‘As I was once a spy?’ Babur thought of how he had crept like a sewer rat into the city. ‘No, we don’t have time. If we are to trick the Uzbeks we must be quick and take the risk.’
Babur was certain he was right, but if his plan failed, what would the consequences be? That was something he refused to contemplate. There was an ancient proverb in Ferghana: ‘Who dares not take his chance will regret it until old age.’
Better to have no old age than to spend his life in regret.
Three days later — they had covered the one hundred and fifty miles even faster than Babur had hoped — Samarkand lay just beyond the next rows of hills that were now scorched brown by the heat of summer but in a few weeks would begin to be silvered with frost. For the past three hours, on Babur’s express orders, his men had ridden at no faster than a trot and in silence. Scouts despatched to scour the landscape for potential ambushes had returned at regular intervals to report that they had seen nothing, heard nothing, to alarm them.
Nevertheless, Babur would take no chances. The Uzbeks were formidable fighters, with the guile of foxes desperate for fresh meat. And that was how they killed — as indiscriminately as a fox in a hen house that slaughters every bird but steals off with only one between its jaws.
As purple dusk softened the landscape, the silent lines of riders at last approached Qolba Hill — the highest of the final range before Samarkand, from which Babur had first glimpsed the city more than five years earlier. This time, instead of heading for the summit, he called a halt, summoned Wazir Khan, Baisanghar and his other chieftains, then gave his final orders. ‘Using Qolba Hill to give us cover, we will ride westward and camp under cover of the trees bordering the Qolba meadow where we will make our final preparations. We will light no fires for fear of giving away our position. Just before the sun rises tomorrow, Baisanghar, you will be our decoy. Take three hundred of our best horsemen, ride down to the banks of the Ab-i-Siyah, then head west. Make sure you are seen from the city walls. The morning mists will make it difficult for the guards to estimate your numbers accurately. Take no risks. Don’t ford the river until you are beyond the Shaykhzada Gate. I depend on you to re-join us and help in the assault on the city walls by the Turquoise Gate no more than four hours after we part.
‘Wazir Khan, as soon as we see that the Uzbeks have taken the bait and are riding in pursuit of Baisanghar, we will attack the walls from the east. Once we are inside, my orders are to kill every Uzbek we find — give no quarter as they gave none to our people — but treat the citizens of Samarkand and their property with respect. They are my subjects.’
‘Yes, Majesty.’ His commanders nodded, each man seeming wrapped in his thoughts, perhaps wondering whether he would live to see another dawn. Shaibani Khan had never been defeated on the battlefield. But this was a trial of wits as well as weapons, and the thought gave Babur renewed courage.
It was half an hour since Baisanghar and his men had departed. Babur rested his back against a well-grown apple tree whose branches sagged with fruit, their ripe scent making him think for a moment of Yadgar. Dawn mists softened the outlines of trees and bushes. The poles for the scaling ladders had been cut and the ladders fashioned wide enough for three men to climb abreast. They would be carried to the attack between pairs of horses. Wazir Khan was kneeling in silent prayer, every few moments bending forward to touch his forehead to the ground.
Perhaps he, too, should be praying, Babur wondered. Instead he allowed himself a few moments’ quiet contemplation, but then returned to thoughts of action. His scouts had reported no sign of any large Uzbek encampment outside the city walls. Perhaps that meant some of Shaibani Khan’s forces had already moved on. The temptation — now that Samarkand had fallen — to pillage the surrounding villages and settlements would be great for some of his ill-disciplined troops. With luck, it would not have entered Shaibani Khan’s arrogant head that anyone would dare attack him and he would have been content to let them go.
Suddenly, Babur thought he heard something and it jerked him from his reflections. Leaping to his feet, and half-skidding on rotting windfall apples, he peered through the trees. In the distance, above the mist shrouding the river, he could make out the familiar walls of Samarkand and — here and there — pinpricks of light on the battlements.
Then, as he strained his eyes and ears, he heard it again: the deep, rhythmic throbbing of a drum, then more drums. Suddenly the battlements were alive with moving dots as figures ran hither and thither. Baisanghar and his men must have been spotted, as intended, as they circled westward. Would Shaibani Khan take the bait?
