Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne

by Alex Rutherford

  ‘Will you send Khurram again?’

  ‘That was what I wanted to discuss with you. He did well last time. He will expect me to send him but I’m reluctant to put him in danger again. The more I see of him the more convinced I am becoming that I should name him now as my heir and keep him here in safety. I can teach him much about how to govern an empire. That will help him when the time comes for him to succeed me. I wish my father had done the same for me and I do not want to repeat his mistakes.’

  Mehrunissa thought quickly. Her every instinct told her she must not allow Jahangir and Khurram to become too close. Even though Khurram was married to Arjumand to whom he was devoted and her family’s position might be advanced by such proximity, her own could only suffer. This she could not permit, but what could she say? Then an idea came to her. ‘I understand your reluctance to part from Khurram. But he is proud and will be offended if you don’t send him against Malik Ambar once again. He will take it as a criticism that last time he failed to capture or kill Malik Ambar.’

  ‘So you truly believe I should send him?’

  ‘Yes. To him, dealing with the Abyssinian is unfinished business – I have heard him say as much – and to do anything else would belittle him. And when he returns – as I am sure he will, if you order him not to hazard his own life – there will be time enough to think about naming your heir. You are still young – you have plenty of time to consider such an important step. You mustn’t forget you have other sons and how they will feel if you show too much favour to Khurram.’

  ‘Parvez is a fool and a drunk. He can surely have no more expectation of the throne than Khusrau.’

  ‘But there’s also Shahriyar. He is growing up fast and I hear encouraging things about his progress. They say that he rides superbly and is a sure shot with either bow or musket.’

  Jahangir smiled. ‘You make me ashamed. You shouldn’t have to tell me about my own son’s promise. I admit I hardly see Shahriyar.’

  ‘You should. Then you can judge him for yourself.’

  She was right, Jahangir thought. There was no need to rush to name an heir. And she was also right that he should allow Khurram to deal with Malik Ambar.

  ‘As always, your instincts are correct. You see things so clearly.’

  ‘I only want to help you. And after Khurram has departed on campaign I’ll hold a small party and invite Shahriyar so that you can see how well he is turning out. And perhaps I will also ask Ladli to join us. She too is growing up and is not without looks and accomplishment. I think you will be pleased with her.’

  ‘Do so. But enough of business. You have eased my mind. Let’s now enjoy the pleasures of the body.’ Gently he began to unfasten the coral buttons of her low-cut bodice and smiled to see the answering light in her eyes. Jahangir was hers and she was his and nothing and no one should come between them.

  Chapter 13

  The Abyssinian

  ‘My father has sent us to confront Malik Ambar once more. Undaunted by our previous victories over him the Abyssinian has once again invaded Moghul territories,’ Khurram began. He was standing immaculately dressed in cream robes with a quadruple string of pearls as a belt and another lustrous pearl almost as big as a grape adorning his cream turban on the jharoka balcony of the Agra fort to address the serried ranks of his troops gathered on the parade ground below. Jahangir, watching from the chamber behind the balcony, wondered whether he could have spoken with the same confidence and authority at his age. At Khurram’s words a ripple, like wind stirring wheat in a field, seemed to run through the rows of men and they began to cheer.

  ‘This time we will not be content with defeating Malik Ambar’s forces and expelling him from our lands as we did three years ago,’ Khurram continued, holding up his right hand to command silence. ‘We will demand that his masters, the sultans of Golconda, Bijapur and Ahmednagar, cede some of their lands and goods to us. The booty will be magnificent and I will make sure you all share in it.’ Khurram lowered his hand and smiled as a great chorus of Khurram zinderbad, Padishah Jahangir zinderbad burst from his men. His ancestor Babur had been right when recording that the prospect of profit was the best way of ensuring the loyalty and bravery of an army, Jahangir thought.

  When finally the shouting had died down, Khurram went on, ‘Tonight, once our final preparations are completed, I have ordered our cooks to provide a special feast so that when we ride out from Agra tomorrow we do so not only confident in our ultimate victory but also with well-filled stomachs.’ Another wave of cheering enveloped Khurram as he turned, followed by two tall bodyguards dressed in cream with steel breastplates and helmets polished to mirror brightness, and went inside to where his father was waiting.

