Empire of the Moghul: Brothers at War (20 page)

The officer charged seconds later, his lance tip pointed at Humayun who left it until the very last moment to jump aside. Thwarted, the officer swerved and turned to try again. As he did so, Baba Yasaval – now unhorsed too and bleeding from a deep sword slash to his face – ran in front of Humayun and, as the officer charged, struck at his horse. He succeeded in bringing the animal down but at the cost of taking its rider’s lance full in the abdomen. Humayun ran forward towards the purple-turbaned man who, although winded by his fall from his horse, was quickly on his feet with sword drawn to parry Humayun’s first blow with Alamgir. He managed to fend off the second blow too but while he did so, Humayun struck with the dagger in his left hand, striking the man in the throat and twisting the dagger’s jagged blade as it entered to cause fatal damage. The officer’s warm blood spurted all over Humayun’s hand.

‘Majesty, we heard the trumpet,’ a voice came from above on top of the vertical outcrop. Humayun glanced up. Some of his men – from the cast of their features and the colour and cut of their orange clothes members of the army of one of his Rajput vassals – had succeeded in getting on top of the outcrop and were peering over the edge. As Humayun turned again to face his attackers – he seemed to be the only survivor of those trapped beneath the outcrop – one of the Rajputs fired a black-shafted arrow, felling the horse of one of Sher Shah’s men. A second arrow wounded another man in the leg. The rest of Humayun’s attackers recoiled as if to consider their next move. In the few seconds while they did so, the Rajput archer uncoiled his orange turban from around his head. He threw one end of the material, which was about ten feet long, over the edge of the outcrop where it hung blowing slightly in the breeze about a foot above Humayun’s head.

‘Grab hold of my turban cloth, Majesty. I will pull you to safety.’

Humayun hesitated and looked around him. Baba Yasaval was still lying where he’d fallen, slumped against the steep side of the outcrop. His helmetless head with its grey stubble was down on his chest and trickles of blood were still seeping from his nostrils and the corners of his lips and dripping down on to his breastplate. His arms were by his side but his legs were splayed and the lance still protruded from his abdomen. He was surely dead and Humayun could see no sign of life in any other of his men.

Any moment now his attackers would close in again to finish him off, Humayun realised. His duty to both his destiny and his dynasty was to save himself. Transferring Alamgir to his left hand, he reached up with his right and grasped the orange turban cloth tightly. Immediately he felt the material tauten and as he scrambled with his feet against the stone rock face for added impetus he began to rise. Suddenly, his attackers, seeing that he was about to escape, rushed towards him.

Humayun slashed awkwardly at the foremost of them with Alamgir in his left hand but the cut went home, the sharp blade slicing into the man’s forehead as he looked upward, almost detaching a flap of skin and causing blood to pour down into his eyes. At the same time, Humayun felt the air move close to him as a Rajput from above threw his battleaxe at the next attacker, catching him in the muscle of his upper arm, and he too fell back. A third hesitated for a moment and that hesitation allowed Humayun to scramble and pull himself over the edge and on to the top of the outcrop. He scarcely noticed that the scar tissue on his right forearm and hand had opened up under the pressure imposed on it as he had been pulled up and was now bleeding profusely.

‘Majesty.’ The Rajput who had thrown the turban cloth spoke urgently as he helped Humayun to his feet. ‘We have a fresh horse for you. Everywhere your men are retreating. Unless you too ride quickly away you will be captured or killed.’

Looking round, Humayun realised that he had indeed only two choices – to retreat to fight another day or die in battle. However much the latter appealed to his warrior’s honour, he felt that life and ambition still burned bright within him and that fate had better in store for her fortunate son than a futile if courageous death. He must live.

‘Let us ride and regroup as many of our forces as we can.’

