Mouth dry and dusty as the stone he was trying to hang on to, Babur flailed about, kicking out wildly to right and left as he sought a purchase for his feet but meeting only smooth stone. His protesting arms burned as they took his full weight. Then, just when he felt he must let go and tumble down, he felt his right foot nudge something soft — a tussock of coarse grass that must have seeded itself deep in one of the cracks between the stones. Gasping with relief, Babur pushed his right foot on it to test its strength and as it took some of his weight felt the pain in his arms subside.
For a moment he closed his eyes. He felt like an insect, tiny, vulnerable and exposed, but at least he could rest for a second. Opening his eyes again and looking up through his tumbled hair, he saw the top of the wall was tantalisingly near — perhaps no more than seven or eight feet above him. Cautiously, he stretched up an exploratory right hand and almost laughed out loud as it found a rough, protruding edge he could grip about two feet above his head. Then, still keeping his right foot on the clump of grass that had saved him, he bent his left leg and probed upwards with his foot. Again he found a hold — not much of one — just a narrow, diagonal crack in one of the stone blocks, but enough. With one last great effort he propelled himself upward, reaching for the top of the wall and praying he wasn’t about to feel the slash of a blade across his knuckles.
Heaving himself over the low parapet on to the broad top of the wall, the stone worn smooth by the feet of many sentries, Babur looked round to find to his amazement he was among the first to reach it. He felt he had been climbing for ever, but within moments all around him many more of his men, led by Wazir Khan and grunting with the effort, were dropping from their ladders.
The defenders, it seemed, had fled. Stepping back and wiping the sweat from his face, Babur tripped over a handsome, silver-bound shield that a fleeing soldier had thrown aside. He stooped to pick it up but a noise behind him made him twist around. Less cowardly soldiers of Samarkand were rushing up a steep staircase leading from the courtyard beneath the inner side of the wall. The grand vizier’s personal bodyguard, Babur guessed, noting the bright green sashes of Samarkand round their waists and the green pennants fluttering at the ends of their spears. With a yell, Babur charged towards them, knowing that Wazir Khan and his men would be with him, and found himself locked in a crowd of heaving, swearing, stabbing men. Even though the top of the wall was broad — perhaps ten feet wide — men were soon tumbling from either side of it, some wounded, some simply pushed over the parapet by stronger opponents. The stench of hot, sour sweat filled his nostrils. For ever afterwards it would be for him the scent of battle.
A giant of a man with a long black beard tinged with grey singled Babur out, a voracious sneer spreading over his fleshy face as he took in Babur’s slight stature and his youth. Babur had seen just such a look on the face of a cat about to devour a mouse and the utter disrespect stung him. Wazir Khan had insisted that Babur should wear nothing to identify him as Ferghana’s king but he would still prove his pedigree to this arrogant, fat pig.
‘Old man, you should be at home, dribbling by the fire and calling for your servants to mop up your leaking piss.’
The stout warrior looked startled for a moment but then, as he took in what Babur had said, rage suffused his features. He advanced towards Babur, balancing his spear in his large, leathery hands. ‘You cheeky little rat, I’ll shut you up.’ In a move so sudden that Babur hardly had time to register it, he reversed his spear and jammed the blunt end into the pit of Babur’s stomach.
Babur felt his feet lift off the ground as the impact flung him backwards. As his arms flailed, he was afraid the blow would hurl him off the wall but instead he felt his head snap back as it hit the low stone parapet. For a second his world dissolved into stars, not the pure, silvery starlight he’d gazed up at earlier from the reeds but a chaos of bright, jagged shapes tinged with red which seemed to ooze blood. His mouth was full of salty fluid and instinctively he spat it out. Yet still he couldn’t breathe — the blow had crushed the air out of him.
The bearded man was advancing on him again. ‘That was just for starters. You’ll suffer more for that sneer before you die,’ he spat and simultaneously jabbed at Babur’s groin with his spear. Just in time, and still struggling for breath, Babur rolled sideways and the spearhead hit the stone, striking sparks. His opponent cursed. For all his weight, he was surprisingly light on his feet. Moving like a determined great bear, he lunged at Babur, who, half bent, was clutching his winded and aching belly with one hand while still holding his sword in the other. His breath was coming just a little more easily now and he took comfort from it.
