Raiders from the North

Chapter 13

After a day’s hunting Babur was riding slowly back towards Sayram. Around him in the fields the country people, their womenfolk in bright garments of red, green and blue, were stooping to prepare the ground for the planting of the season’s corn. Suddenly Babur spotted three riders raising golden dust as they galloped towards him from the settlement with the late-afternoon sun behind them. As they approached, he recognised two members of his bodyguard. The third was a stranger. When the three pulled up, he jumped from his horse and flung himself on to the dry ground before Babur.

‘Rise. Who are you?’

‘A messenger from your half-brother Jahangir. I give thanks to God that I have found you at last. I have searched for many days. You were hard to find.’

‘Deliberately so. These are troubled times. What message do you bring from Jahangir? I did not think to hear from him — at least, not while fortune’s hand is against me.’

‘It has turned against my master too. Shaibani Khan is invading Ferghana from the west. King Jahangir beseeches you to come immediately with whatever forces you can muster.’

‘Why should I? He did not send the men I asked for to help me defend Samarkand.’

‘I know nothing of that, Majesty. What I do know is that the people of Ferghana are in great fear and need your help.’

Babur did not reply immediately Then he said, ‘That is a good reason but I must think about my answer. Meanwhile we must return to the settlement. There you may wash and eat.’

Two hours later, Babur made his way to the rooms occupied by his mother and grandmother. As he approached he could hear Esan Dawlat’s lute. When he entered she put it down and his mother laid aside her embroidery. ‘You have heard about the message from Jahangir?’ he said.

‘Of course. How will you respond?’

‘I have thought hard over the last hour. I have no love for Jahangir, who has usurped my rightful throne, and even less for Tambal. However, as a man of honour I can respond in only one way. I must help defend Ferghana against the barbarous Uzbeks — the blood-enemies of our people. I love my birthplace. It is where my father lies in his tomb. I have many fond memories of a happy childhood there with both of you, and with him while he lived. I cannot stand by while my homeland is violated and subjugated. I and what men I can muster ride for Akhsi immediately.’

‘Neither your mother nor I would expect any less of you,’ said Esan Dawlat.

Purple rainclouds ringed Mount Beshtor’s spiky crown — a sight Babur had often seen in his youth. A storm was blowing in from the east and in an hour or less would burst over them. They should find shelter, Babur thought. Anyway, they had been almost ten hours in the saddle. It was time they rested. He pulled his feet from the stirrups and let his legs hang loose, feeling his stiff thighs and calves relax. His black stallion moved restlessly beneath him and he patted its sweating neck.

‘We will make camp over there.’ He pointed to a clump of red-barked spiraea trees about two hundred yards away that would give them cover from the rain and from spying eyes. When he was young, Wazir Khan had given him a handle for his riding whip cunningly carved from spiraea to resemble a fox with open jaws and lolling tongue. But this was no time for nostalgic thoughts of the past and the dead. The strong supple wood of the spiraea was good for making arrows and they would need plenty of those in the days ahead. ‘Baisanghar, post sentries on that hill over there.’

Babur dismounted and tethered his stallion to a tree. They had left Sayram in such haste that there had been no time to bring tents. No matter. He drew his maroon riding cloak tight round him and sat down, his back against a rock, as some of his men went deeper into the trees with their bows to hunt pheasants and pigeons while others gathered wood for a fire.

He had never thought his return to Ferghana would be like this.

‘Majesty?’

Babur looked up to see Baburi.

‘You look sad.’

‘I am, Baburi, In two days’ time, perhaps sooner, we’ll be at Akhsi. But we may be too late.’

‘We came as fast as we could. .’

‘True. But this is my homeland. Samarkand so dazzled me that I forgot that. If I ’d been less recklessly ambitious I might still be its king. And Shaibani Khan wouldn’t have got his filthy hands on my sister. .’

‘Nobody’s safe from the Uzbeks. Shaibani Khan will be your enemy until you — or someone else — slices off his bastard head. .’

