1637: The Peacock Throne

by Eric Flint

  “The difference between earth-backed and freestanding defenses sure is clear,” John muttered, eyes sliding from the undamaged tower to the collapsed outer gatehouse.

  “What?” Bertram called, wiggling a dirty finger in his ear.

  “Nothing!” John shouted back.

  Hoping Aurangzeb could see the hopelessness of continuing his attack, John rolled over and looked out on the plain.

  The ground for almost a mile from the wall positively heaved with men, horses, and even camels. Most of the men seemed to be either advancing into the meat grinder of the defenses or shooting at the defenders, but he spied a few backs among them as men retreated, too.

  One of the crazy camel-mounted guns belched, the one-pound ball whistling as it whipped overhead to crash into the upper works of the left-hand tower of the gatehouse beside one of the snipers, who flinched back behind cover.

  That made John look for the cannon that had dropped the outer gatehouses. A moment’s search revealed all but two of them were silent, their crews dead or fled. More were being rolled forward, though, and these looked bigger. The leading ox of one dropped, red stain growing against the white hide between its horns.

  Someone started wailing.

  He glanced back at the tower where the sniper had been perched. From the gun smoke lingering around him, he was the one who did for the oxen. He was fumbling through a reload, wailing tearfully the whole time.

  Hindu. Probably thinks he’s going to be reincarnated as a slug or worse for having killed a sacred bull.

  Save it for later, bub. Gotta survive this shit, first.

  He looked away.

  Closer to hand a group of military laborers were working to fill in the creek that, running from the southeast to the northwest a hundred yards or so from the gate, made a natural, if shallow, moat in the rainy season.

  “Dammit, man, where is Dara?”

  North wall

  They had been killing for more than an hour by the time the enemy broke and began to flee the space between the outer and inner walls below.

  “They’re falling back,” Damla gloated, her face triumphant in the morning light filtering in from the eastern loops.

  Atisheh wiped at the sweat leaving muddy trails in the dust caking her face, her breathing ragged and fast. She tried to answer but found she could only nod as she lowered her bow. She ached everywhere, but the shoulder where she’d been wounded defending Shah Jahan was a pulsing lake of fire from neck to elbow. She’d worked to strengthen it, but clearly hadn’t spent enough time with the bow.

  “What, tired?” Damla asked, offering a waterskin.

  Atisheh’s nod turned into a roll of her head and then each shoulder. Her hand shook as she took the waterskin and raised it to her lips.

  “Already? We didn’t even get any bladework in.”

  “Cousin,” she gasped when she’d slaked her thirst, “I’d make you eat those words if I didn’t know you’d just spew more foolishness the minute it gallops into that empty gourd you call a skull.”

  Damla grinned. “And I would take such threats more seriously if you weren’t barely standing.”

  “Atisheh!” Yonca yelled as she raced into the tower. Atisheh forgot her pain on hearing the fear in her subordinate’s voice.

  Standing straight, Atisheh schooled her breathing and said, “Speak, do not shout.”

  Yonca lowered her voice. “Messengers, Atisheh. Delhi Gate is secure. The river gate has not been attacked. The Sikhs are massing. Lahore Gate is still hard-pressed.”

  “Good.” She turned to Damla. “Quit grinning at me like an idiot and find out how many we lost. If the numbers are as expected, have the walking wounded remain at their stations and every third warrior join you.”

  “I go,” Damla said, running up the stairs and out onto the upper bastion.

  “Send them to Delhi Gate!” Atisheh shouted after her.

  “We sally?” Yonca asked.

  “If that madman Bidhi hasn’t already.”

  “Already?”

  “He does love a fight, that one.” High praise, from Atisheh, whose reputation had grown in her absence.

  “If only he were as pretty as you,” Yonca purred.

  Atisheh glanced at the younger woman, who was studying her with frank appraisal.

  She snorted. “Later, if at all.”

