Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (48 page)

Eager to begin the action that would determine his future, Khurram had ridden ahead of the main body of his troops with a few of his bodyguard when just before midday two days later one of his scouts galloped up to him on a sweating grey horse.

‘Khusrau’s men are drawing themselves up around that village over there. There are more of them than we thought – perhaps twelve thousand or so. When they became aware of our approach they clearly decided to take advantage of what protection the low mud walls round the villagers’ cattle enclosures and even their simple palm-thatched huts provided. They’re busy trying to drag cannon into position and they’ve deployed a small screen of musketeers and archers a couple of hundred yards in front of the village.’

Following the scout’s outstretched arm Khurram saw through the heat haze that the village was a small one set on flat ground along the far bank of a stream which in the present dry season looked to be mostly mud. Khusrau had a slight numerical advantage because of the number of his own men he had left behind to guard the baggage train.
Nevertheless, though his men were tired by their ride to overtake Khusrau and the day was furnace hot, without waiting for his senior commanders to catch up with him for a council of war Khurram decided to attack and overwhelm Khusrau’s forces before they could finish drawing up their defensive positions.

‘Take an order to Kamran Iqbal to form up half of our cavalrymen ready for an immediate assault. While he attacks the village head on I will lead the remainder across the stream to get behind the village and take the defenders in the rear. Order the war elephants with the small cannon in their howdahs to follow the cavalry into action as closely as they can.’

A quarter of an hour or so later, Khurram watched as his horsemen, led by the burly figure of Kamran Iqbal on his tall black stallion with four banner-carriers immediately behind him, gathered speed in their charge towards the village. Dust began to obscure Khurram’s vision as he in turn, mounted on a favourite chestnut horse, led two thousand of his best riders sweeping left to begin the encirclement of the village. Soon the boom of small cannon and the crackle of musketry showed that Khusrau had got his forces into action against Kamran Iqbal. Through gaps in the swirling dust and smoke Khurram could see that the aim of his half-brother’s artillerymen had been good. Several of Kamran Iqbal’s men’s horses were down. Others were galloping riderless away from the action, reins dangling. Suddenly Khurram saw one of the banner-bearers appear to turn back; the impetus of the attack seemed to be faltering. Then the billowing smoke obscured his view entirely.

Khurram was suddenly stricken with doubt. Had he been
over-eager, rash even, in ordering an immediate attack against stronger forces when he would have been wiser to wait and rest his tired men? Had he been wrong to split his resources twice, once by leaving a strong force to protect the baggage and then again by ordering this two-pronged assault? It was too late for such thoughts. The worst thing he could do now would be to attempt to fall back or to disengage. That would expose his men to a counter-attack by Khusrau. He was committed to the offensive. He must stake his future on the success of the encirclement. Though Khusrau’s men were fighting hard and causing casualties among the frontal attackers, they might crumble beneath his own assault on their rear, fearing their route of retreat would be cut off. Besides, Kamran Iqbal and the troops with him were brave and experienced fighters. Even if they suffered an initial setback they would not give in but attack with renewed vigour.

By now Khurram was approaching the margins of the stream. Pockmarked by the feet of many animals, it was indeed more sticky brown mud than water, he thought, as with a wave of his hand he gestured his men to cross and pushed his own chestnut forward. He was soon riding down the opposite bank followed by his bodyguards and the rest of his men. However, twisting his head he saw that a couple of horses were down, presumably having caught their hooves in the deep, clinging mud while being whipped on too hard by their careless riders.

