Chapter 99: Battle of Bawal Part -4
As the moon reached it’s peak, a 17-year-old boy, stood in the ranks of the rebels as militia , waiting for marching orders in the shadows of forest. He wore chest armour reinforced with leather, simple leather bracers on his forearms and legs, and a dhoti, with bare feet. With a round shield in his left hand and a spear in his right, he might have looked like a ragtag bandit to others, but he felt dignified, no less than a noble. And his name was Nirbhay.
He was part of a group of ten, led by an experienced soldier of the rebel alliance.
"Lucky bastard! One day, I’ll have my own armour like that," Nirbhay thought, feeling a pang of jealousy as he looked at their leader, clad in full chainmail armor with a proper helmet and leather boots.
"What are you looking at? Do you want to die?" snapped his elder brother, nudging him sharply with his elbow and speaking in a low voice.
It was his elder brother Niraj, 19 years old, who was in the same getup, standing beside him. Their eldest brother Naman, 21 years old, standing behind them, cleared his throat and signalled them to focus.
The soldier assigned as their leader didn’t care about such nuisances. His eyes were fixed on the frontline, which was still preparing for the assault on the fort. He stood in stoic attention, looking more like a scarecrow, unapproachable but undeniably the command centre for their small group.
The group held large wooden stake of pallisade walls in front, along with additional personal wooden shields in back to protect themselves from the rain of arrows. This was the state of the entire army consisting such groups, almost 200,000 strong, all in tight formation, waiting for the signal as more groups took their positions in the forest.
Nirbhay turned to his right and saw many such small groups, comprising purely of professional soldiers in better armor among the militia. Some wielded swords, others spears, including archers in the midst but their formations looked top-notch compared to the rest. One of the professional soldiers even winked at him, making him panic and look straight ahead. Bored with the slow formation, he started drawing shapes with his toe, getting lost in thought.
He wondered if the news of land grabbing was actually true. Initially, he was just a helper on his father’s land, leased from a zamindar. The tax was heavy, but they still got to keep 20 percent of the produce. Like many others, his father abandoned the zamindar’s lands, took a loan from government welfare offices, and settled on the outskirts of the forest by clearing a vast amount of land.
However, everything changed one day when instead of his father, his father’s dead body returned home. The local soldiers of the zamindar, who brought the dead villagers, told them that they were killed by imperial soldiers .
The reason being was the villagers protesting against new laws that stated the interest rate had increased and their lands would be seized if they failed to comply.
At first, it felt shady, but the testimony from the survivors confirmed that it was all part of the empire’s plan to clear lands and acquire houses with less labor. Outrage was common, and he and his brothers enlisted in the rebellion as the king’s cousin appeared as a beacon of hope.