Babur nodded. Baburi was probably right. Things might not have been so different. The guilt and melancholy that had descended as the familiar, rugged outlines of Mount Beshtor had emerged on the horizon lifted a little.

It was beginning to rain. Babur stood up and lifted his face to it, feeling the drops run down his cheeks. If this continued there would be no fire tonight. Instead of spitted game, they would eat stale bread and the sweet dried apricots they had carried in their saddlebags from Sayram and sleep on the damp ground, their stomachs growling. But at least he would soon see his birthplace again and, few as his forces were, have the chance to strike at Shaibani Khan.

Babur’s scouts saw it first — smoke rising from the settlement of Tikand, about forty miles from Akhsi. He remembered the village well, especially his hunting trips there with his father when he had galloped his fat little pony after deer across its meadows of white clover or run with the village boys to flush plump pheasants from beds of mirtimuri melons. Tikand had been a pleasant, prosperous place, its fertile soil irrigated by a network of canals.

But this was a very different Tikand. Soon Babur himself could see smoke pouring into the sky, acrid and black. This was no dung fire lit to brew tea or cook the midday meal. The whole settlement must be burning.

As he and his men advanced, weapons ready, nothing stirred, not even a songbird. Ahead, a canal gleamed in the sunlight but around it the neat orchards of pear, apple and almond trees were a wasteland. Their trunks had been hacked and burned. The melon patches, too, had been laid waste.

But there was worse. One tree had been left standing — a handsome apple that should soon have been pink and white with blossom in promise of a fine harvest of fruit. But it was already laden. From its sturdy branches dangled the bodies of five boys, their rough-cut hair, coarse-woven tunics and leggings exactly like those of the laughing, swearing, smooth-skinned urchins with whom he had once chased pheasants. Except that their faces were swollen and purple, their eyes bursting from their sockets, and their necks had bled where the coarse ropes had bitten into their young flesh. Flies buzzed round the congealing blood. Babur rode up to touch the cheek of one boy as his body swayed slowly to and fro. His skin was still slightly warm.

‘Cut them down.’

‘Majesty, over here.’ Baisanghar was pointing at a nearby well, dug to hold water from the canal.

Dismounting, Babur peered down at a mangled heap of bodies, male and female. From what he could see, all had been decapitated. Fifty feet away, arranged in a neat pile like a display of melons on a market stall, were the heads. The uppermost belonged to an old man with a flowing white beard. Probably a grandfather if not a great-grandfather. His severed penis was protruding bloodily from between his lips and his testicles occupied his eye sockets.

Babur and his men rode on in silence towards the centre of Tikand. The Uzbek raiders had left a smoking shell, the barns and houses burned down. Corpses lay everywhere, some stripped and arranged in obscene postures to make it appear as if, in their death agony, they had been copulating. The Uzbeks must have been moving too quickly to carry away the animals, so instead they had mutilated them, slashing their tendons. Babur set his men to cut the throats of any that still lived.

Half an hour later, as they were finishing their grim task, one of his scouts — a soldier whose people inhabited the lower slopes of the nearby mountain of Bara Koh and who knew the terrain well — came galloping in, his face eager.

‘What is it?’

‘We’ve picked up the Uzbeks’ trail. From the fresh droppings their horses left, they are no more than two hours ahead, and from their tracks they are heavily laden and moving slowly. They seem to be heading for Akhsi.’

‘Good. We ride.’

Flanked by Baisanghar and Baburi, Babur set off after the scouts. If he and his men could overtake the Uzbek raiding party he would make them pay — drop for drop of blood, scream for scream — for what they had done here. Those boys, hanged as casually as a farmer kills crows, would be avenged.

But some fifteen miles from Tikand, they lost the trail as they crossed an area of stony, scrubby ground. Perhaps the Uzbeks had turned aside to raid some other village, but there was nowhere of any size between Tikand and Akhsi. Babur decided to pause. If the Uzbeks had discovered they were being followed, he and his men might be riding into a trap. He sent two scouts ahead and another four to circle back, two to the left and two to the right, to check that the Uzbeks were not about to fall on them from the rear.

