Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul (17 page)

‘How far do you think we are now from the fort, Wazir Khan?’

‘If it weren’t for this foul weather, Majesty, we should be able to see it by now. But at least the defenders won’t see us coming. Let’s pause under cover of those trees and eat some of the dried meat we still have in our saddlebags while we send some scouts ahead.’

The snow continued to fall throughout the ninety minutes the five scouts were away, sometimes thickly, sometimes less so. When the men returned they and their mounts were crusted with snow and their leader spoke through lips that were almost blue with cold. ‘The fort is only about two miles ahead, around a bend. There are no hoofor footprints to show that the occupants have been out today, either to patrol or to man outposts. When we dismounted and crept closer, we could make out smoke rising from one part of the fort – presumably the kitchens – but, most importantly, the main gate stood open. Clearly no one is suspecting an attack in this weather.’

‘Well they’re going to get a nasty surprise. Wazir Khan, let us not hesitate but mount up at once and while the snow continues to fall, concealing us, let the scouts lead us quietly and quickly towards where the way bends towards the fort. Then let us gallop for the gate.’

Wazir Khan nodded, and within five minutes the column was on the move, riding in single file up the gentle slope towards the head of the valley. After about two miles, through the snowflakes, which were falling more lightly now, Babur saw the shadow of a rocky outcrop emerge. As he did so, his chief scout whispered, ‘The bend is at that outcrop. The fortress is only about a thousand yards ahead. The path becomes broader now.’

‘We’ll make our attack from here. Tell the men to have their weapons ready but to leave saddlebags and any other unnecessary equipment here in the shadow of the outcrop so that we can gallop to the fortress as fast as the snow will allow.’

Quickly the soldiers began to prepare but before many had completed their task the snow stopped entirely and there, ahead, was the fort – a dark shape against the white of the surrounding snow.

‘Mount up, those who are ready! We must attack before we are seen!’ yelled Babur who, even as he spoke, had drawn Alamgir from its scabbard. He leaped into the saddle and urged his black horse into a gallop towards the fort whose gate he could see remained open. With at most ten riders immediately around him, and the rest strung out to his rear, he felt the blood pound in his ears as he bent low to his horse’s neck. When he was only two hundred yards from the gate, he heard a shout from within the fort – they had been seen. The gate shuddered and juddered as men inside tried to push it closed to bar it against the sudden threat but the newly fallen snow piled against it stopped it moving far. Two men rushed out, futilely kicking at the snow and trying to force the gate over it.

‘Shoot them down!’ Babur shouted, but did not slacken his pace. Within seconds he saw one of the men fall, an arrow in his throat. Then he was at the gate. Slashing at the second man with Alamgir, he felt the sword bite home into soft flesh but did not pause to look where. Instead, pulling hard on the reins, he jerked his horse’s head round to guide it through the still partly open gate. The black horse snorted and Babur felt one of its legs slip but it made the turn, as did the three riders immediately behind him.

But the fourth did not. Babur heard a thudding crash as horse
and rider came down, blocking the entrance. He was in the fort but – for the moment at least – with only three men to assist him. Looking about, he saw men rushing out through the tall wide door to what must be the fort’s main hall. Some were struggling to pull on chain-mail, others to draw their weapons.

‘Come! Attack them now!’ Babur kicked his horse into a gallop once more, and soon he and his three companions were among the panicking men, cutting them down. Suddenly Babur saw a tall man, who appeared to be one of their chiefs, duck back into the hall and urged his horse on after him, bending low to pass beneath the wooden lintel. Blinking in the semi-darkness, he saw that the twenty or thirty men who had emerged from the hall must have been pretty much the entire garrison. Only the officer remained within. He had run back towards a rack of weapons and grabbed a spear and shield before turning towards Babur.

‘Lay down your weapons on the orders of your rightful king, I, Babur of Ferghana.’

‘I will not. You are not my king. My name is Hanif Khan. I owe my loyalty to Tambal, who now controls the land. Vanquish me in combat if you can.’

Babur leaped from his horse and, with Alamgir in his hand, advanced towards Hanif Khan who – as soon as he was near enough – thrust at Babur with his spear. Babur jumped aside, but as he did so his left foot caught against the leg of one of the low tables on which lay the remains of a meal. Arms flailing, he fell on to the table, knocking over some rough wooden goblets and spilling their contents. The wrist of his sword hand caught against the lip of a large metal pot, half full of stew, knocking Alamgir from his grasp.

Hanif Khan rushed towards him, eager to take advantage of this piece of good fortune and to finish him off. Raising his spear above his head in both hands he was about to stab its point into Babur’s exposed throat when Babur grabbed a large wooden platter to use as a rough shield. The spear penetrated but did not split it. Rolling to one side amid the sticky warm mess of spilled food and liquid, Babur let go of the platter and grabbed the spear shaft, twisting it as he did so and wrenching it from Hanif Khan’s grasp.

Undaunted, Hanif Khan jumped back and pulled a slim dagger from his sash. Babur had no time to look for where Alamgir had fallen but hit the man hard with the spear, knocking the platter from its tip. As he did so, he felt a stinging pain across his cheek. Hanif Khan had thrown his dagger at Babur’s throat but missed his mark. Now Babur thrust at him with the spear point and Hanif Khan could only half turn aside before the spear caught his right side and he fell among some rough cushions beside the table. Babur twisted out the spear and, without a moment’s reflection, jabbed it hard into his opponent’s neck, pinning him to the cushions, which were soon soaked with his pumping red blood.

