The story

The fourteenth day did not end at sunset. It went on into the dark, and in the dark Karna was winning.

Both armies had called for light. The Kauravas took up blazing lamps on Duryodhana's order, and the Pandavas answered in kind, the text counting seven lamps to every elephant and ten to every chariot. By that light the epic shows Karna at midnight burning through the Panchalas like a noon sun. Men ran from the rustle of grass, thinking it was him. Yudhishthira saw his army breaking and began to think of retreat. He asked Arjuna to stop Karna.

Arjuna was willing. He asked Krishna to drive him straight at Karna, so that one of them would kill the other. Krishna refused. Not yet, he said. Karna was still holding the spear Indra had given him, and he was keeping it for Arjuna alone. There were only two warriors who could stand against Karna that night, Arjuna himself and Ghatotkacha, and Arjuna was the one who must not go.

Ghatotkacha was Bhima's son by the rakshasi Hidimba, and so a rakshasa, one of the huge, shape-changing beings who walk at night. Krishna called him, and he appeared at once, armoured, with bow and sword, and saluted them both. Here I am, he said, tell me what to do. Krishna spoke to him gently, almost smiling, and called him son. This is your hour, Krishna told him, and nobody else's. Be the raft for your drowning kinsmen. Rakshasas grow stronger at night, he said, and their power to deceive grows with them. Go and kill Karna in the dark with your illusions.

What followed is the strangest stretch of fighting in the war. In the middle of it Ghatotkacha broke off to kill another rakshasa, Alayudha, a brother of the Baka whom Bhima had killed in the forest years before. Then he turned on Karna and the Kaurava army with everything his kind could summon. Weapons rained out of the night sky, along with rocks, wheels and iron-bound posts. Whole ranks went down under them. The Kauravas broke and ran, crying that this could not be a rakshasa at all, that Indra and the gods themselves were killing them for the Pandavas' sake.

Only Karna stayed. He alone did not lose his head. He covered the sky with arrows against the illusions until his horses were killed under him. Then he stood on the ground and thought about what to do. Around him the Kauravas were shouting at him. Use the spear, they cried. Kill the rakshasa now, or the whole army dies tonight. Whoever lives through this night can fight the Pandavas tomorrow.

Karna took up the spear. It was the weapon he had kept honoured for years for Arjuna, the one Indra had given him in exchange for his earrings. He hurled it. Ghatotkacha saw it coming and fled, making himself as tall as a mountain range. The spear burned his illusions to ash, split his heart, and went on blazing upward into the night among the stars. Ghatotkacha fell dead. Even in falling he made his body vast, so that it crushed part of the Kaurava army as it came down.

The Pandavas wept. Krishna roared. He shouted like a lion, embraced Arjuna, and danced on the chariot like a tree tossed by the wind. Arjuna was disturbed and said so. This joy, he said, was out of place at a time for grief. Krishna's answer is completely unsentimental. With the spear spent on Ghatotkacha, Karna was as good as dead. It was a mercy that his armour and earrings had been taken, and a mercy that the spear had gone elsewhere. Even now no one but Arjuna could kill him, and only when Karna was in trouble, his chariot wheel sunk in the earth. Krishna went further. He said he had arranged other deaths for Arjuna's sake before this one: Jarasandha, Shishupala and Ekalavya the Nishada. And Ghatotkacha, he said, had hated brahmins and sacrifices and broken dharma. If Karna had not killed him, Krishna would have done it himself. He had held back until now only out of love for the Pandavas.

Sanjaya later told Dhritarashtra why Karna had never used the spear on Arjuna before. Every night the Kaurava council resolved that at dawn Karna would throw it at Arjuna or at Krishna. Every morning the resolve was gone. Krishna told Satyaki the reason himself. He had been confusing Karna's mind. While the spear was in Karna's hand, he said, he had known neither sleep nor gladness. Not his father or mother, not his brothers, not his own life was as precious to him as Arjuna. Seeing Arjuna free of it was like seeing a dead man come back.

Yudhishthira did not dance. He sat in his chariot and wept. He remembered that the boy had stayed with him in the forest while Arjuna was away, and had carried Draupadi on his back on the mountain journey when she was exhausted. He said he had loved him twice as much as Sahadeva. Then he set off to fight Karna himself. Vyasa stopped him on the way. The rakshasa had died for Yudhishthira's sake, Vyasa told him, and the earth would be his on the fifth day. Hold to dharma, he said, because where dharma is, there is victory.

By then the armies were so exhausted that men were fighting in their sleep. Arjuna called a halt, and both sides lay down where they stood, on horses, on elephants, in chariots, until the moon rose and woke them to fight again. The night established what Krishna's joy and Yudhishthira's tears both knew. The one weapon in the war made for Arjuna's death was gone, and the price was a son who had come the moment he was called.

Who appears, and what it argues

• Ghatotkacha — Bhima's son by the rakshasi Hidimbi, whose strength at night forces Karna to spend the one weapon he had saved for Arjuna.
• Karna — Kunti's first son, given away at birth and raised by a charioteer, who spends his life being told his skill does not outrank his upbringing.
• Krishna — Cousin, envoy and charioteer — the one who shapes the war's course without ever lifting a weapon in it.
• Arjuna — The archer the whole war is arranged around, who arrives at its opening unable to lift his bow because of who is standing on the other side.
• Yudhishthira — The eldest Pandava, called the king of dharma, who gambles away his brothers, his wife and himself without anyone forcing his hand.
• Vyasa — The poet of the epic and the father of its two kings, who keeps walking into his own story to tell its people what is coming.
• Theme: Divine counsel
• Theme: Kinship and enmity

Elsewhere in this parva

• Abhimanyu inside the wheel — A boy who knows how to break into a formation and not how to break out of it is sent in first, and the gap closes behind him
• The race against the sun — Arjuna swears to kill Jayadratha before sunset or enter the fire himself, and the whole Kaurava army spends a day standing in his way
• The death of Drona — Drona asks the one man who never lies whether his son is dead, hears an answer about an elephant, and lays down his arms

Questions to explore

• Why was Krishna overjoyed when Ghatotkacha died?
• Why did Karna never use Indra's spear on Arjuna before that night?
• Did Krishna send Ghatotkacha against Karna knowing he would die?