The predawn quiet had yet to be broken by the army’s muezzin calling the faithful to Fajr, the third prayer of the day, when Aurangzeb’s messenger arrived and ordered Carvalho to begin his artillery barrage. A quick study of the moon’s position made it clear that the order was arriving at last three hours early.
Strange, he had been clear that we were not to begin until the muezzin began to call the faithful to Fajr. I wonder what changed.
He knew better than to send the messenger back with questions for the prince, however.
“To your guns, men!” Carvalho’s command was quiet but spurred his gathered gun captains to run for their guns.
Rodrigo, his second, gave a short bow, a mocking grin, and departed at a more stately pace.
Carvalho smiled. Rodrigo knew his duty well. Besides, he had the shortest walk, and being the captain’s oldest comrade had its prerogatives.
He checked the nervous impulse to verify the angle of his fire with his linstock one more time while waiting for his men to reach their guns. The fools across the river had kept watch fires going through the night, and he sighted in his guns using the excellent aim-points each made. The wait was longer than it was when he first entered service under Aurangzeb. The twenty-odd cannon he was fairly confident would not explode when loaded with powder charges sufficient to carry their shot across the river and into the enemy encampment were not even half the guns that he’d been given command of.
Despite the many difficulties of supply the march had placed on his talents, Aurangzeb had managed to expand not only the numbers of his artillery park, but the quality of the guns as well. As a result, Carvalho’s command had swollen to some fifty heavy pieces and nearly a hundred lighter guns. There was no shortage of powder, either, though much of it lacked the purity Portuguese gun captains were used to when at home, as it had been looted from the many magazines of the forts and armories taken on the campaign south.
He heard the camp drums begin to rumble behind him, knowing that any chance of surprise they’d hoped to gain for the cavalry with the artillery barrage had been destroyed. Cocking his head, Carvalho listened to the signal repeated a few times before he was confident of its meaning: troops to general assembly. Something had changed Aurangzeb’s timetable for the attack, and as it was not for the better, he assumed that Shuja had arrived and ordered Aurangzeb to attack before he was ready.
Shaking off thoughts of things he couldn’t very well change—least of all in the next few minutes—Carvalho stepped to one side of the gun he’d chosen to captain for tonight, careful to keep the glowing match cord at the end of his linstock out of view from across the water. Just because Shah Shuja had spoiled the chances for surprise didn’t make it wise to abandon his orders.
A pair of whistles, one from each end of the gun line, reached his ears.
He counted to three and lowered his dragon-headed linstock to press the match it held at the touchhole. The powder caught as he skipped aside. The gun belched fire, smoke, and thunder, setting the attack in motion.
North shore of the Tapti
“How many?” Aurangzeb asked, turning from the opening of his tent and the smoking battlefield beyond. The scene inside was not comforting, either. Several of his senior umara had been injured, and he’d ordered them placed in his tent and commanded his personal physicians to tend their injuries.
“The count is still being made, Shehzada,” Painda Khan said, sweat dripping from the round eunuch’s face onto the reports laid out before him.
“How many?” he repeated, glaring at his diwan.
“Forgive me, Shehzada, but we are still making our count…” The eunuch cleared his throat as he shuffled slips of paper. As if to prove his point, a clerk in his service entered and placed yet another slip on the field desk.
Aurangzeb waved impatiently.
The eunuch swallowed, but knew better than to make Aurangzeb wait further. “Our preliminary count has our losses at something less than five hundred men dead or wounded, Shehzada. Mostly wounded, of course, but we will know better tomorrow who will survive their injuries.”
“Far fewer than would have died had…some other been allowed to plan this victory,” Shahaji said, skirting the edge of treason.
Aurangzeb, unable to tear his eyes away from watching his personal physician pull a thumb-length sliver of wood from the hard muscles of Habash Khan’s ebony flank, said, “You will speak no more of such things.”
“As you command, Shehzada,” Shahaji said, suppressed anger running beneath the words like a spring dwelling beneath stone.
“I would lose no more men to my brother,” Aurangzeb said in a near whisper, wanting to tear his hair out, to wail and gnash his teeth, but unable to. As such conduct was impossible, given his position, he would have preferred not to utter a word. His captains had, this day, earned and more than earned an explanation.
Quietly, hoarsely, he told them: Shuja had arrived just before midnight and ordered Aurangzeb to begin a general assault. Aurangzeb had argued with his elder brother to no avail, then delayed the transmission of Shuja’s orders for as long as he dared, but ultimately he had been forced to follow orders and send his men in.
Burhanpur
Something heavy went flying into the air above Raj Ghat Gate, pieces of metal glinting in the sun above the dirty black smoke of the explosion. The sound of what must have been a great cannon barrel failing reached Aurangzeb’s ears a heartbeat later, thudding into his chest and making several of his entourage’s horses rear or start. His own stallion, better trained than most, flicked an annoyed ear at the racket, but paid no further mind.
Aurangzeb ground his teeth in a rare show of annoyance. The governor of the subah of Khandesh