Babur and his men waited in silence, eyes and ears alert, hands tight on their reins, ready to take off in a moment if necessary. It was some time before one of the advance scouts returned.

‘Majesty. We’ve found them. They’ve ridden into the forest.’

As their horses picked their way along the narrow trail the Uzbeks must have taken, Babur wondered why they should have entered the dense, dark woods. It wasn’t the fastest route to Akhsi. Then he remembered. Long ago, on one of those hunting expeditions that were now a distant memory, his father had shown him the famous Mirror Rock in some low hills to the north of the forest. The great boulder had amazed him. Nearly thirty feet long, and in some places as high as a man, its grey surface was threaded with so many thick veins of rock crystal that, when the rays of the midday sun fell on it, it shone like a mirror, reflecting darts of bright light. It was supposed to have mystical powers. . a warrior who honed the blade of his dagger on one of its sharp edges would never fall in battle. Perhaps the Uzbeks — now that their murdering was done — wished to see it and test its powers.

Half an hour later, Babur and his men emerged into open pasture where they could again see the tracks of horses heading north. Drawing Baisanghar and Baburi to his side, Babur told them of Mirror Rock. ‘If that is where the Uzbeks have gone, we may catch them off-guard. They will not expect to have been followed. But we must be cautious. . If I remember correctly, the rock is only three miles from here. Tell the men to keep silent and have their weapons ready. .’

The Uzbeks were shouting and laughing, their voices rising from over the brow of a low hill as Babur and his men approached. He signalled his men to dismount and, leaving half a dozen soldiers to guard the horses, led the rest on foot up the slope of the hill from behind which the raucous noises were coming. Keeping very low, they peered down.

It was nearly midday and the sunlight reflecting off Mirror Rock was so dazzling that Babur had to shut his eyes. Even so, hot white spots danced beneath his eyelids. He had forgotten the rock’s brilliance. Shading his eyes with his hand, he looked again. The Uzbeks were lolling on the ground beneath the rock. Wineskins — some empty, some still full — lay around them. So did their weapons. There were no more than about fifty men. Their horses, laden with spoils from Tikand, were tethered beneath a clump of trees to the right-hand side of the rock.

Sudden high-pitched screams somewhere over to his left made Babur swing round. Two Uzbeks were dragging a half-naked woman by her arms to the foot of the rock. A chorus of further cries — high and piercing — rose from behind the rock where the Uzbeks must have left their female captives, to be brought out and enjoyed at their leisure.

The Uzbeks stripped the screaming, writhing woman of her robe, exposing her soft, pale body. Then, while one knelt and pinioned her wrists, two others each held one of her spreadeagled legs and a fourth, grinning, began to loosen his belt. Thoughts of Khanzada flashed through Babur’s brain. He leaped to his feet and loosed his first arrow. The man was still fumbling beneath his tunic as the tip pierced his throat. With a ludicrous expression on his face he tumbled backwards, hand clutching his genitals.

Babur’s second arrow penetrated the left eye of the Uzbek holding the woman’s wrists who, on seeing what had happened to his comrade, had stupidly looked directly up the hill towards where Babur was silhouetted against the skyline.

With a cry of ‘For Ferghana!’ Babur raced down the hill, his men around him, their minds set on bloody revenge for the inhabitants of Tikand.

‘We’ve left them a feast.’ Baburi looked back at the circle of dark-winged birds wheeling in the air currents above Mirror Rock.

‘It would have been better if there’d been more,’ Babur muttered. Wiping out this raiding party was just a fleabite. Shaibani Khan, his power and strength, lay ahead. Still, he had left a message: his name scrawled in blood on a scrap of paper shoved between the teeth of an Uzbek. Shaibani Khan would soon know who had done this.

‘But we didn’t lose a single man and we’ve taken all their horses and the food they stole.’