In no time, Wazir Khan, Baisanghar and the rest of his men were surrounding Babur congratulating him on his bravery. The fort was theirs. He had taken his first small step on the long road to recovering Ferghana. Going outside, Babur saw that the snow was falling again, turning scarlet where it covered the bodies of his enemies. He longed for the moment when he could thrust his spear through Tambal as he had just done through his vassal.

And so it had begun. Babur had become a raider, attacking swiftly and always leaving his name scratched in blood on a paper left stuffed into the gaping mouth of one of his dead enemies. And he had done well. Gradually he had increased the size of his forces, using soft words and sweet promises as well as harsh steel and the booty from his raids to attract new supporters and win over his adversaries. Within just twenty months of his capture of the mud fort, systematically and tenaciously, small fort by small fort, village by village, he had reclaimed much of the west of Ferghana. His strategy was working. Tambal no longer dared stir very far to the north or west from Akhsi towards Babur’s strongholds, and Babur had become powerful enough to feel able to issue demands to him.

The first, made six months ago and often repeated, had been for the release of his grandmother, mother and sister from imprisonment in Akhsi in return for a promise not to attack the fortress until a year had passed. Three months ago Tambal had sent
messengers to Babur with oily assurances that Esan Dawlat, Kutlugh Nigar and Khanzada were all in good health and being treated with the respect due to women of the royal house. But he had not offered to let them go.

Now Babur was advancing eastwards towards the town of Gava fifty miles away, recently refortified by Tambal and garrisoned with Chakrak mercenaries. He had a particular score to settle there. The Chakrak commander of its garrison had been one of the first to pledge allegiance to his half-brother Jahangir and to Tambal as regent. The town’s capture would send another signal to Tambal that it was time to conciliate Babur by returning his family.

Babur and his men stopped by the bank of a small river to allow their horses to drink. As Babur was eating without relish a hunk of sour cheese, made from mare’s milk, he saw one of his scouts approaching on his horse. To Babur’s alarm a body was strapped limp across his saddlebow. Running towards the man, Babur shouted, ‘What has happened? Who is this man?’

‘He was a merchant. I found him lying half alive in a pool of blood by the side of the track with a sword slash across his stomach. I lifted him on to my horse but he died soon after. Before he did, though, he told me he had been heading for a small caravanserai about ten miles from here with three other merchants when about two hours ago they were attacked by a Chakrak raiding party. They killed his fellows and left him for dead before making off with all the goods.’

‘We must find the Chakraks and avenge him if we can. Send out some of your fellow scouts.’

‘Majesty, that may not be necessary. With his last breath the merchant told me that he’d overheard the Chakraks talking of making for the caravanserai to see if they could find more victims there . . .’

‘In that case we make for the caravanserai.’

The singing was wild and raucous – just like the Chakraks themselves. Men’s voices, slurred with drink, soared to a new crescendo, belting out suggestions for obscene actions so gross and so physically
impossible that, despite himself, Babur grinned. He glanced at Wazir Khan – he was smiling too.

Babur signalled to his men, who were all around him in the long grass, and, like him, lying flat on their stomachs, to keep down and wait. Then he wriggled closer to the single-storey, mud-brick caravanserai overlooking a ford across one of Ferghana’s swift-flowing rivers where the revellers were letting themselves go. The jingling of bells told him dancing girls were there. So did a sudden, indignant female shriek, followed by gusts of male laughter.

It was still only mid-afternoon, but the twenty or so Chakraks were clearly already pissed as rats. They hadn’t even troubled to tether their horses properly and some, with matted manes and tails so long they brushed the ground, had already trotted away. As for their booty, seized from the four merchants, they couldn’t even be bothered to carry it inside. The merchants’ grey pack mules, roped together and contentedly grazing, were still loaded with wicker panniers stuffed with what looked like furs and leather. All the Chakraks seemed to have taken inside were barrels of wine.

Barbarians, Babur thought. They were about to get what was coming to them and it was a nice thought. Raising his head above the long grasses, Babur looked round but could see no one. Just as he’d thought, they’d not even the wit to post a boy to keep watch over the animals or the bags. Rising to his feet, he crept towards what was more of a hole in the caravanserai’s thick walls than a window, just to the right of the low entrance, and peered cautiously inside. The room was bare, except for a long wooden table pushed against the back wall, some three-legged stools and a half broken bench. In the middle of the room a plump, snub-nosed girl, wearing a tightly belted red-flowered jacket over pale, baggy yellow trousers with bells around her ankles and her wrists, and another taller girl in blue trousers and jacket and with a tambourine in her grubby hands were whirling and gyrating, stamping their bare feet on the flagstone floor. As he watched, a couple of Chakraks, sweaty-faced under their round, shaggy sheepskin hats, lunged at them unsteadily, grabbing unsuccessfully for a breast or a buttock and tumbling to the floor, amid the cheers of their companions.

In one corner, a large black kettle was suspended over a smoky fire. In another, Babur watched a Chakrak drop his trousers and begin busily defecating, his comrades seemingly oblivious to the stink. Another got to his feet and spewed an arc of yellow vomit before slumping down again, flicking a gobbet of sick from his sleeve with a long fingernail. Babur ducked away again. He had seen enough in every sense.