The Spear Meant for Arjuna

The fourteenth day of the war on the field of Kurukshetra had been the most terrible yet. Arjuna had sworn to kill Jayadratha before sunset or burn himself alive, and to fulfill that vow the Pandavas had torn through the Kaurava host all day in a fury of grief and steel, until at last, in the dying light, Jayadratha's head was struck from his shoulders. But the rage of both armies was so hot, and the day's losses so vast, that when the sun went down the fighting did not stop. For the first time, the two hosts battled on into the night.

Night was the hour of the rakshasas, the night-roaming beings whose strange powers waxed strongest in the dark. And the Pandavas had among them one such being of enormous might: Ghatotkacha, the rakshasa son of Bhima and the forest-woman Hidimba, a giant warrior who loved his father's people with his whole fierce heart. As the darkness deepened, Ghatotkacha came into his full power, and he fell upon the Kaurava army like a storm out of the night.