He had barely descended from his howdah before Bairam Khan spoke. ‘Majesty, you’ve heard the news — Hemu’s forces have taken Delhi. The war council is assembled in your tent and already debating what we must do. We must join them immediately.’ Following Bairam Khan inside, Akbar saw his other commanders and counsellors sitting cross-legged on the thick red and blue carpet around a low, gilded stool draped in green velvet — the emperor’s chair. As Akbar took his place they rose and made brief obeisance to him, but he noticed how, as they sat down again, their eyes quickly turned to the tall, lean man standing by his side.
‘Summon Tardi Beg so that he can tell the story he has already told me,’ Bairam Khan ordered. Moments later, the Moghul Governor of Delhi was ushered in. Akbar had known and liked Tardi Beg all his life. He was a warrior of swaggering confidence from the mountains north of Kabul, with a booming voice to match the muscular bulk of his body. Usually his eyes held a humorous twinkle but now the lined, sun-burnished face above the thick black beard looked sombre.
‘Well, Tardi Beg, account for yourself before His Majesty and the council.’ Bairam Khan’s tone was cold. ‘Tell us how you abandoned the imperial capital to a seller of saltpetre and his rabble.’
‘It was no rabble, but a powerful, well-armed force. Hemu’s origins may be humble but he is an accomplished general who has won many battles for whoever would hire him. Now he is no longer a mercenary, but fighting for himself. He has raised the supporters of the old Lodi dynasty displaced by your grandfather against us, Majesty, and it seems that even the proudest and most noble will do whatever he bids them. Our spies reported a great advance party swarming towards Delhi over the plains from the west and that Hemu’s main army — an even bigger force, with three hundred war elephants — was not many days behind. There was nothing we could do but withdraw from the city or face certain destruction.’
Bairam Khan’s face tautened with anger. ‘By fleeing Delhi you have sent a signal to every rebel and petty chieftain to turn against us. I left you with a garrison of twenty thousand men. .’
‘It wasn’t enough.’
‘Then you should have sent word to me and held the city until I could send reinforcements.’
Tardi Beg’s eyes flashed and the fingers of his right hand sought the hilt of the ruby-studded dagger tucked into his sash. ‘Bairam Khan, we have known each other many years and fought and bled side by side. Are you questioning my loyalty?’
‘Your conduct is something for which you will answer on a future occasion, Tardi Beg. The question now is how to regain what you have lost. We should. .’ Bairam Khan broke off as a man with a straggling brown beard entered the tent. ‘Ahmed Khan, I’m glad you have returned safely. What can you tell us?’
Akbar was always pleased to see Ahmed Khan, one of the most trusted of his father Humayun’s ichkis, his inner circle. Humayun had appointed him Governor of Agra, but when the trouble with Hemu began Bairam Khan had recalled him and asked him to resume his former role of chief scout and intelligence gatherer. The liberal speckling of dust on his clothes suggested he had only just arrived in the camp.
‘Hemu is advancing on Delhi from the northwest at the head of his main army of two hundred thousand men. If he maintains his present pace he will reach the city in about a week. According to a small band of soldiers my men intercepted as they were riding to join him, he intends to proclaim himself emperor there. He has already assumed the title of padishah and ordered coins to be minted in his name. What is more, he claims the Moghuls are alien interlopers in Hindustan ruled by a mere boy, and that the roots of our dynasty are so weak they will be easy to pluck out.’
His words seemed to stir the council into life, Akbar thought, watching them exchange shocked glances. ‘We must strike now — before Hemu reaches Delhi and consolidates his position,’ Bairam Khan was saying. ‘If we are quick we can intercept him before he gets there.’
‘But the risk is too great,’ objected a commander from Herat whose left arm ended in a stump where his hand should have been. ‘If we are defeated we will lose everything. We should try to win ourselves time by negotiating. .’
‘Nonsense. Why should Hemu negotiate from a position of such strength?’ said Muhammad Beg, a thickset and grizzled veteran Badakhshani with a broken nose. ‘I agree with Bairam Khan.’
‘You are all wrong,’ cut in Ali Gul, a Tajik. ‘We have only one option — to withdraw to Lahore which is still under Moghul control and regroup. Then, when we are strong enough, we can drive out our enemies.’
