Karna & Arjun - The Union of Brothers

8. The Dance of Arrows

Arjun was among the very few warriors who had mastered the technique of fighting in the dark. He was well versed with the process of firing shabd-bhedi arrow. Looking at the pace and the angle at which the serpents were entering, he could gauge the position of warriors that were firing Nagastras. His leap of faith was accompanied with a lot of subconscious calculations. He successfully dived on one of the archers that were attacking the vimaan.

He found himself standing on a sea stack and could see the reflection of the moon on the ocean surface. Luckily the archer that Arjun had knocked out was still lying on the surface of stack. Arjun bent down to take his bow and his quiver only to find that he wasn't dealing with a normal human being. The man had a pale skin with barely any flesh beneath. His face was full of wrinkles with a thick white moustache and his bald had was covered with a red cloth tied like a head band. Arjun was feeling guilty to have attacked an old man who was probably following someone's orders. Arjun's guilt spiked within moments as he realized that the man wasn't breathing and he couldn't hear his heart beat.

Before Arjun could think of anything else, he noticed a thin flash of moonlight between him and the old archer. It didn't take him more than a second to realize that a silver arrow was fired at him but it missed its mark. Arjun diligently analyzed the series of stacks on both his sides with each of them occupied by an archer in their old age. There were five archers on each side. He could see the white sand beach in front of him and the vimaan hovered behind him over the surface of water. He was aware that getting rid of those archers was the only way to move forward. Arjun lifted the bow with an intent to attack the archers on one side but couldn't do saw as the arrows kept coming in large numbers from both the sides and he was busy dodging those.

He was aware that he had a limited supply of arrows hence didn't want to take any chance with his targets. He jumped vertically and used his time in the air to fire three arrows in quick succession on each side. Being an ambidextrous archer, it wasn't a tough task for Savyasachi. He targeted the right side of their chest with a hope to not kill them. His time on the stack surface was still not pleasant as the remaining four archers continued to fire at him. Once again he jumped in the air and repeated his exercise to knock them off. This time he had it covered and there was no one left to attack him.

He kept looking at the vimaan which was about fifty feet away from him and at about ten feet higher than his eye level, while he enjoyed the refreshing cold breeze. He was hoping that his brother would show up at the door of the vimaan. After few minutes of waiting he got worried about Sahdev and started thinking about the ways to get inside the vimaan again. As he was looking around, somebody pulled his right foot from behind, making him fall on his face. The hand that held his ankle belonged to the first old archer that Arjun had knocked out. He realized that none of those archers were actually alive. They were dead bodies that were controlled by some divyastra or mayavi energy. The other warriors got back up and once again the dance of arrows began.

Arjun knew that he would need help to get past this obstacle. He pushed himself up using his hands and rotated his body like a screw to free up himself from the dead man's grip. Before the dead archer could make another move, Arjun invoked Vidyutastra using one of the remaining few arrows and fired it inside the vimaan to call for help.