Raiders from the North

Chapter 17

Six months later Babur sat, face impassive, on his gilded throne, his courtiers erect and motionless around him, as Baburi lowered the sack to the ground before him.

‘Show them.’

Taking his dagger from his blue sash, Baburi slit the sack to reveal the contents: two heads, blood-encrusted and mottled purple-black with weeping putrescence. The stench of decay — sweet and rotten to the point of nausea — filled the room. The ragged flesh where a blade had roughly hacked through the base of the neck suggested that death had not come easily to the two men. The once handsome features of Sayyidim, the young cup-bearer whom Babur had helped hold down while his frost-bitten hand had been amputated, were only just recognisable in his bloated face. His bursting lips were pulled back to reveal gums suppurating pus above still perfect white teeth. As for the other head, Babur had not even recognised the man — one of Baisanghar’s lieutenants — but his death, like Sayyidim’s, would be avenged.

The dead men’s task had been to take a letter from Babur to the King of Khorasan, his distant relation, at his court in Herat. Merchants arriving with the biggest caravan to reach Kabul that season had reported that, beyond the Hindu Kush, Shaibani Khan was on the move again at the head of a vast army. Some said his target was wealthy Khorasan, west of Kabul, others that it was Kabul itself. Babur’s letter to the king had been a warning but also a suggestion for their alliance. Except that the letter had never arrived. .

Baburi had come upon the messengers’ fate by chance during a routine raid against a clan of sheep-rustling Kafirs. While searching the mud-brick huts of their remote village he had found the messengers’ heads in a large clay pot under a buzzing cloud of green-black flies. The heads of their ten-man military escort were nearby. From the account Baburi choked out of the headman, the Kafirs had tortured them for no reason other than sadistic pleasure. Some had had their tongues cut out, but even more appalling was what had they done to one messenger who had been slashed in the abdomen during the fight in which they were captured. The Kafirs had put their hands into the wound and pulled out part of his intestine and, as he screamed out, tied it to a post and then made the man dance around it, unravelling his intestines as he went until at last death had mercifully ended his sufferings.

Baburi, resisting the temptation for instant vengeance, had bound the headman’s ankles to his wrists behind his back and rounded up all the other Kafirs he could find to bring back to the citadel in Kabul. The convoy had arrived just a few hours earlier and in the dungeons beneath the citadel it hadn’t taken long to force from them a confession of who had bribed them to carry out such a barbarous act.

Babur addressed his courtiers in a flat, dispassionate voice. ‘I asked you to assemble here before me to hear proof of an act of treason. These heads belong to my messengers to the King of Khorasan. They were murdered on the orders of a man of my blood, a man I trusted. . Bring him in.’

A gasp went up as Mirza Khan was led into the room surrounded by guards. In deference to his rank as a descendant of Timur he was not bound. There was nothing humble or fearful in his demeanour or his clothes: a heavy enamelled chain hung round his neck and his tunic of purple silk was secured about his stout body with a yellow sash woven with pearls. His expression was insolent.

Glancing briefly at the two rotting heads as if they were no more than a speck of dirt on his red riding boots Mirza Khan touched his hand to his breast but said nothing.

‘The men who murdered my messengers — Kafirs from the mountains — have confessed to their crime. They name you as the instigator. .’

‘Any one of us, never mind villains, will say anything under torture. .’

‘Sometimes even the truth. . They say you paid them to seize the messengers — one of them once your own cup-bearer — as they entered the Shibartu Pass and to steal the letter they were carrying to the King of Khorasan. You also told them they could do as they liked with the prisoners, provided their disposal was permanent. In their stupidity they kept their heads as proof of this. .’

Mirza Khan shrugged. ‘Kafirs are known for their lies and deceit. .’

