Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul

by Alex Rutherford

  They untied them, jumped on to their backs and, with a click of their tongues and a drumming of their feet on the ponies’ well-fed sides, cantered into the darkness. It was extraordinary, Babur thought, how in just a few short weeks Baburi was becoming like the full blood-brother he had never had. He was teaching him to fight with a sword, to wrestle, even to fire arrows from the saddle – as Wazir Khan had once taught him. Baburi had indeed proved a natural horseman and, made wiser by a few bruising falls, could now almost keep pace with Babur.

  Baburi, in turn, was teaching him the songs and dances of the people – and even the concealment skills and deftness required of the sneak thief. It had been Baburi, too, who had taught him how to dress as a peasant for their nocturnal ramblings. When they rode out into the night, they bargained in the villages and settlements for goods in the bazaars and sat hunched round communal fires sipping smoky tea while the elders told their stories.

  Sometimes Babur heard them inveigh against himself and the other warlords who made the lives of ordinary men so precarious. At first such comments had angered him, but now he listened, trying to understand what was in the hearts and minds of his people. However, both he and Baburi laughed at the outrageous rumours circulating about the peccadilloes of those in the fortress. Kasim – Babur’s quiet, unassuming vizier – was said to have a male member of which a stallion would be proud but to be able to enjoy sex only when dressed as a woman and shackled to his bed.

  But tonight there was an even more potent attraction than a discussion of Kasim’s appetites. In Dzhizak, the village they were making for, was a brothel they had visited several times already – a broken-down wooden shack where the women danced in the firelight, flaunting their wares, and the men could take their pick. At the thought of the luscious breasts and wide hips of one of them, Yadgar, Babur’s pulse quickened. In daytime his thoughts were on preparing for his coming campaign, but when night fell he could scarcely contain his eagerness to gallop through the soft darkness to her.

  Yadgar’s warm, available body and hot, questing mouth had revealed a new world and taught him many techniques and sensations. She was so different from Ayisha who, in all their couplings, had never caressed him. Her hands were always clenched by her sides, her lips cold and shut against him. Perhaps if he had been a more experienced lover on his wedding night, things might have been different . . . But that was in the past. When he was again King of Ferghana he would make Yadgar his concubine. He would enjoy enhancing her lush beauty with bright gems and watching the shimmer of golden chains against her amber skin, the lustre of pearls rising and falling on the soft cushion of her breasts, moist with the sweat of their lovemaking. The thought made him kick his pony on urgently.

  Soon they reached the willow grove that marked the outskirts of Dzhizak and called out to the night-watchman that they were travellers in need of refreshment. After he had examined their faces by the light of his guttering torch he grunted and let them continue. They dismounted and led their ponies past the low, mud-brick houses and down the narrow alley to the bazaar, where the thin yellow light from the merchants’ oil lamps barely illumined the piles of gritty, poor-quality rice and mouldering root vegetables. The ground was speckled with sheep and goat droppings and a sprinkling of chicken turds deposited by a few scrawny hens.

  The brothel lay on the far side. Yes, Yadgar was there. Babur could see her warming her hands over the dung fire. So was Baburi’s usual choice – a wild mountain girl, boyish and slim, with red glints in her hair and an impudent little face.

  As soon as she saw them, Yadgar came running, the cheap bells on her sturdy ankles jingling as she leaped at Babur, flinging her arms round his neck as her mouth sought his. She pressed herself close, laughing as she felt his instant response. Taking him by the hand she led him inside the brothel where, in a wooden cubicle barely large enough for the mattress on the floor, she shrugged off her clothes and went expertly to work with her hands and lips, before spreading her thighs to allow him to enter her warm, moist body.

  The pale pink dawn was rising as Babur and Baburi, sated and happy and more than a little drunk from the strong spirits served in the brothel, came back within sight of Shahrukiyyah. They had spoken little on the return ride except to trade a few frank comments about their women and to boast of the frequency and inventiveness of their own performances. Inside the castle, Babur returned to his apartments, waving away the attendants who always seemed to materialise out of nowhere so that he could savour a few last moments of freedom and irresponsibility.

