Where are we?
Why do our hearts hurt?
Why are there tears in our eyes?
Why are we walking in this river, in the dark, walking against the current? Why does the water cling to our legs?
It is not water.
It is a river of blood.
The Moon and stars are covered up by smoke and all is darkness.
But look—now the lights of millions of lamps come dancing like fireflies. The soldiers have lit their little lights to fight on at night. The war of the half-blind. These men are already ghosts. The battle at night looks like a festival for the ancestors. They are already gone.
The river carries life into the mouth of death. The ocean of death.
All the dead are with us here, and the living are a fragile minority.
Drona is tearing apart the Pandava army with no regard for rules. No one remembers why they began this war. Karna’s chariot is like a storm, like lightning striking at night. He seems unstoppable. Like Arjuna tore through the Kaurava armies by day, Karna rips apart the Pandavas by night like a lion devouring the carcass of an antelope. The men are convinced that they are already dead. They fall and breathe their last without ever being struck.
“Krishna,” says Arjuna. “Karna is destroying us. Take me to him!”
“No, Arjuna. You cannot defeat Karna tonight. He carries your father’s spear and he means to kill you with it.”
Krishna is darker than the night.
“Then what can we do? Karna is killing everyone, crying out my name all the time. If we do not stop him we are lost. We will not see the dawn.”
Krishna hesitates. But only for a moment.
The darkness grows thick about them. Expectant.
“You have one friend who could stop Karna tonight.”
“Who?”
“I am thinking of your nephew Ghatotkacha, the son of Bhima and Hidimbi. He is a sorcerer of immense power. Ask him to fight for you.”
Ghatotkacha.
His name makes the ground shiver. Bhima’s son—half-rakshasa, grandson of the wind, hunter in the night. The hairs on Arjuna’s body stand up.
Here he is:
Ghatotkacha.
His mouth is red and gaping like a chasm full of tusks. His ears are pointed, his copper-colored tongue is a sword blade, his green beard drips blood. His eyes are fire-holding opals and his blue face is studded with jewels. Ghatotkacha is enormous—he towers over elephants. His neck is painted red. His eight-wheeled chariot of coagulate darkness is covered with bear-skins; strange beasts the size of elephants pull it, tossing their snaky manes and neighing like demon horses, guided by a rakshasa chariot-driver with bright eyes and fiery breath. On his banner pole roosts a vulture garlanded with entrails.
When Ghatotkacha speaks it is a rumble of thunder, a growling of animals in the night, a hissing of snakes in the Earth.
“You called me, and I am here.”
“It is almost midnight,” says Krishna. “Your power is now greater than that of any other warrior.”
“Yes,” says Ghatotkacha. “The darkness fills me with strength.”
“Your family is drowning,” says Krishna, “and you must be the boat that rescues them. Karna is destroying the army of Yudhisthira like a wolf slaughtering baby cows. You alone can stop him.”
Ghatotkacha’s laughter is the guts of the Earth breaking, spilling their molten juices.
“Tonight the Kauravas will see a battle that men will remember until the end of this world,” says the great rakshasa.
As he laughs a wild wind rises. His grandfather comes to the sorcerer’s aid. All the lamps are extinguished and in the utter darkness Ghatotkacha’s eyes glow like two golden Moons.
The next moment the night seems filled with the sound of slavering jackals, howling wolves, baying dogs, hissing snakes. An army of rakshasas follows Ghatotkacha’s chariot like a wave of gem-studded darkness, hurling rocks and trees. The Kaurava army collapses. Men flee screaming and weeping like children from the beast-like faces of the rakshasas illuminated only by their own glowing eyes. Boulders the size of houses crash down flattening soldiers to pulp.
Karna sees the rakshasa army rushing in like a devouring swarm. He sees through them.
“They are not real,” he shouts. “They are an illusion! If you do not believe in them they cannot hurt you!”
But his voice is drowned by the panic.
Whispering a secret word, Karna puts his fingers to his lips and blows out a breath wreathed in his own power. His breath becomes a weapon, an arrow, and when he lets that arrow fly it pierces Ghatotkacha’s illusion. In the blink of an eye the rakshasa army vanishes. Roaring, howling, cackling Ghatotkacha rushes toward Karna. His chariot grows bigger as it moves until he appears to be the great palace at the heart of a flying city populated with carnivorous creatures.
