Raiders from the North

white fetlocks — through the long golden grasses, firing from the saddle at a row of straw targets. He was keeping perfect balance as he drew arrow after arrow from his quiver, fitted them to his tight, double-curved bow and sent them flying through the air. Each hit its mark. Kamran, on his rough-coated pony, was watching his half-brother with respect. Babur saw him gasp as Humayun looked up into the bright blue skies and, so fast it was hard to see him do it, unleashed another arrow to bring down a bird.

Babur smiled. Even from his vantage-point high on the battlements he could sense Humayun’s pleasure and his desire to show off — it was in the casual grace with which he held himself on his horse, the straightness of his back, the carriage of his handsome head. He looked every inch a warrior prince and knew it. But Kamran, just five months younger, was also growing up. Like his half-brother, he would be tall and, though not so powerfully built, was utterly fearless — a quality that had already led to several accidents.

Babur was glad his mother had lived long enough to see the two boys and to be reunited with Khanzada — something that in her heart he knew she’d despaired of. With her daughter’s return to Kabul, Kutlugh Nigar had revived like a parched meadow after the rains. What Khanzada had told her of her sufferings at the hands of Shaibani Khan, Babur could only guess. Sometimes he’d seen a stricken look in his mother’s eyes as she had gazed at her daughter. Khanzada must have seen it too. He had noticed how tender and cheerful Khanzada was with her, as if she was trying to reassure her that, despite everything, her inner spirit was not broken. On one matter only Khanzada had refused to gratify her mother. Kutlugh Nigar would dearly have loved to see her daughter marry again as a way of extinguishing the past but, in her gentle way, Khanzada had rebuffed any such suggestion, however good the man, however prestigious the alliance.

Kutlugh Nigar’s death seven years ago had been as sudden as his grandmother’s. She had been embroidering the border of a cotton robe in her apartments as Khanzada read to her and had simply slumped forward with a little sigh that proved to have been her last breath. Her spirit had passed and there had been nothing the hakim could do. A few hours later Babur, unable to hold back his tears, had seen her buried next to Esan Dawlat in the hillside garden he had laid out when he had first come to Kabul. He had made a vow never to forget how, through his blackest, most dangerous moments, his grandmother and mother had supported and guided him and that without them he would have had no throne at all. . It still saddened him that neither had lived to see his youngest sons.

He turned his gaze to where six-year-old Askari appeared to be tormenting his three-year-old half-brother Hindal with a pointed stick. Their nurse was trying to take the stick away and Babur saw Askari’s pointed little face screw up in a yell of defiance, which only provoked a sound cuff on the ear at which he surrendered his weapon and started to howl. Hindal — now that his nurse had intervened to protect him — was watching his brother’s discomfort with huge amusement on his round, chubby face.

He was lucky to have so many healthy sons, Babur thought, and to have a rich, secure kingdom. In the ten years since he had relinquished Samarkand, he had continued to rule Kabul, quelling any opposition swiftly and winning his people’s respect for his ability to stamp on the brigand tribes that infested the kotals — the high, narrow passes around Kabul — and preyed on the caravans. The Khugiani, Khirilji, Turi and Landar bandits had all had cause to regret their crimes. Their severed heads, cemented into high towers overlooking the passes, were a warning to others and reassured the anxious traveller that he was entering a kingdom in which the ruler ruled.

The treasuries were full, as the faithful, quietly efficient Kasim — guardian of the Royal Treasuries in place of Wali Gul, whose aged mind had finally wandered too far — proudly reported to Babur each day of the new moon. Kabul’s merchants, feasting on roasted camel to celebrate every safe arrival of a caravan train, felt wealthy and secure. They might be happy but was he? Esan Dawlat — of all the women of his family the one who had understood him best — would have known instinctively the answer — that he was not.

Looking at his sons, Babur felt with renewed sharpness the unfulfilled longing that never quite left him. What would their future be? He had survived so much, learned so many lessons as a fighter and a leader of men. His experiences had taught him never to despair, never to allow setbacks to diminish his ambition. And that ambition was still for something greater than Kabul. . something magnificent to bequeath to his sons and their sons after them. .

