THE MAHABHARATA: A Modern Rendering, Vol 2 (49 page)

Not only the awestruck soldiers of both armies on the field, but Devas and gandharvas, charanas and apsaras, have gathered in the sky to watch this duel. Drenched in water from Satyaki’s varunastra, his shaft of agni put out, Drona roars on Kurukshetra so the ground shakes under his chariot wheels. But before the duel can resume, Nakula and Sahadeva, Bheema and Yudhishtira ride to Satyaki’s side. In a moment, Dhrishtadyumna in a fresh chariot, Virata and the Kekaya brothers are beside him, as well; and from the Kaurava ranks, Dusasana, with a score of his brothers, arrives to fight for Drona. The battle spreads out again, as the armies fall at each other.

Though he has been frustrated in his attempt on Yudhishtira and is furious at the Yadava responsible, Drona is still warrior enough, artist enough, to admire the relucent valor of young Satyaki.

SIXTEEN
DEEP INTO THE ENEMY’S ARMY 

The sun rises to his zenith and begins his descent in the sky. Blazing midday finds Arjuna and Krishna battling not just the Kaurava army, but time himself. Arjuna is twice as fierce as when he began and Krishna’s horses respond not just to their reins he holds, but to his very thought. Like steeds of light they flit, weaving dizzily through the enemy, while Arjuna’s arrows cut a hot path ahead of them.

But unlike the Pandava and his dark sarathy, the white horses begin to tire. Their careen through two dense vyuhas has been long and hard and, nearing the end of Drona’s lotus, they turn sluggish. Their coats are drenched in sweat; there is foam at their mouths and their flanks are bloody with arrows. Those unearthly horses, given Arjuna by Chitrasena the gandharva, cannot be killed; but they do tire and their bodies heave from thirst.

Jayadratha is still far away, beyond the final petal of the lotus, three-fourths of a krosa from Arjuna; and the greatest Kaurava warriors stand between the Pandava and his prey. The sun sinks in the west and the Kaurava soldiers are heartened by the sight of the exhausted horses. Seeing the white chariot slow to a crawl, the Avanti brothers, Vinda and Anuvinda, ride at Arjuna in the hope that speed will give them a telling advantage.

They roar a challenge at the Pandava. They cover not just him, but his thirsty horses and his blue sarathy with arrows. Blinding Arjuna breaks the bows in their hands. But Krishna can hardly maneuver his chariot any more; his horses slow to a walk, panting. Seizing the chance, Vinda attacks Arjuna from ahead and Anuvinda from the rear. How will he resist them both, when Yuddhamanyu and Uttamaujas have been left far behind and have rejoined Dhrishtadyumna’s legion? But Arjuna will not let anyone hold him up. On another day, he may have indulged himself in a prolonged duel with the gifted brothers. Today, he takes Vinda’s head off his neck with a crescent-tipped shaft and bloodies Anuvinda’s chest, before cutting off his arms and legs and then his head.

Crying out, the Kauravas swarm at the white chariot from every side. Arjuna swivels where he stands, the Gandiva spewing an iridescence of arrows all around him. He holds them off, as fresh as when he began, killing hundreds. Then, he tells Krishna, “The horses are wounded and thirsty. They will not reach Jayadratha unless they rest.”

Krishna replies, “They must be unyoked and their wounds tended. They must drink, or they will drop. But how?”

He sounds worried. He wonders if he should raise the Panchajanya and blow a rishabha on it. But Arjuna says calmly, “Unyoke them, Krishna. Let them rest.”

“Here?”

“It is as good a place as any,” smiles the Pandava. “You tend to them, I will fight on foot.”

Arjuna climbs down from the chariot. He looks like Kamadeva, standing there with the Gandiva in his hand as if it were the Love God’s sugarcane bow. The Kauravas roar to each other, “Look! Arjuna’s horses can’t run any more.”

“He stands helpless on the ground. This is the time to kill him!”

“Surround him. Cover him with arrows!”

So they do, running at him in excitement. But too soon: Arjuna on the ground is deadlier than Arjuna in his chariot. Rushing forward recklessly, thinking they have him at their mercy now, they hardly see the Pandava move; but a tide of arrows rises around him. It sweeps in every direction and turns into a red wave of screams. The Kaurava soldiers shrink from him, gripped by a fear deeper than the fear of death.

