Chapter One: Daughter of the Wild
Vindhya Forests, Year 1542 — Dawn
The forest was waking, and so was the hunter.
Mist curled like ghosts between the sal trees. The stillness was sacred — the kind found before blood is spilled. A bowstring creaked, taut as a blade. Above the underbrush, two eyes glinted—deep, dark, deliberate.
Fourteen-year-old Durgavati exhaled slowly. Her arrow kissed the string.
The panther was fifty feet away, its shoulders rolling like thunder wrapped in velvet. One wrong breath, one misstep, and she'd be the prey. But Durgavati was not prey. She never had been.
She released.
The arrow struck with a thud—just behind the panther's eye. It dropped without a sound, collapsing into the ferns with a kind of dignity only death affords.
A shadow moved behind her.
"Well aimed," came the low growl of Raja Keerat Rai, her father, stepping from the trees. His broad chest bore war-scars that whispered of Bundelkhand's past wars. "But you hesitated."
"I listened," she said, lowering her bow. "The wind shifted."
He nodded. "That wind may be your last one day."
"I intend to ride it," she replied. There was steel in her voice, and her father noticed it with a silent pride. The girl was growing into something more than a princess. Something that the empire could neither tame nor predict.
Fort of Kalinjar — Later That Night
Durgavati stood beneath the towering stone walls of the fort, watching the horizon where storm clouds brewed over the Narmada. Lightning forked like cracked bones in the sky. Soldiers marched along the ramparts. Torches flickered. War drums echoed in her bones.
Her father's council was in uproar again.
"She must marry soon," spat a noble inside the chamber. "The Rajput blood must secure alliances before Delhi's shadow grows."
"Let her fight," said another. "She's her father's blade."
"She's a girl."
Durgavati stepped through the archway before her father could answer.
"I am a sword," she said coldly, "whether in a man's sheath or not."
The room fell silent. She walked into the middle, past silk-robed nobles and battle-hardened warriors. Her eyes were fire.
"If you fear the Mughals, then marry your daughters off to them. I will not be bartered."
One of the older generals, Bhairo Singh, chuckled under his breath. "You speak as though war is already at our door."
"It is," she said, turning to face the war maps. "You just don't hear it knocking yet."
One Month Later — Wedding Procession of Blood
The alliance with Gondwana had been agreed. A marriage not of hearts, but of strategy. Dalpat Shah, the heir of the powerful Gondi dynasty, awaited her in Singorgarh.
But the road was long. And not empty.
Bandits were common in the ravines — but what came that day was no mere bandit.
Durgavati's caravan was winding through a gorge when the trees erupted in fire.
Flaming arrows rained from the cliffs. Horses shrieked. Guards fell screaming. Smoke swallowed the sky.
From the smoke came men in black robes with no banners. Silent, swift, and brutal. Assassins.
Durgavati did not scream.
She kicked off her palanquin before it could collapse and drew her sword — a Rajput talwar forged with an eagle-shaped hilt. The air shimmered with heat. Her wedding finery trailed blood where it had been torn.
A masked assassin lunged. She ducked low and sliced upwards, cutting him from hip to neck. Another came behind — she pivoted, her sword cleaving his arm from his shoulder.
"Protect the princess!" yelled her commander.
But Durgavati didn't wait for protection. She became the storm.
She climbed the cliff with bloodied hands, slipping between arrows. At the top, she found the archer—an older man with coal eyes.
"Who sent you?" she growled, blade at his throat.
He spat in her face and tried to bite his own tongue. She slit it before he could.
She stared at his dying eyes, and in them, saw something chilling: fear of something greater than death.
This wasn't a robbery. This was a message.
Singorgarh Fort — Days Later
The wedding took place, blood-washed and silent. Durgavati wore red—not for custom, but for war. Her eyes met Dalpat Shah's with mutual understanding: they were both survivors.
That night, alone on the fort wall, Dalpat said, "That attack was not from the jungle. It was from Delhi."
She nodded. "Akbar expands east. Gondwana is next. And I am not a gift to you. I am a warning to him."
He smiled.
"I never asked for a bride. But I think I found a weapon."
Two Years Later — The Sky Falls
Dalpat Shah died of fever.
Or poison.
No healer could agree. But Durgavati knew the quiet pattern of assassins—how they wait for kingdoms to soften. He had fallen ill just after signing a military pact with Kalinjar's rivals. His drink had smelled of iron. His breath turned black.
And now, Durgavati was a widow.
With a three-year-old son.
The council tried to place regents above her. Old men. Cowards. Traitors in gold.
She unsheathed her husband's sword and drove it into the council table.
"You want a king?" she hissed. "You're looking at one."
The Forest Answers
Durgavati rode alone into the Vindhya ranges that night. The stars blinked through storm clouds. Wolves howled in the distance.
At a clearing, she dismounted and knelt before the fire.
From the trees came shadows.
The Bhils. The tribal archers of Gondwana. Men and women who hunted with silence and killed with accuracy unseen in courts. Their leader, Bheemsen, stepped forward.
He bowed. "Queen of the Hawk."
"You know why I'm here," she said.
"Yes," Bheemsen said. "The empire breathes down our neck. And the nobles whimper like beaten dogs."
"I want warriors," she said. "I want ghosts in the jungle. I want the wind to whisper my name in Delhi."
Bheemsen grinned, toothless and dangerous. "Then let the trees bleed with us."
Closing Lines
As dawn rose over Singorgarh, Durgavati stood atop the highest rampart. Below, her army — Rajput swordsmen, Gondi horsemen, Bhil archers — assembled.
Not one man cheered.
They bowed.
For they saw not a widow.
They saw a storm in human shape. A queen whose enemies had mistaken a lull in thunder for silence. A woman who would not go down in history quietly—but screaming, sword-first, into the heart of the world.
And far away, in Agra, a man called Asaf Khan unfolded a scroll.
On it was a sketch.
Of a queen.
And under it, the words: "Send tribute, or send fire."
He smiled.
"Let's send both."
End of Chapter One