happened? Who is this man?’
‘He was a merchant. I found him lying half alive in a pool of blood by the side of the track with a sword slash across his stomach. I lifted him on to my horse but he died soon after. Before he did, though, he told me he had been heading for a small caravanserai about ten miles from here with three other merchants when about two hours ago they were attacked by a Chakrak raiding party. They killed his fellows and left him for dead before making off with all the goods.’
‘We must find the Chakraks and avenge him if we can. Send out some of your fellow scouts.’
‘Majesty, that may not be necessary. With his last breath the merchant told me that he’d overheard the Chakraks talking of making for the caravanserai to see if they could find more victims there. .’
‘In that case we make for the caravanserai.’
The singing was wild and raucous — just like the Chakraks themselves. Men’s voices, slurred with drink, soared to a new crescendo, belting out suggestions for obscene actions so gross and so physically impossible that, despite himself, Babur grinned. He glanced at Wazir Khan — he was smiling too.
Babur signalled to his men, who were all around him in the long grass, and, like him, lying flat on their stomachs, to keep down and wait. Then he wriggled closer to the single-storey, mud-brick caravanserai overlooking a ford across one of Ferghana’s swift-flowing rivers where the revellers were letting themselves go. The jingling of bells told him dancing girls were there. So did a sudden, indignant female shriek, followed by gusts of male laughter.
It was still only mid-afternoon, but the twenty or so Chakraks were clearly already pissed as rats. They hadn’t even troubled to tether their horses properly and some, with matted manes and tails so long they brushed the ground, had already trotted away. As for their booty, seized from the four merchants, they couldn’t even be bothered to carry it inside. The merchants’ grey pack mules, roped together and contentedly grazing, were still loaded with wicker panniers stuffed with what looked like furs and leather. All the Chakraks seemed to have taken inside were barrels of wine.
Barbarians, Babur thought. They were about to get what was coming to them and it was a nice thought. Raising his head above the long grasses, Babur looked round but could see no one. Just as he’d thought, they’d not even the wit to post a boy to keep watch over the animals or the bags. Rising to his feet, he crept towards what was more of a hole in the caravanserai’s thick walls than a window, just to the right of the low entrance, and peered cautiously inside. The room was bare, except for a long wooden table pushed against the back wall, some three-legged stools and a half broken bench. In the middle of the room a plump, snub-nosed girl, wearing a tightly belted red-flowered jacket over pale, baggy yellow trousers with bells around her ankles and her wrists, and another taller girl in blue trousers and jacket and with a tambourine in her grubby hands were whirling and gyrating, stamping their bare feet on the flagstone floor. As he watched, a couple of Chakraks, sweaty-faced under their round, shaggy sheepskin hats, lunged at them unsteadily, grabbing unsuccessfully for a breast or a buttock and tumbling to the floor, amid the cheers of their companions.
In one corner, a large black kettle was suspended over a smoky fire. In another, Babur watched a Chakrak drop his trousers and begin busily defecating, his comrades seemingly oblivious to the stink. Another got to his feet and spewed an arc of yellow vomit before slumping down again, flicking a gobbet of sick from his sleeve with a long fingernail. Babur ducked away again. He had seen enough in every sense.
Keeping low to the ground again, he made his way back to Wazir Khan. ‘They’re ours for the taking, the drunken fools. They’ve even left their shields and swords piled by the door.’
Wazir Khan raised an eyebrow. ‘Now, Majesty?’
‘Yes!’
Babur and Wazir Khan rose to their feet, signalling to their men to do likewise. They had done this so many times before that spoken orders were no longer needed. Finger to his lips, Wazir Khan gestured to several men to work their way around the caravanserai to the back, in case there were other ways out. Then Babur yelled his battle cry: ‘Ferghana!’
With Babur at their head, the men burst in. Stupid with drink and taken by surprise, the Chakraks put up little resistance. The only blade that Babur faced, as he and his men went ruthlessly to work, belonged to the snub-nosed girl. She whipped a dagger out of her bodice and made a spirited attempt to stab Babur in his arm but he turned her wrist with its jingling bells with ease and, flicking her round, put a boot to her wide rump and sent her sprawling.