  ‘You spoke well,’ Jahangir said, embracing him.

  ‘Because I wish my men to fight well. My announcement of the feast will speed their final preparations.’

  ‘Today I received more news of Malik Ambar’s movements. It appears he is marauding through the area around Mandu, raiding some of the richer estates. He’s also seized two district treasuries and a local armoury.’

  ‘So he’ll have amassed quite a bit of loot?’

  ‘Yes, but that might work in our favour by slowing him down a little and making it easier for you to catch up with him.’

  ‘That will be my biggest problem. Our forces outnumber his and are the more heavily armed. Though I’ve ordered our men to bring no unnecessary baggage or equipment, his troops will be more mobile and nimble. Also, they know the southern lands better than we do, as we found to our cost three years ago. They’ll again be an elusive prey . . .’

  ‘But I don’t doubt your ability to succeed.’

  Khurram’s expression told Jahangir that his son didn’t doubt it either. ‘I’ll set up my headquarters at Burhanpur on the Tapti river again. From there I’ll march for Mandu to try to come up with Malik Ambar. I’ll also send flanking detachments to the south to block his retreat. I intend to drive him further into our territory rather than out of it so that we can reduce his advantage in local knowledge. Once I have defeated him there – as God willing I will – I’ll have a better chance of destroying the remnants of his army as they retreat towards his own lands and of capturing Malik Ambar himself, ending his threat once and for all.’

  ‘Be careful. He is a wily enemy.’

  ‘He won’t escape me this time.’

  ‘I know, but remember not to let youthful eagerness and confidence in your abilities, however justified, make you abandon prudence. Think your plan of battle through carefully with your commanders. Take no unnecessary risks yourself.’

  ‘I will try to remember, Father.’

  ‘Arjumand goes with you, despite her pregnancy?’

  ‘She insists on it, as she did last time. She also refuses to be parted from our children, though once we reach Burhanpur they will remain in the safety of the fortress there. Forgive me, Father. If I may I must leave you. I’ve some last minute commissariat matters to attend to before the farewell feast.’

  Jahangir opened his arms to his son and the two men embraced again. ‘God bless and speed you back to me victorious, my son.’

  After Khurram had gone, Jahangir walked out on to the jharoka balcony. The soldiers on the parade ground had dispersed. Looking towards the Jumna he saw a string of war elephants being led from the hati mahal to make their slow way down to the brown waters to drink, but otherwise there was little movement on the riverbank. The sun was sinking, streaking the western sky crimson and purple. How often had a Moghul emperor stood here, contemplating such a scene? For a moment Jahangir imagined his forebears – Babur the warrior from the Asian steppes, Humayun the stargazer, his own father the great Akbar, so revered by his people – standing beside him. Their line was ancient, reaching back even beyond Timur to the warrior Genghis Khan . . . It made him proud to think of it, and even prouder that he had fathered such an able and loyal son as Khurram, about to lead the Moghul armies in defence of the empire their anc
estors had bled for.

  ‘Highness,’ reported Kamran Iqbal as the Deccan sun beat down on the fabric of the red command tent in which Khurram was sitting on a small low divan surrounded by his senior officers. ‘Ever since we freed the area around Mandu, Malik Ambar’s men have continued to retreat before our advance. They are still following the course of the Bari river, sticking close to its west bank as they make their way south. They’re now less than twenty miles from their own territories.’

  ‘Good. That means we’ve achieved something since launching our pursuit from Burhanpur, but it’s not enough . . . Are any of our forces between them and the range of high hills that mark the divide between our two lands?’

  ‘No, Highness. Only a few detachments of scouts not strong enough to fight a delaying action.’

  ‘I thought not. Malik Ambar has outmanoeuvred us yet again. Despite our best efforts we’ve never managed to get enough of our forces between him and the borderlands to compel him to fight us on ground of our own choosing. He seems to anticipate our every move.’

  ‘But we’ve been victorious in nearly all the skirmishes we’ve fought with his men and we’ve kept him away from any sources of fresh plunder – and even recovered some of what he had taken before,’ said Kamran Iqbal with a hint of pride in his voice, while several other officers nodded in vigorous agreement.

