Empire of the Moghul: Brothers at War

by Alex Rutherford

  At the thought, another emotion harsher than grief took over – fury with his half-brothers. If they were brought before him now all Babur’s urgings of mercy wouldn’t deter him from hacking off their traitorous heads and kicking them through the dust. Instinctively, Humayun pulled his dagger from his sash and sent it spinning across the tent to embed itself in a round red cushion that he wished was Kamran’s throat.

  Kamran had seen his opportunity for a throne and with Askari as his willing accomplice had taken it. While they held Kabul, it would be almost impossible for Humayun to regain Hindustan. It had long been obvious that family unity, pride in the Moghul dynasty, mattered less to them than the chance to enrich themselves and, so it seemed, above all to damage him.Why could they never see how destructive their vindictive jealousy was, what a risk it was to them all?

  Humayun paced about, trying to order his thoughts. He must think and behave rationally not only for his own sake but for his wife and their unborn child. The thought of Hamida for a moment lightened his mood. Despite the dangers surrounding them, these past weeks had been among the happiest he had ever known, especially when, a month ago, Hamida had told him, eyes more luminous than ever, that her dream had been correct. She was indeed pregnant. Perhaps the knowledge that he might soon have an heir was what made Kamran and Askari’s latest betrayal especially hard to bear. By striking at him, they were also striking at his wife and unborn child – those Humayun loved most in the world.

  And if Hamida was indeed carrying a boy, as she believed, the loss of Kabul made the child’s future all the more precarious. Even if the baby survived the dangerous times Humayun knew were coming, instead of inheriting a great empire he might be heir to almost nothing – reduced as some of his ancestors had been to the life of a petty warlord constantly feuding with his relations over a few mud-walled villages and a few flocks of sheep while another dynasty ruled Hindustan.

  This could not, must not happen. He would not let it. Humayun dropped to his knees and out loud swore an oath.

  ‘Whatever it takes, however long the struggle, I will regain Hindustan. I am ready to spill every drop of blood to do so. I will bequeath my sons and their sons a greater empire than even my father dreamed of. I, Humayun, swear it.’

  The desert heat was growing unbearable as Humayun and his troops drew nearer to Marwar. Every day seemed hotter and the going harder. The sour-breathed camels with their great splayed feet were managing but the horses and pack mules were sinking up to their hocks in the burning drifting sand. Every day, animals collapsed from dehydration and exhaustion, legs feebly twitching and parched tongues lolling through cracked lips. Humayun ordered his men to slit the throats of those too sick to go on and add their meat to the cooking pot, but he also commanded them to collect their blood. In Timur’s day, warriors had survived out on the steppes by drinking the blood of their animals.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he watched the enclosed litter bearing Hamida appear out of the silvery, shimmering haze, carried on the shoulders of six of his strongest men. Khanzada, Gulbadan and the other women were on ponies but he was doing everything possible to help the pregnant Hamida travel as smoothly as possible. Grass and aromatic herbs and roots had been stuffed into the sides of the litter’s bamboo frame and every hour or so attendants dampened it with a little of the precious water to provide her with some fragrant relief from the heat. Even so, her face was very thin and the dark circles in the almost translucent skin beneath her eyes showed that pregnancy had not come easily to her. Often she felt nauseous and found it hard to eat.

  Watching her litter draw nearer, the fear he might lose her gripped Humayun anew. He was doing all he could to protect her and bring her to safety but hazards were all around. Snakes and scorpions lurked. They were even vulnerable to the bands of brigands who infested the desert, now that he had so few troops left – barely one thousand. At the news of the fall of Kabul, many of his men had simply melted away.

  God willing, soon they should reach the outskirts of the kingdom of Marwar and find sanctuary there. Raja Maldeo’s messages of support – brought on the most recent occasion by the same ambassador who had sought Humayun out in Sarkar – were growing ever more fervent the nearer Humayun and his column approached. Nevertheless he wished Maldeo would send practical help – food, water and fresh horses would be more welcome than fine promises. But Humayun hesitated to ask for such things. He was coming to Marwar as the raja’s guest and ally, not as a beggar.