All the warriors flee, or faint, or watch unable to move. Only Karna stands steady before the towering darkness.
Where is Drona?
Where is Ashwatthaman?
Where are the sons of Gandhari?
Karna is alone.
Ghatotkacha lifts an enormous wheel with a thousand spokes. Its edge is razor-sharp and it spins faster than a tornado. He hurls the wheel straight at Karna’s chariot, but Karna cuts it into pieces with his arrows. The shards cut into the ground. Next Ghatotkacha throws a golden mace with a studded head the size of a tree’s crown. Karna shoots another enchanted arrow and the mace winks out of existence.
“Ride!” Karna shouts to his driver. “Ride for him and do not fear!”
But the driver sees a legion of horrors before them. He faints and falls from his seat. Karna’s horses run wild, dragging his chariot away from his enemy. The suta’s son can hear nothing but the pounding of his own heart, the rushing of his own blood. He will not fail now.
Karna grabs Indra’s spear and leaps from his chariot, landing with a somersault. He still holds his bow in one hand. Standing up he plants the spear in the ground at his side and faces Ghatotkacha. The rakshasa’s chariot fills the sky. The sound of his eight grinding wheels is the roar of the ocean.
Karna inhales deeply.
This foe will demand all his strength.
He whispers a mantra, taught by Parashuram himself, and his hand moves like lightning. He draws arrow after arrow from the empty air and fires them in streams but nothing can check Ghatotkacha’s speed. His chariot rushes at Karna. The four beasts pulling it have the faces of demon elephants, manes like lions, mouths leering open from ear to ear full of row upon row of shark-like pointed teeth. They rush upon Karna, ready to trample him. At the last possible moment he drops his bow and draws his sword. He dodges one of their enormous feet and leaps and grabs hold of a swinging trunk. He clenches his teeth as he flies through the air then lets go and drops like a plummeting falcon onto the back of one of the demon chariot-beasts. He runs along the broad back toward the mane and plunges his sword in where the spine meets the skull. The giant bellows in pain and lurches to one side, smashing into the body of his fellow. Karna leaps clear of the collision. As he flies through the air, time seems to slow. Adrenaline rushing through him he spins, twists, changes direction in mid leap to land in Ghatotkacha’s chariot right in front of the driver. The rakshasa charioteer’s fiery eyes open wide with dismay as Karna’s blade slices open his neck. Black blood showers Karna. The chariot-beasts smash into each other, driverless, one of their number crashes to the ground bleeding from a deep wound in the back of his neck.
Ghatotkacha roars and reaches out to grab hold of Karna but Karna is already gone—he dives from the chariot and rolls across the ground, throwing away his sword and picking up a bow as he goes, jumping to his feet and immediately shooting arrow after arrow at Ghatotkacha’s chariot. His mantra-summoned arrows cut down banner poles, break wheels, axles, bars—Ghatotkacha’s chariot shatters with a concussive explosion of smoke.
The Kaurava soldiers cheer. They rush back into the fray. No one can stop Karna—not even a rakshasa!
But Ghatotkacha is not hurt. Not even scratched.
He rises from the wreckage of his chariot, towering over the armies. He sprouts ravening heads from his shoulders, grasping arms from his sides. His mouths gobble up Karna’s arrows. He is everywhere at once. His illusions plunge the army into a realm of nightmares. Now Ghatotkacha is the size of a mountain, now he shrinks to the size of thumb. He flits about like a stinging hornet, then he is in the sky on batlike wings raining lumps of iron. Now he dives into the Earth and swims beneath the army like a whale in the sea before bursting up in a shower of boulders. Wolves and leopards and blue-skinned red-tongued cannibals run here and there frightening men to death. Karna fights on against every illusion, piercing them with spell-whetted arrows.
If only the Sun would rise, he thinks. If only my father would shine down on me—then all these sorceries would burn away and I could kill this demon with a single arrow!
But the night does not end.
