That decision made, he turned his attention from the base of the wall and looked to Carvalho’s battery. His two remaining guns had only a fraction of their original crew remaining, forcing a far slower rate of fire than they had at the outset of the battle.
He considered ordering them to withdraw, but discarded the idea as worthless. Carvalho would consolidate his remaining men with the larger guns being brought up—or not, according to God’s will. Indeed, as he watched, the first of the heavier guns was drawing into position to fire, its thirty-man crew struggling with the mighty weight of metal.
Drums sounded the advance. A moment later, ten thousand sowar rocked into motion, the rumble of their hoofbeats drowning the drums. They would be at the walls in minutes.
“God willing, we will have an end to this, brother,” Aurangzeb breathed. This time, his messengers remained silent.
Gun line
“Can’t shift her, Captain,” Farshad said. “Not without more men.”
“Still more of Dara’s bastards to kill where she lays,” Carvalho said, pitching in to reload. The next minutes were occupied with hard, sweaty work.
Finished, he stepped back and pulled his linstock from his belt. The cord had gone out, drowned in his sweaty robes. He bent to shelter it as he struck grinder and flint. A bullet whizzed by in the space he’d occupied, making him sweat all the more.
He put the dragon to the touch and skipped back as the powder caught and the charge exploded. He missed where the ball struck, the target lost in dust and smoke and the chaos of battle.
The next long while passed in a blur of reload, fire. Reload. Fire.
Sometime later, something reached through the raw repetition and roar of battle. Something felt in his bones, not heard. He staggered from the gun and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was then that thousands of horsemen rode past his position, charging toward the wall and battle. Even at speed, it took the better part of two minutes for the mass of men to ride by.
“Only enough powder for a few more shots, Captain!” Farshad croaked.
An oxen’s low turned him round in hopes of seeing a supply cart laden with powder and ball. Instead it was Islam’s Whore of Babylon, the largest of Aurangzeb’s guns to arrive in camp before the attack.
“Get that great big bitch into line and start shooting, Islam!” Carvalho yelled. Another round whistled by his head, too close to bear thinking about.
“Yes, Captain!” Islam yelled back, eyes gone a little wild.
With a sound like two great wood blocks being slapped together, the lead oxen of the team dropped stone dead, skull pierced by a sniper’s bullet.
“Jesus!” he screamed. “They must have had every Atishbaz from here to the Himalayas making powder and shot for those damn weapons! How did we not know?”
Busy commanding his men, Islam did not respond to the question. None of the rest of the gunners seemed inclined to offer an opinion either, being busy cutting the ox from its traces.
Frustration and rage vented and ignored by an indifferent God and universe, he gestured for his remaining crew to join Islam’s men.
The backbreaking labor that followed caused him to lose track of time, but it passed nonetheless, and at a cost: two more oxen were killed and a man wounded. That cost paid, they had the great beast of a gun in position.
Carvalho stood back, panting.
Islam’s men were more efficient, or at least less tired: they immediately set to loading. The powder went in quickly enough, but the two huge, muscle-bound men carrying the first ball from the wagon struggled to lift it to the muzzle.
“Well done!” Carvalho yelled as the men stepped back.
A smiling Islam ignited his linstock and stepped to the touch.
Carvalho looked expectantly at the wall but the cannon did not fire.
Carvalho looked back to see Islam on his knees, blood pouring from his mouth and a red stain growing beneath his breastbone.
“God!” Carvalho cried as he ran to Islam’s side. He was too slow, and Islam’s face struck one of the monstrous wheels of the gun carriage as he fell forward.
Grinding his teeth, Carvalho snatched the still-smoking linstock from the dead man’s hand and laid it to the touch.
The cannon roared his anger and rage, propelling the nearly fifty-pound ball across the intervening distance to crash into the wall. The red sandstone facing of the wall sloughed away, the top bucking before dust and smoke obscured it from view.
Aurangzeb’s camp
Tent of Nur Jahan
Nur opened the next message and brought it to the light. It did no good, however. It was her attention that was lacking, not the light.
She had not slept well, having had a strange dream in the night. It had started well enough: seeing Jahangir as he’d been when she first knew him, powerfully handsome, with eyes that pulled her in and held her in their regard. He’d been riding a white stallion across a vast plain of wind-waving grasses, riding to join her. Nur had enjoyed watching this young Jahangir ride to her, a shadow of the thrill she used to feel on seeing him rising up her sleeping spine. He was yelling something she could not comprehend. She did not mind the yells, at first, thinking he was only as excited to see her as she was to see him. But then the wind turned stiff and cold, plum clouds stacking higher and higher on the horizon and making the grass ripple wildly, as if in the wake of half a hundred unseen tigers.
The darkness closed in.
Sudden fear raked her soul. Those invisible predators caught her husband, drew Jahangir and his brilliant white mount down in a welter of blood, his voice ringing in her ears even as she startled awake.
Like all nightmares, it was far easier to remember the fear than any message, but her mind had