  According to the red leather-bound volume in which Kasim dutifully recorded daily the diminution of their supplies, just as he had done when Babur had been besieged in Samarkand, they still had enough corn, dates and other dried fruit to sustain them. However, it was many days since they’d tasted fresh food other than that from the carcasses of the exhausted or diseased animals, if that could indeed be called fresh. At first they’d bought produce from the villages along the way. It was the mango season and the flesh of the delicate, orange, sweet-scented fruits hanging in clusters among the glossy, dark green leaves was one of the few things Hamida could be tempted to eat. But six days ago they had passed the last settlement – a tangle of mud-brick houses clustered around a well – and the desert had engulfed them. Ahmed Khan’s scouts, riding ahead in the cool of the moonlit nights, had reported no signs of further habitation.

  The worst problem, though, was lack of water, which his officers now rationed carefully. Three nights ago, two of his men had drunk strong spirits instead. Then, with their thirsts heightened and their passions unleashed, they had fought for possession of a waterskin containing a few mouthfuls of fetid liquid and one had died, slashed across the throat by the other’s dagger. Humayun had ordered the survivor to be beheaded, but he had seen the sullen challenge in the eyes of the soldiers drawn up to witness the punishment. Indiscipline and insubordination were as dangerous as any attacks from desert raiders . . .

  His own horse was suffering badly. Its once glossy coat was flecked with dried sweat and sand and it stumbled frequently. Humayun squinted around him. The glare from the orange ball of the sun deadened the landscape, flattening out the rolling dunes and reducing everything to a dispiriting, eye-searing monotony with nothing to catch the mind’s attention or freshen the spirit. To spare his horse for a while, Humayun slipped down, and taking the reins in his left hand, plodded by its side.

  Suddenly Humayun heard shouts somewhere up ahead. Shading his eyes, he tried to see what was happening towards the front of the column some three or four hundred yards away but the sun dazzle made it impossible. ‘Find out what’s going on,’ he shouted to Jauhar. But before Jauhar could kick his mount forward, a general stampede began. Pack animals that had been trailing listlessly behind were suddenly rushing frenziedly past, no longer finding the sand an obstacle in their headlong charge. It could only be water, Humayun realised, and his heart soared.

  Remounting his own horse which was now whinnying with excitement, he rode forward. He would bring Hamida a cup of cool water with his own hands. But as he drew nearer, chaos met his eyes. At first it was hard to see what was happening in the midst of so many flailing, pushing bodies – human and animal – half hidden by a few squat dusty-looking palm trees. Then he saw the raised mud-brick sides of what looked like a cluster of small wells and to one side, a small spring seeping out in rivulets over pebbles into the sand. Men were already fighting over the hide buckets that they’d hauled out of the wells, spilling the precious water.

  The pack animals they should have been tending were also acting half crazed. Camels were spitting and frenziedly lashing out with their feet. One man was kicked so hard in the guts that he fell to the ground and was instantly trampled. Humayun saw his head crushed, brains and blood spilling sickeningly out on to the sand where camp dogs at once began to lick them up. Mules were baring their yellow teeth and biting at one another as they all struggled, regardless of the loads on their backs, to get to the spring.

  Humayun was beside himself with f
ury. What were his officers thinking of . . . ? But as he kicked his horse forward, determined to restore order, he saw that officers as well as men were in that tangled, heaving mêlée. He shouted to them but they didn’t hear. Forcing his way further into the crush, waving Alamgir above his head and roaring rebukes, he at last made his presence felt. Shamefaced, his officers gave up their own fight for water and began trying to control their men.

  Humayun’s thoughts now were for Hamida and the other women towards the back of the column. Turning his horse, he galloped back over the hot sand but was relieved to find them still quietly making their way, protected by his guards. They had been so far to the back of the line that they had not become caught up in the stampede. Riding up to Hamida’s litter he opened the curtains and peered inside. Her smile, radiant in the shadowy interior, told him all was well and he breathed more easily.