Babur glanced at the lines of riderless horses at the rear of the column. The seven women his men had found — the youngest no more than twelve — were wrapped in cloaks and riding in two donkey carts that the Uzbeks had taken from Tikand to carry their booty. Before he went much further, he must get rid of them. There was a small settlement east of here where, for the present at least, the women would be safe. He would send them there with an escort.

Babur rode on in silence, ignoring Baburi’s attempts to talk. What would he find as he neared Akhsi? Would other chieftains rally to Jahangir? Would they reach him before Shaibani Khan’s troops arrived before the gates? More than ever he missed Wazir Khan’s wisdom. He, too, had been born and bred in Ferghana. He would have understood Babur’s torment.

With darkness falling, they camped on the banks of a stream flowing from the Jaxartes. With Akhsi so close now — barely two hours’ ride away — Babur had to curb the desire to ride on. It was too dangerous to blunder about in the dark. Uzbek patrols might be anywhere.

He sat on the edge of the stream, watching the water ripple past. He had been foolish. Rather than hacking those Uzbeks to pieces at Mirror Rock, he should have questioned them, found out where Shaibani Khan was, the size of his force. Instead, bent on revenge, he had been intent only on their death. He still had much to learn. .

‘Majesty. We found this shepherd nearby with his flock. You must hear his story.’

Babur looked round to see Baisanghar and behind him, between two soldiers, a man of about forty with a weathered face. He looked nervous but that was hardly surprising. He hadn’t expected to be grabbed and hauled into Babur’s camp.

‘Repeat what you told my men. No one will harm you.’

Baisanghar gripped the man’s shoulders and turned him to face Babur.

The shepherd cleared his throat. ‘Shaibani Khan captured Akhsi five days ago.’ His eyes flickered anxiously over Babur’s face. ‘They say he tricked King Jahangir. He told him he didn’t want Ferghana, only tribute. If the king would acknowledge him publicly as his overlord and pay him what he asked he’d take his army back to Samarkand. .’

‘Go on.’ Babur felt suddenly cold.

‘I wasn’t there, of course. So I can only tell you what I heard. . They say the ceremony was held on the banks of the Jaxartes below the fortress. Beneath a pavilion of red silk, the king knelt to Shaibani Khan, who was seated on a divan covered with gold cloth, and called him “Master”. As he waited, head bowed, Shaibani Khan rose and drew his great curved sword. Smiling, he advanced on the king. “Now that you are my vassal I can do what I like with you,” he said, and hacked off his head. As he did so, Shaibani Khan’s warriors fell on the king’s courtiers who were standing at either side and murdered them too.’

‘Tambal? Was he killed? And what of Baqi Beg, Yusuf and the others?’

‘All dead. I also heard — from two stable-boys who escaped from Akhsi — that when Shaibani Khan entered the fortress he had the women of the harem paraded before him. Some he gave to his men, others he took for himself. Last of all he summoned Roxanna, the king’s mother. They say he held up her son’s severed head before her and, as she wept, wailed and cursed him, he ordered her throat to be cut — “to silence her whining”, he said.’

Babur’s head was reeling. His informant hadn’t seen any of these things for himself and perhaps the details were wrong, but Babur didn’t doubt the essence of the story — that Shaibani Khan had tricked and killed Jahangir and Tambal and had taken Ferghana for himself. Neither did he doubt Roxanna’s fate and for a moment felt a fleeting pity for his father’s concubine.

At dawn, after a restless night, Babur untethered his horse and rode alone towards a steep ridge from which he knew he could see Akhsi. His stallion was sweating as they breasted the summit. Far below, with the Jaxartes curling past, he saw the fortress built by his ancestors, their stronghold for so long.

A banner was streaming proudly above the gate. From this distance Babur couldn’t distinguish the colour but he knew it wasn’t the bright yellow of Ferghana. It was the black of Shaibani Khan, who had stolen his ancestral lands just as he had seized Samarkand. Babur couldn’t hold back the tears that ran down his face or control the sobs that shook him. But it didn’t matter. Up here on the mountain ridge there was no one to see, only the hawks circling high above.

