novelraw Arc 4 - Bhisma-Vadha Parva - Chapter 8 - Illusion and Steel
Arc 4 - Bhisma-Vadha Parva - Chapter 8 - Illusion and Steel
Sañjaya said:
As that fierce, hero-slaying battle rolled on, Śakuni, son of Suvala, spurred his riders against the Pāṇḍava lines; and Hṛidika’s son Kṛtavarman, the Satvata scourge, drove hard at their ranks as well. Smiling, your princes loosed squadrons of superb horse—Kāmboja coursers and river-bred mounts, steeds of Aratta, Māhī, Sindhu, Vanāyu white as foam, and Tittri racers swift as wind. They ringed the Pāṇḍava host like a storm about a hill.
Into them thundered Irāvat, Arjuna’s serpent-born son—gold-caparisoned chargers under him, manes flashing, speed like swans upon deep waters. Their chests crashed against your swift studs; many a horse went down; the air rang like Garuḍa’s wing-beat on a serpent host, and riders, locked wheel to wheel, cut one another down till the cavalry thinned to a bleeding handful.
Then Suvala’s six brothers—Gaya, Gavākṣa, Vṛiṣabha, Carmavat, Ārjava, and Śuka—mail-clad, fierce, and hard to break, burst from your array with Śakuni at their back. They punched through Irāvat’s line; the Nāga’s grandson rallied his men and bade them contrive the foes’ destruction. Lances hissed, Irāvat took deep wounds and bled like a hooked elephant, yet he stood firm, tore out the barbs, and hurled them back. Sword in hand, shield up, he waded among Suvala’s sons—too quick for mounted blades to find him—hewing arms from shoulders, scattering bright weapons on the ground. Five fell there; Vṛiṣabha alone, gashed and staggering, won free.
Duryodhana, enraged at the ruin, called Alamvuṣa—the Rākṣasa son of Ṛiśyaśṛiṅga, master of maya and sworn foe to Bhīma—“Slay him!” he cried. With his demon riders and bright lances the fiend bore down; Irāvat met him head-on.
A thousand phantoms on snorting mares,
spear-points like a glittering rain—
Irāvat’s line cut them to air,
and death rode back across the plain.
The two champions closed. Irāvat’s blade sheared bow and shaft; Alamvuṣa lifted into the sky, weaving illusion. Irāvat, kin to serpents and a knower of vital spots, rose likewise—form for form—splitting the demon’s limbs to pieces that re-formed young again, for such is Rākṣasa nature.
Stung, Irāvat summoned his mother’s people: a mighty Nāga swelled vast as Ananta, and coils of serpents masked the fiend. Alamvuṣa turned to Garuḍa’s dreadful guise and devoured the snakes. Irāvat faltered at the omen; in that blink the demon’s sword flashed—Arjuna’s son fell, his earringed, diademed head bright as a lotus upon the blood-dark earth.
Moon-bright brow on a crimson tide,
serpent’s heir by illusion slain;
silence held a breath of time—
then war’s great furnace roared again.
Freed of that fear, your host and allied kings found their breath. Elsewhere the killing swelled: elephants gored men and were felled by men; chariots ground through foot; horse and rider tangled in dying knots. Arjuna—knowing not his son lay dead—smote down many kings who ringed Bhīṣma. Warriors on both sides poured out their lives like oblations into the fire of battle; disheveled captains fought bare-handed when sword and bow were lost.
Bhīṣma’s arrows pierced to the vitals; many a Pāṇḍava champion, many a tusker, horseman, and charioteer dropped before the son of Śāntanu, whose might seemed equal to Śakra’s. Bhīma and Pr̥iṣata’s son (Dṛṣṭadyumna) raged scarcely less; Sātyaki’s contest scorched the field. Yet at Droṇa’s onrush the Pāṇḍavas’ hearts tightened: “Alone he could unmake us,” they said—what then when world-renowned heroes stood about him?
