It was seven hours since she had set out under a flag of truce. Straining his eyes into the darkness, Humayun allowed himself to hope for just a moment that Akbar might be in Gulbadan’s arms but common sense quickly overcame such wishful thinking. Kamran was not a man to be moved by sentiment. He would not release Akbar until the very last moment, when he was certain Humayun would keep his word.
Nevertheless, unable to contain his impatience, Humayun ran to the roped-off enclosure where his horse was tethered. Without waiting for a saddle and using the halter in place of reins, he urged it to leap the rope and galloped off down to the valley. His heart was jumping so fast that for a moment he imagined the thudding of hooves on the soft turf was the sound it was making. For so much of the time he had to suppress his feelings — to show himself a cool, dispassionate leader to his men, to turn a calm, confident face to Hamida. But out here in the enshrouding darkness he could admit that he was as vulnerable as any man to fears and anxieties, particularly over the fate of those he loved and whom it was his duty to protect.
‘It is the emperor!’ he heard Jauhar cry out. Swerving to a standstill just a few yards from where Gulbadan’s wagon had halted, Humayun slid from his horse. Jauhar had also dismounted and without words led Humayun to Gulbadan’s cart. Taking the torch Jauhar was holding, Humayun drew aside the curtains and peered in at his half-sister.
‘I am glad to see you safely returned. What did Kamran say? Will he accept my terms?’
Gulbadan leaned further forward into the light, her young face very tired. ‘Humayun, I’m sorry. Kamran wasn’t there — only Askari. Hearing of your advance, some weeks ago Kamran rode to Kabul which he means to defend against you.’
‘And Akbar?’
‘Kamran took him with him to Kabul. But Humayun — there is still hope. Askari assured me Akbar is in good health and that Maham Anga is with him. . ’
‘How can I trust a word Askari says when he follows a man prepared to use a child as a weapon against me?’
‘Askari does feel the shame of it, I think. Also, from what he says I believe he thinks that, by ordering him to remain behind in Kandahar, Kamran has left him to bear the brunt of your anger.’
‘Will Askari surrender Kandahar to me?’
‘He will — on the promise that you will spare his life and those of his men.’
Humayun smiled grimly. ‘He can keep his miserable life and so may his men, but my offer of free passage was conditional on the safe return of Akbar. Askari, at least, will stay in my custody until I have found my son and dealt with Kamran.What of Hindal? Did you learn anything of his fate?’
‘My brother is often in my thoughts and I pressed Askari about what had happened to him. . He told me that Kamran ordered Hindal to be taken to the fort at Jalalabad and held prisoner there. But somehow on the way there he managed to escape. That was many months ago and Askari does not know where he has gone. . I hope my brother is safe.’
‘So do I.Though we had our differences I was not blameless and he was more of a brother to me than either of the others. But you, Gulbadan, you are a true sister to me and a true friend to Hamida. What you did today was hard and I’m grateful.’
It was a bitter thing that Babur’s sons should be so divided. Humayun was locked in gloom as he walked slowly back to his horse. Arriving back at the camp, he went straight to Hamida. She was waiting inside the women’s tent and at his sombre look the light of hope in her dark eyes faded. ‘So Kamran has refused your offer.’
‘Not even that. He wasn’t there. Hamida — he has taken Akbar to Kabul. . ’
As tears welled in her eyes, Humayun caught her to him. ‘Listen to me. We mustn’t despair. Askari is still in Kandahar and he promised Gulbadan that Akbar is in good health. That at least is good news.’
‘But Kabul is so far away. . ’
‘It’s three hundred miles away and I’d go three thousand miles to recover our son. You know that. . ’
‘I do, but it’s so hard. I think constantly about Akbar and what might be happening to him, even when I try to sleep. When I was pregnant and we were fleeing Maldeo, I couldn’t help imagining how it would feel to have him cut living from my womb. I felt the cold blade in my flesh. This worry is as bad. . it’s like a physical pain. I’m not sure how much more of it I can bear.’
