She looked right. The range was closing fast. The infantry would be in range about—
B-b-b-bam!
No more the near-perfect drumbeat of volley fire, this was a long, drawn-out stuttering crash of each man waiting until she was clear of their immediate front before opening fire.
A lump formed in her throat; not of admiration for their action—checking fire for a lone warrior of unknown allegiance was not wise—but for their discipline. That those men were not only able to hear but also execute such a foolish order with complete precision in the heat of battle was a testament to their leadership and drill.
She looked again at Aurangzeb’s men. Many of the leading horses had gone down under the Sikh fire, taking their riders and, more often than not, those following too closely behind as well. The charge she’d thought would kill her stalled as a result, allowing her a chance.
Atisheh counted it a minor miracle none of Dara’s sowar plugged her with arrows as she covered the last few gaz and rejoined the wheel. Her mare nipped at another horse that came too close. Wishing she had the energy to match, Atisheh looked for Dara.
He was there, somehow having lost his helmet and the magnificent horse he’d been mounted on when she last saw him, but he was there. Still in command, not only of his senses, but of the men. He yelled something and the drum changed cadence, sounding the withdrawal.
The infantry was on the move as well, withdrawing with the same choreographed precision as before. Now that the men had no obstruction to their fire, they resumed volley fire once more.
Damla was suddenly beside her, dusty hand extending a swollen wineskin to Atisheh as they rode.
Atisheh took it with a grateful nod, ignoring the painful protests of her shoulders and arms as she raised it to her lips. She coughed up as much as she was able to get down, but still felt far better for having something to wash the blood and fear from her mouth and throat.
“Yonca?” she asked when she could speak again.
Damla shrugged. “Dead, I think. Same ball I thought killed you.”
“The others?”
“More alive than dead,” Damla said with a shrug. “We’ll count the cost when we’re behind the walls again.”
Atisheh noted Damla hadn’t said, “when we’re safe behind the walls,” but from the looks of things, Dara’s sortie had proven extremely effective. More than she’d dared hope it would be.
She prayed Dara’s luck would hold.
Gun line
Carvalho was pressing the dragon to the touchhole for what seemed like the thousandth time when his luck ran out. A round from one of the devilishly long-ranged up-timer weapons spanked from the cannon and whirred into the meat of his left hand.
Cursing, he dropped the linstock to grab his bleeding hand instead of stepping out of the way. The gun belched its load, rocking up and dropping its weight on his left boot.
The world went white, then away.
He came to on the ground, looking up into the dark, smiling face of Sidi Miftah Habash Khan. Sidi, not yet fully recovered from the injury suffered at Burhanpur, had become the leader of Aurangzeb’s remaining light cavalry in the absence of Shahaji, though what he was doing here was a question.
“What?” he tried to ask, but his jaw was so tightly clenched he could not move it.
The smile disappeared. “I said, that looks like it hurts. I am sorry, my friend, for what must come next.”
Before Carvalho could figure out what Sidi was apologizing for, the former slave-soldier-now-umara grabbed his hand, the wounded one, in a tight grip.
Carvalho screamed, reflexively pulling back to punch Sidi, who nodded at someone out of view.
The weight on his foot was removed.
The pain slapped him like a typhoon-driven wave. Carvalho had never felt the like, but he didn’t pass out, not this time. Not with Sidi’s distraction.
“Sneaky, filthy, shit-eating Mohammedan bastard!” he grated in Portuguese, more because cursing helped him deal with the pain than any real anger at Sidi.
The grin returned. “Now you sound like Father De Jesus.”
“You speak Portuguese?”
Sidi’s smile grew fixed. “Who do you think sold me to these people?”
Their conversation was interrupted as another round from those infernal weapons ricocheted from the cannon and whir-whir-wheeted its way through the air.
Sidi flinched. “The pig-eating vermin think we’re trying to get the gun back in play.”
My men.
Carvalho tried to raise his head, but Sidi pushed him down. “None of that. Can’t have you looking at it.”
“My men,” Carvalho grated.
“Are being seen to,” Sidi said.
Such was the pain and disorder to his thoughts that Carvalho didn’t think to ask what, exactly, the man meant until he was being lifted from the ground and thrown over the back of Sidi’s horse.
Just a glance revealed far more than he wanted to see or could ever forget. Great wounds gaped in the flesh of his men, men he’d known since taking service with the Mughals almost a decade ago. Men who would no longer answer his call to arms, fight beside him, make him laugh, make him proud.
He tried to wipe his eyes but only succeeded in making his vision blur with more blood, sweat, and tears.
Chapter 48
Red Fort
Redoubt west of Lahore Gate
“Did we win?” Bertram wheezed, a coughing fit bending him double behind the parapet.
“How the hell should I know?” John asked, waving the broken—and how did that happen?—sword in his right hand at the chaos raging along the ravine. Nothing moved immediately below the walls, nothing but flies and the occasional twitch of things that might have once been whole men. Indeed, the walls to either side of their position were relatively quiet, the men too exhausted and stunned to do anything
