THE MAHABHARATA: A Modern Rendering, Vol 2 (57 page)

Krishna smiles at Bheema’s son and says, “Karna devours our army and no one can stand before him. Drona and his son are also out hunting tonight. Your uncle Arjuna must watch over Yudhishtira like his very life. Ghatotkacha, if you don’t stop Karna, I fear the war will end tonight and the earth will belong to Duryodhana. Karna must be killed and no one can do this thing but you. Take your astras, open Yama’s door for him.”

Ghatotkacha bows gravely, “I will go at once.”

A pang in his heart, Arjuna says, “Take Satyaki with you. Together, you will tame the sutaputra.”

Krishna’s face is bland. If any evil premonition stirs in Ghatotkacha, he shows no sign of it but seems pleased he has been chosen for this mission. Anyway, the high rakshasas are magical beings, creatures of twilight that make no stark difference between the realms of waking and dreams, or life and death, as men do.

Ghatotkacha arms himself to the fangs and comes into battle mounted in a white chariot. Around him, again, his legion of rakshasas swarms. Lithe they are and powerful; their skins shine by the light of the torches. Most are at least a head taller than the men they have come to fight. All of them bear eerie weapons in their hands, sorcerous ayudhas and every rakshasa is a master of maya. Just seeing that force, the Kaurava soldiers scatter.

TWENTY-SEVEN
GHATOTKACHA RULES THE NIGHT 

Duryodhana sees his soldiers flee one side of the battlefield. He sees Ghatotkacha advance on Karna and turns to Dusasana in alarm, “Ghatotkacha rides at Karna with his devils. Take ten men for every rakshasa, go quickly, my brother! Karna must be protected.”

Dusasana turns to go, when another rakshasa speaks out of the darkness. It is Jatasura, whose father Bheema once killed, on an adventure of his. In his element, by night, he says to Duryodhana, “This is my chance to avenge my father. Let me kill Bheema’s son and drink his blood under the stars.”

Gladly, Duryodhana sends Jatasura
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out against Ghatotkacha. On his way, the demon kills a thousand Pandava soldiers. He is taller than any of Ghatotkacha’s warriors, taller than Bheema’s son. He is pale-skinned, for he is of another race of rakshasas, from another part of the earth. Jatasura does not ride into battle but comes to fight on foot, like some curse. He comes veiled in maya and can only rarely be seen.

He roars at Ghatotkacha, “You are neither a human nor one of our people. Get down from your chariot, if you dare: let us fight like rakshasas!”

He cries out a resonant challenge in their weird tongue. Ghatotkacha leaps down from his chariot. The sight of them, circling each other, one white and the other black, their eyes luminous, their ears pointed, their movements feline, makes the human soldiers around them shiver and step back. But torches are held for the two to fight to the death.

Their roars are fearsome, their blows dark whiplashes. Soon, blood blossoms on their faces. At times they lock with each other, so the muscles on their bodies stand out like serpents, glistening with the sweat that covers them. Then, one of them wrenches free and flails at the other with a clenched fist, or a vicious kick too swift to see, felling him. But neither stays down for more than a moment. Two human armies hold their breath around the inhuman warriors. Long they fight, until Ghatot-kacha decides he has had enough of unarmed combat. With a blow like an earthquake, he knocks Jatasura down. Before that rakshasa can rise, Ghatotkacha sweeps up a long scimitar and hews off his head with a stroke that makes an arc of torches on its gleaming blade.

Jatasura’s scream echoes through the field, dying only when his head lands twenty feet from his body, blood shining in a trail between. Ghatotkacha picks up the grisly head and runs toward Duryodhana’s chariot. Gore from Jatasura’s neck flows over his black body and the men around him cower from Bheema’s son.

In a ringing voice, Ghatotkacha cries to Duryodhana, “One must never visit a king without a gift. I have brought you a gift, Duryodhana!”

He flings Jatasura’s head into his chariot, at the Kaurava’s feet. Duryodhana leaps back with a cry. His lips wet with Jatasura’s blood, Ghatotkacha says, “I will bring you another gift before the night ends, one you will love. Uncle, I will bring you Karna’s head!”