‘Tell your men to be ready to ride but no man is to move until I give the order,’ Babur said in a low voice to his commanders, who had gathered around him, listening, like him, to the drums.
The thudding had settled into a heavy, ominous rhythm. Babur hoped it wasn’t Mahmud Khan’s flayed skin he could hear being beaten. As the minutes passed, the uncertainty was growing intolerable. Under cover of the mist, Babur moved forward to get a better view and concealed himself in a coppice nearer the walls. As far as he could tell from his new vantage point, the Iron Gate and, beyond it, the Shaykhzada Gate — closest to where Baisanghar and his men, Baburi among them, had passed — were still shut. But then, when Babur thought he could stand the suspense no longer, the portcullis over the Iron Gate began to rise. As soon as it was high enough, a stream of horsemen, two abreast, cantered out and, wheeling north-westwards, broke into a gallop. On and on the column came — at least four hundred warriors, he thought, in near ecstasy. When, finally, the last riders had disappeared wraithlike into the mist there was a pause. Babur expected the Iron Gate to be lowered but instead a single man rode slowly out. A few paces beyond the gate, he reined in his horse and turned his head from left to right. He appeared to be snuffing the air, as hunting dogs did before they gave chase. For a moment, the lone rider seemed to be looking across the low-lying fields and meadows through the mist straight at him, though he knew that was impossible.
Babur had little doubt as to who it was — Shaibani Khan himself. What would the Uzbek leader do? Finally the rider raised his hand. As yet more warriors surged through the Iron Gate behind him, he kicked his horse and, calling to his men with a harsh cry that, though faint by the time it reached him, Babur could still hear, disappeared north-west. After another couple of minutes, all the riders had gone and the portcullis was being slowly lowered back into place.
Curbing his impatience, Babur returned to the main body of his troops and signalled yet again to his men to stay quiet and still. If they moved into the open too quickly, sounds of alarm from the city might yet reach Shaibani Khan and bring him back. Wazir Khan was using the time to tighten his horse’s girths and check his weapons — sword, dagger and throwing axe. Grateful for his old mentor’s calmness and commonsense, Babur did the same. On his shoulder was his leather quiver and it gave him confidence to run his fingers over the sharp tips of his long, newly fletched arrows. He took his curved bow from its case and tried the tautness of the string, grunting with satisfaction at the tension in the oiled sinew. It felt as tightly strung as he did.
Finally the moment came. All was quiet again on the battlements, and Shaibani Khan’s force must now be well beyond earshot.
‘ We ride!’ shouted Babur, his voice raw with excitement. Leaping on to his horse he rode clear of the trees and waited as his men formed up. His bodyguard, under Wazir Khan, was immediately behind him, then the pairs of riders bringing the ladders, the rest of the cavalry and finally Ibrahim Saru’s mounted crossbowmen.
Babur dug in his heels and his horse leaped forward. They tore south across the meadows through the dispersing mists, the city walls on their right as they made for the Turquoise Gate. They were on the far side of the river that flowed past the walls but this time they had no need to ford it. A wide, strong bridge of wooden planks — newly built, no doubt, by the Uzbeks — stood three hundred yards upstream from the Turquoise Gate.
Babur and his men thundered over it and made straight for the gate. As shouts of alarm rang out from the battlements, the Mangligh crossbowmen sent up volley after volley of bolts. Within minutes the ladders were against the walls at their lowest point, on either side of the Turquoise Gate. Looking up as he began to climb, Babur was astonished to see not a single defender.
It was a matter of moments to scale the ladder and climb the last few feet by grabbing on to the stonework. There was hardly room to move, let alone draw a sword, as his warriors swarmed around him. But of Uzbek defenders — apart from those lying dead with Mangligh bolts sticking into them like a porcupine’s quills — there remained no sign.
Then a volley of arrows from a strong point about a hundred yards away revealed that not all the Uzbek defenders had fled. A black-feathered arrow struck Babur’s domed helmet a glancing blow. Another embedded itself deep in the thigh of a man behind him. A third penetrated the cheek of a soldier who was clambering from a ladder over the battlements on to the wall. Blood pouring out of his mouth, he lost his grip and, falling backwards from the
