Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul (16 page)

Water was trickling between his parched lips. Babur’s tongue, half stuck to the roof of his mouth, loosened, seeking the drops eagerly. He had no idea where he was. All that mattered was getting some of that precious moisture. At last his eyes jerked open. The familiar figure of Wazir Khan was leaning over him, a long strip of cotton cloth in one hand and a water bottle in the other. When he saw that Babur was conscious, he put them down and knelt back.

Babur was still burning with thirst. ‘More water,’ he wanted to say, but managed only a dry-lipped croak. Wazir Khan understood. He placed the end of the cloth between Babur’s lips and continued what he had been doing, unknown to Babur, for the past hour: pouring a thin stream of water down the cloth so that it flowed a few drops at a time into Babur’s mouth.

After a long while, Babur choked, spluttered and managed to sit up. Wazir Khan put the cloth and the water bottle to one side and felt his forehead. ‘Your temperature is falling at last, Majesty.’

Looking around him, Babur saw they were inside a small cave with a fire at the centre. His head spun and he closed his eyes. ‘How long have I been ill?’

‘Four days, Majesty. It is now midday on the fifth.’

‘What was it? Not poison, surely . . . ?’

Wazir Khan shook his head. ‘No. Just a high fever – probably the result of a sheep-tick bite.’

Babur almost smiled – a tick bite at a time like this.

‘Fetch some broth,’ Wazir Khan called to one of his men. When the bowl of millet-flour soup was brought he knelt beside Babur, holding it to his lips with one hand and supporting his head with the other. The warm liquid tasted good but Babur could only manage a little before his stomach clenched and he waved the bowl aside.

‘Has there been news from Samarkand? Baisanghar must be almost ready to bring the army after us.’

‘No, Majesty. There has been nothing.’

‘Or from Ferghana?’ Silently Babur cursed the ill luck that had struck him down. By now, riding hard and light, the mountains of Ferghana should have been in sight.

Wazir Khan shook his head. ‘I did not look for any news. I sent out no scouts. My concern was to keep you hidden until you had recovered. There will be many spies between here and Ferghana. If reports reached Ferghana that you were ill – or dead . . .’

He left the words unspoken but Babur understood. If the traitors pulling the strings of their little puppet king thought he was dead, his womenfolk might not see another sunrise.

‘Thank you, Wazir Khan. As always, you think of things I fail
to.’ Wazir Khan’s words reminded him chillingly of his predicament. Babur lay back, willing the strength to flow back into his limbs but miserably conscious of how weak he was. ‘I will rest for the remainder of today, but tomorrow, we will ride.’

‘Yes, Majesty, if you are able to.’

‘I will be.’ Babur closed his eyes again, praying that he was right.

He slept most of that day and night but woke as soon as the dim light of the following morning crept into the cave. Sitting up cautiously he found that his head was clearer and that, though he still felt a little unsteady, he could stand unaided. With one hand against the lichen-covered wall, he walked stiffly towards the cave opening and ducked outside. Wazir Khan and some of his guards were squatting around a small fire of sheep’s droppings that was burning brightly. A copper kettle was suspended above it from a makeshift frame.

Wazir Khan handed him a clay cup of hot water that tasted of smoke and a piece of dry bread that he began to chew. He noticed that the horses, tethered by a clump of gorse bushes, were already saddled and loaded. Wazir Khan had, as always, done well. Within half an hour they had kicked earth over the remains of their fire, filled their leather water bottles from a stream and were mounting.

Babur pulled himself into his saddle with none of his usual spring, feeling the eyes not only of Wazir Khan but of the rest of his men upon him. For a moment he swayed, but then he kicked his horse on in the direction of the sunrise and Ferghana.

Babur’s heart quickened as, in the distance, he made out the Jaxartes river and his home. The robust little castle of Akhsi, half built into the cliff above the river, was the place of his earliest and fondest memories. At this moment, the glories of Samarkand could not compete and he felt tears rising.