Duryodhana stands too shocked to retort. With a smile, Bheema’s son lopes back into battle. The Kaurava army parts for him and he quickly finds himself facing the lord of Anga by rushlight. Ghatotkacha’s eyes are torches burning with their own fire. The rakshasa stands heaving before Karna; he stands swirled about in maya, that mysterious being. At times, the two armies see him, but mostly he is invisible. A hush falls on Kurukshetra, but it is broken by loud, rich laughter. Karna’s eyes are not deceived for a moment by Ghatotkacha’s maya; he sees the rakshasa, wraith-like, even when he is invisible to all the others. Karna throws back his head and mocks him with laughter, diminishing his spell of fear.

Ghatotkacha answers the mockery with an astra that immolates a thousand Kaurava soldiers. Kurukshetra is lit up, with men burning like rushlights. Roaring, Karna looses five silver shafts at him. Ghatotkacha has been taught by his uncle Arjuna and strikes them aside with ease. Again, the rakshasa fights with maya; and now he not only makes himself invisible, but casts potent spells at his enemy. Great winds rise out of nowhere and blow away lines of Kaurava soldiers; or sheets of flame flash from the rakshasa’s hands, ashing entire legions.

Karna douses fire with rain. He stills tempests with unerring shafts that put out their stormy eyes. Karna is effulgent on Kurukshetra, with the light of his father. His bow is a sliver of the sun in his hands and the battle against Ghatotkacha isn’t a duel merely of the earth. All around Karna his soldiers run, screaming in terror of the rakshasa, or they are slain by his sorcery. Karna himself stands unmoved, his arrows a Ganga of flames from his hands.

Ghatotkacha is quenchless. One moment, he fights with sharp wooden shafts from the ground and Karna is hard-pressed to hold him off. The next instant, the rakshasa treads air with maya, invisibly and now his arrows are astras of sinuous darkness. Karna fights at the limits of his prodigious ability, for his very life. Ghatotkacha is everywhere. He is all the night of a thousand forms, a thousand fears. When Karna pierces his maya in the air, in a flash he assumes some monstrous shape on the ground, goes among the Kaurava soldiers as a Beast, with a thousand heads.

Duryodhana watches from a safe distance, in concern. It does not seem even Karna will be any match, tonight, for Ghatotkacha. Only the most intrepid soldiers continue to stand around the two, holding torches for them to fight by: for to be anywhere near is to court death.

Then, another demon arrives, tall and ferile, on Kurukshetra with a hideous army. Vile, slouching beasts march behind the pale stranger and surely never before, since the earliest days, would such fiends have dared to approach a Kuru king without being slain on sight. It is the rakshasa Alayudha, whom even his own kind shun, come to offer his services to Duryodhana. The creatures that march in his yowling, gibbering legion are monsters that never show themselves when the sun is up.

Bheeshma would not have let these devils near the army of Hastinapura. The desperate Duryodhana senses an ally and welcomes him. In sibilant tones, the rakshasa says, “I am Alayudha. Hidimba, Kirmira and Baka were my kin
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. Bheema slew them all and I have come for revenge. I hunt only by dark, so I waited until you fought under the stars.” He bares his fangs in a grin that makes even Duryodhana’s skin crawl. “Hidimbi belonged to us all in the vana. But Bheema took her for himself and he is not even one of us. Their child is a monster, of neither your kind nor mine. He is an unnatural thing, a blot on the face of the earth. He must die and Bheema must die. I, Alayudha, have come to drink their blood.”

If he were not so repelled by the stench of this rakshasa, Duryodhana may have clasped the devil to him. As it is, he cries, “Welcome, Alayudha, to the army of Hastinapura! Bheema’s son rules this night and no one can stand before him. You have come to be my savior. Look where Ghatotkacha burns my army. Go friend! Kill Bheema’s boy and you shall find me forever grateful.”

Karna is, by far, the finest archer in the Kaurava army. He is a legion of marksmen by himself. He is better than Aswatthama, Drona, Kripa and Kritavarman; he is better than all of them together. Long ago, Yudhishtira glimpsed Karna’s genius at the tournament in Hastinapura and he knew this was the greatest bowman in the world. Yes, even greater than Arjuna. Ever since, he has dreaded Karna. Now, this naked midnight of the war, Karna dominates Kurukshetra with his immaculate gifts. Yet, the one who confronts him tonight is a match even for him. Ghatotkacha contains Karna and even as he does, he slaughters the Kaurava army.

Alayudha comes into battle, his malignant platoon streaming behind him, many of those rakshasas shambling on all fours, their eyes green slits. Ghatotkacha greets the force of demons with weapons of fire and wind and braids of lightning that streak along the ground through their lines. Raising their evil faces to bay at the enemy, the rakshasas come on in a wave, unmindful of their own that fall screaming among them, torched.