So, O King, possessed as by demons, the mighty bowmen of both hosts forgave no foe. None in that slaughter, like a battle of Rākṣasas, paused to spare a life.
Sañjaya said:
When word of Irāvat’s fall passed through the Pāṇḍava ranks, it was Ghaṭotkaca who answered first. His thunder-shouts shook the quarters; men sweated, horses shied, and even mailed warriors froze like deer before a lion. Spear upraised, ringed by grim night-rangers, he stormed toward Duryodhana. Your son stood his ground and roared back, an elephant–corps like a black storm-cloud massed behind him. The Rākṣasas crashed upon that living wall—arrows, axes, mallets, trees and crags for missiles—till tuskers with split temples toppled like hills undone.
Duryodhana, blazing, broke their front and with a flurry of knife-edged shafts struck down four chiefs—Vegavat, Mahārudra, Vidyujjihva, Pramathin. Then Ghaṭotkaca, eyes red, bared his teeth and spoke: this was the day to pay the debts of exile, of the dice, of Draupadī’s outrage. He drew his huge bow and drowned your son in a rain like monsoon upon a mountain. Duryodhana did not flinch, but Bhīṣma, Droṇa, Kṛpa and Kṛtavarman closed to shield him. The Rākṣasa answered with māyā—wind, darkness, phantom rocks and beasts—till your battalions reeled; Bhīṣma loosed a divine counter, shearing the illusions like sunburnt fog.
Vow of the Night-ranger
wrongs long-hoarded, fire long-fed—
this day I pour them, red for red.
Alamvuṣa, proud in his sorceries and swelling with the slaying of Irāvat, rushed to meet Bhīma’s son. Their duel was a storm of phantoms: serpents and eagles, woods and fires, rivers against waves. At last Ghaṭotkaca, calling on his mother’s boons, split the demon’s craft, smote him breast to chin, and felled him roaring—Irāvat avenged. The Pāṇḍava line found breath and shouted; your warriors, shaken, drew tight about the grandsire.
As for Pārtha—hearing how the Rākṣasa tide had risen and of Irāvat’s end, he drove harder. Ape-bannered, Kṛṣṇa at the reins, he carved through the circles that ringed Bhīṣma: kings fell two and three at a shaft; the Trigartas broke; the Sindhu’s lord he checked and passed, storm-aim fixed on the son of Gaṅgā. Under the grandsire’s iron rain the day bled out; at sunset both hosts, torn and breathless, drew off to their tents, each naming its dead and binding its wounds.
Sañjaya said:
Ghaṭotkaca’s storm of arrows—hard even for Dānavas to endure—burst over Duryodhana, and still your son stood like a tusker under monsoon rain. Stung and hissing, he loosed five-and-twenty keen shafts that bit the Rākṣasa deep, blood sheeting him like temple-juice on an elephant. The night-ranger hefted a meteoric dart to finish the Kuru king—when Bhagadatta, towering on a hill-sized elephant, lumbered between them and walled off Duryodhana’s car. Ghaṭotkaca’s dart flashed; the great beast staggered, bled, and crashed. Bhagadatta sprang clear, but your line wavered; Duryodhana, pride fixed like a mountain, nocked a blazing shaft—only to see the Rākṣasa blur aside and answer with a roar that shook men’s bow-hands.
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Bhīṣma heard and warned: “Hidimvā’s son hammers the king—go, shield him!” At once the heavy hitters surged to that quarter: Somadatta and Vālhika, Jayadratha, Kṛpa, Bhūriśravās, Śalya, the Avanti twins, Vṛhadvāla, Aśvatthāman, Vikarna, Citraseṇa, Vivitsu—and ranks behind them. Ghaṭotkaca planted himself like Maināka, vast bow arced, clansmen bristling with clubs and mallets. The clash that followed crackled like green bamboo in a fire; lances hissed like striking serpents; steel on mail rang like splitting rock.