T
he hot, still air, already heavy with the moisture that in a week or so would begin to pour from the skies, was oppressive. Beneath his chain mail and fine-woven cotton tunic, sweat trickled down Humayun’s back. His face too was beaded with it. Impatiently he wiped it away with a face cloth only to feel the salty drops immediately re-form. The drumming of his bay horse’s hooves as he galloped back towards Agra, bodyguards ahead and a detachment of cavalry including his loyal orange-clad Rajputs behind him, seemed to pound out a bitter message. Defeat and failure. Defeat and failure. The words echoed around his head but even so he could scarcely believe what had happened.

The troops he had hoped to reassemble had melted away. Some had returned to their own provinces but more had deserted to Sher Shah’s advancing armies. That they should believe the son of a low horse trader could overthrow the Moghuls . . . the enormity hurt more than a physical wound, but even worse was the thought that, for all his courage in battle, he had allowed it to happen.

Where was his good fortune now? At Panipat, Hindustan had dropped like a ripe, juicy pomegranate into the Moghuls’ outstretched hands. The ease with which he had defeated Bahadur Shah and the Lodi pretenders had made him think his dynasty invincible. Perhaps he hadn’t understood the nature of his new empire – that rebellion was endemic. However many insurrections he quashed, however many rebels’ heads he struck off, there would always be more. Inspired by Sher Shah’s success, enemies were now menacing him from the west and south as well as from the east.

In his frustration, Humayun slapped his gauntleted hand so hard against the pommel of his saddle that his startled horse skittered sideways, tossing its head and snorting, almost unseating him. Gripping hard with his knees he managed to steady it, then relaxing the reins leaned forward and patted its sweating neck to reassure it. Anyway, with luck he and his advance party should be in Agra before nightfall. Though it would be another week, maybe longer, until the rest of his army – the artillery wagons, baggage carts and thousands of pack beasts – reached the city, he would have a little time to consider his next move. According to his scouts, Sher Shah had halted his advance, at least for the moment, not moving far beyond Kanauj. Perhaps he too was taking stock . . .

In fact it wasn’t till after midnight that Humayun’s exhausted horse carried him through the dark streets of Agra, along the banks of the Jumna and up into the fort. The kettledrums above the gatehouse boomed out into the night as, by the orange light of torches flickering in sconces high on the walls, he rode up the steep ramp into the courtyard. A groom rushed to take the reins as Humayun lowered his weary body from the saddle.

‘Majesty.’ A dark-robed figure moved forward. As it came closer, Humayun recognised his grandfather, Baisanghar. Normally so strong, even forceful, his face looked haggard, for once showing every one of his seventy-two years and it told Humayun immediately that something unforeseen and unwelcome had occured.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘Your mother is ill. For the past six weeks she has complained of a pain in her breast so sharp that only opium can bring her relief. The
hakims
say they can do nothing for her. I wanted to send messengers to you but she insisted I should not distract you from your campaign . . . yet I know she longs to see you. It’s all that has kept her alive . . .’

‘I will go to her.’ Hurrying across the stone flagstones towards his mother’s apartments, Humayun no longer saw the red sandstone fortress around him. Instead, he was a boy again in Kabul – galloping his pony through the grassy meadows, firing arrows from the saddle at the straw targets Baisanghar had set up and already rehearsing wildly inflated stories of his skill and daring with which to impress Maham.

As he entered his mother’s sickroom, the soothing smell of frankincense filled his nostrils. It came from four tall incense burners set up around her couch in which the golden crystals of resin were smouldering. Maham looked very small beneath the green coverlet, the skin on her face paper thin, but her large, dark eyes still had their beauty and they warmed as they rested on her son. Humayun bent and kissed her forehead. ‘Forgive me – I come to you with the sweat and dust of the journey still upon me.’

‘My beautiful warrior . . . Your father was so proud of you . . . he always said you were the most worthy of all his sons, the most fit to rule . . . Among his last words to me were, “Maham, although I have other sons, I love none as I love your Humayun. He will achieve his heart’s desire. None can equal him.”’ She touched his cheek with her dry hand. ‘How is it with you, my son, my emperor? Have you defeated our enemies?’