‘My quartermaster found this among their miserable possessions.’ An attendant passed Babur a shabby little bag of flowered silk. Untying the cord at its neck, Babur pulled out a small plug of ivory with a piece of onyx set into its base. ‘Your seal, Mirza Khan. The craftsmen who inscribed your name did a good job — see how clearly your name and titles stand out. You were a fool to send a token like that to your hirelings, but I always knew you had manure for brains. .’

It was good to see Mirza Khan’s fear beginning to show. Sweat was running down his face into his perfumed beard and dark stains were spreading visibly into the purple silk beneath his armpits.

‘What I don’t understand is why you did it.’

Mirza Khan dabbed at his face briefly with a lilac handkerchief but remained silent.

‘If you don’t speak I’ll have you tortured.’

‘You can’t — I’m of Timur’s house, your own cousin.’

‘I can and I will. You forfeited your rights when you betrayed me.’ Babur’s cold words seemed to crush the insolence from Mirza Khan. The screws were twisting now.

‘Majesty. .’ It was the first time Mirza Khan had addressed him so. ‘I had no choice — I was forced to act as I did. .’

‘A man always has a choice. For whom were you acting?’

Mirza Khan suddenly began to retch. A thin trail of yellowish vomit spewed from the corner of his mouth, staining the purple silk of his tunic. He wiped it away, raised his head and looked piteously at Babur. ‘Remember, we share the same blood. .’

‘I do remember, and I am ashamed of it. Once more, who is your paymaster?’

Mirza Khan looked as if he was about to vomit again, but he swallowed hard and mumbled something.

‘Speak up.’

‘Shaibani Khan.’

Babur stared. Then he jumped down from his dais and advanced on Mirza Khan, shook him by his shoulders and yelled into his face, ‘You have betrayed me to Shaibani Khan, that Uzbek barbarian — the enemy of all our house?’

‘He promised to return my lands that he had captured. He promised me honour again instead of being a hanger-on at your court. I warned him you were proposing an alliance with Khorasan. He wished to stop it. He plans to attack Khorasan and then you, Majesty. Let me be your spy now, Majesty. . Shaibani Khan trusts me. I will send him whatever messages you wish. . perhaps we can lure him into a trap.’

To Babur, the man’s oily wheedling was as repulsive as the sour stench of vomit on his breath. He let go of him and stepped back. ‘Take this traitor and throw him head first from the battlements. If that fails to kill him, throw him down again. Then take his body to the dunghill in the marketplace so the mongrels that scavenge there can devour it.’

‘Majesty, please. .’ Warm, yellow urine was seeping down on to the soft red leather of Mirza Khan’s boots, slowly forming a small pool on the stone floor. Suddenly he vomited again, and a new smell told Babur that Mirza Khan had also lost control of his bowels.

‘Take him!’ Babur shouted to the guards. ‘See that my orders are carried out at once.’

An hour later, Babur rode out to observe the execution of the Kafirs. So brutal had been their treatment of his men that he had ordered them to suffer a long-established punishment for the worst of traitors. They were to be impaled on sharpened stakes beneath the city walls. Their cries would not reach as far as the citadel. He was glad. Their agonised shrieking was not for the ears of Maham, Kutlugh Nigar or his grandmother although, now he thought about it, Esan Dawlat could probably have observed the whole process without flinching — as he would.

His contempt for Mirza Khan, his anger with the Kafirs for their mindless bestiality, banished any pity. He watched as the condemned men were roughly stripped of their clothes and dragged to where the stakes waited. The executioners, wearing black leather aprons over their tunics — red as the blood that would soon soak them — seized and impaled the prisoners one by one. Some had the sharp stakes driven up through their anuses. Others were spitted sideways to roars of encouragement from the townspeople. Not that Babur could condemn them — he felt nothing but satisfaction every time a sharpened stake penetrated the soft flesh of a writhing body and the warm blood spurted. He would have liked to give Mirza Khan the same treatment — only his royal birth had saved him.