Soon, Ghatotkacha is contained, since now two powerful enemies assail him at once. For all his rank appearance, Alayudha is a warrior, his courage boundless. He is also impervious to most weapons, calmly plucking them out of his milk-white skin. Then, he comes on again, death at his bow, his curved sword and his fangs and talons he uses to tear down those who stand before him. Alayudha quaffs the blood of the men he kills and soon his lean form is covered in deep scarlet, shining slickly by the torches.

Bheema sees his son beset by two enemies and attacks Alayudha with a gale of arrows. Seeing the father come to battle, Alayudha turns away from the son. His army eddying around him, he rushes snarling at Bheema. By dark, the demons have the better of Yudhishtira’s soldiers. Supernatural fear numbs the Pandava legions. The rakshasas kill them with fang and claw, with sinister weapons and sorcery. Alayudha and Bheema face each other at the heart of all the blood flying. Bheema is bemused by the rakshasa’s maya; the duel against an enemy who is seldom visible is not one he relishes. Alayudha smashes the Pandava’s chariot. Bheema leaps down from its ruins and the two fight with maces.

At the edge of the war, Krishna turns to Arjuna. “We must go to Bheema!”

Arjuna comes to battle like a spirit of light. Krishna pilots his chariot straight to Ghatotkacha’s side. Arjuna engages Karna, while Krishna cries to Bheema’s son, “Your father needs your help against Alayudha. Fly to him!”

Karna makes to pursue Ghatotkacha, but Arjuna raises a screen of arrows in his path. Roaring, Karna turns on his brother. Ghatotkacha flies out of the sky at Alayudha. Like the heart of the midnight wind he swoops and hacks off the white rakshasa’s head with a bright blow of his sword. Alayudha’s blood sprays across his own people with the force of Ghatotkacha’s arm. It is as if they have all been slain with that stroke: panic takes them. Maddened, they run every way and the avenging Pandava army cuts them down as they please.

Ghatotkacha picks up Alayudha’s head from the ground. Bearing it aloft he runs to Duryodhana’s chariot again. Grinning, he flings the ruddy thing at the Kaurava’s feet. Duryodhana jumps back from it with a roar. Ghatotkacha has already returned to the fighting.

Bheema’s son rules the night’s heart. He massacres the enemy as not Bheema, Arjuna, Satyaki or any of the others have yet done. He burns them, he blows them away: whole legions with astras and with subtle, deadly maya, so they hardly know they have been killed. Only Karna prevents him from razing all Duryodhana’s army, only Karna holds him up in the dark. When Ghatotkacha lashes down a torrent of fire on the Kaurava forces, Karna blows the burning storm away with a vayavyastra. When it is a cloud of arrows the rakshasa conjures in the sky, Karna dispels it with an aindrastra. But Ghatotkacha is like two armies by himself, on the ground and in the air! Not even Karna can contain him entirely. In a chilling moment, Karna sees an entire complement of Kaurava soldiers beheaded by a flight of golden swords: to this, he has no answer.

Ghatotkacha’s inhuman roars fill the darkness and terror worse than death lays hold of Duryodhana’s men. And the rakshasa is not alone. Beside him, his father and uncle kill thousands and it seems the war will surely end tonight. Karna hears desperate voices cry to him, “Kill the rakshasa, Karna, or the war is lost!”

“Hah! Save us, Karna! Kill the devil.”

“Use your Shakti, Karna. Use Indra’s Shakti against the beast. Or we all die tonight!”

“Kill him now or everything is lost!”

Karna hears Duryodhana’s desperate cry, “The Shakti, Karna! The Shakti, or we are doomed!”

TWENTY-EIGHT INDRA’S SHAKTI 

Karna lays his hand on the Shakti before him and it begins to shine like a piece of a star. His chariot is lit up, blindingly. As he picks up the weapon, he hears the echo of another voice above the tumult of the armies.

Giving Karna his Shakti, Indra said, ‘You can cast it only once, against just one enemy. Whoever he may be, he will die. But then the Shakti will return to me.’

Karna had replied, ‘I need to use it only once. I have only one enemy.’

Indra laughed, ‘You mean Arjuna; but Krishna protects him. Not even with my Shakti can you kill the Pandava.’