Arjuna stands, a flame on Kurukshetra and there is nothing his enemies can do about him. As disdainfully as he slew them from his chariot, he slaughters them standing on the earth. Krishna says, “There is no water anywhere, how will the horses drink?”

Hardly as if he was fighting a battle, Arjuna replies, “But, my Lord, there is water just behind you. Look.”

Between scathing volleys, he invokes a varunastra. At once, where a moment ago there was only arid ground with hardly a blade of grass growing, a lake shimmers in the noonday sun, its surface covered with lotuses, why, swans floating there! That water is sweet and clear, bounded on all sides by Arjuna’s incredible arrows. There is even a fine pavilion on its banks with steps leading down to the water: all made of arrows.

Krishna laughs aloud; the Kaurava soldiers stand gaping. The Dark One unyokes his horses and leads them to the sparkling lake. First, he lets them drink, then gently plucks out the barbs that stick in their sides. He speaks softly to them all the while; he has tears in his eyes that they were hurt.

Meanwhile, the Kaurava soldiers have stopped fighting. Instead, they cry to each other, “A lake with one arrow!”

“With lotuses and swans.”

“How inviting it seems. I would rather swim in Arjuna’s lake than fight him.”

“Look!” cries another soldier, pointing to the sky. Flights of water birds, goose and duck, ibis and teal have spotted the lake from on high and glide down onto its cool blueness. And the Kaurava legions, enchanted, stand watching Krishna tend to the elven horses with boundless love. So tranquil is his dark face, so absorbed: as if he is not on brutal Kurukshetra, surrounded by a million bloodthirsty enemies, but back in Vrindavana with his gopis, on the banks of a charmed pool in that forest.

In no hurry at all, he washes the blood from their wounds, healing them with his touch. He strokes their sides, speaking to them in a tongue of the gandharvas. When he has rubbed them down, he splashes them with the crisp water and lets them drink again to their hearts’ content. Their thirst quenched, their spirits revived, the pale horses toss their heads and whinny to show they are ready to be yoked again. The wonderful beasts know, as well as any man on Kurukshetra, that this is an exceptional day and there is a critical mission on hand.

Still in no hurry, Krishna yokes his horses once more. Taking his time, he brings the chariot to his kshatriya. With no sign of being pressed for time himself, Arjuna climbs back into it; and this complete calm, in the face of a rapidly westering sun, unnerves the Kaurava army. Seeing Arjuna’s miracle with the lake, seeing how confident both he and Krishna are, Duryodhana’s soldiers have no doubt that Jayadratha will die before the sun sets.

At last, the Pandava’s chariot sets out toward Jayadratha again. Their morale destroyed by his cool assurance, now Duryodhana’s men make easy prey for him. Like the wind in Devaloka, fly the white horses. In moments, leaving a thousand men dead in their wake, Arjuna and Krishna arrive at the very end of Drona’s formidable padma vyuha and they smash through the last petals of the lotus.

Ahead lies the needle made of the Kaurava maharathikas, with Jayadratha at its eye. Now, Krishna and Arjuna actually see that king for the first time since the day’s fighting began: cowering in his chariot, his face ashen. Jayadratha sees them, as well. He knows that two of Drona’s invincible vyuhas have fallen apart at Arjuna’s advent and just a slender stalk of warriors separates him from death. He stands shaking in his chariot. Arjuna forges nearer.

Then, a roar goes up from the Kaurava soldiers. Suddenly another royal ratha breaks out of the sharp tip of the suchi. In it, his lean form covered in golden mail, stands a dark kshatriya determined he will stop the Pandava. It is Duryodhana come to fight for Jayadratha, as if that king’s life is his own: Duryodhana come to see that the sun sets on Arjuna’s defeat.

Krishna says to Arjuna, “Be careful. Remember a desperate man fights like ten others. Duryo-dhana hasn’t faced you yet, show him what it means to fight Arjuna! Kill this one man and the war will end.”

Arjuna says softly, “Here is the man who caused us years of grief, who broke my brother’s heart. He has so much to pay for. But I wonder how he comes to fight me so boldly today.”

Duryodhana stands laughing in his chariot and cries, “Come cousin, fight! I have heard all about the astras you have, show me your valor.”

Quick as love, he shoots ten arrows at them, black fire. Krishna and Arjuna cry out. Arjuna replies with a volley sharp as serpents’ fangs. His arrows glance off Duryodhana and the Kaurava’s laughter rocks the field.

“Is this the best you can do? I fear for your life if it is!”