That night Babur found it hard to lift his mood. Even the sight of Humayun and his new brother Kamran, with his mop of dark hair, soft as a dandelion seed head — born two months ago to Gulrukh and already gripping Babur’s thumb hard — failed to cheer him. Neither could the feel and scent of Maham’s warm, willing body stifle his forebodings. The storm was coming whether he was ready or not. The decisions he must soon take would be the difference between glorious victory and immortal fame or defeat and obscure death not only for him but for all of his family. .

A month later, the precariousness of existence was brought home to Babur in a way he had not anticipated. Esan Dawlat’s body on the bier seemed as small as a child’s. The delicate tang of the camphor water in which her women had washed her rose from her simple cotton shroud. As he looked down on his grandmother’s body, Babur didn’t conceal his tears. Somehow he had always taken her strength and determination for granted. The idea that she could die suddenly in her sleep, without uttering a final word — a command, a piece of shrewd advice — was absurd. But as he thought back over the past months, he realised now that there had been signs — vagueness, and an uncertainty and a tendency to fuss that she had never shown before. Her memory had sometimes seemed confused — she would speak to Babur with perfect clarity about his boyhood but if he asked her what she’d been doing yesterday her face would cloud.

Life without her seemed unthinkable. In their most desperate days, she had been the lynchpin of the family, the voice of reason and common sense but, above all, of courage. Soon he must face the biggest challenge of his life without her. He recollected some of her words to him in his youth: ‘Have no fear of your ambitions. Stare them in the face, fulfil them. Remember, nothing is impossible. .’

At a signal from Babur, three of his grandmother’s favourite attendants — dressed, like him, in the black robes of mourning — bent down and, with Babur, each took a corner of the bier. Hoisting it on to their shoulders, they carried it slowly down the dark, winding stone staircase from her apartments — the sound of sobbing, led by Kutlugh Nigar, rising behind them — across the sunlit courtyard and laid it on the flat, horse-drawn wagon draped with bright crimson cloth. It was the red that Esan Dawlat had always claimed was the colour of the ancestor she revered: Genghis Khan.

Followed by his mullahs, courtiers and commanders, Babur walked behind the cart as it carried Esan Dawlat on her final journey. With his mother’s consent he had decided to bury her in his hillside garden among the fruit, flowers and tumbling watercourses. When she had been laid to rest in the dark, fertile earth and the final prayers for the repose of her soul in Paradise had been intoned, he turned to the mourners. ‘She was a true daughter of Genghis. Her bravery never failed her. She believed to despair was a sin. I will never forget her and one day, when I have overcome my enemies, I will return to this spot to tell her what I have done and to ask her blessing.’

At least Esan Dawlat had died without knowing the terrible calamity that had befallen their royal relations in Herat, Babur thought, a few weeks later, as he tried to take in what Baisanghar was telling him.

‘It is true, Majesty. Herat has fallen to the Uzbeks. Shaibani Khan swept down around the slopes of Mount Mukhtar with thirty thousand warriors. The royal family fled into the Ala Qorghan fortress but the reinforcements summoned by the king were cut down before they could reach them.’

‘What happened to the family?’

Baisanghar bit his lip. ‘Shaibani Khan laid siege to the fortress and tunnelled under the walls from the horse market adjoining it, causing part of them to collapse. The Uzbeks surged in. They killed every male member of the royal family down to the smallest son. Shaibani Khan himself seized the child’s ankles and smashed his head against the stone side of one of the royal tombs, spilling his brains, then tossed him aside on to the corpses of his family. He ordered the fortress to be burned down with the bodies still inside. .’

‘And what of the women?’

‘They say those found hiding in the Ala Qorghan fortress — whether young virgins or bent grandmothers — were forced to strip and dance naked before their drunken conquerors at the victory feast, that the Uzbek chiefs fought among themselves over who was to have the most beautiful, and that some could not wait for the feast to end before publicly sating their lust.’

Babur’s hands were clenched so tightly that his knuckles seemed ready to burst through the skin. ‘What about Herat?’