  ‘True, but I wanted to do more than contain his threat. Now I fear that within a day or two he will be back in among the hills he knows so well and almost impossible to bring to a decisive battle’, said Khurram, trying but failing to keep some of the frustration he felt out of his voice. It was almost as if Malik Ambar had a spy amongst his senior officers, he’d complained to Arjumand in their tent the previous evening.

  ‘But in that case, wouldn’t he have found an opportunity to surprise and defeat you, rather than retreat?’ she had argued. She was probably right, he comforted himself.

  ‘Highness, one of our most reliable scouts tells me that the river bends quite sharply to the west about ten miles or so from Malik Ambar’s present position.’ Kamran Iqbal interrupted Khurram’s sombre musing. ‘Couldn’t we attempt to corner him in the river bend?’

  ‘Perhaps, but it depends on the nature of the ground within the bend. It’s not too marshy, is it?’

  ‘No. There are some sandbanks which might have defensive potential but they’re quite low and apparently there aren’t too many of them.’

  ‘It’s probably worth the risk then,’ said Khurram, his spirits rising. ‘When is Malik Ambar likely to get there?’

  ‘Around ten o’clock tomorrow morning – if he follows his usual pattern of making camp for about nine hours overnight.’

  ‘Let’s attack him there, then. Have our outlying pickets redoubled to stop Malik Ambar’s scouts getting close enough to observe our preparations. We’ll make the bulk of them after dark for added security.’

  The next morning Khurram felt the mixture of fear and excitement that he always experienced before a battle drive out all other emotions as he galloped across the sandy ground towards Malik Ambar’s position in the river bend. His preparations the previous night had gone seemingly unnoticed by his enemies but an advance party of his war elephants had travelled only half of the ten-mile distance towards the ambush place in the river bend before they had encountered some of Malik Ambar’s scouts. Although the musketeers in their howdahs had shot down three of the scouts at least two others had galloped away unscathed towards Malik Ambar’s column, so he would have had nearly an hour’s warning of their attack. Perhaps he had been wrong not to rely solely on his cavalry, thought Khurram, but then he would have lacked the firepower of the small cannon in the howdahs of his elephants, which were loping into the attack surprisingly quickly for such large cumbersome-looking beasts, only a short distance behind his horsemen.

  In the time the scouts’ warning had given them, Malik Ambar’s artillerymen had got perhaps half a dozen of their cannon into position behind some of the sand dunes, which seemed more numerous if a little lower than Khurram had anticipated. Their first shots had fallen short, thudding harmlessly into the sandy earth. Now, however, two of the cannon balls fired in the second round landed close together among the leading wave of Moghul horsemen.

  Khurram, who was galloping in the second wave the better to see and direct the action, saw the mounts of two of his leading men crash to the ground, pitching their riders over their heads. Other horses including that of one of the Moghul standard-bearers stumbled over the bodies and fell too, legs flailing in the air. The long green banner dropped by its carrier was blown by the wind towards Malik Ambar’s lines for a few yards before becoming entangled with a small spiny bush growing on the side of one of the dunes.

  Malik Ambar’s gunners were well disciplined and drilled. More cannon shots boomed out and more horsemen fell from the saddle. Two horses, one missing part of its left foreleg and both of them riderless and neighing in pain, swerved away from the guns across the path of other Moghul horsemen. As they did so, the first wave of Moghul cavalry began to lose all impetus. Soon Khurram and the leading riders of the second wave were among the remnants of the first.

  ‘Come on! Charge with us!’ Khurram yelled as loudly as he could above the noise of battle to some of the faltering riders. ‘Aim for the nearest cannon – those behind the low dune to the left. The distance is short – they can’t reload fast enough to get more than one round off before we reach them.’ Head bent low to his horse’s neck and with his sword extended before him in his right hand, Khurram wheeled his mount to lead them directly towards the long low dune in the centre of Malik Ambar’s line over which two cannon barrels peered.