And another potent volley has Krishna crying, “His arrows are like poison. I have never felt such pain before!”

The Dark One swings his chariot here and there to avoid Duryodhana’s shafts. Arjuna shoots back, a hundred astras, each of which would have killed a hundred men. But they graze off Duryo-dhana like green stems of flowers; his hooded eyes flash at them, his exultant roaring is louder still. Krishna assumes that Arjuna does not shoot fiercely enough at his cousin. To goad the Pandava, he says, “Duryodhana masters you effortlessly and the sun plunges down like a fishing hawk. We might as well admit we are beaten and turn back.”

Arjuna cries, “Why do you mock me, Krishna? It is not Duryodhana we are fighting but Brahma’s golden kavacha in which Drona has wrapped him! Look how it shines under his tunic. But I have the astra to pierce this armor. Indra gave it to me in Amravati.”

Stung by another shaft like fire, Krishna cries, “Then use it quickly! Time slips away from us.”

Arjuna sets a silver arrow to his bow. He invokes the manavastra, with which Rama once killed Maricha. The arrow is a band of lava in his hands. Arjuna draws his bowstring to his ear, but in a blur another archer cuts that shaft in two. The astra vanishes with a hiss of anger. Arjuna whirls around to see Aswatthama grinning at him.

Arjuna roars his frustration. “I can’t summon the manavastra again, it will kill me the next time! But watch me, Krishna, I have a way to make him run. Look how the fool wears his priceless mail: like a bullock carrying a treasure on its back, never knowing its worth. And the kavacha doesn’t cover all of him.”

Arjuna aims some slender shafts, like needles, at the exposed parts of Duryodhana’s body; he shoots at his cousin’s fingers. The fine barbs pierce the Kaurava’s nails and strike deep into his palms. Wringing his hands, Duryodhana flings down his bow and screams to his sarathy to ride away. Krishna’s delighted laughter rings across Kurukshetra. Not two hours remain before sunset.

The maharathikas of the suchimukha vyuha and their armies, surround Arjuna’s chariot, so Krishna can hardly maneuver; they are still two leagues from Jayadratha. Krishna cries, “Pull on your bowstring, Arjuna. Let me hear the thunder of the Gandiva!”

As at some great vina, Arjuna pulls at the string of his bow. The war resounds with the twanging. Exhilarated, Krishna raises the Panchajanya, of the hue of clouds, to his lips and blows blast after blast at the sky. These sounds reverberate across Kurukshetra and Jayadratha trembles even more in his chariot.

As if in response to the challenge, Bhoorisravas, Sala, Karna, Vrishasena, Kripa, Shalya and Aswatthama attack Arjuna, at once: eight kshatriyas with their legions. But Arjuna is godlike. He sees only Jayadratha before his mind’s eye; all these others are leaves in his way, to be brushed aside. Prodigious Aswatthama has his fire returned to him ten-fold, so he faints in his chariot. Karna, Vrishasena and Shalya attack the Pandava in a knot. Tremendous Arjuna routs them all and the others that bar his way to Jayadratha.

Krishna looks up and sees the rim of the sun not far above the western mountain. Arjuna’s heart skips a beat when he follows his sarathy’s gaze. But neither of them will show, by so much as a flicker on their faces, how anxious they are; though, perhaps Arjuna’s archery bears a trace of desperation. While to Krishna and his warrior the sun seems to fall like a meteor in the sky, to their enemies the star appears to sink so slowly it takes a lifetime to go down.

SEVENTEEN
THE SOUND OF KRISHNA’S CONCH 

Meanwhile, a krosa behind Arjuna’s chariot, the bulk of the two armies fights on. Yudhishtira faces Drona, who has sworn to take him captive. Angered by the Acharya’s oath, Yudhishtira covers him in arrows, wounds sprouting on the brahmana like poppies. Drona is taken aback; it will hardly be simple to capture the Pandava if he fights like this. Yudhishtira looses a febrile shakti at Drona, which he cuts down with an astra.

Yet, all the while Drona presses forward in his chariot, nearer and nearer Yudhishtira. When he is close enough, like summer lightning he casts a mace at the Pandava. But the master has taught his pupil well: quick as seeing, Yudhishtira smashes that gada aside with his own. Still the impact rocks him back on his heels. Drona cuts down his banner, kills his horses and lights his ratha with an astra. Yudhishtira saves himself by leaping out, just in time; but his chariot bursts apart in a flash of flames.