Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (21 page)

‘Let’s go,’ he said to Kamran Iqbal, the burly young commander of his cavalry, and they were off. As he was passing through the outer lines of the camp’s strong defences Khurram took one final long look back at the
haram
tent. He was glad that Arjumand was there. Last night, once the plans for today’s raid were complete, her calm presence had helped him relax and thus to get some sleep to prepare him for the day’s action. Kicking his black horse forward he led his men across the dry countryside towards the spot about twelve miles away which, if his scouts’ predictions were correct, Malik Ambar’s forces should reach by mid-morning.

Around nine o’clock Khurram halted his men in the shadow of a low ridge which would conceal him from the sight of Malik Ambar’s men if they approached from the direction he anticipated. Slipping from his high-pommelled gilded saddle he ran quickly towards the top of the ridge. Just before reaching the crest he dropped on to his stomach and peered over. He was soon joined by some of his officers. None could see any sign of movement other than that of a few goats. After three quarters of an hour of anxiously scanning the horizon while worrying that his scouts might have been wrong or that Malik Ambar might somehow have got to hear of his intentions and, eluding the scouts, changed his line of march or even decided to attack the Moghul camp, Khurram could still see nothing. He began
to debate with himself whether he should send part of his force back to check that all was well at the camp but decided to leave it a little longer. To his great relief ten minutes later he saw a cloud of dust in the east – the direction from which he was expecting Malik Ambar to come. Only a few minutes later a member of his team of scouts, which had been ordered to keep watch on Malik Ambar’s army in relays from a safe distance, rode up on his sweat-mottled chestnut horse.

‘How far away are they?’ Khurram asked. ‘Distances can be deceptive in the heat haze.’

‘About two or three miles, Highness.’

‘That’s less than I thought. What formation are they in?’

‘They’ve got a screen of their own scouts riding about a quarter of a mile from the main column but the rest of the force look fairly relaxed as far as I could tell from where I was. The cannon and the powder wagons still have their covers on – that I’m certain of.’

‘So they’ve no suspicion we’re so close?’

‘No, I think not, Highness.’

‘Well, they’ll know soon,’ said Khurram, already turning to descend the ridge. He shouted to his officers, ‘Let us attack straight away. Don’t forget our main targets are the cannon. The more of them we can destroy or disable the more we can reduce our enemy’s fighting power.’

A quarter of an hour later, Khurram was galloping towards Malik Ambar’s column at the head of his men. The horses’ hooves beat a tattoo on the dry ground while flying grit stung their riders’ eyes and filled their mouths and noses. As he rode, Khurram could see through the thick dust that Malik Ambar’s men had now realised the danger. Horsemen
were wheeling to face the threat and gunners were hastily pulling the covers from the cannon and lashing the ox teams to turn the guns to face their opponents, while others were heaving bags of powder and cannon balls from the ammunition wagons. Archers were climbing into the howdahs of the war elephants. Musketeers were readying their weapons and setting their long barrels on tripods so that they could fire more accurately. Khurram could also see a group of men with glittering breastplates riding along the lines. Presumably these must be Malik Ambar and his officers, encouraging their troops and giving orders.

Arrows were beginning to plummet from the sky among his galloping men. The sound of musket balls hissing past his ear and the sight of flashes and puffs of white smoke from Malik Ambar’s lines showed that at least some of the enemy musketeers were now firing. Only moments later a deeper bang and more billowing smoke left him in no doubt that one of Malik Ambar’s cannon was also in action. No more than ten yards away Khurram saw one of his leading riders – a young Rajput banner-carrier – crash backwards out of his saddle to the ground, losing his grip on his large green standard as he fell. The horse of the following rider – another Rajput – stumbled over the body and then catching its legs in the banner fell too, pitching the Rajput over its head and bringing down yet another horse and rider into the dust. Only a quarter of a mile to go to Malik Ambar’s lines, thought Khurram. The enemy could not do too much damage in the time it would take to cover that distance. Instinctively bending lower to his horse’s neck, he twisted the reins to head more directly for Malik Ambar’s cannon and kicked the willing black horse on.

Then he was in among Malik Ambar’s column, slashing at a purple-turbaned musketeer deployed with his comrades in a line some yards in front of the cannon to protect them. He had fired once and was desperately trying to reload his weapon, pushing one of the lead bullets from the white cotton pouch at his side down the long barrel with a steel ramrod. He never completed his task. Khurram’s sword, honed to perfect sharpness by the armourers that morning, caught him in the side of the face, almost severing his jaw and exposing his fine white teeth. Dropping the musket, he collapsed to the ground as, without a backward glance, Khurram charged onwards towards the cannon and the ammunition carts, his bodyguard around him. Only ten yards from Khurram a cannon fired with a deafening crash and billows of white smoke. The ball caught another of Khurram’s bodyguards in the stomach, severing his torso and leaving his blood-spattered horse to gallop on with the bottom half of his body still in the saddle.

Coughing from the acrid gunpowder smoke, his ears ringing, Khurram urged his horse onwards again, slashing at another gunner who was struggling towards his weapon almost bent double under the weight of a heavy stone cannon ball. Struck in the back, the man dropped the ball and, blood soaking his grubby white tunic, slumped to the ground. In a minute or perhaps even less – time seemed to pass so slowly in battle – Khurram was on the other side of the column. Looking around him he could see that many other gunners were dropping their ramrods to abandon their posts and flee on foot. Most were doing so in vain since his own mounted men were catching them in the back with their swords as they ran or piercing them with their lances.

Quickly Khurram’s men began gathering around him. ‘Those of you issued with spikes hammer them into the breeches of the cannon,’ he commanded. ‘Those with mallets try to knock the wheels from the gun limbers. And those of you designated to set gunpowder trails to blow up the powder wagons as we depart, get to your work. The rest of us will hold off Malik Ambar’s men while you do so.’