‘It is the only way.’ Esan Dawlat’s voice was insistent. ‘He will kill you just as he murdered Jahangir and your cousin, Mahmud Khan. He has sworn to exterminate every prince of Timur’s house and, I tell you, he means to keep his oath.’

‘I won’t run from him. I’m no coward. .’

‘Then you are a fool instead. He commands armies of thousands. Over the summer, since he captured Samarkand and then Ferghana, the tribes of the northern steppes have rallied to his banner. His strength increases daily while yours diminishes.’ Esan Dawlat spat into the fire — something which Babur had never seen her do before. ‘What support do you have?’ she continued. ‘Fifty? A hundred? The rest have slunk back to their villages. You don’t even have a wife. . or an heir.’

Esan Dawlat blamed him for that, but he was glad Ayisha had gone for good. The blunt message that had arrived from Ibrahim Saru that he had never intended to give his daughter to a landless pauper and that the marriage was dissolved had afforded Babur as much satisfaction as it had angered his grandmother. According to the messenger who had delivered the letter — and returned the wedding jewellery Babur had given her — the talk was that Ayisha was shortly to marry a man of her own tribe to whom she had been promised before Babur’s offer of marriage. At least Babur thought he might now understand the reason for her coldness towards him, but as far as he was concerned Ayisha could lie in another man’s bed — any man who could thaw her was welcome.

‘I have no time for a wife,’ he said bluntly. ‘It is my destiny to be a king and I must strike back. .’

‘If you truly believe in your destiny you will listen. Even now, Shaibani Khan is searching for you. He knows it was you who ambushed his men at Mirror Rock, and by now he will know, too, that you have returned here to Sayram. Many will be willing to take his gold for betraying you.’

‘I made a promise to Khanzada. .’

‘Which you cannot honour if he cuts your head off your shoulders. And will it ease her suffering when Shaibani Khan tells her you are dead?’ Her face softened when she saw the bitterness in his eyes. ‘You are still so young. You must learn to be patient. When you live as long as I, you learn that circumstances change. Sometimes the bravest thing — and the hardest — is to wait.’

Kutlugh Nigar nodded. Since Khanzada had been taken she had became so silent it was hard to coax a word from her. ‘Your grandmother is right. You have no chance if you stay here. He will murder us all. I do not care for myself, but you must survive. . Remember whose blood flows in your veins. Don’t let Shaibani Khan wipe you out like some petty bandit.’

Kutlugh Nigar wrapped her thick dark blue shawl round herself more tightly and held her hands over the brazier in the hearth. Winter would soon be upon them again, as the winds blowing around Sayram’s mud-brick houses and penetrating the wooden shutters were warning them.

Babur kissed her thin cheek. ‘I will think over what you have both said.’

Esan Dawlat picked up her lute. It was battered and some of the mother-of-pearl, inlaid to resemble clusters of narcissi, had fallen out, but as she plucked the strings the soft, sweet notes carried Babur back to the days of his boyhood in Akhsi.

Going outside, he walked across the courtyard, climbed on to the village wall and stared out into the gathering dusk. He would make his own decisions, but he knew his grandmother and mother were right. His priority must be to stay alive.

‘Majesty.’ He heard Baburi’s voice from below him. A trio of plump pigeons dangled by their feet from his belt — he must have been hunting. He climbed the short flight of steps on to the wall and stood in silence at Babur’s side.

‘Do you ever doubt your destiny, Baburi?’

‘Market boys don’t have destinies. They’re a luxury, for kings.’

‘All my life I’ve been told that I was put on this earth to achieve something. What if it isn’t true. .?’

‘What do you want me to tell you? That you are heir to Genghis Khan and Timur? That life should be good to you as of right?’

Baburi’s tone was impatient; rough, even. Babur had never heard him speak like that before. ‘I have been unlucky.’