In a couple of minutes it was all over and Babur’s men, barely out of breath, were cleaning and sheathing their swords. Not one had been wounded — but they were hardened warriors, used to fighting better men than these drunkards. ‘Take the bodies outside — let’s see who we have,’ Babur ordered, and hurried out himself, glad to leave the fetid, smoky room for the fresh air.
As soon as his men had hauled the dead Chakraks out by their boot-clad feet and arranged them in a line, Babur counted them. There were fifteen. Many had their throats slit, some were headless. His men had also neatly arranged the severed heads, a few with their shaggy hats still on. Babur ran his eyes over them, grunting with satisfaction when he recognised a face. He had vowed to kill every Chakrak who had betrayed him and each skirmish that brought him closer to his goal was highly satisfying.
At the sound of squealing Babur turned. Two of his warriors had each grabbed a dancing girl and were dragging them out of the caravanserai. ‘Do not force them — you know my orders. If they will go with you willingly for money, well, that is another matter.’ Babur turned away.
The girls were indeed willing and, after a few moments of brisk negotiation, led the warriors into an apple orchard beyond the caravanserai. Babur guessed they were the daughters of the squint-faced innkeeper who, at the first sign of trouble, had hidden himself under the table and was still there. Soon a regular procession of Babur’s men were making their way to and from the orchard. From the smiles on the faces of those returning, it seemed that the women were well used to providing favours to their father’s customers.
Wazir Khan was already organising the rounding up of the Chakrak ponies that had drifted off and was checking the goods the Chakraks had looted from the merchants. ‘Look, Majesty,’ he called to Babur, pulling out two brightly coloured rugs. From their sheen the weavers had mixed silk with the wool and the patterning was unusual — perhaps the merchants had been travelling from the east, from Kashgar, where the people were skilled in such things. With the furs and the leather, they would fetch a good price, which would help him pay his men, Babur thought, pleased.
It would also be a good move to give his men a feast. They had done well and he must show his appreciation. He would hold it as soon as they returned westward, back to Shahrukiyyah. There, in the fortress he had seized from Tambal’s forces six months ago and made his base, they would toast the memory of Ali Mazid Beg, lord of Shahrukiyyah until his murder in Samarkand. They would also drink to his son, slain as he tried to defend the fortress against Chakrak mercenaries despatched by Tambal as soon as he had learned of Ali Mazid Beg’s death.
At the memory of his loyal chief, Babur’s thoughts grew sombre as they often did these days. What had he achieved in the two years since Ali Mazid Beg’s corpse had been hoisted over the Turquoise Gate? Was he any closer to freeing his family or to regaining Ferghana, never mind Samarkand? How much longer could he go on as a king without a kingdom? It would take time to build an army large enough to storm Akhsi, liberate his womenfolk and regain his throne. As for Samarkand, his brief days there as ruler were just a shadowy memory. It was hard to believe they had actually happened. The grand vizier’s ghost had had the last laugh after all.
The thought angered Babur. He lashed out with his foot at one of the severed heads, sending it flying across the grass. His men deserved some fun, he thought, and so did he. ‘Cut branches for sticks,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s play some polo with these vermin’s heads. We’ll use the trees over there for goals.’
For an hour, he lost himself in a wild game, swerving from side to side on one of the nimble Chakrak ponies and whacking with the branches stripped of their twigs at the severed heads so that they bowled and bounced through the grass. The heads were soon unrecognisable — features smashed, eyeballs tumbling out — and Babur and his sweating fellow players, as well as their mounts, were flecked with blood.
Tiring of the sport at last but having released some of his pent-up anger and frustration, Babur halted his steaming mount. Glancing round he caught Wazir Khan watching him. For once there was no approval on his face. But Babur refused to feel ashamed. His enemies deserved everything they got, dead or alive.
‘Let’s go,’ he ordered. ‘It is a long way to Gava and we mustn’t keep our hosts waiting.’ Kicking his horse so
