98.10

“Here comes the pious knight. The king’s saviour. He has left his grimoires at home* to deliver Dhrita·rashtra’s boy from all his sorrows and fears. Spur on our happy steeds and make haste. This princeling’s tutor dreams he might make himself a hero.”

98.15

Madhava’s fine ivory steeds flew like the wind and soon he was close by Drona. Drona and Shaineya put each other to the torch. They were great enemies and arrows flew from them in thousands upon thousands as each sought to undo the other. Weaving nets of wood across the sky the two champions let fly a huge mass of arrows. They filled all the ten reaches of the sky with biting rain like the clouds of the hot season passing. Soon the sun was gone and the wind fell and a heavy darkness woven from wood hung dismal and impenetrable above our heads. Drona and Shaineya’s arrows had put out the world’s light. Such was their sheer dexterity that Drona and Satvata darkened all of heaven’s fires with reeds.

98.20

The shafts clattered against each other and the sound was like Shakra rattling his thunderbolts. Iron bit through wood like a pantophagy of snakes and o Bharata the bowstrings whipped against their frenzied arms like the endless echoing thunder of the mountaintops. Between the glinting feathers of the arrowfletchings we saw fragments of their cars steeds and drivers as the deluge of lethally honed and polished darts fell o king like a rain of cobras to the earth.