Ghatotkacha has a million mouths, a million tongues, billions of tearing gnashing dripping teeth. The darkness is broken open by flashes of fire from his hands. In each burst of light the shadows of the Kaurava soldiers leap higher. They grow, change shape. They tear themselves from the ground and stand on their own. A true army of rakshasas emerges to fight for Duryodhana, against their traitor half-breed kin. Now Kurukshetra is the world of the dead. Living men cower while the armies of the banished trample them. The rakshasas are red, black, green, blue. They have three heads, six arms, split tongues. Some run on many legs like insects. Some fly on crow’s wings. Some are covered with eyes and mouths and some have no visible face.
Ghatotkacha becomes a mountain showering iron lances, flaming arrows.
The rakshasas burn up as they touch him.
He dives into the Earth again and the rakshasas dive after him, chasing him into the ground. The field buckles and twists, the men and elephants fall. Geysers of steam and fire and sulphur erupt from the broken land.
Ghatotkacha emerges unscathed.
Nothing can touch him.
“Stand!” Karna shouts. “Stand and fight!”
Then Drona is at his side. Duryodhana too.
“He is unstoppable!” Duryodhana shouts.
Ghatotkacha turns to hunt for Karna again. His lips are red and he drags his hands on the ground like a tree-sized ape.
“Karna,” says Duryodhana, “you told me once you had a weapon of Indra that could kill any enemy. Use it now, or we are lost!”
Karna shakes his head. Just then Ghatotkacha smells him. He fixes his opal eyes on him and begins to run, growing larger and larger as he comes on and on.
“That weapon is for Arjuna!” he cries.
“You will never have a chance to face Arjuna if Ghatotkacha kills us all tonight!”
Karna’s mind wavers.
His senses are filled with the rakshasa’s immense presence.
What can overcome this monster?
Ghatotkacha towers up before them.
As soon as Karna thinks of Indra’s spear it is there, resting in his hand. It vibrates slightly against his palm. He feels it twitch. It wants to fly.
“Use it now!” Duryodhana shouts.
Ghatotkacha opens his mouth to eat their world.
With a cry Karna hurls the weapon of Indra. It vanishes into the enormous mass of Ghatotkacha. But he feels it enter his body, fly through him, and travel on. A flash—disappearing between the stars.
Bhima’s son reels. He stumbles. He feels his life fleeing his limbs.
In his last act Ghatotkacha grows to a monstrous height, taller than Himalayan peaks. His head disappears into the outer darkness of the world. His feet are like the roots of mountains. Then with a deafening groan he falls, crushing hundreds of thousands of Kaurava soldiers beneath his dead body.
Those that remain celebrate.
They cheer the sorcerer’s death and shout Karna’s name again and again. Beating their shields with their spears. Duryodhana embraces his friend. Only Karna remains mute, still as a stone.
On the Pandava side, lamentation rises. Men weep. They thought the rakshasa would win their war in one night, and now he is gone. Bhima beats the dusty ground with his fists and screams for his son. His red-rimmed eyes stream with tears. Yudhisthira covers his face.
Only Krishna does not mourn.
The dark lord dances, shouts, embraces Arjuna, and spins and leaps for joy.
“Krishna, why do you laugh and dance? Karna has killed Ghatotkacha!”
Krishna looks at Arjuna with eyes full of love. With a bright smile he rushes to embrace his friend again, holds him close, then dances away. His feet are light, his laugh that of an innocent boy.
“No, no Arjuna,” he sings. “Tonight it is Karna who is slain!”
He slows, calms himself, and approaches his friend again.
“No man could defeat Karna so long as he carried your father’s weapon,” says Krishna, “not even you. He received that spear in exchange for his inborn armor and earrings. Now that he has thrown it away he has become a man like you. You can meet him in battle and defeat him. Ghatotkacha has just saved your life.”
All around them they hear the rising tide of war again. The battlecries and clash of weapons. When will it end? When will the soldiers sleep?
“Even now, Arjuna, Karna will not prove easy to endure. Among all this army only you stand a chance of killing him.”
The night licks her ravenous teeth.
The Earth drinks blood.
Wowsers.