A look of anguish crossed Baisanghar’s usually calm face. ‘The Uzbeks sacked it. Ordinary men were slaughtered, their wives raped and their children sold into slavery. My cousin, who cared for Maham, was slain. Shaibani Khan has also turned on the city’s teachers and writers. The caravan that arrived here today brought a few lucky survivors from the madrasas of Herat. One — a poet — says all the manuscripts in the libraries were ripped up and Shaibani Khan ordered some of the scraps to be rammed down the throat of a scholar he caught until he choked while continually asking him, “How does it feel to live on a diet of poetry?”’

Though repelled by Baisanghar’s report, Babur wasn’t surprised. From the moment he’d learned his messengers had been intercepted he’d known it couldn’t be long. What would have happened if his warning had reached his relatives in Herat? Their cultured, exquisite world of airy palaces, ancient mosques and madrasas, tucked away to the west, had been ripped apart by a whirlwind. Babur’s father had sometimes talked of these distant relations, so far away he had never visited them. He had mocked their love of luxury and their obsession with beauty, their lack of manly aggression and fighting skills, and had derided their effete, cultured court where a writer was more prized than a warrior and poets eulogised not victory in battle but the succulence of a well-roasted goose or the joy of drinking the wine they called ‘the water of life’.

But had they really been so foolish? Babur wondered. They had preserved their charmed existence until now. It was a shock to realise that with Samarkand, Ferghana, Kunduz and Khorasan all beneath the Uzbek yoke, he was now the only Timurid ruler left alive. It was a great responsibility, a sacred trust. Whatever the condition of his army, whatever the state of his supplies, before long he must march out against Shaibani Khan to defend what was left of Timur’s world or die in the attempt.

The reports of the Uzbek mistreatment of the royal family, particularly of the women — probably true though they had a certain formulaic quality — yet again concentrated his thoughts painfully on Khanzada. Was she still alive? He had long comforted himself that she was more useful to the Uzbek as a live bargaining counter than dead. That was the argument he advanced time and again to put heart into his mother. With her own mother dead, now more than ever Kutlugh Nigar needed to believe that she would see Khanzada again. He could never share with her his darker thoughts — that Shaibani Khan’s desire to avenge the abuses he had suffered as a boy in Samarkand was unabated, that he seemed to glory in humilating others and might particularly relish debasing a Timurid princess.

‘Majesty. .’ Baisanghar’s anxious voice interrupted his bleak thoughts.

Babur drew himself up. ‘I’m not going to wait for Shaibani Khan to bring his army to Kabul. In a week’s time we ride against him with whatever forces we can muster. How many troops do we have already?’

‘About eight thousand.’

It was nothing compared with the size of the Uzbek horde but what had Esan Dawlat always said?: ‘Never despair while you still breathe.’

‘I must bring forward the plans I have long been forming to oppose Shaibani Khan once more. Send messengers at once — tonight — to all the tribes, even the Kafirs. Tell them that any who come will be free of all levies on grain and livestock for five years and that I will pay them well. Tell them what has happened in Herat and remind them that Shaibani Khan is the enemy of us all. He destroys anyone who is not an Uzbek. .’

That night, with only Baburi for company, Babur climbed up to the battlements. It was one of his favourite places and usually brought him peace. In the meadows below, cooking fires glowed red in the darkness as shepherds and travelling merchants prepared their evening meal. Babur could hear voices calling and laughing, the bleating of sheep and the coughing of camels. Beyond, Kabul lay quiet within its girdle of walls. What was going through the citizens’ minds? The caravan trains pouring into the city from the west must be bringing as many rumours as trade goods. The people must know of the catastrophe that had overtaken Khorasan and that Shaibani Khan would soon be moving in their direction.

Baburi, too, was sombre.

‘What are you thinking?’ Babur was curious.

‘I was wondering where we’ll both be a month, maybe a year from now. .’

