battleaxe as he tried to run up from the gate to warn the defenders that we had been betrayed and that the enemy had gained entrance. He managed to crawl into a doorway where I found him. His last words to me were that I must escape from Kabul. . that I must take his necklace to establish my identity and find you and tell you what had happened and. . that he was sorry. . he had done his best to defend Kabul but he had failed you. I sought you first at Sarkar but you had already left. Since then I have been searching for you. I thought I would be too late, that you would have already heard. . ’ ‘No, I knew nothing of this.’ Humayun struggled to compose himself. ‘Your father did not fail me — he gave his life for me and I will not forget it. You have made an epic journey. Now you must rest but we will talk more later. I must learn as much as possible about what has happened.’
As Ahmed Khan’s men led Darya away, Humayun gestured to Jauhar that he wished to be alone and entered his tent. As he splashed his face with water he scarcely felt the cold drops trickle down his face. Conflicting emotions — some personal, some political, but none pleasant — jostled in his mind. Initially simple grief, the knowledge that he would never see his grandfather again, was uppermost. Humayun closed his eyes as he recalled his father’s vivid stories of Baisanghar in his youth, of how as a young cavalry captain he had brought Babur Timur’s ring, still crusted with the blood of its previous wearer; how Baisanghar had sacrificed his right hand out of loyalty to Babur and opened the gates of Samarkand to him. Humayun’s mother Maham too had had her own fund of stories of her father — less violent but even more fond. Now Baisanghar was dead without ever knowing that Humayun had married. But at least he had died before Kamran and Askari had attacked Kabul.
At the thought, another emotion harsher than grief took over — fury with his half-brothers. If they were brought before him now all Babur’s urgings of mercy wouldn’t deter him from hacking off their traitorous heads and kicking them through the dust. Instinctively, Humayun pulled his dagger from his sash and sent it spinning across the tent to embed itself in a round red cushion that he wished was Kamran’s throat.
Kamran had seen his opportunity for a throne and with Askari as his willing accomplice had taken it. While they held Kabul, it would be almost impossible for Humayun to regain Hindustan. It had long been obvious that family unity, pride in the Moghul dynasty, mattered less to them than the chance to enrich themselves and, so it seemed, above all to damage him.Why could they never see how destructive their vindictive jealousy was, what a risk it was to them all?
Humayun paced about, trying to order his thoughts. He must think and behave rationally not only for his own sake but for his wife and their unborn child. The thought of Hamida for a moment lightened his mood. Despite the dangers surrounding them, these past weeks had been among the happiest he had ever known, especially when, a month ago, Hamida had told him, eyes more luminous than ever, that her dream had been correct. She was indeed pregnant. Perhaps the knowledge that he might soon have an heir was what made Kamran and Askari’s latest betrayal especially hard to bear. By striking at him, they were also striking at his wife and unborn child — those Humayun loved most in the world.
And if Hamida was indeed carrying a boy, as she believed, the loss of Kabul made the child’s future all the more precarious. Even if the baby survived the dangerous times Humayun knew were coming, instead of inheriting a great empire he might be heir to almost nothing — reduced as some of his ancestors had been to the life of a petty warlord constantly feuding with his relations over a few mud-walled villages and a few flocks of sheep while another dynasty ruled Hindustan.
This could not, must not happen. He would not let it. Humayun dropped to his knees and out loud swore an oath.
‘Whatever it takes, however long the struggle, I will regain Hindustan. I am ready to spill every drop of blood to do so. I will bequeath my sons and their sons a greater empire than even my father dreamed of. I, Humayun, swear it.’
The desert heat was growing unbearable as Humayun and his troops drew nearer to Marwar. Every day seemed hotter and the going harder. The sour-breathed camels with their great splayed feet were managing but the horses and pack mules were sinking up to their hocks in the burning drifting sand. Every day, animals collapsed from dehydration and exhaustion, legs feebly twitching and parched tongues lolling through cracked lips. Humayun ordered his men to slit the throats of those too sick to go on and add their meat to the cooking pot, but he also commanded them to collect their blood. In Timur’s day, warriors had survived out on the steppes by drinking the blood of their animals.