So they had kept the news of his reverses from her, Humayun thought with relief. ‘Yes, Mother, all is well. Sleep now. I will come to you in the morning and we will talk again.’ But Maham’s eyes were already closing and Humayun doubted she’d heard him.

Khanzada was waiting for him in the antechamber. She looked drawn – Humayun guessed she had spent many hours by Maham’s bedside – but her face lit at the sight of him. ‘I gave thanks when I heard you had reached Agra in safety,’ she said as he kissed her cheek.

‘I must speak with the
hakims
. . . ’

‘They have done what they can. We even sent messengers to consult Abdul-Malik, knowing how his skill saved your father when he was poisoned. Though he is old and half blind, his mind is still clear. But when told of the symptoms he said nothing could be done except to ease Maham’s pain.’ Khanzada paused. ‘She was waiting for one thing only – to see you again, Humayun. Now she will die happy . . . ’

Humayun looked down at Timur’s ring on his battle-scarred hand. ‘I lied to her just now . . . I told her I had conquered our enemies. But as she looks down on me from Paradise I will make her proud – I swear it . . . ’ Without warning, he felt tears running down his cheeks.

Two days later, Humayun was one of the four men carrying the sandalwood coffin containing his mother’s body, washed in camphor water and wrapped in soft woollen blankets, down to the Jumna where a boat was waiting. A bright, flower-filled garden – one of several planted by his father Babur on the far bank of the river and now coming to maturity – would be her resting place. Humayun glanced at Baisanghar, walking beside him. Despite his age he had insisted on accompanying his daughter on her final journey. How stooped and frail he looked – no longer the warrior who had hazarded his life to help Babur capture Samarkand.

An even deeper melancholy took hold of Humayun – not only grief at Maham’s death but a sense that many of the certainties of his youth were crumbling. All his life he’d been a pampered prince, brought up to expect great things as of right, confident of his place in the world. Never before had he felt so insignificant, so vulnerable to the buffeting of others’ actions. Never before had he felt it so difficult to control his destiny.

As he and the other coffin bearers reached the riverbank, Humayun raised his face to the heavy grey skies. Without warning, the rain began to fall, at first in large, fat drops but soon in a ceaseless sheet that drenched his dark mourning robes. Perhaps the rain was a sign, sent to cleanse him of his doubts, to tell him that though some things must end, there could always be a fresh beginning for a leader who never despaired in the face of grief or adversity but kept his belief in himself and in his ultimate triumph.

Humayun looked around at his counsellors, like him dressed in the mourning that custom demanded they wear for forty days. Maham had been dead for only fourteen of those days but if the alarming reports reaching him were accurate, little time was left for observing the courtesies to the dead.

‘You’re certain, Ahmed Khan . . . ?’

‘Yes, Majesty’, responded his travel-stained chief scout.‘Sher Shah is advancing fast with an army at least three hundred thousand strong. I saw the vanguard with my own eyes just five days’ ride east from here.’

‘This matches other reports that have been coming in, Majesty,’ said Kasim. ‘Despite the start of the rains, Sher Shah is making good progress.’

At least Sher Shah hadn’t caught up with his retreating army, Humayun thought. The main force had reached Agra safely nearly a week ago though many had deserted along the road. ‘So he means to attack us here in Agra . . . How many troops do we have left?’ Humayun turned to Zahid Beg, the tall, thin officer he had made his commander-of-horse in place of Baba Yasaval.

‘Around eighty thousand including the returning forces from Kanauj, Majesty, but the number diminishes every day . . . ’

Raising his head, Humayun looked down the length of his audience chamber to the courtyard beyond. The rain had ceased temporarily and in the shafts of sunlight the red sandstone glowed.This fortress had been the Moghuls’ greatest stronghold ever since they had swept down to conquer Hindustan. Last night before retiring into the pleasures of the
haram
he had stood on the battlements with his astrologer, Sharaf, and together they had gazed into the night sky. But Sharaf had been unable to find any messages written there – or in his charts and tables.Was the silence of the stars God’s way of showing him that he and he alone must find a way of saving his dynasty. . . ?