Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (43 page)

‘Have any of the rest of you anything better to suggest?’ Mehrunissa asked. There was no response beyond a silent shifting of feet and exchange of dismayed looks.

‘Well then, the ford it must be – I cannot and you cannot leave your emperor in the hands of that renegade Mahabat Khan. How long will preparations to attack take?’

‘A few hours to check what weapons we have and what has been left on the other bank, to tie muskets and powder in oiled cloth bags to give them what protection we can from water, to fit the few remaining war elephants with their armour – that sort of thing . . . We could be ready before dusk, but the morning would be better.’

‘Won’t Mahabat Khan move off rather than stand by while we make such preparations?’ A slight young man with a neatly trimmed beard – one of the youngest officers – found his voice.

‘No. Whatever else he is, Mahabat Khan is less of a fool than you,’ Mehrunissa said. ‘He knows that even if he has the emperor, having failed to seize me he has failed to seize power. Don’t fear – he will wait to see my next move. We will attack in the morning so none of you incompetents
can have any excuse that you had insufficient time to prepare. In the meantime, keep up occasional fire over the river so that Mahabat Khan’s men have a disturbed night. Also, send out patrols in all directions to keep him guessing about our intentions.’ Mehrunissa smiled grimly. She was almost enjoying herself. Mahabat Khan had given her the power to act directly and not as before through an intermediary. ‘Have my elephant and its howdah prepared for war. Tomorrow I will lead you to redeem your honour and to rescue our emperor. Cowards though some of you may be, you will not dare hang back if a woman leads.’

‘Majesty, Mahabat Khan permits your grandsons to join you,’ said a tall Rajput, sweeping aside the velvet entrance curtain.

Dara Shukoh and Aurangzeb entered hesitantly. None of what was going on would make any sense to them, Jahangir thought. Once they were alone, he knelt and took each by the hand. ‘Don’t be afraid. No one is going to harm you. I am here and will protect you. And it won’t be long before the empress rescues us. She escaped from Mahabat Khan and even now will be rallying our troops on the other side of the river.’

Aurangzeb said nothing but Jahangir felt Dara Shukoh pull away. ‘The empress isn’t our friend – she’s our enemy. That’s what I overheard my father say.’

‘He is wrong. Mehrunissa is your great-aunt and is concerned for your welfare. She will find a way to help us . . . help you . . .’ Jahangir released Aurangzeb and stood up.

‘My father says she only cares about herself,’ Dara Shukoh continued. ‘That’s why she makes you so drunk – so she
can give all the orders. He told me never to trust her . . . and I don’t. My brother and I want to go home!’

‘Enough! I asked for you to be brought to me because I was worried you might be afraid, and this is how you reward me. When we’re free again I will try to forget what you said, Dara Shukoh. But I’m sad to find that my son has taught you to be as insolent and ungrateful as himself.’

Turning away, Jahangir took a deep breath. Dara Shukoh’s vehemence had shaken him.

‘General, they are moving down the riverbank,’ shouted one of Mahabat Khan’s junior officers the next morning, two hours after daybreak. Mahabat Khan had had his scouts monitor carefully the movements of the troops on the other bank as he tried to predict what Mehrunissa and the officers of Jahangir’s guard would do next. He had discovered from questioning the prisoners – not under threat of torture but with the promise of reward under his new regime – that the imperial forces accompanying Jahangir numbered not three thousand as he had thought but more like six thousand, of whom he had captured perhaps fifteen hundred, together with a lot of equipment. With his ten thousand Rajputs he still theoretically had double the manpower of Mehrunissa but he knew that in practice he needed at least a quarter of these to guard the camp and his prisoners. In particular he had designated Ashok and two hundred of his most loyal and level-headed soldiers to keep Jahangir and his two grandsons safe but also secure in his hands at all times.

Although he had been confused for a time by the various patrols sent in random directions in accordance with
Mehrunissa’s orders, it had become increasingly clear to him that the imperial troops were really concentrating all their efforts upstream around a small hill on their side of the river. Just before dusk one of his prisoners had volunteered that the imperial troops had previously considered but quickly discarded the idea of using a deep ford there as an alternative to a boat bridge for crossing the Jhelum. It had only taken Mahabat Khan a moment to realise that Mehrunissa had no intention of either yielding or trying to escape but meant to attempt to snatch her husband back by an attack over that same ford. He could not help but admire the courage of his fellow Persian. Indeed, she reminded him of his wife, and for a moment he found himself wishing for the comforting presence of that strong-willed woman. But at the beginning of his impulsive ride from the Deccan he had written telling her to leave Agra on the pretext of returning to visit relations in Persia and go to Rajasthan to the Aravalli Hills, whence he had recruited so many of his best troops and where he knew she would be safe.

Once he had become sure in his own mind that an attack was coming sooner or later over the ford, he had ordered a thousand of his best musketeers to take an extra musket each from a stock he had found among the captured baggage train so that they could fire two volleys quickly. He had also designated others of his men to act as their loaders, again to increase their rate of fire. In this way he hoped to make up for his lack of cannon apart from the three small bronze
gajnals
he had found among the imperial baggage train, which were equipped with only limited quantities of powder and shot. These he had ordered to be mounted in baggage carts and moved by ox teams under cover of darkness to
some of the low mud banks near the ford, where he had also commanded some of his chosen musketeers with their two weapons and attendant loaders to conceal themselves.