‘Be strong for a little longer. . be strong for our son, just as you were when Maldeo plotted our destruction.Askari has offered to surrender Kandahar to me. As soon as I have secured it, we ride for Kabul.’ He felt her body relax a little and she stepped back from him.
‘You’re right — disappointment made me speak as I did. I had convinced myself I would get Akbar back within a day or two. It was foolish to build up my hopes.’
‘It was only natural. I’d let myself hope too. I also must learn patience and persistence. Taking strength from each other we will endure and succeed.’
A few minutes later, Humayun entered his command tent, sat down, took a piece of paper and scratched a few sentences on it. Then, though it was growing late, he summoned his war council.
‘Ahmed Khan, I want you to send a detachment of your men to Kandahar tonight taking this letter to my half-brother Askari. My message to him is simple. “Tomorrow I will ride at the head of my forces to your gates. If you open them to me, as you promised our sister, you will keep your life though you will be my prisoner. If you attempt in any way to deceive me, your life — and the lives of your men — are forfeit. The choice is yours.”’
As Ahmed Khan hurried off, Humayun addressed the rest of his commanders.
‘Tomorrow, if my half-brother keeps his word, we will occupy Kandahar. Bairam Khan, I ask you to select two thousand of your men under the leadership of your most trustworthy senior officers to garrison the fortress.’
Bairam Khan nodded.‘I will choose from among my archers and musketeers and, if you agree, Majesty, I will also detail a detachment of cavalry to remain to patrol the surrounding country.’
‘An excellent suggestion, Bairam Khan. Once our garrison is in place in Kandahar, we set out for Kabul. Though it is a long journey through difficult mountain terrain, we must travel hard and fast. Every day that passes gives my half-brother more time to buy allies and strengthen his position there.’
‘What about our baggage train? That will slow us,’ asked Zahid Beg.
‘We will carry what we can with us and designate a small force to protect the baggage train, including our cannon, which must follow at the best pace it can. But the hour grows late. We will meet again an hour before dawn to prepare for our advance on Kabul.’
The long valley, framed to north and south by sweeping grey mountains, was filled with tents radiating out in lines from the centre where Humayun’s scarlet command tent stood. To its right were the tents of his senior officers, a bright scarlet banner streaming from the roof of Bairam Khan’s. To the left, enclosed by wooden screens fastened together by leather thongs, were the haram tents where the women had their private accommodation. Hamida and Gulbadan had insisted on travelling with Humayun rather than with the slower baggage column and neither had murmured a word of complaint about the forced marches of fourteen hours a day.
But despite their efforts Kabul still lay nearly a hundred and fifty miles away to the northeast and there was little Humayun could do to increase their pace. All the time it was growing colder. Though it was only early October, the gusting winds already carried a few flakes of snow. Before too long it would be full winter.
At least as he advanced his army was swelling with new recruits. Ahmed Khan had just told him that another group of deserters from Kamran had ridden into the camp offering him their allegiance. Humayun had ordered the leader to be brought to him for questioning.
Half an hour later, Humayun looked down at the man lying at his feet, arms outstretched, in the formal obeisance of the korunush. From his black boots embroidered with red stars, an emblem of their clan, Humayun guessed he was a chieftain of the Kafirs who
dwelled in the kotals, the high, narrow passes around Kabul. The Kafirs were notorious turncoats. When Humayun was just a boy, his father had made an example of the men of one Kafir village who had murdered his envoys by having them impaled before the walls of Kabul so that the earth had been stained red with their blood.
‘Get up. You are a Kafir, are you not?’
‘Yes, Majesty.’ The man, weather-beaten, squat and bandy-legged, looked gaunt and his sheepskin jerkin was torn.
‘Why have you and your men come here?’
‘To offer to serve you, Majesty.’
‘But you served my half-brother Kamran, didn’t you?’
The Kafir nodded.
‘Why did you desert him?’
‘He broke his word. He promised us gold but he gave us nothing. When two of my men complained he had them flung from the walls of the citadel of Kabul.’
‘When was this?’
‘Three weeks ago. A few days later, when your brother sent us foraging into the mountains, we did not return but came in search of your army.’
‘What was happening in Kabul before you left?’
