Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul (24 page)

Baisanghar rose.

Babur turned to his scribe. ‘I must despatch a letter.’ The man smoothed a piece of paper on his writing block, then dipped his pen into the onyx jar dangling from his neck on a thong that held the thick black ink he mixed each morning.

‘My beloved father-in-law,’ Babur began. Then running quickly through the flowery courtesies – enquiries after Ibrahim Saru’s health and hopes for his unbounded prosperity, all as necessary as they were insincere, he cut to the chase: ‘In your beneficence, you promised me crossbowmen to help me regain my throne and make your daughter a ruling queen. My heart grieves that, despite my many entreaties, those troops have not yet come. Those around me begin to whisper that perhaps you are not a man of honour. I refuse to entertain such thoughts. But if you cannot assure me now that your men are on the road to Shahrukiyyah, I shall be forced to assume that you have, indeed, broken our agreement.’

He scratched his signature and ordered the scribe to affix his seal. This was Ibrahim Saru’s last chance. It was intolerable that an uncouth tribal leader should toy with him.

For the next hour Babur and his counsellors, grim-faced and earnest, debated, but without more information their discussion was sterile. All they had were questions that could not yet be answered. Frustrated, Babur dismissed the council but asked Wazir Khan to remain.

‘Majesty?’

‘If Shaibani Khan has taken Samarkand, I’ve been trying to work out what I would do next if I were him and I keep reaching the same answer. I would send my forces east to destroy us here before moving on to Akhsi and crushing Jahangir and Tambal. Shaibani Khan has sworn to obliterate the descendants of Timur. He would enjoy boasting that he had wiped out the last two remnants of the male line of Ferghana.’

For once Wazir Khan had no words of comfort. For a while they sat in silence, each locked in his own thoughts.

But at least they didn’t have to wait long for more news. By sunset, further reports were reaching Shahrukiyyah of a momentous catastrophe to the west. A band of agitated merchants who had been camped on the hills beyond Samarkand brought tales of a clash between horsemen outside the city walls. They had not waited for the outcome but, gathering their pack animals, had fled eastward. Other travellers brought stories heard along the road that Shaibani Khan and his hordes had swooped down from the north and fallen on Samarkand.

The night Babur couldn’t sleep, the still, warm air – oppressive and heavy – adding to his restlessness. Yesterday he would have sent for Baburi to amuse him with his stories or to gallop with him to the brothel and Yadgar, but not now. He sat alone by the window, gazing out. The heavy ring glinted on his finger. What would Timur have done? Would he have been prepared to wait passively to see what fate dished out to him? No. He would have found a way to take the initiative, to turn circumstances to his advantage.

Babur continued to sit, jaw in hand, as one by one the candles sputtered out and he was left in the darkness. Again and again, he kept turning everything over in his mind. As a thin line of golden light appeared on the eastern horizon, a glimmer of hope began to shine in the dark corners of his mind. Suddenly he knew what he would do. It was a huge risk, and it would cut him to the heart, but it was the only chance he had . . .

As soon as it was full daylight, he summoned his council. ‘Shaibani Khan is a threat to the entire House of Timur. If he wipes me out
he will turn next on my half-brother Jahangir. It will be only a matter of time. He wants all the Timurid lands and he will have them – unless we put aside our own quarrels. That is why I intend to offer Jahangir and Tambal an alliance. If they and the clans loyal to them will help me push the Uzbeks out of Samarkand, I will relinquish Ferghana to them . . .’

Wazir Khan’s sharp intake of breath told Babur how much he had shocked him. ‘But, Majesty—’

‘It is the only way. Kasim, you will be my ambassador.’

Babur looked sternly at his council, feeling a new steeliness within him. ‘For the moment, until we have an answer from Akhsi, you will say nothing of this to anyone. Those are my orders.’