Then the Rākṣasa went to work—snapping Droṇa’s bow with a crescent, toppling Somadatta’s standard, pricking Vālhika thrice in the breast, stinging Kṛpa once and Citraseṇa thrice, and driving a heavy head into Vikarna’s shoulder so he slumped blood-wet on his car. Fifteen arrows drilled Bhūriśravās through his armor into the earth beneath; Vivitsu and Aśvatthāman were rocked forward on their benches, reins spilling from numb hands. Jayadratha’s boar-pennon fell; his bow parted next. Four Avanti horses died in a single breath. Vṛhadvāla took a deep, punishing shot and sagged on his footboard. And Ghaṭotkaca, wrath mounting, sifted Śalya’s guard with bright, venom-swift shafts that punched through the veteran’s mail.
Sañjaya said:
Ghaṭotkaca, having scattered the Kuru champions, drove straight for Duryodhana. A ring of six-cubits bows rose to meet him, lion-roaring as they flooded him with arrows till he looked like a hook-torn tusker. The Rākṣasa vaulted into the sky like Garuḍa and thundered—peals that shook quarters and cloud—so loud Yudhiṣṭhira sent Bhīma to his aid: “The grandsire burns the Pañchālas; Pārtha is fixed there. This roar says Hidimbā’s son is overborne. Go.”
Then Bhīma came like a spring-tide, Abhimanyu and the sons of Draupadī hard at his wheels, Satyadhṛti, Sauciti, Śreṇimat, Vasudāna, the Kāśi prince, Kṣatradeva, Kṣatradharman, Nīla with his own, and a wall of six thousand elephants. Their wheel-rattle, hoof-drum, and lion-shouts whitened Kuru faces; men peeled off Ghaṭotkaca and ran. The rescue struck, and in that quarter the fight turned dreadful—ranks locking ranks, weapons streaming, each side refusing to yield. Dust rose like ruddy smoke; sight failed; fathers missed sons and sons their sires; no man spared or was spared.
The field became an underworld: bow-hiss and war-cries like the clamor of the dead, a river running blood braided with hair, heads falling like a stony squall. Headless trunks, hacked steeds, eviscerated elephants paved the ground. Horses smashed into horses; men chest-butted men and dropped; tuskers gored tuskers, standards blazing as they bled. Some were spitted on ivory; some, frontal globes split, screamed like thunderheads; others, trunk-shorn, crashed like mountains shorn of wings. Red chalk seemed to pour down their flanks; riderless giants loomed like crestless peaks; the maddened, unhooked, crushed cars, horses, foot by the hundred. Lancers spurred through the compass; nobles on chariots met nobles and fought to the last. In that ghastly press, seeking glory or heaven, the Dhṛtarāṣṭra host, for the most part, showed their backs.
Sañjaya said:
Beholding his own divisions scattered and his warriors struck down, King Duryodhana, burning with wrath, urged his steeds against Bhīmasena, that mighty chastiser of foes. Lifting a great bow radiant like the thunderbolt of Indra, he poured a thick shower of arrows upon the son of Pāṇḍu. His shafts, swift and numerous, fell like rain upon the mountain-breast.
In fury he loosed a crescent-headed arrow, keen and feathered, and with it struck Bhīmasena’s bow in twain. Then, seizing a whetted shaft, capable of cleaving even the crags of Himālaya, he struck Bhīma full in the chest.
Fierce was that shaft’s burning flight,
Piercing mail and lion might;
Bhīma reeled, yet held his ground,
Licking blood, his eyes profound.
Grievously wounded, the son of Vāyu caught hold of his golden flagstaff, steadying himself like a hill in storm. Seeing Bhīma thus oppressed, Ghaṭotkaca, his mighty son, flamed with anger like a blazing forest fire at midnight.
Then Abhimanyu and other heroes of the Pāṇḍava host, their hearts kindled with wrath, rushed roaring toward the Kuru king, eager to strike. Seeing them advance like tigers loosed, the preceptor Droṇa, ever vigilant, cried aloud to the Kaurava chiefs:
“Go forth, O blessed ones, defend the king!