‘No you haven’t. You were fortunate in your birth. You had everything. You weren’t an orphan. You didn’t have to fight for scraps like me.’ Suddenly anger blazed in Baburi’s indigo eyes. ‘I’ve watched you since we rode back here from Akhsi, drowning in self-pity, hardly speaking to those around you. You’ve changed. You weren’t like this when we went riding together or when you had Yadgar in your arms. That was living and you’ve forgotten what it was like. If this is how you behave in adversity, perhaps you don’t deserve this “great destiny” — whatever it might be — that you seem to carry around like a burden on your back.’

Before he knew it, Babur had taken a swing at Baburi and the two had tumbled from the walls on to the hard mud below. Babur was the heavier and had Baburi pinned under him but, quick as an eel, Baburi twisted to one side and, with the fingers of one hand poking into one of Babur’s eyes, caught him a hard blow with the other on the side of his head. Grunting with pain, Babur rolled off him, sprang to his feet and leaped on him again, winding him. Seizing Baburi’s head he began banging it hard against the ground, but a second later felt Baburi’s boot in his groin. In agony, he let go of Baburi and rolled aside.

The two of them — hair dusty and tousled — looked at one another. Baburi’s nose was bleeding and Babur felt blood running down his own face from a cut above his ear, while his left eye, where Baburi had jabbed it, was already hard to keep open.

‘You’d make a good street-fighter,’ Baburi said. ‘You’ll never starve — destiny or no destiny.’

As men, alerted by the sound of their fight, came running along the walls above them, led by an amazed-looking Baisanghar, the two of them started to laugh.

The air was so cold it stung Babur’s eyes. Every two or three steps his feet, in their hide boots, slipped on the ice. Yet this steep pass, leading south out of Ferghana, was the only viable escape route from Shaibani Khan whose patrols had been hunting Babur and his men like foxes, flushing them from place to place and laying everywhere waste.

The absence of horses or ponies made Babur feel vulnerable, even high on this icy mountain where they would meet no one. He and his people had always been horsemen but for the moment they must rely on the endurance of their own bodies. During the first few days of the journey up the lower slopes, Esan Dawlat and Kutlugh Nigar had ridden on the backs of one of the four donkeys Babur had brought with him to help carry their possessions. But as the ascent got steeper and the weather worsened, Babur had had to order the animals killed for food.

Thereafter, it had sometimes been possible for Esan Dawlat and Kutlugh Nigar to be carried in baskets on the backs of his strongest men. But for the rest of the time, they and their two serving women, like the forty or so men who remained with Babur, had had to walk, feeling their way upwards through the frozen rocks with their wooden staves. Kutlugh Nigar had surprised her son with her agility and balance, refusing help in favour of her own weaker mother. Babur could see her now, ahead of him, so muffled in sheepskins that almost nothing of her was visible, pulling herself up the rocks quicker than some of his men. She was faring much better than Kasim, who had fallen repeatedly and was clearly exhausted.

All that the party had to shelter them were four felt tents and some fleeces rolled together round poles that three men — one behind another with the pole resting on their shoulders — could just about carry. Babur had taken his turn, his back bending as his feet fought for purchase.

After another day, they should be over the pass. In the valleys below there would be villages to provide them with shelter and later with horses. That night, lying beneath the fleeces, Babur took comfort from that thought, as he did from the companionable warmth of the bodies of Baburi and his men pressed tightly around him.

Caught urinating on the ice of a frozen stream, the boy gawped in amazement two days later at the unkempt party stumbling towards him from the direction of the pass. Then he turned and fled, slipping and slithering to the village a few hundred yards further downhill.

‘Shall I send men ahead, Majesty?’ Baisanghar asked.

Babur nodded. Though he was numb with cold, relief and pride began to pump through him, reviving him. He had done it. He had brought his family and his men safely through the mountains. That they were a ragged few, rather than the armies he had once commanded, didn’t matter for the present.