‘Well, rat spawn — soon you’ll be on the dung heap with the rest of your kind,’ the man said, repositioning his spear so that the tip was pointed directly towards Babur’s face. Babur stared at it, half hypnotised by the diamond bright, coldly gleaming point. For a moment, he felt strangely paralysed, powerless to react, but as the warrior thrust his spear at him again, he knew instinctively what he must do. Summoning all his agility and his speed he flung himself to the ground and rolled not away from his assailant but towards him, underneath his jabbing spear. As his body crashed into the man’s legs, he slashed at the back of one of his knees with his long-bladed dagger, severing the tendons. With a howl, his opponent collapsed sideways, and blood gushed from the wound. Babur scrambled to his feet and struck again. This time he aimed for the man’s ribs, at a spot just below his left armpit that the breastplate didn’t cover. He felt his blade penetrate the tough muscle and thick cartilage, then slide between the man’s ribs. The giant gave what sounded like a low sigh and slumped forward. As Babur pulled out his dagger blood spurted everywhere. He gazed, fascinated, at the first man he had killed in hand-to-hand combat.
‘Majesty, look out!’ Wazir Khan’s shout came only just in time. Turning and dropping back to his knees, Babur thrust wildly at another attacker who had been about to bring an axe biting into the back of his neck. Suddenly Babur knew fear again. What an idiot to allow himself to be taken by surprise from behind. In the nick of time, Wazir Khan kicked Babur’s new assailant to the ground and, with a single, powerful sweep of his curved sword, sent his head skidding across the battlements.
Grateful for the second chance that he knew so many inexperienced warriors did not live to enjoy, Babur was already back on his feet again, dagger and sword ready, but looking around he saw that the vizier’s guards had all been killed or fled. They lay in ones and twos, slumped over each other or spreadeagled on the stone in unnatural postures, their once bright sashes dark with blood. Babur caught the stench of spilled guts and slashed intestines.
‘Come.’ Baisanghar was beside him, blood seeping from what seemed a deep wound to his shoulder, his face taut with pain. Yet he gestured insistently to the crenellated outline of the Kok Saray just a few hundred feet away. ‘That is where the grand vizier will be hiding — if I know him, he will have taken refuge in the women’s quarters.’
Signalling to his men to follow, Babur stumbled after Baisanghar towards the staircase leading down from the wall. As he scrambled over fallen bodies, half-slipping in the gore, one face caught his eye. It belonged to a youth perhaps no older than him. Drained of blood, his lips were drawn back over the gums in a silent scream of pain and his large, dark but unseeing eyes seemed filled with fear beneath their long lashes. Babur shivered and looked quickly away. It could easily have been himself had it not been for Wazir Khan’s warning shout.
The citadel was quiet and still as Babur, Wazir Khan and their men followed Baisanghar across the courtyard. After the fight on the wall there was no reason for them to keep silent — their presence within the citadel could hardly be a secret. But Babur’s men moved as quietly and stealthily as the sheep- and cattle-rustlers so many of them were. Where were the grand vizier’s remaining guards and troops? Babur expected a rush of arrows at any moment, but there was nothing.
As they stole up to it, the four-sto
rey Kok Saray was also eerily silent, its gleaming brass doors with their dragon handles open and unguarded. Timur’s fabled stronghold. What confidence it must have taken to build something so magnificent. Its very stones exuded power and authority. Babur remembered his father’s sinister stories. ‘All of Timur’s offspring who raised their heads and sat on the throne sat there. All who lost their heads in quest of the throne lost it there. To say “They have taken the prince to the Kok Saray” meant he was already dead.’
Wazir Khan and Baisanghar were conferring. Impatient to enter, Babur joined them. ‘Majesty, we must be cautious,’ Wazir Khan said quickly, seeing Babur’s eagerness. ‘This may be a trap.’ Babur nodded. He was right. Only a careless fool would rush inside. He forced himself to curb the impetuousness that had so nearly cost him dear when he had run for the blocked doorway. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help constantly shifting from foot to foot while Wazir Khan ordered six of his men to take torches from the brackets where they were burning and enter cautiously to check for signs of an ambush.