  Yonca had the good grace to look away, ears reddening. It reminded Atisheh to pull her chain veil across her face. It wouldn’t do to offend some of the more conservative men while she did the killing they could not. There would be no end of whining if they saw an unmarried woman’s face.

  “Run ahead and let the master of horse know we come,” she said, making a show of checking her bowstring.

  “I go.”

  Once she was alone, Atisheh groaned and leaned heavily against the wall. Wanting nothing more than to do nothing for a few months, she pushed off the wall and staggered up the stairs.

  The groom who tended her horses sprang to his feet on her arrival. She looked around and, seeing few witnesses she cared for, gestured at him. He obediently squatted beside her horse with his hands cupped, helping her mount.

  She barely suppressed a grunt as the muscles in her shoulder decided to fold themselves into an agonizing cramp the likes of which she’d never felt before. She sat the horse a moment, stretching her shoulder, then gently kneed the mare into motion.

  She was feeling better by the time she saw the serried ranks of Sikhs waiting to be led from the gate. Never one to publicly admit that a firearm was anything other than dead weight in the making, she secretly admired the “shotguns” the men carried at the shoulder. The amount of sword-grade wootz steel Talawat had used was a sin against all that was holy, but the weapons did look very fine, especially when massed in a solid block of nearly a thousand fighting men.

  Beyond them were more men, perhaps another two thousand, with more traditional arquebuses and a level of training and expertise she knew to be less than professional. Still, they were here to make good on their duty to the Sultan Al’Azam.

  She rode across in front of the men to where the Sultan Al’Azam, Dara Shikoh, sat a magnificent Marwari stallion that had been caparisoned in chain and silk.

  Behind the Sultan Al’Azam, several hundred sowar sat their mounts, each armored and armed in the fashion of their people. More were riding up every moment from those walls where the fighting had finished, gathering around their individual umara; commanders of one hundred, even fifty.

  A glance at the men surrounding Dara Shikoh confirmed her belief she was the highest ranking umara present. A lowly commander of five hundred sowar the senior ranking warrior? That was a problem. Mughal tactics did not rely on discipline so much as bravery and something John called “volume of fire,” but Dara and John’s plan did require they engage superior numbers at a specific moment in time that depended on some confusion in Aurangzeb’s army to work.

  To her mind, this chaos was not conducive to success.

  Men.

  Dara’s impatience was palpable. The emperor’s horse, sensitive to his rider’s mood and already prepared to fight for dominance of the growing herd about him, tried to bite the head from a messenger who stepped too close while reporting to Dara. The messenger dodged aside, but the horse took some hair along with the man’s turban.

  And it wasn’t just Dara’s horse that was threatening to get out of control. The lack of organization among the riders was an almost painful contrast to the disciplined stillness of the Sikhs. Someone needed to get control of this…what was the word John used that so disturbed his wife?

  “Clusterfuck…” she muttered.

  Such was her luck, however, that as she uttered the word there came one of those silences that happen at the most inopportune moments. It seemed to her that even the distant guns stopped firing in order to reveal her words to the emperor.

  “What was that, Atisheh?” Dara asked. His jaw was set, and there were rings beneath his eyes tha
t bespoke sleeplessness.

  “Sultan Al’Azam, forgive me, I was asking where John Ennis is?” She felt no guilt for the lie, as there was no time to explain the saying.

  “I sent John to Lahore Gate, where we are sore pressed.”

  And what lunacy possessed you to send the sole commander of five thousand within these walls to stand a post like a common sowar?

  She swallowed bitter anger, remembering that John was no horseman, and therefore unqualified to lead this sally anyway.

  “When do we sally, Sultan Al’Azam?” she asked, trying to convey with her tone that now would be better than later.

  “Bidhi Chand has yet to arrive,” Dara said, oblivious to the nuance of her message.

  “Sultan Al’Azam, please heed me. Some of his best men were at Lahore Gate. Is it possible that he took personal command there when the fighting grew thick?”