No one is paying me any attention, thought Akbar as the angry, anxious clamour rose around him. Bairam Khan was frowning and looking intently about him. Akbar knew he was assessing his next move. He was also sure that Bairam Khan’s strategy was right — attack was the surest defence. Hadn’t his father admitted that during his campaigns he had too often been prepared to delay and thus ceded the initiative to his enemies? In that moment Akbar made up his mind. He would not be driven out of Hindustan as his father had been. It was the Moghuls’ destiny to rule Hindustan, but, more than that, it was his destiny, and rule it he would.
Almost before he realised it, he was on his feet, every eye upon him. All were used to him just sitting there, their boy emperor listening to their advice and quietly acquiescing in their decisions. ‘Enough of this. How dare any of you even think of abandoning the empire?’ he said loudly. ‘It’s not yours to surrender. I am the rightful ruler here. My duty — our duty — is to win new lands, not yield those our ancestors won to petty usurpers. We must attack Hemu at once and crush him like a melon beneath the elephant’s foot. I will lead the troops myself.’
As Akbar sat down again, he looked instinctively towards Bairam Khan, whose almost imperceptible nod told him his outburst had pleased his commander-in-chief. His other counsellors and commanders were on their feet now and suddenly the great tent was filled with their voices, this time all shouting one thing: ‘Mirza Akbar! Mirza Akba!’ His first reaction was relief, then pride. Not only were they acknowledging him as one of the Amirzada — the blood-kin of Timur — but they were affirming their readiness to follow him to war in his first campaign as emperor. He had asserted himself and despite his youth they had listened. Command was sweet.
An hour later, Akbar visited his mother in the royal women’s quarters. The sleeping tents and bathhouses were protected by a fence of tall, gilded wooden screens lashed together with thongs of oxhide in which there was only one well-guarded entry gate. As he entered her tent, he smelled the sweet spicy scent that ever since childhood he had associated with Hamida — sandalwood. It was coming from a silver incense burner in the centre of the floor, from which a thin wisp of smoke was curling upwards to a vent in the roof.
Hamida was lying against a bolster of flowered silk while Zainab her attendant combed her long hair, dark as Akbar’s own. On one side sat his aunt Gulbadan, frowning with concentration as she plucked the strings of a somewhat battered round-bellied lute that had once belonged to Akbar’s great-great-grandmother, who had carried it strapped to her back during the Moghuls’ flight from Central Asia. Akbar knew the story of that lute as minutely as he knew all the family history. He also knew that his aunt, clever as she was, had no talent for lute-playing and that that annoyed her, hence her persistence.
On the other side of Hamida, embroidering a shirt, was his wet-nurse or milk-mother, Maham Anga. In Moghul society, the bond between wet-nurse and the royal child she had suckled was lifelong. It also made Maham Anga’s own son Adham Khan — just a few months older than himself — his milk-brother, bound to him with ties as strong as those of blood.
At the sight of Akbar, the faces of all three women lit up. His mother Hamida, barely thirty and slender-bodied and smooth-skinned still, jumped up and hugged him. Gulbadan put down her lute and smiled. A little older than Hamida, tiny lines already wrinkled the corners of her tawny eyes, and had her long hair not been hennaed, silver threads would have run through it. Maham Anga came f
orward to embrace him warmly. She was taller than either Hamida or Gulbadan and handsome in a big-boned, almost masculine way.
Akbar was pleased that the three women who meant most to him were here together. ‘I have come to you straight from the war council. Hemu’s advance force has captured Delhi but he won’t hold it long. Tomorrow I will lead our forces to intercept him and his main army before he can join his troops in Delhi. We will defeat Hemu and retake what is ours.’
While he spoke, Hamida’s eyes — amber-brown like his own — were fixed on his face. As he fell silent she continued to regard him steadily. What was going through her mind? he wondered.
‘My son,’ his mother said at last, emotion in her voice, ‘I always knew, even when I carried you in my belly, that one day you would be a great warrior and a great leader. The realisation that that time has come fills me with joy. I have something for you.’ She whispered something to Zainab, who hurried off. When she returned several minutes later she was carrying an object wrapped in green velvet which she laid on the carpet at Hamida’s feet. His mother knelt and threw back the velvet, and Akbar saw his father’s golden breastplate and eagle-hilted sword, Alamgir, in its sapphire-studded scabbard.