‘You mean you’re wondering whether we’ll still be alive?’

‘Partly, but also what will have happened.’

‘Are you afraid?’

‘I’m not sure — that’s another thing I was thinking about. . Are you?’

It was Babur’s turn to ponder. ‘No, I’m not afraid. I’m anxious but that’s not the same thing. I’m worried what will happen to my family. The world I was born into — the world my father and his father knew — is changing. These past years, since I lost Ferghana, I have been a wanderer. Even here, though I am a king again, all I have, all I am, is trembling in the balance. If I cannot defeat Shaibani Khan, everything I’ve ever done will have been pointless and everything I want preserved will be swept away. .’

‘You’re worried no one will remember you?’

‘No, it’s more than that. I worry that I won’t deserve to be remembered. .’

It was so dark now that Babur couldn’t see Baburi’s face but he felt him gently lay a hand on his shoulder — a rare gesture that did something to lessen his sense of an awesome burden. Baburi was reminding him that in the coming conflict he wouldn’t be alone. .

Babur brushed the sweat from his face and slipped his feet out of the stirrups to stretch his legs. They’d been riding for six long days now, their pace inevitably slowed by the cumbersome baggage train carrying their equipment. Soon, though, they should be approaching the Shibartu Pass that would take them westward over the mountains towards Khorasan. Once across the pass, they would enter territories where they might encounter Uzbek raiding parties. . but he must be patient. There was no way he could tackle Shaibani Khan head-on in a pitched battle. He must build confidence among his troops and win new allies by successes gained using the tactics of his adolescent days as a hit-and-run raider from the hills. He must ambush enemy columns and disappear before they could concentrate their forces against him. He must capture isolated fortresses and use the booty and weapons within to win more adherents until gradually he became strong enough to take on large formations of Shaibani Khan’s men.

Reining in his grey horse, Babur called a halt. They would camp for the night on this steep, grassy hillside, with a commanding view that ensured their safety from ambush, He summoned his military council. They were an ill-assorted group — many just tribal leaders in lambskin jackets whose rule over a mud-brick settlement or two entitled them to sit alongside seasoned commanders like Baisanghar. With fewer than ten thousand troops he needed every man willing to ride with him, even unruly tribesmen. And he needed them to believe in him, despite the odds they were facing.

‘In a few days we’ll be over the pass. With luck, those Uzbek devils won’t be expecting us. That’s our strength. They’ll think we’re meekly awaiting our fate in Kabul, like lambs in the butcher’s pen. Until our scouts and spies can tell us more, it’s too risky to advance to Herat itself. But we are warriors of the hills and mountains, we have the cunning of the wolf who doesn’t rush blindly among the herds of deer but waits, hidden, knowing that if he is patient he can sink his fangs into the flanks of a straggler and taste blood. . The wolf’s way must be ours. So, tell your men to keep their weapons sharpened and oiled and to stay alert.’

The nodding of heads and exchange of glances showed him his words had met their mark. ‘And remember the words of the Holy Book: “With God’s help, many a small force has defeated a large one.”’

‘About four hundred Uzbeks, Majesty, just three or four miles away on the far banks of a river. It looked like they were preparing to ford, spreading the baggage more equally between the horses and pack-animals to swim them over. . If we’re quick we can attack while they’re still crossing. .’ The scout was breathing hard and the coat of his chestnut gelding was damp with sweat.

Babur grinned at Baburi and Baisanghar. At last, after two weeks of edging westward, of keeping beneath the cover of the dense forests that clothed the hills, there was a chance of action. The Uzbeks would be preoccupied, securing their shields to their backs and wrapping their bows and quivers to keep them dry. And their other weapons — swords, daggers and throwing axes — would be useless to them in the water.

‘Baisanghar, assemble the advance guard.’ With Baisanghar’s advice, Babur had selected five hundred of his best warriors and divided them into groups of fifty, each under its own commander. They would be more than enough to deal with an Uzbek raiding party. The rest of the army and the baggage could stay where it was unless reinforcements were needed.