Now the moment for action had come once more Mahabat Khan grew calm. He shouted to his musketeers and archers to hold their fire until he was sure their targets were within range and gave the order. Then they were to continue to fire as rapidly as possible. He ordered those manning the small cannon to do the same, although he knew that their inexperience with the weapons would make them slow to reload. Then he moved across to join the squadrons of horsemen waiting to attack any of the imperial soldiers who actually succeeded in crossing the Jhelum.

The first beasts Mahabat Khan saw enter the river, which at this point was around eighty yards wide, were a line of three large war elephants wearing overlapping steel plate armour to protect their bodies and heads with scimitars strapped to their red-painted tusks. Each had two drivers sitting behind its ears and trying to make themselves as small targets as possible in their exposed position. Five musketeers were crammed into open wooden howdahs on each of their backs. Two more war elephants followed them into the cold water and Mahabat Khan saw at least twenty or thirty more behind them. Perhaps, he thought, some were actually baggage elephants pressed into an unfamiliar role. There were also hundreds of horsemen massing on the riverbank and churning it into mud. Many were carrying long lances at the ends of which fluttered green Moghul pennants. The middle elephant of the first line of three had advanced only about ten yards into the river and Mahabat Khan’s men were still holding their fire when he saw it stumble, perhaps in
one of the deep potholes in the river bed the prisoners had warned of. It swayed so violently it shed two of the musketeers from its open howdah into the swift-flowing waters to be carried off downstream towards the burnt remnants of the bridge of boats.

Mahabat Khan knew that this was his opportunity and shouted the order to open fire. Within moments the musketeers and archers emerged from behind the mud banks and got to work. Some of the first shots hit both of the mahouts on another of the leading elephants and they too fell with a splash into the swirling waters of the Jhelum, leaving the driverless animal to try to turn in fright to regain the northern bank from which it had come. As it turned it too slipped, and its left shoulder dropped below the water level. Impeded by the heavy weight of its armour, it overbalanced completely and was carried away half submerged and drowning, leaving the musketeers from its howdah to swim as best they could for their lives. The remaining elephant of the front line continued to advance, however, as did those behind until a shot from one of the
gajnals
caught an elephant in the fourth rank in an unprotected portion of its face and it too fell, flecking the jade-green waters of the Jhelum with its blood.

Many of the imperial horsemen were now in the water and they and their mounts seemed to be making better progress, half walking, half swimming and overtaking the stumbling elephants. Some of the riders even stood courageously in their stirrups to loose off arrows or – astonishingly, to Mahabat Khan’s mind – in one case managing to fire a long-barrelled musket. Two or three of Mahabat Khan’s musketeers fell and by now others were reloading, so the fire from his side of the river diminished.
This allowed several of the leading imperial horsemen to complete their crossing.

‘Charge!’ Mahabat Khan yelled, and at the head of his riders he swept down on to the muddy river bank to attack the horsemen as they emerged. His first sword stroke glanced off the breastplate of one but his second caught the throat of a chestnut horse which instantly collapsed, throwing its rider. For a moment it lay kicking in the shallows, blood pumping into the water, but then it was still. All about him horsemen were clashing along the river’s edge. Here a horse reared up and its imperial rider slipped from its back; there one of his own Rajputs was knocked from his saddle, spitted like a chicken for cooking by one of the imperial lances.

Elsewhere, two men were fighting in the shallows, rolling over and over as they grappled to hold each other’s head under water. Then one managed to grab a dagger and stabbed his opponent beneath his breastplate. Blood flowed into the water again. The victor – who Mahabat Khan was relieved to see was one of his Rajputs – heaved aside the body of his dying opponent and, water sluicing from him, began to stagger from the river. But Mahabat Khan’s relief turned to dismay when the man suddenly flung up his arms and fell backwards, to be carried away instantly in the current. Almost immediately another Rajput crashed from his horse so close to Mahabat Khan that cold water from the splash soaked him. He looked around for the source of the accurate fire and as he did so he heard another musket ball hiss past his head.

Then he saw where the fire was coming from – the gilded howdah on a massive elephant wading through the river about fifty feet away. In the howdah were four figures. The
one in front was wearing a dark cloak. The other three were attendants, two intent on loading muskets, pushing lead balls down the barrel with steel ramrods, the third handing a loaded weapon to the cloaked figure. The empress, Mahabat Khan realised at once. He knew instinctively that she recognised him too. Well aware of her skill as a tiger hunter he tried to make himself small, crouching low over the withers of his horse, his arms about its neck. But only a few moments later he felt a sharp pain and numbness in his right forearm and the horse pitched forward. Both he and his mount had been hit.

Immediately he was in the cold water, being whirled downstream by the flow. Although he had lost his helmet in his fall he was being pulled underwater by the weight of his breastplate. Water was in his nostrils and his ears and he struggled to close his mouth. His ears were bubbling now and his lungs felt fit to burst. He had to do something quickly to get his breastplate off or he would drown. Despite the wound he could still move his right hand and he groped for the dagger at his waist. Finding it, he closed his fingers carefully round the jade hilt before pulling it out of its scabbard to be sure it would not slip from his grasp. It came out fairly easily and he cut first one and then the other leather strap on the left side of his breastplate. As it came away the force of the water caught it and because the straps on his right side were still fastened he was twisted down further underwater, before he freed himself from it. He clawed his way up to the surface, and took in a gasping lungful of air, only to feel a sharp blow and then another in the small of his back.