The Ambush(1)
Year 1563, January, Somewhere in Badrak near border of Duranabad
Today is a full moon, the moonlight bath the landscape in its soft light. In the distance an army camp could be seen where there was none almost 5-6 hours ago with multiple cooking fire going on with soldiers sitting around it eating their ration and sharing warmth in a hushed tone of camaraderie and friendship after a exhausting days march. This was none other than prince Viraja private army. Each soldier was dressed in grey trousers and brown shirts and boots with helmet and cuirass having the emblem of a trident with a cobra coiled around it which is his Rudradev khurd company official emblem, it has been inspired from emblem of the Khurda kingdom which is a trident and also symbolizes two thing that is closely associated with Lord Shiva. It has been close to 5 days since the prince has left his company headquarter barracks with his army and has been marching nonstop while stopping only once previously to reach his current location.Once he has reached here he decided to make temporary stop before moving deeper into his barony to the destined location where he will create another branch factory of his company.
Within the camp is a large command tent in which Prince Viraja dressed all in black with a cuirass on is sitting and discussing with colonel Virendra and other officers about the reports brought in by scouts. It seems out of 15000, close to 10000 men of noble Durani's army which was stationed at the border of Duranabad has circled around to his rear and entered his fiefdom and will reach his positon by noon. Similarly there is another army of 8000 to 9000 men of unknown origin is advancing from the front they seem to have originated from the forest in Duranabd close to the border of his fiefdom, they are also timing their march such that they reach the prince position at noon too. Basically the ambush was set with 2 pronged attack in order to cut of his escape route and to surround him.
Hearing this the prince had a smile on his face and decided to use the Nepolean strategy of moving his army rapidly, attacking quickly, and defeating each of the disconnected enemy units. He ordered colonel Virendra to start packing up the camp within an hour and send the noncombatants along with all the goods carriage with a platoon of 100 men as guards towards the inner location of his territory to meet up with the 500 royal guards sent previously by his father to police his barony and the rest of the army which include close to 4500 men and his royal cavalry guard of 1000 strong will move forward to meet the unknown enemy first in battle and once he has crushed them, he will circle back to meet the noble durani's army in battle. He looked at Bhimrao and Hariharan and said "Once you reach there, you are to move towards the location where my new company compound is to be build and start work on it".With all the instruction given he dismissed them all to prepare for departure.As they left his eyes went to the report delivered by one of the field agent of Third Eye. It includes details of deployments and size of the Royal army as well as private army of the nobles.It turns out that the Royal army number has notched upto 85-90 thousand while the great nobles is allowed army of size not more than 20-25 thousand and finally minor nobles are allowed army size of may be 2-5 thousand.