‘Your brother was fortifying the citadel and laying in supplies ready for a siege — that was why he sent parties like ours out foraging. He fears you, Majesty. He knows, as does the whole of Kabul, that you are advancing with a great army. . that you have Persian troops under your command and that in the eyes of the world you, not he, is padishah. . ’
Humayun ignored the man’s ingratiating smile. ‘Do you know anything about my infant son? Did you see him in Kabul?’
The man looked blank. ‘No, Majesty. I did not even know he was there. . ’
‘You are sure — you heard nothing of a royal child brought with his wet-nurse from Kandahar?’
‘No, Majesty, nothing.’
Humayun studied the Kafir chieftain for a few moments. The man had no allegiance to anyone or anything. All he cared about was who had the fattest purse. And he had been in Kamran’s service. Humayun’s instinct was to have him and his men ejected from the camp. But that would send out a bad message to other clans thinking of joining him. The struggle ahead would be long and hard and he would need every soldier he could get. His own father had made good use of the wild mountain tribes’ ferocious fighting skills, though he had kept a tight rein on them.
‘You and your men may join my army, but understand this. Any disobedience, any disloyalty will be punished by death. If you serve me well, once Kabul has fallen you will be generously rewarded. Do you accept?’
‘Yes, Majesty.’
Humayun turned to his guards. ‘Take this man to Zahid Beg so he can decide what use to make of him and his companions.’
As the setting sun cast purple shadows over the valley and dusk came tumbling down, Humayun once more felt the need for solitude, the need to escape if only for a little while from the burden of his responsibilities. Dismissing his guards and wrapping his cloak around him, he set off northwards through the lines of tents, intending to walk the perimeter of the encampment. Instead, when he reached the edge of the camp he continued beyond it, past the pickets, drawn by the outlines of the mountains beyond as they folded away into the greater darkness.
For a while, he followed a goat track as it climbed steeply upwards. Below him he could see the orange lights of a hundred camp fires as his men cooked their evening meal. In a few minutes he must return to eat with Hamida and Gulbadan in the haram tent, but there was something compelling about the absolute stillness out on the mountainside. Glancing up, Humayun looked at the stars. Low on the horizon was Canopus — that brightest, most auspicious of stars that his father had seen on his way to Kabul and that had given him such hope. Now he hoped it was shining for him too.
Chapter 17
Flesh and Blood
Winter descended quickly in the mountains.Three weeks ago, the fluttering snowflakes had barely settled but now the wind was driving them almost horizontally down a narrow defile through the icy mountains to the northwest of Kabul as Humayun led his army onwards. With the worsening conditions compounding the difficulties of travelling over the many passes, Humayun had thought it wise to wait for his main baggage train to catch up. Though it had cost him some days, he had not dared risk being separated from his cannon and other heavy equipment for a long period by the winter weather.
Ice crystals stung Humayun’s face as he raised his head to scan the twisting track ahead. Even with eyes scrunched to slits against the blizzard’s frozen bite, he could see almost nothing, certainly not the tips of the jagged snow-covered peaks nor the summit of the pass of which the defile formed a part and which he guessed could be no more than three-quarters of a mile in front of them.
Ahmed Khan should soon return. He had sent him ahead with some of his men to confirm that the pass could be negotiated by an army such as his in weather as severe as this and also to identify a spot — probably on the downward slope — where they could camp protected from the wind.
Suddenly, despite the howling of the blizzard and the muffling effect of the red woollen cloth wound round the lower part of his face, Humayun thought he heard a cry from out of the snow ahead. Perhaps it was just a trick of the wind, or even a wolf, he thought, as he looked up again and pulled his face cloth down to hear better. As he did so, he heard another cry nearer and definitely human — ‘The enemy are ahead!’