  It took over an hour to restore calm but by then half a dozen men were dead, trampled in the crush or slain by others determined to get to the water first. Others were writhing on the ground, clutching bellies swollen with water and screaming for relief. Several were vomiting water and bile and babbling incoherently. It was like a vision from hell and Humayun turned his gaze away. He could only be grateful that his enemy Sher Shah was too far away to know the depths to which he and his little band had fallen.

  His spirits didn’t rise again until three days later when, across the pale orange drifts of sand, the jagged shape of a high, rocky outcrop emerged from the hazy horizon. Atop it, perched like an eagle’s nest, was a fortress – the stronghold of the Raja of Marwar. It must still be some fifteen or twenty miles away, Humayun reckoned, but soon he would be able to bring Hamida, Khanzada and Gulbadan within the safety of its walls. It would be a welcome return to sanity and safety after their precarious desert journey. He despatched a scout at once bearing his greetings to Maldeo.

  The distance must have been shorter than Humayun had calculated because the scout returned next day, bringing a detachment of the raja’s special guard in orange robes and steel breastplates, splendidly mounted on matching black stallions. The warriors’ flowing black hair was knotted on the back of their heads almost like women’s, but there was nothing feminine about these lean, hawk-nosed muscular men with their gleaming spears.

  With Kasim and Zahid Beg by his side, Humayun rode forward. The Rajput leader dismounted and kneeling before Humayun touched his forehead briefly to the hot sand. ‘Maldeo, Raja of Marwar sends his greetings, Majesty. He has been waiting for you for many days and has sent me and my men to escort you over the last miles of your journey.’

  ‘I am grateful to the raja for his care. The sooner we reach Marwar the better – my men are weary.’

  ‘Of course, Majesty. If we ride now, we can reach the fortress by sunset where my master will make you and your entourage comfortable.’

  As Humayun watched the Rajput ride back to his men, he wondered what impression his ragged little army had made. Looking at his men through a stranger’s eyes he saw not a proud Moghul army but a small band of grimy men riding broken beasts, the once-bright blades of the weapons slung from their saddles – the swords and double-headed axes – dull from disuse. Many had thrown their round, metal-bound shields away rather than be burdened with them in the heat and their arrow cases were nearly empty. There had been no time or opportunity to find wood and fletch new arrows since they had ridden into the desert. Only Humayun’s musketeers – well drilled by Zahid Beg – looked capable of putting up a fight. But all that would change when he reached Marwar. He still had some money left to re-equip his men and recruit more, and the raja himself would supply him with troops.

  That night, beneath a sky flushed a vibrant pinky-orange as the sun went down, Humayun led his small column through the winding streets of Marwar towards Raja Maldeo’s massive fortress on top of the steep promontory rising behind the town. Between the last of the wood and mud-brick houses and the outcrop – which looked perhaps a hundred and fifty feet high – was an area of open land with a small spring over to the right. Beyond the spring were rows of tents and brushwood piled ready for burning.

  ‘The camp that has been prepared for your men, Majesty,’ said the Rajput commander.

  Riding on, Humayun approached an arched gatehouse close to the foot of the outcrop. Drums of welcome beaten by unseen hands boomed as, with his bodyguards, senior commanders and courtiers and the women, he passed through. On the other side of the gate, a steep but wide ramp-like road twisted sharply to the left and, following the rock’s natural contours, ascended the outcrop. Slowly Humayun’s tired horse plodded up the ramp, snorting with the effort, emerging at the top on to a wide stone plateau. Ahead was a girdle of crenellated walls that enclosed much of the top of the outcrop. The only entrance was through a two-storey gatehouse beyond which Humayun could see further walls.