The armour and the sword evoked the image of his father so powerfully that for a moment Akbar closed his eyes lest his mother see the tears in them. Hamida, helped by Maham Anga, buckled the breastplate on him. Humayun had been tall and muscular but Akbar was already nearly as broad and the armour fitted well. Now Hamida was holding Alamgir out to him. Slowly, he drew the blade from the scabbard and made a few tentative cuts through the air. The weight, the balance, felt good.
‘I was waiting until I was sure you were ready,’ said Hamida, as if she had read his mind. ‘Now I see that you are. Tomorrow, when I watch you ride away, I will feel a mother’s anxiety but also the pride of an empress. May God go with you, my son.’
Chapter 2
A Severed Head
The horizon shimmered beneath the heat haze of the late afternoon sun as Akbar stood, shifting nervously from foot to foot, on one of the few small hills on the otherwise featureless plains northwest of Delhi. Suddenly he saw emerging through the haze a troop of about fifty mounted men. As they approached, he said to Bairam Khan at his side, ‘That’s Ahmed Khan at their head, isn’t it?’
‘I can’t be sure. Your young eyes are better than mine, but that is definitely a green Moghul banner that one of the leading riders is carrying.’
Soon it became clear that it was indeed Ahmed Khan returning from the scouting expedition on which Akbar, on Bairam Khan’s advice, had despatched him three days previously to locate and confirm the strength of Hemu’s army. About a quarter of an hour later, the familiar straggle-bearded figure approached them and, as Akbar remembered him doing so often in front of his father, briefly prostrated himself.
‘Rise, Ahmed Khan. What news have you?’
‘We found Hemu and his main force without difficulty. They’re encamped at Panipat, only twelve miles north of here.’ The name Panipat was both familiar and a source of pride to Akbar. There thirty years ago his grandfather Babur had defeated the Lodi Sultan of Delhi, Sultan Ibrahim, to found the Moghul empire. Only eighteen months before, Akbar himself had ridden through the battlefield, still littered with the great bleached bones of some of Sultan Ibrahim’s war elephants, as he had accompanied his father Humayun on his victorious march to recapture Delhi and refound the empire he had lost to an ambitious ruler from Bengal, Sher Shah. Fate had not been kind to his father. After so many struggles against Sher Shah and his own traitorous half-brothers, Humayun had lived only six months after regaining his throne. Now, it seemed that it would be Akbar’s turn to command a Moghul army in battle at Panipat. Young as he was he must do everything to ensure he lived up to his father’s and grandfather’s memories.
‘How many men does Hemu have with him, Ahmed Khan?’ he asked.
‘We estimated more than a hundred and twenty thousand, at least half of them mounted and of good quality. And he also has around five hundred war elephants.’
‘Then as we expected he will outnumber us by about twenty thousand men. How many cannon and muskets does he possess?’
‘They’ve fewer cannon than we anticipated, perhaps thirty in total, many of them small. From what we could see, most of the foot soldiers are equipped with bows and arrows, not muskets, although they do of course have some musketeers.’
‘We’ve got the advantage there then, Bairam Khan, haven’t we?’ Akbar turned to his commander-in-chief. ‘There’s no reason we shouldn’t give battle at Panipat, is there? It is a place of good fortune for our people. Wouldn’t fighting there give added confidence to our troops, even if we are outnumbered?’ Akbar’s expression was almost pleading.
Bairam Khan smiled at his young protege’s enthusiasm. ‘Yes, Majesty, it is indeed a good site for a battle, and we can advance towards it across these barren plains quickly and without fear of ambush.’
Before Akbar could reply, Ahmed Khan interrupted. ‘Your Majesty speaks of Panipat being of good omen for the Moghuls. It certainly is — but perhaps not for Hemu. We heard a story from a merchant we questioned who had been trading in Hemu’s camp. He claimed he got it straight from one of Hemu’s personal attendants, but it seems to be common gossip among Hemu’s men because we later heard it repeated by another captive — a humble foot soldier whose ragged dress suggested he was far from being a member of Hemu’s war council.’