Glancing over his shoulder, he watched the enclosed litter bearing Hamida appear out of the silvery, shimmering haze, carried on the shoulders of six of his strongest men. Khanzada, Gulbadan and the other women were on ponies but he was doing everything possible to help the pregnant Hamida travel as smoothly as possible. Grass and aromatic herbs and roots had been stuffed into the sides of the litter’s bamboo frame and every hour or so attendants dampened it with a little of the precious water to provide her with some fragrant relief from the heat. Even so, her face was very thin and the dark circles in the almost translucent skin beneath her eyes showed that pregnancy had not come easily to her. Often she felt nauseous and found it hard to eat.
Watching her litter draw nearer, the fear he might lose her gripped Humayun anew. He was doing all he could to protect her and bring her to safety but hazards were all around. Snakes and scorpions lurked. They were even vulnerable to the bands of brigands who infested the desert, now that he had so few troops left — barely one thousand. At the news of the fall of Kabul, many of his men had simply melted away.
God willing, soon they should reach the outskirts of the kingdom of Marwar and find sanctuary there. Raja Maldeo’s messages of support — brought on the most recent occasion by the same ambassador who had sought Humayun out in Sarkar — were growing ever more fervent the nearer Humayun and his column approached. Nevertheless he wished Maldeo would send practical help — food, water and fresh horses would be more welcome than fine promises. But Humayun hesitated to ask for such things. He was coming to Marwar as the raja’s guest and ally, not as a beggar.
According to the red leather-bound volume in which Kasim dutifully recorded daily the diminution of their supplies, just as he had done when Babur had been besieged in Samarkand, they still had enough corn, dates and other dried fruit to sustain them. However, it was many days since they’d tasted fresh food other than that from the carcasses of the exhausted or diseased animals, if that could indeed be called fresh. At first they’d bought produce from the villages along the way. It was the mango season and the flesh of the delicate, orange, sweet-scented fruits hanging in clusters among the glossy, dark green leaves was one of the few things Hamida could be tempted to eat. But six days ago they had passed the last settlement — a tangle of mud-brick houses clustered around a well — and the desert had engulfed them. Ahmed Khan’s scouts, riding ahead in the cool of the moonlit nights, had reported no signs of further habitation.
The worst problem, though, was lack of water, which his officers now rationed carefully. Three nights ago, two of his men had drunk strong spirits instead. Then, with their thirsts heightened and their passions unleashed, they had fought for possession of a waterskin containing a few mouthfuls of fetid liquid and one had died, slashed across the throat by the other’s dagger. Humayun had ordered the survivor to be beheaded, but he had seen the sullen challenge in the eyes of the soldiers drawn up to witness the punishment. Indiscipline and insubordination were as dangerous as any attacks from desert raiders. .
His own horse was suffering badly. Its once glossy coat was flecked with dried sweat and sand and it stumbled frequently. Humayun squinted around him. The glare from the orange ball of the sun deadened the landscape, flattening out the rolling dunes and reducing everything to a dispiriting, eye-searing monotony with nothing to catch the mind’s attention or freshen the spirit. To spare his horse for a while, Humayun slipped down, and taking the reins in his left hand, plodded by its side.
Suddenly Humayun heard shouts somewhere up ahead. Shading his eyes, he tried to see what was happening towards the front of the column some three or four hundred yards away but the sun dazzle made it impossible. ‘Find out what’s going on,’ he shouted to Jauhar. But before Jauhar could kick his mount forward, a general stampede began. Pack animals that had been trailing listlessly behind were suddenly rushing frenziedly past, no longer finding the sand an obstacle in their headlong charge. It could only be water, Humayun realised, and his heart soared.
Remounting his own horse which was now whinnying with excitement, he rode forward. He would bring Hamida a cup of cool water with his own hands. But as he drew nearer, chaos met his eyes. At first it was hard to see what was happening in the midst of so many flailing, pushing bodies — human and animal — half hidden by a few squat dusty-looking palm trees. Then he saw the raised mud-brick sides of what looked like a cluster of small wells and to one side, a small spring seeping out in rivulets over pebbles into the sand. Men were already fighting over the hide buckets that they’d hauled out of the wells, spilling the precious water.