Turning his head to the front again he realised that the first low walls of the villagers’ cattle enclosure were only two hundred yards away. Suddenly he saw flashes as musketeers rose from behind the mud walls and fired. Musket balls
hissed past him. Another of his horsemen, an extravagantly bearded orange-turbaned Rajput, hit square in the forehead by one, pitched from the saddle and rolled over several times in the dust before being trampled beneath the hooves of the following horses. There were fifty or so musketeers from the number of flashes, thought Khurram. Still, most of them wouldn’t be able to reload before he and his men were on them if they rode hard. But then to his dismay archers also appeared from behind the wall and fired quickly before ducking back down beneath the wall’s protection. An arrow seemed to be coming directly towards him and time stood still. Before he could even pull on the chestnut’s reins it struck the small burnished steel plate which protected the horse’s head and glanced off.

The chestnut’s momentum was disturbed both by the impact and the shock of the blow and it skittered sideways. Khurram fought frantically to regain control, and by pulling hard on the reins and leaning forward on the horse’s neck he succeeded in jumping the crumbling mud wall, which at this point was less than three feet high. So too did most of his men, but at least two of their mounts landed on small dung middens piled behind the wall and their front legs shot from under them, causing their hindquarters to catch the wall and their riders to be catapulted over their heads, smashing into the ground.

Khurram aimed a swinging sword blow at an archer wearing a dark tunic who was preparing to draw back the string of his large double bow to fire again. Before he could do so the sharp sword caught him across the chest and he collapsed backwards, dropping his bow. Around Khurram several more of his men fell from the saddle, dead or wounded.
With the blood of battle pounding in his ears, Khurram pushed onwards into the village itself with two of his bodyguards and swerved around the side of a low shack. A small goat ran out from it under the front legs of one of the bodyguards’ horses. The horse stumbled over the goat and the rider fell sideways on to the palm branches from which the roof of the shack was constructed. They collapsed under his weight and he disappeared from view.

Both Khurram’s and the other bodyguards’ horses were impeded and so once more lost momentum. Soon, however, Khurram had his chestnut moving again and within a few moments was in the single narrow main street of the village. Here his gaze was caught for a moment by a small white-painted shrine housing a red-daubed image of the many-armed Hindu goddess Kali, round whose neck hung a necklace of orange flowers. But then at the end of the street – partly camouflaged by the dappled shade thrown by the branches and leaves of a spreading banyan tree – Khurram saw a cannon with a man about to set light to the powder in the firing hole. Pulling as hard as he could on the reins, Khurram twisted his chestnut off the street into a gap between two small houses, disturbing some scrawny hens scratching and pecking at the dirt, which fluttered off squawking.

Almost immediately he heard the cannon fire and saw white smoke billow above the houses, followed by a thud and a scream. One of his riders had been hit. It wasn’t the bodyguard immediately behind him – he too had managed to turn between the houses. Now, determined to surprise and attack the men manning the cannon before they could load and fire again, Khurram and the guard pushed their mounts quickly on through some pieces of spiny bush being
used to pen livestock and picked their way round string charpoys and clay cooking pots behind houses from which the inhabitants had long since fled,

Coming to the back corner of the last house and edging his horse round it, Khurram saw the cannon under the banyan tree only a few yards away. Gunners stripped to the waist and sweating in the intense midday heat were struggling valiantly to ram bags of powder and shot down the barrel while three or four musketeers were firing from behind the protection of the tree’s broad trunk up the main street towards his men to keep them back while the gunners reloaded. Without pausing to think and urging his chestnut on with hands and heels, Khurram charged towards the cannon, followed by his single bodyguard. On seeing them two of the three gunners turned and started to run, only to be skewered one after the other by the tip of the bodyguard’s lance. The third bravely stood his ground and tried to knock Khurram from his saddle with the long ramrod. His unwieldy blow missed, and Khurram drew his sword and struck the man across his naked shoulder. The weapon sliced deep into flesh and sinew and the man collapsed over the cannon barrel, blood gushing from the wound.

Meanwhile, a musketeer had swung his weapon round to aim at Khurram but the musket barrel was long – nearly six feet – and the man nervous. It shook in his grip as he fired so the ball missed both Khurram and his mount, whistling harmlessly past his head. Khurram struck the musketeer’s skull so hard with his sword that the impact almost jolted it from his hand and the man’s skull split like a ripe watermelon, spewing blood and brain into the dust.