  Before he had covered more than half the distance, he heard a crashing explosion followed immediately by a second boom and felt a rush of hot air as shards of metal and a shower of sand and grit flew around him and acrid smoke billowed from behind the dune. The chestnut horse of the rider next to him collapsed with a jagged piece of metal embedded in its throat and its rider, a tall, orange-clad Rajput, hit the ground head first and lay still, his neck broken. Khurram kicked his horse on, ears ringing, brains scrambled and eyes and mouth full of grit and smoke. Even dazed as he was, he knew that the violent blasts were not the normal discharge of the cannon. The thought that it might be some sort of new weapon flitted across his mind for a moment but then as his black horse breasted the low dune and some of the smoke cleared he saw that one of the two large cannon behind the dune had exploded. Its barrel had been peeled back like a banana. The dismembered and mangled bodies of several of its crew were strewn around. There was a large crater in the sand nearby around which were some fragments of tin and white cloth. The second explosion must have been caused by some powder stored nearby and ignited by the first.

  The explosion of the first cannon had blown the long barrel of the second from its heavy wooden limber crushing two of its gunners beneath it. A third was trying to crawl away with a shattered left leg which ended in a bloody mess of flesh and bone halfway down his calf.

  Looking down as he reined in his horse to allow his troops to gather round him again, Khurram saw that the lower part of his breastplate, his saddle pommel and a steel plate protecting his horse’s head were all spattered with blood and small pieces of flesh that must have come from the body of one of the crew of the first cannon. He had been very lucky, he thought with a shudder. The explosion had occurred directly in front of him. If overuse or faulty manufacture had not caused that gun barrel to explode, more than likely the cannon ball would have cut him in two. He must not fail to exploit the opportunity fate had given him.

  To his delight he and the men swiftly gathering about him were now in Malik Ambar’s lines and the Abyssinian’s artillerymen could not manhandle their remaining weapons into a position where they could fire at them even if, stunned as they must be by the explosions, they had the presence of mind to do so. Some of the war elephants had now come up, trampling through the soft sand
of the dune. Khurram waved them forward towards the centre of Malik Ambar’s position, where behind some more dunes he could see baggage wagons and beyond them a group of mounted men, and shouted to his horsemen to follow.

  Malik Ambar’s troops were beginning to recover from their confusion. As the elephants moved forward Khurram heard the crackle of musketry from behind some of the nearby dunes, followed by the ring of musket balls ricocheting off the elephants’ heavy steel plate armour. One elephant, clearly hit in an unprotected spot, first slowed and then veered away but the rest plodded resolutely forward as if deaf to their comrade’s trumpets of distress. Knowing that the problem with muskets as with artillery was the time required to complete the cumbersome loading process, Khurram immediately gestured to an officer on the flank of his party to gather some of his horsemen to cut down the musketeers before they could reload. The man obeyed and less than a minute later several musketeers emerged from behind one side of the nearest of the dunes as the horsemen rounded the other. The enemy threw down their weapons and as they ran they tried pathetically to protect their heads from the cavalrymen’s sharp slashing swords with their hands. It was to no avail and soon all were lying sprawled in the sand.

  Meanwhile the elephants were approaching the wagons. Suddenly Khurram saw a group of Malik Ambar’s men straining to heave two small wagons aside, revealing as they did so two cannon and their leather-jerkined gunners. At once the artillerymen put their tapers to the firing holes. One of the leading elephants pitched forward, hit by a cannon ball which shattered one of its tusks and reduced its trunk and mouth to bloody pulp. The second shot luckily missed but sprayed sand as it embedded itself in the ground near the foot of another large Moghul elephant. The beast stopped immediately, perhaps blinded momentarily by the grit, and began to trumpet. Nevertheless, the other elephants moved round it, answering to the commands of their mahouts as obediently as if on the parade ground. Khurram saw a flash and a billow of white smoke from a howdah as one of his gajnals fired. The ball hit the nearest of Malik Ambar’s cannon, knocking off one of its metal-bound wooden wheels and destroying the axle, causing the cannon barrel to point skywards at a crazy angle. Musketeers from another of the howdahs had picked off two of the crew of the second cannon, one of whom lay on his back, heels drumming the sandy ground in his death agony. As Khurram watched, four of his horsemen surrounded the remaining two artillerymen, who threw themselves face down on the ground in token of surrender.