As Babur rose, he saw how troubled Wazir Khan looked. In former days he would have talked through his plans with his old friend to try to convince him. But no one could help him now. This was his destiny, his choice. If his boldness worked, he would again be in golden Samarkand. He had never ceased to think of it as his rightful property or to mourn its loss, this place his father had ached to possess and to which mountainous little Ferghana, with its unruly chiefs and bleating sheep, had always been a poor second. If he was to succeed where his father had not, ambition, not sentiment, must be his watchword.

The following days brought further trickles, then a stream, and finally a flood of refugees to the settlements around Shahrukiyyah. Babur sent men to question them and learned that most were from villages near Samarkand. Ominously, few were from the city itself and there was no sign of Mahmud’s chamberlain who had written in such despair. Neither was there any news of Mahmud’s wife, the grand vizier’s daughter . . .

From the battlements, Babur watched the drab procession of travel-stained, weary people, who had simply grabbed what they could and fled for their lives – old men and snotty-nosed infants loaded onto carts, some of which had been hauled the one hundred and fifty miles by hand, desperate-looking mothers clutching babies
to their skinny breasts. All hungry mouths – a burden not a help. Babur ordered distributions from his granaries and those of the other fortresses he held, but even those supplies would not last for long.

He had hoped that some of the soldiers of Samarkand might have managed to flee the Uzbeks and would make their way eastwards, but the reports arriving from Baisanghar’s scouts blasted any such idea. It was clear there had been great slaughter as the Uzbeks had hacked and hewn their way to victory. The meadows around Samarkand were strewn with the bloated corpses of its soldiers. Few had escaped. Only an army of ghosts would march to Babur’s assistance.

Everything now depended on Jahangir and Tambal. Should he have ridden to them himself under a flag of truce? he wondered. Would Kasim convince Jahangir and Tambal that their best – perhaps only – chance of survival lay in accepting his offer of a peace settlement and an alliance against Shaibani Khan or would they be blinded to the threat of Shaibani Khan by their suspicion of his own motives?

He was with his mother and grandmother when he heard that Kasim had returned. Without explanation, and avoiding Esan Dawlat’s sharp eyes, he hurried to his chambers where he had ordered his ambassador to be brought. Kasim was his usual quiet, self-possessed self, betraying not a hint of excitement or agitation about the news he was carrying.

‘Well?’ It was all Babur could do not to grab him by the shoulders.

‘I bring an answer, Majesty. They accept your terms.’ Now, at last, Kasim allowed himself a faint smile. ‘See, Majesty.’ From a dark-red camelskin bag, fastened with plugs of ivory, he extracted a letter.

Babur scanned it and his heart beat faster. Yes! Passing over the empty courtesies he found what he was looking for. He read the words to himself several times, savouring them. ‘What you propose, my brother, is the only way to save us all from the Uzbek menace. By the time you receive this, my troops will already be preparing to march to Shahrukiyyah. I am sending you four thousand cavalry
and a thousand archers, all that I can spare.’ It was signed by Jahangir and stamped with the royal seal of Ferghana.

It cost Babur a pang to run his fingers over the thick wax – the right to affix the royal seal was his: by blood and birth he was King of Ferghana. But he had made his choice and must abide by it. He must also trust Jahangir and his controller, Tambal, to keep their word. If they betrayed him now, they would all be ruined.

B
abur turned to look at the lines of riders strung out behind him, their brilliant yellow banners proclaiming them all warriors of Ferghana. Tribal and dynastic feuds forgotten, they were riding against an ancient enemy. Three hours earlier, in their apartments in the fortress, Esan Dawlat and Kutlugh Nigar had given him their blessing and his mother had pressed her lips to the eagle hilt of his father’s sword, Alamgir, hanging from his metal-studded belt. He was surprised that they had not objected to his bargain with his half-brother – Esan Dawlat had actually commended his vision and daring. Only Khanzada had seemed shaken at the thought that she might never again see her childhood home of Akhsi.

As for Ayisha, he had gone to her last night for one final, brief encounter. If he did not return, he might at least be leaving an heir inside her, he had thought, thrusting energetically but joylessly, his eyes fixed on the wall rather than on her expressionless, half-averted face. As soon as he had reached his shuddering climax, Ayisha had done what she now always did – rolled away from him and pulled the coverlet over her nakedness. He had not looked at her as he dressed hurriedly and left her chamber immediately without either speaking a single word of comfort or farewell. They would never be other than emotional strangers.