Then he saw a shadowy rider appear through the whirling snow, galloping down the snowy track towards him, oblivious of the risks of the rocks and the ice. As the horseman drew closer, Humayun saw that it was Ahmed Khan, frantically kicking and urging his horse on while repeatedly yelling, ‘The enemy are ahead! The enemy are ahead!’ Two of his scouts were close behind him. Suddenly, one pitched forward over his horse’s head, two arrows protruding from his back as he rolled over and over in the white snow, staining it crimson with his blood. Moments later, the second scout’s chestnut horse stumbled and collapsed with several arrows in its rump. The rider slid from the saddle and stumbled on through the deep snow, only to fall himself within ten yards, transfixed by a black-feathered arrow.
Then Humayun saw emerging through the snow the dark shapes of unknown horsemen charging towards him, some crouching low over their horses’ necks, swords and lances extended in front of them, and others with bows in their hands. Humayun yelled to Bairam Khan through the wind, ‘Have the wagons drawn into the best defensive position you can — put those carrying the women right in the centre. Leave sufficient good men to guard them properly then follow me with the rest.’
Humayun kicked his horse forward to face the threat and as he did so shouted as loudly as he could to a company of mounted archers riding just behind him, ‘Fire!’ The men, who already had their double bows unslung and the strings tightened in case of just such an ambush, stood in their stirrups and loosed a volley of arrows through the driving snow towards Kamran’s men. Several horses staggered and fell, throwing their riders. One lost his domed helmet in his fall and hit his shaven head hard against a rock protruding through the snow, smashing his skull and spattering the ground with blood and brains.
However, the rest of Kamran’s cavalrymen came on, the downward slope of the defile giving added impetus to their charge as they crashed into Humayun’s front line of horsemen, who opened gaps in their ranks to receive them before trying to surround them. One of Kamran’s men, wearing a bulky sheepskin jacket and whirling a spiked flail around his head, made for Humayun. Senses heightened by the prospect of action, Humayun noticed as he pulled his own horse’s head round how the mane of his opponent’s mount was encrusted with icicles. The spiked balls at the end of the man’s flail swung harmlessly past Humayun as he thrust at his enemy, but his sword swipe did no more than make a deep slash in the man’s thick sheepskin jacket.
Both men turned and rode at each other again, their horses’ hot breath steaming in the frozen air. Again both struck at each other but again both missed. As Humayun’s opponent tugged hard on the rei
ns to make a third attempt on Humayun, his horse slipped on ice. As the man struggled to stay in the saddle, Humayun turned his own mount sharply and was on him before he could regain sufficient control to swing his flail properly.
Humayun slashed with his sword and, although the man jerked his upper body out of the way, the sword cut deep into his attacker’s lower thigh just above the knee, severing sinew and biting into the bone. Instinctively the man dropped his flail and clutched at the wound. As he did so, Humayun struck him again, this time across his throat. Fine droplets of blood spurted into the cold air and the man fell.
All around Humayun his troops were struggling with their opponents, whom they seemed to outnumber. However, Humayun noticed that three of the enemy had surrounded Bairam Khan, who had become isolated from the rest of his men. Humayun kicked his horse towards them. Bairam Khan had lost his helmet and the blizzard was blowing his long black hair out behind him. He was defending himself as best as he could, wheeling his tall black horse expertly to confront each of his attackers in turn. Nevertheless he was being hard pressed and was already bleeding from a deep sword cut which extended from his left ear down his neck to the top of his breastplate.
The first that Bairam Khan’s assailants knew of Humayun’s arrival was the sword stroke which knocked one of their number from his saddle and the second was the blow which almost severed the sword arm of another who was poised to thrust his weapon deep into Bairam Khan’s exposed side. The third man turned to flee but Bairam Khan cut at him as he went, leaving him trailing blood on the snow as he made good his escape. He was followed by all of Kamran’s men who were able to disengage themselves. The attack had ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The whole thing had lasted less than half an hour.
‘Pursue them,’ shouted Humayun to Zahid Beg. ‘Kill and capture as many as you can but take care — others may be waiting in further ambushes ahead.’ Dismounting, he ran over towards Bairam Khan, who was slumped in his saddle. He was just in time to catch the Persian as he fell sideways. Humayun lowered him to the ground and began to staunch his wound with his own red face cloth. ‘Thank you, Majesty. I owe you my life. . I will repay you,’ mumbled Bairam Khan, grimacing with pain.
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