  The gatehouse, with a carving of a Rajput warrior on a rearing horse above the lintel, looked ancient – far older than the Agra fort or even the citadel of Kabul, Humayun thought as he rode beneath the raised metal grille. How many generations of Rajput warriors had swept though it and down the steep ramp to do battle in furtherance of their warrior code? Of all the peoples in Hindustan, these Rajputs were surely closest to the Moghuls themselves – a warrior breed for whom fighting, honour, glory, conquest were as natural as the warm milk they had sucked at their mothers’ breasts. But then his curious eyes fell on something he didn’t understand. Along each side of the gatehouse’s deep inner walls was a series of small blood-red handprints.

  ‘What are those?’

  The Rajput commander replied with what seemed to Humayun a deep pride. ‘Those are the handprints of the royal women of Marwar made by them on their way to their deaths. When a Rajput woman’s husband dies or is killed in battle it is her duty to renounce life and join him on his funeral pyre. These marks that you see here are the last living acts of these women on their way to be consumed in the flames.’

  Humayun had heard similar stories before. Babur had told him that his Hindu subjects called this practice sati and that the women were not always willing. Babur had witnessed a young widow – barely more than sixteen – struggling and being drenched in oil and thrown bodily into the flames. Her screams had been terrible and she had died before Babur’s men could intervene.

  As if he could read Humayun’s mind, the Rajput continued, ‘It is a point of honour for our women . . . And if ever we suffer such terrible defeat in battle that it seems our women might be seized by our enemy, the most senior Rajput princess leads the other noblewomen – dressed in their finery and best jewels as if for a wedding – in the ceremony of jauhar. A great fire is lit and the women leap joyfully into the flames rather than face dishonour.’ The man was smiling as if at a vision of something wonderful.

  Humayun turned his eyes from those red imprints, whether made in ecstasy or despair. Instinctively, he felt that however devoted to her husband, however dire the circumstances, a woman had her own existence to think of, her own obligations – to herself, to her children if she was a mother, and to those around her. Khanzada’s experiences had shown that an indomitable spirit could endure and emerge, not unscathed, but stronger.The thought of Hamida being burned alive if he died chilled his blood. Perhaps the difference was that the Rajputs as Hindus believed in reincarnation and that to die with honour meant being reborn with greater status, whereas he believed that one must make the most of the single life one had on earth.

  Directly ahead, in the centre of a fresh curtain of walls was a passageway about six foot wide with a near right-angled bend at its centre – no doubt designed to prevent an enemy storming through in great numbers. It gave on to a large parade ground where a group of war elephants were being drilled. Opposite was yet another set of walls, again with only one narrow gateway. These concentric walls, so different from the design of a Moghul fortress, reminded Humayun of the intricate boxes within boxes that the slant-eyed merchants from Kashgar sold in the m
arkets of Kabul.

  But this third set of walls was the last. Passing through, Humayun entered a large rectangular courtyard – the heart of Maldeo’s fortress. In the centre stood an imposing building more solid than beautiful. It was impossible to tell how many storeys it had – small arched windows pierced its walls seemingly at random. Attached to one side was a wide, sturdily built tower with, on the very top, an elegant stone pavilion.

  Humayun reined in his horse and looked critically around him. His host should have been there to welcome him. But just then came a blast from an unseen trumpeter and a procession of orange-clad Rajput warriors filed out of the palace’s carved central doorway and formed up in two lines on either side of Humayun. Raja Maldeo followed, a tall, powerfully built man in belted orange robes that swept the ground, dark hair tightly bound beneath a turban of cloth of gold flashing with diamonds. Hand on breast, he advanced towards Humayun and bowed his head.

  ‘Greetings, Majesty. Welcome to Marwar.’

  ‘I thank you for your hospitality, Raja Maldeo.’

  ‘Your ladies will be given apartments near those of the royal women of my house as is our Rajput custom. Rooms for yourself and your courtiers and commanders have been prepared in the Hawa Mahal – the Palace of the Winds.’ Maldeo gestured towards the tower. ‘Yours will be in the pavilion at the very top where the breezes blow through.’