  As the doors of his chamber closed behind him, he was already tugging off his clothes. He was unprepared for a sharp blow to his left ear. He turned to see Esan Dawlat, hand still raised, eyes blazing. Never had she come to his apartments like this. Two of her elderly waiting women were standing behind her, eyes downcast but half-smiles on their lips.

  ‘If you are sure you and your market boy have quite finished your whoring, we have matters to discuss,’ his grandmother snapped. ‘A messenger arrived during the night from Samarkand with a letter. It is from the chamberlain of your cousin Mahmud.’ She flourished a bit of paper in his face.

  ‘What does my cousin say? Does he want to make me a present of the kingdom he stole?’ Babur rubbed his ear. He wasn’t surprised Esan Dawlat knew he had been with a woman. She always knew everything. But he felt embarrassed she was seeing him in peasant garb, fresh from Yadgar’s embraces and probably still smelling of her.

  ‘Your cousin says nothing – and never will again unless you count the boom of a drum. Shaibani Khan has taken Samarkand and had Mahmud flayed alive. His skin has been made into a drum to be beaten above the Turquoise Gate every time Shaibani Khan enters and leaves the city.’ Esan Dawlat’s shrewd old eyes were pinpoints of anger at the outrage inflicted by an Uzbek barbarian on a Timurid prince.

  ‘Listen.’ Squinting, she began to read: ‘“The Uzbeks fell on us like an army of ants devouring everything in their path. They overwhelmed the city’s defences by sheer weight of numbers and have butchered hundreds of our citizens. Bodies are piled in the marketplaces and rot in the wells. I and a few members of the court have survived in hiding thus far but we are in terrible peril . . . They have left us few places to conceal ourselves. May God show us the mercy that, in his infinite wisdom, he has denied to others.”’

  Babur felt instantly sober. While he had been cavorting, a thunderbolt had struck. ‘I will summon my council and decide what to do. But we must have more information. The news in that letter must already be old. I will send scouts westward . . .’

  Esan Dawlat nodded. It seemed there was nothing further she wished to say to him. A flick of her fingers brought her serving women to her side and she was heading for the door of his chamber. Babur himself opened it for her and watched her resolute figure walk briskly down the dimly lit passage back to the women’s quarters, her servants bobbing behind her.

  He washed quickly, still in shock at the tidings from Samarkand. Despite everything, he would not have wished such a fate on Mahmud, and the thought of Shaibani Khan’s men defiling Timur’s exquisite city and murdering its people hurt. If he’d wanted revenge on his cousin or Samarkand’s fickle citizens, he would never have resorted to such obscene butchery . . .

  Three-quarters of an hour later, dressed once more as befitted a king, Babur looked at his counsellors, many recently roused from sleep for this early-morning meeting. On his finger was Timur’s ring – a mark of the gravity of the situation. ‘You have heard the news, of course?’

  His counsellors nodded.

  ‘I fear it is true, but in case it is a trick to distract us from attacking Akhsi, Baisanghar, I want you to send scouting parties west towards Samarkand to see what they can learn. I want regular reports of whatever they find – even if all seems peaceful I want to know. When they reach the city, I want a full account of it. If the Uzbeks are indeed there I need to know whether it seems Shaibani Khan plans to hold the city or whether this was just
a raid. Go now.’

  Baisanghar rose.

  Babur turned to his scribe. ‘I must despatch a letter.’ The man smoothed a piece of paper on his writing block, then dipped his pen into the onyx jar dangling from his neck on a thong that held the thick black ink he mixed each morning.

  ‘My beloved father-in-law,’ Babur began. Then running quickly through the flowery courtesies – enquiries after Ibrahim Saru’s health and hopes for his unbounded prosperity, all as necessary as they were insincere, he cut to the chase: ‘In your beneficence, you promised me crossbowmen to help me regain my throne and make your daughter a ruling queen. My heart grieves that, despite my many entreaties, those troops have not yet come. Those around me begin to whisper that perhaps you are not a man of honour. I refuse to entertain such thoughts. But if you cannot assure me now that your men are on the road to Shahrukiyyah, I shall be forced to assume that you have, indeed, broken our agreement.’

  He scratched his signature and ordered the scribe to affix his seal. This was Ibrahim Saru’s last chance. It was intolerable that an uncouth tribal leader should toy with him.

