Chapter 40: Vimal Deva Raya
Six hours before the assassination attempt,
On the outskirts of the city of Hampi,
In a small village, while it was still before daybreak, fire lamps were lit up in the streets for light.
At a large house in the centre of the village that seemed to belong to the village head, a large number of men were coming and going inside the house. They all wore luxurious clothes and had at least a dozen servants accompanying them.
Inside the house in the main hall, a middle-aged man who looked slightly similar to Vijay sat on the main seat. He wore a long saffron gown and had a talwar decorated with ornaments at his waist. Maybe due to being in a high position all his life, He was surrounded by an air of nobility.
The man was none other than the head of the Nobles, Vimal Deva Raya.
Their family used to be the royal family two generations ago. Vimal's grandfather and Vijay's grandfather were both brothers; hence, they were both princes and had an equal claim to the throne. Regrettably, Vimal's grandfather lost the battle for the throne as his cruelty towards the common people was condemned by their father. This caused their family to become a branch line of the royal family.
His father, Pushpa Devaraya, was a person with great ambition, not wanting to be a common noble, He secretly contacted some ambitious nobles in the empire to lead a coup and take the throne for himself.
However, out of fortune or misfortune, just before he could act, Vijay's father, the former King, took strong actions against the nobles and Zamindars in the empire. This action caught them off-guard and weakened their power to the minimum, and Pushpa Devaraya's plan couldn't proceed. Although he was not suspected of anything, he passed away with a broken heart, lamenting that he had no opportunity to rise.
Vimal yelled louder as his speech grew more intense, banging the table and raising his hand in defiance.
"No, no, no!"
The listeners, like Filled with Chicken Blood, stood up in anger, clenching their hands into fists and waving them around in the air nonsensically.
Vimal: "So tell me, my dear compatriots, do you want to take back what was rightfully ours?"
Vimal roared in fury as he unsheathed his Talwar, cut his hand in a show of bravery and pointed the bloody sword towards the sky.
"Take it back, take it back, take it back, take it back, take it back, take it back."
Inspired by him, everyone roared to the sky as chants rang through the whole hall, audible throughout the entire village.
All the nobles in the room unsheathed their weapons and pointed them towards the air.
All this commotion was observed by a Fakeer sitting in the corner of the house, smirking. He was dressed in a green robe and wore a Taqiyah (Arabic hat worn by Muslims) on his head, with kajal in his eyes. He had been dispatched by the great monarch Mohammad of the Mughal Empire to assist the nobles in the Vijayanagara Empire in their fight against the royal family.
Lately, there had been a lot of trouble in the Mughal Empire, with riots increasing in certain parts of the land. Additionally, mysterious weapons were increasingly appearing within the empire.
Noticing the turmoil in the Vijayanagara Empire, Mohammad had sent the Fakeer to support the nobles with a batch of trained assassins and a considerable amount of gold coins.