As his soldiers dropped from their saddles to begin their tasks Khurram heard a trumpet blow and through a gap in the billowing smoke – which he had already learned rendered battlefields such confusing places – saw a group of Malik Ambar’s horsemen emerge from lower down the now disorganised ranks of his column and charge determinedly towards his own position. ‘Come on, let’s meet them head on,’ Khurram shouted, and urged his black horse forward.

He and his men could not get their horses into a gallop before the enemy was on them. Apparently recognising Khurram, one thick-set officer who had had no time to don either helmet or breastplate pulled on his reins to head directly for him. Khurram wheeled his horse, now blowing from its previous exertions, to meet him. However, it was his opponent who got in the first blow, aiming a swinging stroke of his scimitar which caught Khurram’s breastplate and then skidded off, knocking Khurram off balance so that his own first stroke missed too, parting the air over the officer’s head as he ducked. But then Khurram, recovering the faster, struck again, thrusting his sharp sword deep into the man’s ample and unprotected stomach just below his breastbone. Dropping his weapon and his reins and clutching at his wound, the officer fell from his horse which, relieved of his weight, galloped away from the fray.

Looking around him while he caught his breath, Khurram saw that more and more of Malik Ambar’s men were joining the fight and that several of his own soldiers were sprawled on the ground, dead or wounded. The raid had been as successful as he could have wished, eroding Malik Ambar’s strength and his equipment. But now with their task complete it was time for him and his men to retreat while they still could. ‘Mount up,’ he shouted to those finishing disabling the cannon. ‘Pick up any wounded or unhorsed men and ride two to a horse, but as you leave remember to set fire to the powder trails you’ve laid around the wagons.’

He watched as his dismounted men scrambled into their saddles, pulling comrades up behind. One tall Rajput was struggling to get a wounded companion on to his grey horse when two arrows thudded in quick succession into the body of the injured man and he fell backwards, clearly dead. ‘Come on,’ Khurram urged, and put his heels to his horse whose black coat was now covered with a scum of white sweat. He was among the last to leave. As he rode hard, twisting in his saddle to look behind him, he saw another of his men fall sideways from his mount, hit by a spear thrown by one of Malik Ambar’s soldiers. The man’s foot caught in the stirrup and he was dragged behind the horse for some distance before the stirrup leather snapped.

Suddenly, Khurram felt a blast of warm air sweep past him and a great boom deafened him again. At least one of the powder wagons had exploded. Another bang followed and Khurram felt a stinging pain in his left cheek near his nose and liquid running down his face on to his lips. It tasted salty and metallic on his tongue – blood. Putting his
hand to his cheek as he rode he pulled out a sliver of metal. Perhaps part of a tin powder trunk, he thought.

Soon he was back on top of the ridge from which he had started the attack, where the rest of his men were regrouping. Patting the heaving flanks of his horse and looking behind him again, he saw that a few Moghul stragglers were still galloping away from Malik Ambar’s disorganised column. The forelegs of one grey horse buckled as it ascended the slope and it collapsed, its rider, a burly, bow-legged man, leaping from the saddle just in time. Looking closer, Khurram saw that the horse had a great sword slash along its side. It had done well and bravely to get its rider so far.

Malik Ambar’s men were not pursuing them. Just as had happened twice before in the two months since Khurram had left Burhanpur, his opponent had preferred to persist with a tactical retreat, accepting losses to his forces in hit and run raids like today’s without attempting to follow his assailants when they broke off the action. Malik Ambar seemed determined to continue the withdrawal into the mountains bordering the Deccan plateau which he had begun on first hearing the news of Khurram’s approach. Here his outnumbered force would be able to exploit familiar terrain in any battle.

Khurram wiped his bloody sword on a piece of saddlecloth and sheathed it once more in its jewelled scabbard, his emotions a mixture of satisfaction and frustration. Satisfaction that he had inflicted further damage on Malik Ambar’s army, diminishing their firepower and numbers at an acceptable cost in Moghul lives, and frustration that Malik Ambar still would not commit himself to a conclusive battle. However,
he comforted himself that such an encounter could not be long delayed.

‘Here, let me see,’ Arjumand ordered. It was less than five minutes since Khurram had galloped back into the camp on his exhausted black horse. Heedless of convention she had run from the
haram
tent to greet him, having spent the intervening hours ceaselessly pacing the hot interior, returning only the most perfunctory answers to the attempts of her attendants to distract her with titbits of court gossip or queries as to whether she might want refreshment. Seeing the blood on Khurram’s face she had immediately taken him back into the tent.

‘It’s nothing. It’s a scratch. It really is. The scab is forming already,’ Khurram protested but Arjumand would not be thwarted, calling for an infusion of the leaves of the neem tree to clean the wound, a sure way she had been told to prevent infection from setting in. While a maid hurried off to find the neem water, Arjumand undid the straps of Khurram’s breastplate and lifted it from him, saying as she did so, ‘Thanks to God that you are safe.’

‘I told you I would return . . . You look so worried. Are you sure that accompanying me on campaign is really good for you? Wouldn’t you be happier in Burhanpur?’

‘No,’ Arjumand replied immediately, her tone firm. ‘Here the wait for news is shorter. It would be much worse waiting for messengers to arrive and then scanning their faces for what news they brought. Here in the camp I can be with you and share your thoughts and your joy in your final victory, which I know to be inevitable.’ As she spoke she
embraced him, heedless of the acrid smell of the sweat which stained his tunic.

Even as he returned her caress, Khurram’s mind began to turn to how best he could achieve the victory Arjumand thought so inevitable. Malik Ambar still remained a most dangerous adversary.