  Dara was nodding, but his eyes had that vacant look they got when he was having one of his spells. His mailed hand tried to steal to the scar at his temple but bonged against his helmet instead.

  Another messenger ran up and bowed.

  Dara managed a slow nod for him.

  “Commander of one thousand, Bidhi Chand begs leave to sally, Sultan Al’Azam.”

  “Where is he?” Dara asked, looking at the motionless block of infantry.

  “Over there, Sultan Al’Azam,” the messenger said, pointing.

  A man emerged from the infantry and waved his sword.

  “Well, bring him here,” Dara said.

  Gritting her teeth, Atisheh hauled on her reins and turned her horse for the Sikhs. Dara might complain that she hadn’t asked for leave to depart, but she could feel the weight of time they didn’t have fleeing from them like water from between the fingers.

  A moment later she was reining in before the man the messenger had pointed out.

  He was not Bidhi Chand.

  “What is going on?” she asked.

  “Bidhi Chand is fighting at Lahore Gate”—the man’s Persian was unexpectedly fluid and almost without accent, more cultured than her own had been when first she arrived at court—“and gave orders for us to go without him should he fall or otherwise not be among us.”

  “And who are you?” she asked, suspicious.

  “A common warrior of my people, sister, chosen, like you, to lead others into battle in defense of what we love and cherish,” the man said, smile emerging from a thick, luxuriant beard.

  She liked his voice, though it seemed, from the length of his answer, that he liked it well enough for the both of them.

  It was then she noted the man wore two of the full-length swords in the style the Sikhs preferred.

  Merciful God! How long has he been here?

  She swallowed, said respectfully, “I will inform the Sultan Al’Azam you are ready to march, Guru.”

  “I trust you will do so without mentioning me by name or title?” he asked with a waggle of his head. “I do not wish to steal any glory from Dara Shikoh.”

  “As you wish,” Atisheh said.

  “Go with God, sister.”

  “And you,” she returned, the benediction somehow more meaningful than ever. Atisheh turned her horse again and galloped to rejoin Dara.

  “Bidhi Chand begs you to begin the sally, Sultan Al’Azam, before it is too late!” she shouted as she rode up, figuring the more public the pressure, the more likely Dara would be to act without questioning.

  Yonca and Damla and thirty other harem guards had joined the sowar surrounding the emperor in her absence. She was comforted by their presence even as she mourned the empty saddles of women and eunuchs she knew would have to be either wounded or dead to miss the glory that was to come.

  Dara’s lip curled in an unconscious snarl, but his anger must have helped him cut through the mental fog he’d suffered, as he gestured curtly to the drummers, who immediately signaled attention to orders.

  No man nor horse trained to fight with the Mughals could ignore the spine-deep jolt that particular roll of the drums wrought. Relative silence fell, the only noise the slow thunder of cannon.

  The Sultan Al’Azam of all India stood in the stirrups and raised his voice, first at the gates and then at his men: “Open the gates! We ride straight out to strike the camp sitting astride Delhi Road! The infantry will follow, then turn and strike at the dogs attacking Lahore Gate. We sowar will retire from the camp to cover their flank when we have set them to rout!”

  He paused, drew a deep breath, and bellowed the last: “Ride! Ride to victory!”

  “Victory!” his sowar cried. The drums began their roll as close to two thousand sowar rode past the infantry and down the ramp leading to the gates and their fate, the sound of their hooves thunderous in the close confines of the gate.

  Chapter 45

  Siege lines

  Aurangzeb’s command group

  Aurangzeb had scarcely risen from prayer when one of his messengers was shot dead a few hundred gaz to their west.

  “Who?” he muttered aloud, returning his gaze to the men following the Rajput spearhead at the base of the outer wall.

  “Mohammed, Sultan Al’Azam,” the first messenger in line croaked from behind him.

  “What?” he asked without turning, constant motion of the prayer beads in his hands stuttering but not stopping.

  “The messenger’s name was Mohammed, Sultan Al’Azam.”