‘Majesty, it is dangerous to go further tonight.’ Wazir Khan’s eyes, too, were bright with tears. ‘They’ll be watching for us. We should stay concealed until I’ve sent out scouts.’

Babur wanted to gallop to the gates and demand entry, but Wazir Khan was right. He got shakily down from his horse, feeling the
feverish ache in his limbs, and listened as Wazir Khan selected his two best and swiftest horsemen to ride onwards and find out what they could.

The fortress was at least an hour’s journey, perhaps more in the gathering darkness, and the scouts would need to take care not to be seen. It would be some while before they returned. Perched as Babur and his men were high on the side of a hill and reluctant to retreat back over the crest, their position was too exposed to risk a fire to warm themselves or cook over. Not that they had much to cook. In the six days since Babur’s recovery, they had travelled too fast to forage or hunt, Instead they had relied mainly on the now mouldering bread, cheese, apples and dried fruit they had brought from Samarkand. Babur wrapped himself in a blanket and chewed a strip of dried melon. Its sweetness disgusted him and he spat it out, taking a long draught of water to rid himself of the cloying taste.

The scouts returned two hours before dawn, and the news was bad, as Babur had suspected it would be. The castle gates were barred and many defenders were keeping watch from the walls. According to a herdsman the scouts had surprised as he sat around his fire in a riverside pasture with his two young sons, who had been too terrified to speak anything but the truth, many of the nomadic tribal leaders had sworn to support Babur’s half-brother. It didn’t surprise Babur to learn that the chieftain whose men he had ordered hacked to death for stealing the peasant’s goods and raping his wife outside Samarkand was among them. And of course, Jahangir’s grandfather. Babur thought of the sly-faced old man who had brought Roxanna and her brat to the castle. He should never have taken them in – but what else could he have done? Jahangir was his half-brother. Blood was blood.

It was no surprise either that Yusuf, his father’s stout treasurer, together with Baba Qashqa, his comptroller of the household, and Baqi Beg, his thin, fidgety astrologer, had joined his half-brother since – though Babur had allowed them to live – he had forced them to yield their profitable appointments.

His thoughts returned to his grandmother, mother and sister.
The scouts had not been able to find out anything about them. He cursed his powerlessness. What could he and two dozen bodyguards do anyway? He must wait for his army to join him.

As the sun rose behind Mount Beshtor, making the ever-present snow on the summit sparkle like crystal, Babur wrapped his cloak round him, and, signalling he wished to be alone, began to tramp up the hill on which they had camped. The emerald-green grass was slippery with dew beneath his feet. It smelled fresh and sweet. But before long winter would descend and these slopes would be frozen hard and white. It was a worrying thought. How could he campaign in winter?

The wind blowing in from the east had a cold bite. Babur settled in the shelter of a slab of rock and his keen eyes scanned the landscape whose contours he knew so intimately they felt like part of him – every sweep of green meadowland, every steep-sided valley with its patches of grey scree, every jagged mountain peak, every bend in the Jaxartes. The sense of loss overwhelmed him and he bowed his head.

The sun had risen high in a bright, cloudless sky when Babur heard the distant thud of hoofbeats coming from the west. Leaping up, he turned to look behind him and, sure enough, in the distance, he could see a long line of riders coming along a valley. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to count them – perhaps two hundred, maybe more – and caught the flash of a green standard. It must be the advance guard sent by Baisanghar.

Feeling new energy surging through him, driving out the despair, he turned and ran down the hill towards the camp, slipping and rolling in his eagerness. ‘Wazir Khan, the troops are coming,’ he shouted, as he ran into the camp.

‘You are sure they are our men?’

‘I’m certain. They carry the green banners of Samarkand.’

‘I will send a patrol to guide them to us, Majesty.’