He sinks in danger deep as the ocean’s swing.
Behold, the sons of Pāṇḍu charge with thunder’s cry,
Bhīma leads their wrath beneath the crimson sky!”
At these words of their teacher, the foremost warriors of thy host—Somadatta, Kṛpa, Bhūriśravā, Śalya, Aśvatthāman, Vinda, Anuvinda, the Sindhu lord Jayadratha, Vikarna, and the proud Vṛhadvala—rushed forth together, encircling Duryodhana like planets around the sun.
When the two armies closed, only twenty paces apart, the air itself shuddered with the roar of conches and the crash of chariots. Then Droṇa, that lion among men, stretched his great bow and smote Bhīma with six-and-twenty arrows. Again, like monsoon clouds bursting upon the earth, he covered him with showers of steel.
But Bhīma, strong as death and fierce as Rudra, returned ten arrows upon the preceptor, striking his left side. Pierced and weakened by age, the venerable Droṇa swayed and sank upon his chariot seat, his senses failing.
Beholding their master thus afflicted, Duryodhana and his son Aśvatthāman rushed together upon Bhīmasena, like Yama’s twin forms at the world’s end. Then Bhīma, seizing his colossal mace, leapt from his chariot to the ground. Standing unmoved like a peak of Kailāsa, he raised his weapon high, a thundercloud in human form.
Flashed the mace in Bhīma’s hand,
Bright as doom’s own burning brand;
Earth beneath his feet did quake,
When he vowed the field to take.
Seeing him thus arrayed, Duryodhana and Aśvatthāman charged, their chariots flying like storms upon the plain. Around them pressed many Kaurava heroes, raining darts and javelins upon Bhīma from all directions.
But the Pandava warriors, headed by Abhimanyu, spurred forward to his aid, ready to lay down their lives. Among them came Nīla, the blue-hued prince of the southern realms, a friend beloved of Bhīma and valiant in battle. He rushed upon Aśvatthāman, eager for combat.
Drawing his great bow, Nīla struck Drona’s son with a shower of keen arrows, as Indra once smote Vipracitti, the terror of the worlds.
Feathered shafts like comets burned,
Each to its shining target turned;
Blood streamed red from warrior’s crest—
Yet wrath flared brighter in his breast.
Pierced and enraged, Aśvatthāman drew his mighty bow whose twang echoed like Indra’s thunder. With flawless aim he slew Nīla’s four steeds, shattered his standard, and struck the prince himself in the chest. Nīla, faint and bleeding, sank upon his car’s terrace.
Then Ghaṭotkaca, seeing his friend fall, roared in fury and rushed forward, surrounded by his Rākṣasa kinsmen. They fell upon Aśvatthāman like night upon the fading sun. The son of Droṇa, valorous and terrible, met their charge, slaying many monstrous foes in his path. Yet Ghaṭotkaca’s rage only deepened, and he began his dreadful māyā.
Suddenly, the sky grew dark with illusion. Thunder rolled, fires flared, and in that bewildering vision thy warriors beheld their own forces slain before their eyes.
They saw their kinsmen writhing in blood upon the earth, horses screaming, chariots overturned, and kings crushed beneath unseen weights. Drona, Duryodhana, Śalya, Aśvatthāman—all seemed to flee before the demon’s might.
Though I and Bhīṣma cried aloud, “Stand firm! This is illusion wrought by Ghaṭotkaca!” our words found no hold in their hearts. Fear blinded their reason, and panic seized the host. They fled toward their tents as darkness swallowed the plain.
Drums were drowned by demon cries,
Conches wailed through smoky skies;
’Mid thunder, flame, and battle’s roar,
Kaurava hearts believed no more.
Thus, O King, thy army, routed by the wicked Ghaṭotkaca and bewildered by illusion, fled in all directions as the sun descended. The Pāṇḍavas, beholding victory at hand, lifted their voices in leonine shouts that shook the field and filled the evening sky.