A few minutes later, Baisanghar’s soldiers returned with what looked — beneath the layers of thick quilted coats and the dark woollen cloth wound round his head — like an elderly man. They must have told him who Babur was for he fell at his feet, touching his forehead to the cold snow.

‘There’s no need for that.’ It was a long time since Babur had received such obeisance. He took the man by the shoulders and helped him gently to his feet. ‘We are weary and have come far. And we have women with us. Will you give us shelter?’

‘Few cross the mountains so late in the year,’ the man said. ‘I am the headman here. You are welcome in our village.’

That night, Babur sat cross-legged by the fire in the headman’s simple, mud-walled house. The lower floor was a single room with bolsters of wool to sleep on — Esan Dawlat, Kutlugh Nigar and the headman’s wife were sharing a small room above, reached by a flight of wooden stairs outside. Baburi was next to him, and both were examining the black marks and blisters on their feet left by frostbite.

‘Sometimes I thought I’d never walk again — even if we survived.’ Baburi winced as he touched a tender spot.

‘We were lucky. We could easily have lost our way or fallen down a ravine.’

‘Was it luck or that mighty “destiny” of yours?’ Baburi smiled. Babur also smiled but made no reply.

Despite the early-morning mist, Babur saw the hare as it jumped out from behind a low bush then froze, ears erect, to snuff the air. He was downwind of it — the hare couldn’t know he was there. Carefully he put an arrow to his bow-string and pulled it back, eyes never leaving the animal that, satisfied it was safe, was enjoying a brisk scratch.

Suddenly behind Babur came the sound of running feet and the hare took off. Cursing, he turned to see one of his men, agitated and panting. ‘Majesty, an ambassador has come from Kabul. He has been seeking you for the past two months, ever since the snows began to melt. He is waiting in the headman’s house.’

Irritation forgotten, Babur secured his quiver, slung his bow over his shoulder and ran down the track towards the village. The message must be from his father’s cousin, the King of Kabul. . but the two men had been estranged and there had been little contact between them that Babur could recall.

The ambassador, wearing a peacock blue robe, was more grandly dressed than anyone Babur had seen in a long time. Feathers, held by a jewelled clasp, waved from the crest of his dark blue turban and his two attendants were clad in blue trimmed with gold. They must have changed while they were waiting for his men to find him. Babur smiled inwardly. No one would ride about the mountains in such garb. . All the same, he was conscious for the first time in many months of his own appearance — his long hair, simple yellow wool tunic and buckskin trousers.

But the ambassador didn’t seem perturbed. Relief that his search was over was written in his features as Babur strode towards him.

The ambassador bowed low. ‘Greetings, Majesty.’

‘You are welcome. They tell me you come from Kabul. What do you want of me?’

‘Majesty, I bring news that is sad but also glorious. The king, your father’s cousin, Ulughbeg Mirza, died during the winter leaving no heir. His last surviving son had already died of a fever two months before. My message from the Royal Council of Kabul is this. The throne can be yours if you will come. The council believes the inhabitants will welcome another ruler from Timur’s illustrious stock, particularly one proven in battle and still young. With the council’s support, which they pledge you on the Holy Book, you will have no rivals.’

Babur could not hide his surprise. Never in his wildest and most desperate moments had he thought of the kingdom of Kabul. It was so far away — more than five hundred miles. To reach it he must cross the broad Oxus and the twisting, knife-sharp passes of the Hindu Kush. Even then it would be a gamble. By the time he arrived much might have changed. The members of the royal council who, for whatever reason, seemed so generously disposed towards him might have been toppled or bribed to support another candidate.

Yet he couldn’t stay here, hunting rabbits and hares, as another year passed him by and also, Babur thought, with growing elation and excitement, Kabul was far from the rapacious Shaibani Khan. It was also rich and powerful. Soldiers would flock to him again. There, he could rebuild his power and plan his next move.

‘Thank you,’ he said, to the messenger. ‘I will give you my answer in a short while.’ But he already knew. He was going to Kabul.