‘Majesty, we have reports of a group of riders approaching Kabul from the west.’ Baisanghar’s words interrupted Babur’s reverie. As usual he looked anxious. When the elderly Bahlul Ayyub had died in his sleep, Babur had not hesitated to make Baisanghar grand vizier of Kabul — consolation to him for his short tenure as grand vizier of Samarkand.

‘What are they? Merchants?’

‘I’m not sure, Majesty. They are following the caravan route, but they’ve only a few pack-mules — no more than they’d need to carry their tents. Yet our informants say they have two great carts loaded with some curious metal contraptions and each pulled by thirty oxen. .’

‘How many men are there?’

‘Perhaps fifty, and strangely dressed in leather tunics with high, conical hats wound about with bright orange cloth. .’

‘A group of travelling acrobats, perhaps. .’

‘I think not, Majesty.’

‘I was joking, Baisanghar. Have them kept under surveillance. When will they be here?’

‘In three days, perhaps four.’

‘Let me know when they arrive.’ All kinds of people passed through Kabul — Mongolians in embroidered brocade tunics with green leather bowcases and saddles, straggle-bearded Chinamen with their air of impenetrable superiority, swarthy-faced, thick-set merchants from Mesopotamia, as jealous as any Afghan tribesmen of their honour and as quick to pick a fight, and dark-skinned, bright-turbaned dealers in sugar and spices from deep inside Hindustan. If these new arrivals were interesting he’d summon them to the citadel. . It might amuse Humayun and Kamran to see visitors from some far-off place.

In fact, Baisanghar’s estimate was wrong. Just two days later, on a day of thin, grey drizzle, the party and its mysterious wagons were spotted approaching Kabul. They ignored the city but pressed on up the steep road to the citadel. Watching from the balcony of his private apartments, Babur could see the two wagons sliding about in the oozing mud that the rain had created from the normal layer of dust. Whatever was inside them seemed to be covered with thick felt against the weather. The bullocks were struggling, their heads low beneath the heavy wooden yoke, their shoulders straining.

The leading rider, a tall man with his face wrapped in a dark cloth against the penetrating rain, looked back at the struggling beasts. Babur saw him wave. He was no doubt shouting instructions because eight of the men at once dismounted and began pushing the carts from the back. One slipped and fell face down in the mud.

The leader seemed to lose patience. He turned his grey horse and kicked it on up the slope. Reaching the steep, paved ramp leading up to the first entrance gate to the citadel, he seemed to be urging his mount to go still faster. Only when two guards leaped in front of him did he bring it to an abrupt, slithering standstill. On his balcony, Babur couldn’t hear what was being said but everything about the man suggested this was no merchant but a warrior. The angle of his head as he responded to the guards’ questions was arrogant, and as he impatiently flung back his wet travelling cloak, Babur glimpsed the hilt of a sword in a strangely shaped scabbard — curved like a scimitar but narrower.

‘Guards,’ Babur shouted from his balcony, ‘bring that man to me now.’

Five minutes later, with four guards in front of him, six behind, the man entered. His cloak had been taken from him and so had his sword — the curved steel scabbard hanging from the thin metal chain at his waist swung empty. But the cloth still concealed the lower part of the man’s face and his conical hat was pulled low over his brow. The guards allowed him no closer to Babur than twenty feet.

‘On your knees before the king!’

The man not only knelt but spreadeagled himself full-length on the floor in front of Babur in the full, formal Timurid salute of the korunush.

‘You may stand.’ Babur was more curious than ever. Why should a man who had demanded entry to his citadel as if of right perform such obeisance unasked? And, even more curious, why was he still face down, arms extended? Hadn’t he understood what Babur had said?

One of the guards was about to jab him with the butt of his spear but Babur held up a restraining hand. Feeling for his dagger, he walked slowly towards the man until he was standing over him. ‘I said you may rise.’

A quiver ran through the recumbent figure. After a moment’s hesitation the man pushed himself back on to