Suddenly Khurram was aware that some of Khusrau’s
troops were fleeing, closely pursued by those of his own men who had followed him into the village. As he caught his breath he could still hear the sounds of heavy fighting coming from where Kamran Iqbal’s men had attacked head-on. His eyes were stinging with the acrid smoke swirling everywhere. Sparks from either a cannon or muskets must have set the palm roofs of one or two of the houses alight. Now the strong breeze was blowing burning embers from one roof to another. Soon the whole village would be ablaze.

‘Let’s attack Khusrau’s troops from the rear—’ shouted Khurram to his men who were gathering around him, but he got no further as suddenly from the direction of the fight a group of horsemen burst from the entrance of a small lane halfway along the main street. Seeing Khurram’s mounted men the leaders charged directly towards them, swords extended. As they did so Khurram noticed amid the smoke that in the centre of the group was a rider whose horse had a second set of reins which were being held by the horseman in front. It could only be his partially sighted half-brother.

Khurram kicked his chestnut towards the rider holding the leading reins. The man raised his sword in his free hand and parried Khurram’s first sword stroke but could not evade the second, which almost severed his forearm just above the wrist. With blood spurting from the wound he turned away from the fight, dropping the leading reins as he went. Reacting quickly and instinctively Khurram bent and grabbed at the reins, just catching hold of them as they fell.

Jerking Khusrau’s horse – a grey mare – away from the fight, Khurram shouted, ‘It is I, Khurram. Khusrau, you must surrender. I have you in my custody.’ His half-brother said nothing. ‘Haven’t enough men died on your behalf, not only
now but in your other rebellions? Say something,’ Khurram shouted again, even louder, just in case his first words had been drowned by the noise of battle and the crackling of the burning roofs. Khusrau’s face remained almost impassive. Only one of his eyes seemed at all focused. The other stared blankly, apparently sightless. As a blazing frond from a palm roof was blown down close beside him, causing his mare to jerk up her head, Khusrau spoke.

‘I yield.’

‘I’ve lived by the ancient code of our ancestors from the steppes: “throne or coffin”. This is the third time I’ve bid for the throne and failed. Twice I’ve evaded the coffin while my brave followers did not. On the second occasion I gave up my sight. If it were not for the love of Jani my wife, I would have abandoned myself to despair. Now I am ready to die. Just allow me to dictate one final letter to her.’

Khusrau’s delivery was a monotone as, only twenty minutes later, he stood arms lightly held by two guards before Khurram. His soldiers had obeyed his summons to surrender and were even now being searched and their weapons stacked up. As Khurram – his face streaked with smoke and his clothes and body still wet with the sweat of battle – looked at his half-brother it seemed to him that Khusrau had by a supreme act of will divorced himself from everything going on around him, resigned to whatever fate lay in store for him.

At the moment, unlike Khusrau, he could not be so detached. Elation at his victory and all that it meant for
realising his ambitions for the throne mingled with sorrow at the loss of so many of his men. Among the wounded was Kamran Iqbal. His left arm had been so badly smashed by a musket ball while he was rallying Khurram’s men in the face of their first setbacks in their frontal assault on the village that the
hakims
had told Khurram that only immediate amputation of the limb at the elbow could save him. They had already begun sharpening their knives and placing the cauterising irons in the fire. Still worse was the condition of one of his young
qorchis.
Nearly the whole of a burning palm-thatched roof had been blown on to him as he lay on the ground already wounded by a sword thrust in the side. His screams of pain had been more animal than human when Khurram had visited him, forcing himself to look at the blackened face from which the skin hung in strips. The
hakims
had said that the only thing they could do was drip opium water into his blistered mouth to smooth his passage to Paradise. Pray God it was quick, Khurram thought.