After what seemed an age to Babur but was, in fact, just a few minutes, they returned, signalling that all seemed quiet. Babur’s heart leaped and he stepped inside, his men clustering behind him. Beyond the brass doors they found a cavernous, vaulted entrance chamber and beyond that, straight ahead, a flight of broad, shallow steps. Slowly, warily, they began to climb, guided by flickering torchlight, eyes straining into the darkness ahead. Thirty steps brought them to the second storey. Ahead rose another flight. Babur’s foot was already on its first step when he heard a shout.
‘Majesty, down, get down!’ Babur ducked as a spear flung out of the darkness above hurtled over his head, so close that he felt his hair stir. The next moment, two dozen more of the grand vizier’s men were rushing down the stairs towards them. Babur found himself twisting and slashing. In the confusion his dagger was of more use than his sword. He darted beneath his enemies’ shields, stabbing upwards with his blade, feeling warm blood spurt down his hands and arms as he found his mark. All around him his men, swearing and grunting, were pushing forward.
The grand vizier’s troops began to waver, struggling to maintain the momentum of their charge down the stairs. Soon they were being pushed ever backwards. Suddenly they lost discipline and began fleeing back up, slipping and crashing on the steps in their desperate eagerness to get away and not to have to die in a lost cause. Babur’s men came after them, slashing and hacking at the forms disappearing up the second flight of stairs, then retreating part-way up a third.
In the rush, Babur slipped on an uneven step and slithering sideways fell. One of his advancing men was so close behind that he couldn’t stop himself stumbling over Babur and in the process standing hard on the small of his back, winding him once more. As the fight receded up the third staircase, Babur scrambled painfully to his feet. For a moment he felt sick and found it hard to focus. Putting his hand against the wall he steadied himself and forced himself to take deep breaths, though his bruised ribs and strained stomach muscles made it painful.
‘Majesty.’ Wazir Khan was rushing down the stairs towards him.
‘Are you hurt?’
Babur shook his head. ‘No, I’m fine.’
‘The last of the grand vizier’s men — those we did not kill — have taken refuge at the top of the building. It’s nearly over.’ Wazir Khan allowed himself a rare smile and touched Babur’s shoulder. ‘Come.’
Just then came shouts from below and the sound of many feet pounding the stone steps towards them. Babur swung round to meet the new menace. But surging up the stairs from the dark shadows, he recognised some of the men who had come through the tunnel and, at their head, Ali Mazid Beg, the muscular chieftain from the west of Ferghana he and Wazir Khan had chosen to lead them.
‘Majesty, the citadel and the fortress are ours — as is the city.’ Ali Mazid Beg looked exhausted but beneath the filth and sweat his almond-eyed face beamed triumph.
‘You have done well.’
‘Majesty.’ Though he was still out of breath, Ali Mazid Beg’s voice was full of pride at what he and his troops had achieved.
‘Have you or your men seen the grand vizier?’
Ali Mazid Beg shook his head regretfully.
‘Then it must be as Baisanghar thought. He is hiding among his women, here in the Kok Saray, unless he has escaped from the city.’
‘Where would he go, Majesty? Who would hide him?’ Wazir Khan asked.
With Wazir Khan at his side Babur climbed the remaining steps to the top storey of the Kok Saray. Directly opposite the staircase, through a crowd of his jubilant warriors, he could see a pair of shining silver doors inlaid with turquoises.
‘The women’s quarters?’ Babur asked.
Baisanghar nodded.
In his mind’s eye, Babur suddenly pictured his sister Khanzada wide-eyed with fear. How would he feel if she was hiding behind such a door, defenceless before warriors high on victory? He turned to the men clustered around him. ‘The women are not to be touched. I come to Samarkand as its new king, not as a marauder in the night.’
He read angry disappointment on many of the men’s flushed faces. They’d probably believe he’d spoken as he had because he was still a boy with an incomplete understanding of a man’s needs and frustrations. But they could think what they liked. Glancing at Wazir Khan he saw approval on his commander’s face and felt he’d passed yet another test.
