When I awoke, the moonlight lit the entrance to the cave, and I saw Jyoti standing there against the night, her feet planted apart as if ready for a battle. She was looking out across the plains and toward the black space that was the Caspian. Her gown flapped in a gentle breeze, and the light of the moon cast her in silhouette, so that I saw her body through her garments, saw the delicious width of her hips and that tempting space between her thighs.
I wanted her again, but there was no time. She had told me - before we had sought shelter from the coming day in this cave high in the mountains - that she belonged to a distinct tribe of people that resided far in the lands to the South-East, that her people were not an indigenous tribe there but in fact one made from the outcasts of other tribes, some from far afield. We intended to go there immediately, but we needed the full of the night to do it in. And so, I resisted the urge to go to her and take her, to feel again the heaven of being with her and releasing in her.
Thus, we made our way across the lands of the Dahae, skirting the lands of the Achaemenidan Empire and the scouts of Alexander's great army, and passed instead through the mountains of Sakas and Kashmir. Only once we encountered spies, men of the Macedonian army spread out in distant posts, in the Tocharian speaking basin far north of the Nanda Dynasty: we had sought food for Jyoti, I already having feasted on a goat farmer at the foot of the Tian Shan mountain-range. Little did we know the extent of Alexander's obsession to retrieve my Indian girl, or for what reason, and so we couldn't have suspected that our visages would have been described to such faraway outposts of the Macedonian Army as this one in the Tarim Basin.
With my preternatural hearing, I'd overheard the men identify us, and one left straight away on horseback to notify a scout. I killed the remaining spy, but the other had escaped me down the steep paths of the Pamir Mountains. The local Congling found the body of the murdered spy, for I hadn't had time to hide his body properly, and there was a ruckus made and Jyoti and I quickly fled and continued our journey south. It wouldn't be long, I wagered, before contingents of Alexander's army nearby, perhaps stationed further south in the lands of the Matsya Kingdom, would muster to hunt us down.
As I carried my girl through the night, moving swiftly across the rugged terrains of Kashmir, I wondered at the motivation for Alexander to have Jyoti returned. I had thought, and perhaps she did as well, though I now doubted it, that his army had simply captured her in some raid or another as her people had migrated from place to place, and she had been imprisoned and branded as one of his harem. But no king went to such efforts to save face over an escaped slave, and now that I had seen the strange blue light contained within her, I knew that Jyoti was something part of a much greater plan than simply sex for the Macedonian leader. I would endeavour to know once we were with her tribe and safe across the border of the Nanda Dynasty.
In only a 'hora' or two the sun would rise enough to present a very real danger to me, and I hoped that we would make our destination without any hindrance. It was a vain hope. We saw a vast army ahead of us, spread out across the steppe beyond Malawa. Dhana Nanda's army. Men in glorious brigadine armour, with pointed helmets, painted shields and curved swords marched across the plains, behind an impressive line of thousands upon thousands of mounted elephants. Flanking those were golden chariots covered by vast parasols, and behind all this were the bullock trains carting carts loaded with catapults and other engines of war. At the rear of this vast army was another army of its own: a whole congregation of surgeons, cooks, servants and prostitutes, all with their own bullock teams of equipment and folded tents.
The sight stopped us in our travels, and we watched this monument march across the land towards the Five Rivers. And it became apparent why. The spy from the Tarim Basin must have made his rendezvous, for Alexander's own army likewise marched from the Hydaspes River, and so the two great armies were marching towards one another for an epic battle. As she watched the sight below, I stole a look at Jyoti and again wondered about the power I had witnessed coming from her in the yurt at the Parthian camp.
"That is King Chandragupta," Jyoti said, pointing at a large houdah atop a massive bull elephant near the front of the massive congregation. I fancied I could see, sitting beside the king, a djinn or some other deity, its skin blue as the sky and flowers fashioned in garlands about its neck and down its bare chest. Whether Jyoti could also see this supernatural entity, I wasn't sure.
"We must keep going," I reminded her, glancing at the sky above the mountains to our left. She nodded, and I picked her up in my arms, hugging her warmth to me, and we continued our journey as the battle horns of the Macedonian army sounded from way across one of the rivers.
'You were close, Alexander,' I thought, 'but I was faster. Now my girl and I are safe across Dhana Nanda territories, and let us see if you can best their mighty army for this magical prize.'