Ten minutes later, with the scout on a fresh horse beside him, Babur set out with the vanguard along a sheep track leading through softly rolling, clover-clad hills towards the river. Luckily it had rained in the night and the spongy ground would make it harder for listening ears to detect the thud of galloping hoofs. Even so, it was good the scout was taking them to a point a few hundred yards upstream from the Uzbeks where a sharp ox-bow bend beyond a plantation of willows should conceal their approach.

Babur glanced down at the steel breastplate expertly made for him in the foundries of Kabul. His coat of light chain-mail fitted well and his sword Alamgir was at his side. He was ready. The emotions surging up inside him made him want to yell his head off, though he knew he couldn’t. . not yet anyway. .

Two miles further on and the track was broadening out — Babur’s men could ride six abreast now — but there was less cover. Babur frowned, conferred briefly with the scout, then raised his hand to halt his men and summoned the youth he had recently chosen as his qorchi, his squire.

‘Ride quickly down the column. Tell my commanders to keep their men at a trot, bows and quivers ready and their mouths shut. When we’re almost at the bend in the river we’ll halt and I’ll send the scout ahead. If he reports that the Uzbeks are not yet across, we charge. Do you understand?’ The boy nodded and cantered off.

Babur’s heart beat to a thunderous rhythm as they set off again. His senses felt unnaturally acute — he noticed the spiky black hairs on the body of a caterpillar wriggling along a blade of grass and the soft, purple-pink breast of a wood pigeon startled from the tree where it had been resting. The smell of sweat — his own and his horse’s and from the men and animals around him — seemed to rise in a pungent elemental cloud, the essence of life itself. Perhaps a man never felt so alive as when he was about to be in the presence of death.

‘Majesty, you should halt here while I reconnoitre,’ said the scout.

Two hundred yards ahead, Babur caught the gleam of water through the trailing feathery branches of some fine old willows. ‘Very well. Be quick.’

‘Yes, Maj-’ The scout got no further as a black-feathered Uzbek arrow pierced his cheek and a second tore into his throat. A third thudded harmlessly into the ground. As the blood bubbled out, the man’s eyes glazed and he tumbled from his horse, one foot still caught in his stirrup.

As cries to take cover rose around him, Babur flung himself low over his horse’s neck expecting at any moment to feel the cold tip of an arrow embed itself in his flesh. Gripping his reins in his left hand, with his right he reached round to grab his metal-bound leather shield and hold it over his head for protection. But no more arrows came. Babur cautiously raised himself. To his left, through the swaying golden willows — the direction from which the arrows had come — he saw a trio of Uzbek horsemen making off along the bank towards the point at which the river took its sharp turn.

Perhaps they were scouts spying out the land while the others were still crossing. He mustn’t give them time to get back and raise the alarm. Kicking his horse, Babur threw back his head and yelled the order to charge.

The willow branches whipped his face as he burst through and he tasted blood from a cut in his lip. Reaching the wide bank, he saw the Uzbeks disappearing round the bend and cursed. Taking an arrow from his quiver and pulling his bow off his shoulder, he dropped his reins. Half standing in his stirrups and holding his horse steady with his knees, he fitted the arrow to the string and pulled it back. It sped straight and fast, embedding itself in the rump of one of the Uzbek horses. Babur heard its whinny of pain and watched it skitter sideways into the river, taking its rider with it. Baburi had also fired but the other two Uzbeks had vanished.

As Babur and his close-packed riders thundered round the sharp curve, turf flying up, his heart leaped. The two surviving Uzbek riders were yelling and gesticulating but few of their comrades had noticed. A small group, still on the far bank, had seen that something was wrong and were running for their weapons but most were in the water, concentrating on getting themselves and their animals across the fast-flowing river.