  For the next hour Babur and his counsellors, grim-faced and earnest, debated, but without more information their discussion was sterile. All they had were questions that could not yet be answered. Frustrated, Babur dismissed the council but asked Wazir Khan to remain.

  ‘Majesty?’

  ‘If Shaibani Khan has taken Samarkand, I’ve been trying to work out what I would do next if I were him and I keep reaching the same answer. I would send my forces east to destroy us here before moving on to Akhsi and crushing Jahangir and Tambal. Shaibani Khan has sworn to obliterate the descendants of Timur. He would enjoy boasting that he had wiped out the last two remnants of the male line of Ferghana.’

  For once Wazir Khan had no words of comfort. For a while they sat in silence, each locked in his own thoughts.

  But at least they didn’t have to wait long for more news. By sunset, further reports were reaching Shahrukiyyah of a momentous catastrophe to the west. A band of agitated merchants who had been camped on the hills beyond Samarkand brought tales of a clash between horsemen outside the city walls. They had not waited for the outcome but, gathering their pack animals, had fled eastward. Other travellers brought stories heard along the road that Shaibani Khan and his hordes had swooped down from the north and fallen on Samarkand.

  The night Babur couldn’t sleep, the still, warm air – oppressive and heavy – adding to his restlessness. Yesterday he would have sent for Baburi to amuse him with his stories or to gallop with him to the brothel and Yadgar, but not now. He sat alone by the window, gazing out. The heavy ring glinted on his finger. What would Timur have done? Would he have been prepared to wait passively to see what fate dished out to him? No. He would have found a way to take the initiative, to turn circumstances to his advantage.

  Babur continued to sit, jaw in hand, as one by one the candles sputtered out and he was left in the darkness. Again and again, he kept turning everything over in his mind. As a thin line of golden light appeared on the eastern horizon, a glimmer of hope began to shine in the dark corners of his mind. Suddenly he knew what he would do. It was a huge risk, and it would cut him to the heart, but it was the only chance he had . . .

  As soon as it was full daylight, he summoned his council. ‘Shaibani Khan is a threat to the entire House of Timur. If he wipes me out he will turn next on my half-brother Jahangir. It will be only a matter of time. He wants all the Timurid lands and he will have them – unless we put aside our own quarrels. That is why I intend to offer Jahangir and Tambal an alliance. If they and the clans loyal to them will help me push the Uzbeks out of Samarkand, I will relinquish Ferghana to them . . .’

  Wazir Khan’s sharp intake of breath told Babur how much he had shocked him. ‘But, Majesty—’

  ‘It is the only way. Kasim, you will be my ambassador.’

  Babur looked sternly at his council, feeling a new steeliness within him. ‘For the moment, until we have an answer from Akhsi, you will say nothing of this to anyone. Those are my orders.’

  As Babur rose, he saw how troubled Wazir Khan looked. In former days he would have talked through his plans with his old friend to try to convince him. But no one could help him now. This was his destiny, his choice. If his boldness worked, he would again be in golden Samarkand. He had never ceased to think of it as his rightful property or to mourn its loss, this place his father had ached to possess and to which mountainous little Ferghana, with its unruly chiefs and bleating sheep, had always been a poor second. If he was to succeed where his father had not, ambition, not sentiment, must be his watchword.

  The following days brought further trickles, then a stream, and finally a flood of refugees to the settlements around Shahrukiyyah. Babur sent men to question them and learned that most were from villages near Samarkand. Ominously, few were from the city itself and there was no sign of Mahmud’s chamberlain who had written in such despair. Neither was there any news of Mahmud’s wife, the grand vizier’s daughter . . .

  From the battlements, Babur watched the drab procession of travel-stained, weary people, who had simply grabbed what they could and fled for their lives – old men and snotty-nosed infants loaded onto carts, some of which had been hauled the one hundred and fifty miles by hand, desperate-looking mothers clutching babies to their skinny breasts. All hungry mouths – a burden not a help. Babur ordered distributions from his granaries and those of the other fortresses he held, but even those supplies would not last for long.