At least her father had come to his senses. Towards the rear of
the long column, beyond the yellow pennants of Ferghana, were the ranks of mounted Mangligh crossbowmen in black and red. They had arrived at Shahrukiyyah within days of Ibrahim Saru getting wind of the alliance between Babur and Jahangir against Shaibani Khan.

Wazir Khan and Baisanghar were riding by his side and somewhere among the ranks of his cavalry would be Baburi. He had not spoken more than a word or two to his friend since the news of the fall of Samarkand and missed his light-hearted company. But companionship – friendship – was perhaps not for kings, whose minds must be fixed on greater things, Babur reflected.

They were travelling quickly, galloping over ground baked hard by the heat of summer. They were also travelling light. Babur had decided there was no time to transport cumbersome siege engines. He was staking everything on a swift surprise attack. Till now Samarkand had always been in the hands of one Timurid ruler or another. The citizens of Samarkand – those left alive – should be desperate to rid themselves of a cruel, alien predator like Shaibani Khan. When they saw his forces approach, he hoped they would rise against their oppressors.

What really counted, though, were Shaibani Khan’s plans. With autumn almost upon him, did he intend to winter in Samarkand? Babur frowned as he rode, his chestnut’s hoofs beating a rhythmic tattoo, trying to put himself inside the mind of his enemy. What did he really want? To rape and loot Samarkand and then return with his pack of marauders back to the northern steppes to enjoy his booty, or did he have grander ambitions? Was his attack on Samarkand simply a sustained raid or had he come to stay to establish a dynasty and empire of his own?

If the stories Babur had heard in his boyhood were true, Shaibani Khan bore Samarkand a grudge. He recalled his father’s tales of how, as a boy, Shaibani Khan had been captured during a raid by the King of Samarkand’s forces on an Uzbek settlement. His father and brothers had been killed but, at scarcely more than ten, he had been dragged at a camel’s tail, a leather thong round his neck, as a slave to Samarkand. Quick-witted and clever, he had survived
the harsh conditions in the blacksmiths’ workshops, where the symbol of the slave had been burned into his left cheek, and had come to the attention of a courtier in the Kok Saray.

The nobleman had had him educated and given him a good position as a scribe, but had also forced him to share his bed. One night the young Shaibani Khan had slit his master’s throat. Dipping his finger in the murdered man’s blood, he had written his final missive as a scribe; a message scrawled on the wall, calling down a curse on the city. He had vanished back to his own people. Reunited with his clan, he had risen to become overlord of all the Uzbeks and still nursed a brooding hatred for the royal House of Timur. He was now a man of some thirty-five summers and in his prime, a formidable enemy who cast a dark shadow before him and left death in his wake. Defeating such a man would not be easy . . .

Guile rather than force might be the answer. Within some four days, if they could keep up their pace, they would be within striking distance of Samarkand. To retain any advantage of surprise, he would have to attack at once. But perhaps it would be better to make Shaibani Khan uncertain of his intentions – or, best of all, to mislead him. If he could convince him he was trying to break out of Ferghana – to bypass Samarkand and travel west – he might draw his enemy away from the city.

That evening, as Babur sat at a campfire with Wazir Khan and Baisanghar, he stared into the flames, still seeking inspiration. The ground where they had made camp was sandy. Suddenly he rose, picked up a stick and traced the outline of Samarkand – the five-mile girdle of walls pierced by the six gates, the surrounding patchwork of meadows, orchards and gardens, the tracery of streams and rivers on the eastern and northern sides. ‘What if we sent a detachment of our men along the far side of the Ab-i-Siyah river, parallel with the northern walls of Samarkand . . . They would be visible to those guarding the Iron and the Shaykhzada gates but still too far off for the Uzbeks to gauge their strength accurately. We might make them think it was our entire army . . .’