The silver doors shuddered under the impact of a battering ram carried up from one of the courtyards below and the turquoises shattered, bright shards falling to the floor. Yet the doors held. Beneath the shining silver, the wood must be thick and the bolts strong, Babur thought as, for the fourth time, his men hurled the metal-tipped tree trunk at them. But at last the doors’ silver covering buckled and the wood beneath splintered. Two warriors used their axes to hack a hole big enough for a man to enter.
For a few seconds Babur and his men waited, fingering their weapons. He was sure that at any moment they would hear the cry of guards rushing to defend the harem or be forced back from the opening by arrows fired from within. Instead the only response was silence and the rich, heavy scent of sandalwood, which reminded him of the last time he had sat with his mother. It curled around them, mingling with the odour of their sweat.
Signalling to his men to keep silent, Babur moved towards the opening, again determined to be the first inside. ‘No, Majesty.’ Wazir Khan’s restraining hand gripped him hard. ‘Let me enter first.’
I owe him this, Babur thought. Hiding his disappointment, he watched Wazir Khan and two of his guards ease themselves cautiously through, weapons ready. A few moments later he heard Wazir Khan say, ‘You may enter, Majesty.’
Babur climbed through the shattered door and stepped on to rugs of a velvet softness he had never felt before. The carpets of Ferghana were like worn blankets in comparison.
Wazir Khan signalled to him to be wary. As the rest of his men pushed through behind him, Babur moved forward, scanning the corners of the large chamber, alert for any movement. The chamber was well lit by hundreds of candles burning in mirrored niches. The amber light played over woven wall hangings depicting tulips, irises and other flowers of Samarkand, and plump cushions of velvet or shimmering satin. Six smaller silver doors, three on each side, led to what Babur guessed were the women’s private rooms. Ahead another door was covered with gold leaf into which was etched the tiger of Samarkand.
Feeling his men’s eyes upon him once more, Babur cleared his throat. ‘Vizier!’ he shouted towards the golden door, his voice young, but firm and clear. ‘You cannot save yourself but you can at least make your death quick and honourable.’ He thought he detected a fumbling sound from behind the door but then all was quiet again. ‘Vizier, have you no dignity or shame?’ Babur persisted.
This time there was the unmistakable sound of a scuffle and voices raised in anger. Suddenly the golden door swung open to reveal two of the grand vizier’s bodyguards,
one with a sabre slash across his cheek, dragging their protesting master by his arms, his bright green brocade coat billowing behind him. Without ceremony they hurled him at Babur’s feet, then knelt before him themselves in subjection. Other guards, following nervously, also prostrated themselves. Babur gazed at the scene with contempt. ‘Baisanghar, disarm them.’
As Baisanghar’s men went briskly to work, a young woman in pale blue silk darted through the golden door, deftly evaded Baisanghar’s men and ran to the grand vizier. Falling to her knees beside him, she tried to put her arms round him but, with an oath, he pushed her slim form away violently. After regaining her balance, the girl looked up at Babur. He saw an oval face and eyes that, though puffy with tears, were still beautiful. ‘Let my father live. He is an old man.’ She spoke without fear though confronted by a crowd of battle-stained warriors from whom she must know she could expect little sympathy or even mercy.
‘He has no right to live. His ambition exceeded his breeding,’ Babur replied curtly. ‘Where are the other women?’
The girl hesitated then said, ‘In their rooms.’ She gestured towards the six small doors. Babur nodded to Wazir Khan. ‘Search them. Make sure no soldiers are hiding there. Then lock the women in until we have time to deal with them.’ Wazir Khan quickly detailed groups of soldiers to break down the doors. Almost at once Babur heard wails of dismay and screams of protest from deep within the harem, but he knew his orders would be obeyed. He could not prevent the women being frightened but they would not be violated.
The vizier’s daughter was still looking directly at him, a challenging expression in her chestnut eyes. He turned away from her accusing stare. ‘Take her to her private quarters and lock her in also.’ He had no intention of sparing the vizier but found he wanted to save the young woman from witnessing her father’s end. Before a soldier could take hold of her, she rose of her own accord and disappeared through one of the doors, her head held high on her slender neck, without any final entreaty or even a backward glance. Babur stared after her, wondering what it had cost her to show such dignity.
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