  He had hoped that some of the soldiers of Samarkand might have managed to flee the Uzbeks and would make their way eastwards, but the reports arriving from Baisanghar’s scouts blasted any such idea. It was clear there had been great slaughter as the Uzbeks had hacked and hewn their way to victory. The meadows around Samarkand were strewn with the bloated corpses of its soldiers. Few had escaped. Only an army of ghosts would march to Babur’s assistance.

  Everything now depended on Jahangir and Tambal. Should he have ridden to them himself under a flag of truce? he wondered. Would Kasim convince Jahangir and Tambal that their best – perhaps only – chance of survival lay in accepting his offer of a peace settlement and an alliance against Shaibani Khan or would they be blinded to the threat of Shaibani Khan by their suspicion of his own motives?

  He was with his mother and grandmother when he heard that Kasim had returned. Without explanation, and avoiding Esan Dawlat’s sharp eyes, he hurried to his chambers where he had ordered his ambassador to be brought. Kasim was his usual quiet, self-possessed self, betraying not a hint of excitement or agitation about the news he was carrying.

  ‘Well?’ It was all Babur could do not to grab him by the shoulders.

  ‘I bring an answer, Majesty. They accept your terms.’ Now, at last, Kasim allowed himself a faint smile. ‘See, Majesty.’ From a dark-red camelskin bag, fastened with plugs of ivory, he extracted a letter.

  Babur scanned it and his heart beat faster. Yes! Passing over the empty courtesies he found what he was looking for. He read the words to himself several times, savouring them. ‘What you propose, my brother, is the only way to save us all from the Uzbek menace. By the time you receive this, my troops will already be preparing to march to Shahrukiyyah. I am sending you four thousand cavalry and a thousand archers, all that I can spare.’ It was signed by Jahangir and stamped with the royal seal of Ferghana.

  It cost Babur a pang to run his fingers over the thick wax – the right to affix the royal seal was his: by blood and birth he was King of Ferghana. But he had made his choice and must abide by it. He must also trust Jahangir and his controller, Tambal, to keep their word. If they betrayed him now, they would all be ruined.

  Chapter 10

  An Ancient Foe

  Babur turned to look at the lines of riders strung out behind him, their brilliant yellow banners proclaiming them all warriors of Ferghana. Tribal and dynastic feuds forgotten, they were riding against an ancie
nt enemy. Three hours earlier, in their apartments in the fortress, Esan Dawlat and Kutlugh Nigar had given him their blessing and his mother had pressed her lips to the eagle hilt of his father’s sword, Alamgir, hanging from his metal-studded belt. He was surprised that they had not objected to his bargain with his half-brother – Esan Dawlat had actually commended his vision and daring. Only Khanzada had seemed shaken at the thought that she might never again see her childhood home of Akhsi.

  As for Ayisha, he had gone to her last night for one final, brief encounter. If he did not return, he might at least be leaving an heir inside her, he had thought, thrusting energetically but joylessly, his eyes fixed on the wall rather than on her expressionless, half-averted face. As soon as he had reached his shuddering climax, Ayisha had done what she now always did – rolled away from him and pulled the coverlet over her nakedness. He had not looked at her as he dressed hurriedly and left her chamber immediately without either speaking a single word of comfort or farewell. They would never be other than emotional strangers.

  At least her father had come to his senses. Towards the rear of

  the long column, beyond the yellow pennants of Ferghana, were the ranks of mounted Mangligh crossbowmen in black and red. They had arrived at Shahrukiyyah within days of Ibrahim Saru getting wind of the alliance between Babur and Jahangir against Shaibani Khan.

  Wazir Khan and Baisanghar were riding by his side and somewhere among the ranks of his cavalry would be Baburi. He had not spoken more than a word or two to his friend since the news of the fall of Samarkand and missed his light-hearted company. But companionship – friendship – was perhaps not for kings, whose minds must be fixed on greater things, Babur reflected.

  They were travelling quickly, galloping over ground baked hard by the heat of summer. They were also travelling light. Babur had decided there was no time to transport cumbersome siege engines. He was staking everything on a swift surprise attack. Till now Samarkand had always been in the hands of one Timurid ruler or another. The citizens of Samarkand – those left alive – should be desperate to rid themselves of a cruel, alien predator like Shaibani Khan. When they saw his forces approach, he hoped they would rise against their oppressors.