‘What is this story?’ asked Akbar.
‘That a couple of nights ago Hemu’s own war elephant — a huge beast — was killed by lightning in its stable during a brief but violent storm. None of the other elephants was even injured. When Hemu heard the news the next morning, he confessed that he’d had a nightmare that same evening in which he had fallen from his elephant into a swollen river. He was on the point of drowning when a Moghul warrior dragged him to the bank, put him in chains and led him away with a rope around his neck. Hemu explained this away to his followers saying that in his family the reverse of what was portrayed in dreams always came about in life. Thus he would soon strike us from our high howdahs and lead us into captivity. However, he seemed clearly worried, and was later observed making lavish offerings to his Hindu gods.’
This was indeed an omen, Akbar thought. But Bairam Khan was the first to speak. ‘Even if this rumour isn’t true, its circulation around Hemu’s camp will lower morale. It makes me even more certain that we should advance at once to Panipat.’
Two days later, the bright orange flames of cooking fires punctured the grey half-light of the hour before dawn as Akbar’s men grabbed a hasty meal and began to arm themselves. Nervously they tested the sharpness of their sword blades with their fingers and checked and rechecked the tightness of their horses’ girths whilst muttering prayers for their safety and success in the coming battle. Elsewhere, as agreed by the war council, small cannon were being hitched to teams of twenty-four oxen so that they could accompany the army as it advanced. In the elephant lines, the mahouts were feeding their charges with great bundles of hay, fitting their armoured coats of overlapping steel plates and strapping the curved scimitars to their tusks. The howdahs which would carry the troops on their backs were being readied to be loaded on to them once the other preparations were complete. In their tents, the medical men — the hakims — were laying out their ointments and phials of pain-dulling opium and readying their saws and cauterising irons essential for the severe wounds they knew they would encounter.
Akbar himself had slept fitfully. Images of glory had been interspersed with anxiety not to let either himself or his forebears down. He had given up any pretence at sleep two hours previously. Now he was already clad in his gilded breastplate with his father’s sword Alamgir slung from his studded metal belt. His helmet was encircled at its widest point by a row of rubies and a peacock feather set in gold waved at its crest, but in practical contrast to this show of magnificence a fine mesh of ha
rd steel rings hung down at its back and sides to protect his neck in battle. At Akbar’s side were Bairam Khan and the broad-shouldered, bearded figure of Tardi Beg, both also already armed and helmeted. Akbar had pressed Bairam Khan to allow Tardi Beg to take his place in the battle and have the opportunity to prove himself once more, but it had only been with great difficulty that he had persuaded him. Even now Bairam Khan’s tone was harsh as he spoke. ‘Tardi Beg, I trust you not to let our emperor down. It was his idea that you should lead the right wing. I had my reservations.’
‘You made that clear enough at the war council. Haven’t we fought side by side before? Haven’t we called each other tugan, brother-in-arms? Only God knows what our personal fates will be today. Let us not part on bad terms. You need not fear. I will uphold my honour.’ Tardi Beg’s usually resonant voice was quiet.
Bairam Khan stared deep into the eyes of Tardi Beg, who steadily and unblinkingly returned his gaze. Suddenly Bairam Khan smiled, stretched out his arms and embraced the other man. ‘May God be with you,’ he said. ‘I know you will fight well, my brother.’
‘Victory will be ours,’ replied Tardi Beg, before bowing to Akbar. Then without another word he turned, mounted the horse held ready for him by his groom and rode with his bodyguard towards his appointed position.
An hour and a half later, with his milk-brother Adham Khan beside him, Akbar was riding just behind the vanguard at the very centre of the mile-wide line of his advancing army. Both young men had repeatedly to rein in their horses, which seemed as eager for battle as they were, for as Bairam Khan, riding a short distance from them, had pointed out, the squadrons of horsemen on the flanks and in the vanguard must not outdistance the teams of oxen pulling the small cannon, the majestic, plodding war elephants and the ranks of archers marching behind them. Some of the bowmen had ragged clothes and many were barefoot but, like the elephants, they could still play a role in battle even in the new world of gunpowder. Their very numbers compensated for what they lacked in individual firepower, Bairam Khan had told Akbar.
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