
The third log was two meters above his face.
Vidhar rolled hard to his right.
The timber struck the ground where he had knelt a half-second before, burying itself a foot into the mud and throwing a shower of black soil across his chest.
He bounded to his feet, but the path ahead was blocked.
The final two logs were swinging inward from both flanks at once, their heavy trunks closing together like the jaws of a wooden trap four feet off the ground.
Vidhar dropped the bow into his left hand, pinning the black stave tight against his ribs.
His right hand blurred down to his hip.
SHING.
The three-and-a-half-kilogram steel Parashu cleared the leather loop.
Vidhar didn’t try to block the swinging trunks.
He leaped forward, driving the power from his back foot, and launched himself into the gap between the two closing timbers.
WHACK-CRACK!
The hand-forged steel bit clean into the moving oak, cutting through the grain.
Vidhar used the weight of his drop and the rebound of the strike to spin his body around, driving the heavy four-sided rear spike of the axe straight into the center of the right log.
CRUNCH!
The spike punched two inches into the heartwood.
The shock hit Vidhar’s wrist, but he absorbed the blow through his flexing knees, shoving off the embedded timber to throw himself clear of the trap.
He landed on both feet on a flat slab of wet shale, sliding half a meter before stopping in a low, level stance.
Behind him, the two damaged timbers collided with a dull, shuddering crack, tearing free from their ropes and rolling down the ravine into the brush below.
Silence reclaimed the green canopy.
Vidhar stood breathing hard, steam rising from his bare shoulders.
His left hand gripped the horn bow across his chest; his right held the steel axe at his hip, its silver edge clean of chips.
His saffron dhoti was soaked in black mud, but his skin was unmarked.
From the high birch branch, Kakbhushundi fluttered down, landing on a broken pine stump near Vidhar’s shoulder.
“Not bad,” the crow croaked softly into his thoughts, his beady eyes gleaming.
“The boy cut moving oak without losing a finger.
The forest threw its teeth at you, and you spit them back.
But look up, scribbler.
The master has not dropped his stick yet.”
Vidhar turned his head.
Bhagavan Parashurama stood ten paces up the path, resting his hands atop the bamboo pole.
His dark eyes swept over the shattered logs in the ravine, then stopped on Vidhar’s balance on the slippery shale.
“You cut the vine instead of fighting the timber,” the Teacher said, his voice flat, but the hard line of his mouth softened by a fraction.
“You used your sight.
You did not attack what was strong; you severed what held it up.”
He stepped down off the rock, his bare feet silent on the mud.
“The body can move through the wild.
Now we see if your breath can command the stone.
Tomorrow, we climb beyond the treeline to the Surya Shila (the Sun Rock).
The physical drills are ended.
You will learn to draw the second Astra—the Varunastra (the water-weapon)—and you will learn how to extinguish the fire you lit in the gorge.”
Bhagavan Parashurama tapped the bamboo pole against the earth, turning back up the hill.
“Clean the mud from your blade with dry sand.
Then carry five baskets of wild tubers from the lower valley for the kitchen.”
Vidhar slid the steel axe back into its loop, wiped his brow with the back of his forearm, and bowed toward the Teacher’s back.
“Yes, Gurudev,” Vidhar said.