Only a handful of sodden, shivering men had already reached the bank. Babur and his troops fired a first volley of arrows from the saddle, felling many. Then Babur gave the order to dismount and to maintain a steady fire of arrows from the cover of trees and rocks. Even on the far bank some Uzbeks were falling to the ground while in the blood-flecked river the bodies of dead and dying men and animals were forming a solid, tangled mass that even the current could barely shift.

‘Majesty!’ Baburi’s clear voice rang out above the screams and groans.

Babur glanced round just in time to see one of the two mounted Uzbeks, whose existence he’d completely forgotten, galloping towards him. Something bright gleamed in his hand — an axe. The man threw back his arm and sent it whirling towards Babur with such force that he could almost hear the air whisper as it parted. Babur leaped sideways as the axe flew past his right ear to stick in the mud behind him.

Grunting he turned, yanked it out and weighed it in his hand — it felt good, well-balanced. The Uzbek was only a few yards away now, curved sword in hand and determination on his face beneath his pointed steel helmet as he bent low in the saddle. Baburi rushed forward.

‘No — I want him,’ Babur yelled. Dropping his bow he stood, the axe in his right hand, waiting, judging the moment. With the man just a few paces from him, Babur threw it. The shaft — not the blade — smashed into the warrior’s face, pulping his nose, but he was still in the saddle. Babur felt the hot breath of the man’s snorting horse as the Uzbek bore down on him. Throwing himself forward, Babur grabbed the rider’s left leg just above the knee. The rings of his chain-mail tore the flesh of Babur’s fingers but it only made him hold on tighter and pull harder. The Uzbek, blood streaming from his shattered nose, fell sprawling on the ground but rolled clear of his horse’s thrashing hoofs and sprang up.

He and Babur faced one another, balancing on the balls of their feet like wrestlers, watching for the chance to make the first move. If the blood-smeared Uzbek felt any pain he wasn’t showing it. His cold eyes were narrowed, weighing up his opponent. Babur was wearing nothing to denote him as a king — the Uzbek was just sizing him up warrior to warrior.

Dagger in his left hand now and Alamgir in the right, Babur darted forward in a feint, then jumped back nimbly as the Uzbek lunged. Circling his opponent, Babur tried the same trick a second, then a third time. Each time the Uzbek reacted, slashing with his sword only to have Babur skip teasingly away. Muscles tensed, Babur jumped forward for the fourth time. The Uzbek hesitated, convinced that Babur was still playing with him — that he wouldn’t follow through. But this time, instead of leaping away, Babur lashed at the man’s exposed throat with his sword and kicked his right foot hard into his groin. The Uzbek slid to his knees, hands between his thighs, blood pouring from his throat.

But as Babur stepped forward to finish him off, his right foot slipped on the sticky clay of the riverbank and he crashed down, dropping his dagger and trapping his sword beneath him. The wounded Uzbek saw his chance of reprieve. Pulling himself upright, he recovered his sword and lunged forward. Babur raised his left arm to protect himself and immediately felt a stinging pain. Glancing down, he saw blood pouring from a deep cut in his lower forearm and running down so that his left hand was scarlet and dripping.

Instinctively, he struggled to his feet and, as he did so, twisted away from the Uzbek who, weak from his own wound, reacted slowly. Freeing Alamgir, Babur drove the sword with all his force through the man’s throat and out through the back of his neck. Blood from a severed artery spurted over Babur, mingling with his own.

Looking around, Babur saw the fight was over. The Uzbeks were either dead or had fled. Holding his left hand high above his head to lessen the blood flow, with his right he untied a cotton cloth from round his neck and handed it to Baburi. Then lowering his left arm, which he already felt to be stiffening, he extended it towards him. ‘Bind it tightly. . We may need to fight again today. .’

The euphoria was already leaving him — but why? Perhaps because to Shaibani Khan the death of upwards of three hundred of his men would be no more than a mosquito bite in the night. . Babur would still have to ride a long, hard road before this was over. .