  “No”—Aurangzeb turned on the speaker—“I meant, whose message was he delivering?”

  The man in messenger greens wilted under his stare. “I-I think Mohammed was assigned to Alam Shah, but I am not certain, Sultan Al’Azam.”

  And was Alam Shah trying to report success or failure on his assault?

  Does it matter?

  Aurangzeb turned back to the battle raging around Lahore Gate. The men he’d sent in to exploit what tenuous foothold the Rajputs had bled for were at the base of the wall and beginning their own climb.

  Men were dying. His men were dying with every heartbeat, as if he were wounded and they his life’s blood, spent to keep the body of his ambition advancing in tune with the desires of his heart and soul.

  If Alam Shah had failed to carry the walls, he’d still tied down a large number of defenders who would have otherwise been used to reinforce the gates.

  He glanced toward Delhi Gate, where, as expected, that part of the attack appeared to have failed. That gate was, quite possibly, the strongest part of the fortress, overlapping and layered earth-backed defenses making it stronger even than the walls ringing Red Fort, despite being pierced by gates.

  He briefly considered sending one of his trusted men to rally the retreating warriors, but men forced to retreat from an assault were uniformly tired, frightened, and dispirited, especially if their umara was counted among the dead. Proud men might not obey a stranger in the best of circumstances, and they certainly wouldn’t when ordered into another attack by some fellow who told them it was Aurangzeb’s will.

  No, those men were no longer effective as fighters. Not for a few hours, at least. Thinking they would not be useful until the morrow, Aurangzeb put them from his mind with a mental note to ensure the elevation to formal rank of whatever men the warriors chose to put forward as their new leaders. Time enough in the future to weed out the disagreeable and inept. Service, or at least survival, must be seen to be rewarded, otherwise men would refuse to be led.

  Aurangzeb’s eye fell on the heavy artillery being dragged into position and thanked God the fire from Lahore Gate was falling off in the face of the fire from his camel guns and arquebusiers.

  Even the infantry assault seemed to surge forward and upward as the defenders were forced to keep their heads down.

  Closer than the walls, but still some distance closer to the walls than the oxen and men towing the heavy pieces, Carvalho’s original battery had only enough men standing to crew two cannon, one of which was Carvalho’s own. As Aurangzeb watched, the more distant of his cannon fired, s
howing that crew, at least, was still willing to fight.

  Thousands of men were pressing forward, trying to come to grips with the enemy. Some, pausing to loose arrows at their tormentors, had trouble raising their weapons, such was the press of so many bodies in the tight space.

  It seemed to Aurangzeb the guns that had so devastated the Rajputs on the wall did not have a real range advantage over the weapons his own men carried, but the infernal weapons were capable of a depressingly high rate of fire. In an open field engagement the smoke of their own fire would have limited their accuracy, but with the mob below them, even firing blind was bound to hit some ghazi God wished to meet face-to-face.

  Still, it did not appear there were enough of the weapons to arm the number of men needed to prevent Aurangzeb’s men carrying the wall.

  But then, appearances can be deceiving, as my brother and sister have so recently proven.

  Or am I become like the snake-bite survivor, frightened of every tuft of grass because I was once struck by a viper?

  He forced himself to look at the bodies at the base of the wall, to count the cost of ambition. So many.

  The beads rattled between his fingers.

  Haunted by the possibility his ambition was not the simple expression of God’s will he’d taken it for but something manufactured of his own pride and hubris, the young emperor searched his heart for an answer.

  It beat, steady and fast, but gave no other wisdom.

  Meanwhile, men died, regardless of the answer. If there was one, he did not hear it.

  The prayer beads stopped their rattle.

  “Send in the reserves,” Aurangzeb said.

  Two messengers rode hard for two wings of five thousand sowar each that he’d set aside to exploit any opening.

  That decision made, he turned his attention from the base of the wall and looked to Carvalho’s battery. His two remaining guns had only a fraction of their original crew remaining, forcing a far slower rate of fire than they had at the outset of the battle.