Heart pounding, Babur watched the men gallop off. Now we’ll flush those scum out of the castle. Tambal will repent his treachery and as for the rest . . . Babur ran to his saddlebag and unstrapped his father’s sword. As he drew it from its scabbard, the rubies in
the eagle hilt flashed in the sunlight. It felt good to balance it in his hand and he imagined bringing it down, in a slashing sweep, on Tambal’s bare neck, as he had done on the neck of Qambar-Ali on the first day of his rule in Ferghana.

It wasn’t long before the riders were in view, Baisanghar himself at their head.

Babur stepped forward. Beneath his pointed helmet, Baisanghar looked exhausted. ‘When will the main army get here? Are they far away?’

Baisanghar hesitated a moment before he answered. ‘There is no main army, Majesty.’

The light in Babur’s eyes died. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Mahmud of Kunduz, your cousin, has seized Samarkand. He must have been plotting with Tambal and had his armies ready. He waited until I had ridden from the city with the advance guard, then made his attack. He was aided from within by some of the former associates of the grand vizier whom the vizier’s daughter, Prince Mahmud’s wife, seems to have suborned through messengers promising extravagant rewards. We had been riding for five days before men reached me with the news of Samarkand’s fall. I’m sorry, Majesty. I have failed you.’

‘Mahmud . . .’ Babur could hardly take in what Baisanghar had said. That the cousin he’d known all his life and had thought of as a friend – the cousin to whom he’d only recently sent the gift of a bride – should betray him like this seemed impossible. ‘What of Ali Mazid Beg?’

‘He is dead, Majesty. His body, not the grand vizier’s, now swings above the Turquoise Gate, and many others who were loyal to you are dead.’

Babur turned away, disgust at his cousin and grief for the loyal Ali Mazid Beg almost overwhelming him. At the same time, his mind was trying to grapple with something else: the sheer enormity of his loss. His reign over Samarkand had been – what? A hundred days . . . ? And now he was king of nothing, not even of Ferghana. He was still clutching his father’s sword and the solid feel of the hilt in his hand comforted him. This was not
to be his fate, he vowed, gripping the hilt still tighter. He would not let it be. However long it took, however much blood he spilled, he would take back what was his. Those who had injured him would pay.

T
he mixture of snow and sleet penetrated even the thick sheepskin-lined jacket in which Babur was wrapped. He shivered as, head bowed against the elements, he rode at the head of his remaining men beside a small river, the edges of which were half frozen, up a remote valley among the high mountains to the north of Ferghana.

During the first difficult days after he had discovered that he had lost not one but both of his kingdoms, Babur had wanted to stay near Akhsi in the hope of being able to stake all on getting into the fortress to free his family. But Wazir Khan had with difficulty dissuaded him, pointing out that his enemies would expect such a desperate attempt and would be on guard against it. Wazir Khan, fatherly in his comforting support, had advised, ‘If you wish to save your grandmother, your mother and your sister, you must not throw your life away by taking extravagant risks but make your enemies fear you. To do this you must pressure them, attacking now here, now there, disappearing before they can concentrate their forces against you. Be elusive, ever-threatening. Your foes must never sleep soundly. And if you do this, Majesty, they will not dare to harm your family.’

At length, Babur had recognised the sense of what Wazir Khan was saying. Thinking carefully, he had suggested a plan. ‘We will need a safe base where we can see out the winter and plan our
first raids. I remember that, as part of the military training you gave me each summer, you once took me on an expedition to the northern mountains and we stayed in an old mud fort at the head of a valley where a vassal of Tambal commanded the small garrison. That might make a good base. It is little visited. What d’you think?’

‘I remember the place. It is indeed remote and could serve our purpose well.’

And thus two weeks ago he and Wazir Khan had begun their ride towards the mountains. Only two hundred men were accompanying them. Babur had selected them carefully with Wazir Khan’s help, choosing only those who were young, like himself, and without family ties, or those who, like Baisanghar, formed the trusted core of his inner circle. The rest he had despatched to their homes, telling them to await his call, which they could be sure would come. The snow had started at the beginning of the second week of their journey and had grown thicker and more persistent the higher they had climbed, hampering their progress.