87.15

“Keep clear of me. Take Saumadatti and mighty Karna and Ashvatthaman, Shalya, Vrisha·sena and Kripa, and take a hundred companies of horsemen and six legions of cars and fourteen thousand elephants wild with the season and twentyone thousand fighters all clad in mail and withdraw with them three leagues hence. Saindhava take heart. Even Indra and his gods could not reach you there so how much less the sons of Pandu?”

87.20

Jayad·ratha king of the Sindhus took heart at Drona’s words and he wheeled away among the great chariots of Gandhara and the spearbearers belted and ready that rode upon them. Now a full seven thousand Gandhara horsemen had joined the three thousand from Sindhu and o majesty at their very centre behind quickdrawing steeds that wore chaplets and chowries and caparisons of rivergold rode King Jayad·ratha. At the head of the armies ranged for the fray was your own son Durmarshana and at his back an elephant herd numbering one thousand and one half more and each of those beasts was wellgroomed and clad in armour and mighty of figure and wild and violent and bridled by a skilled rider. Alongside Durmarshana went his brothers Duhshasana and Vikarna. The three of them rode at the very van with weapons drawn, steeled to protect the Sindhu king.

Drona son of Bharad·vaja had laid out his troops in the shape of an arum lily* twelve leagues deep and five leagues wide and he had shaped it so that the army’s mightiest were stationed all throughout its long lines of cars horses elephants and men. The bulb at the lily’s base was hardest to ________