But it was the future Humayun needed to think about now. Sitting tall on his throne he began. ‘My patience with my half-brothers is at an end. They will always be a danger until their forces are destroyed and they are caught.’
‘Our troops have been unlucky. . one day we will succeed in taking them prisoner,’ said Zahid Beg. He regarded the failure to defeat Kamran and Askari as a blemish on his honour.
‘If we carry on as at present I doubt it — unless we are very lucky. I have long suspected that they have spies among our soldiers as well as in the city. That is why they always elude us, making us waste time and energy that would be better spent elsewhere.’
‘But what more can we do?’ asked Zahid Beg.
‘That is why I have summoned you here. Dealing with Kamran and Askari and their mountain raiders cannot be beyond us. Kabul is wealthy. The merchants who come here to trade and fill our caravanserais are numerous. The taxes they pay fill our treasury. I have been preserving this wealth for my long-postponed invasion of Hindustan but I intend to spend some of it to deal once and for all with the problem of my half-brothers. . ’
‘How, Majesty?’ asked Zahid Beg.
‘I will give my own body weight in gold to any man who captures either of my half-brothers. We will also redouble our own efforts — mobilise all our troops to hunt for them. I will lead them myself. I will also pay large sums to tribesmen to ride with us. They know every ripple and fold of the mountains. I pledge not to rest until my half-brothers are caught.’
‘Majesty, one of our patrols reports smoke rising from Karabagh,’ Ahmed Khan said, galloping up to Humayun and reining in his white horse so sharply it snorted in protest.
‘You think the settlement’s under attack?’
‘I’m sure of it, Majesty.’
‘Then let’s ride.’ As his horse’s hooves beat the sun-hardened earth beneath a glaring orange sun, Humayun allowed himself to hope that at last he was getting close to Kamran and Askari. For the past three weeks he and his men had been following in the wake of a large raiding party through the mountainous valleys north of Kabul, always arriving only in time to find settlements burned, orchards hacked down and bodies already putrefying in the intense summer heat. But Karabagh was only about four miles away. Humayun remembered it well from hunting trips in his youth — a large, prosperous place with almond and apricot orchards irrigated by a willow-fringed stream flowing past the mud walls that enclosed it.
The five hundred troops riding at his back — mounted archers and cavalrymen with bright, steel-tipped spears — should be more than enough to deal with whoever was attacking Karabagh, he thought. As he swept round the side of a hill on which a few young oak trees had taken root, Karabagh and its orchards came into view. It wasn’t the peaceful scene Humayun remembered. Fields and orchards had been set alight and through the acrid drifting smoke he saw that the gates into the settlement had been torn down. Even above the thundering of hooves he thought he heard screaming.
‘For justice!’ Humayun yelled and, circling Alamgir above his head, he urged his horse to a gallop, outstripping his bodyguards. He was the first through the shattered gateway and into the settlement, swerving his mount around the body of an old man from whose bloodied back a battleaxe protruded. To his right, some twenty yards away, Humayun saw two men — Chakraks from their shaggy, spherical sheep wool hats — dragging a terrified girl from a house. One of them was already loosening the drawstring of his baggy pantaloons. Seeing Humayun they gaped. Letting go of the girl, who scrambled out of the way, both men reached for their bows but Humayun was on them. With a sweep of his sword he decapitated the first man, sending his head spinning through the warm air to smash against a stone lintel. Then, pulling hard on his reins and leaning back, he brought his horse up on to its back legs and then urged it forward so its front hooves smashed down on the second Chakrak with a satisfying crunch of bone.
All around, his men, who had poured into the settlement behind him, were having the best of the fight. The raiders, intent on looting and raping, had been taken completely by surprise. Those who could were running to find cover. But all Humayun’s thoughts were now on his half-brothers. Wheeling his horse, he looked around for them among the heaving, struggling melee. ‘Majesty, get down!’ he heard Ahmed Khan yell above the shouts, groans and clashing of weapons, and ducked just in time to avoid a spear hurled at him by a wild-haired giant of a man standing on the flat roof of a house. Humayun pulled his battleaxe from the thongs securing it to his saddle and sent it hurtling through the air. It hit the man in the chest so hard he tumbled backwards off the roof as if struck by a musket ball.
Humayun’s blood was pounding in his ears. It felt good to be in the heart of the fight. Brushing the sweat from his face with his green face cloth, he saw what seemed to be the last surviving raiders running towards some horses tethered to the wooden frame above a well. ‘Let no one escape,’ he yelled as, pulling his own mount round, he bore down on them. Leaning forward, he grabbed one man by the shoulder as he was about to jump on to his horse and with a violent push sent him sprawling to the ground. Reining in, Humayun shouted at the man as he lay in the dust, ‘Whose men are you? Answer me at once or I’ll put my sword through your throat.’ The man was winded and still struggling to speak when Humayun heard a familiar voice behind him.
‘They are mine. I surrender. Let’s be done with all this.’
Turning, Humayun saw Askari standing about four yards behind him, thin face streaked with blood from a cut above his right eyebrow. At his feet were his curved sword and a throwing dagger. When they saw what their leader had done, Askari’s remaining men also dropped their weapons.
By now, Humayun’s men were all around. ‘Tie them all up,’ he ordered. Then, dismounting, he slowly approached Askari. Puzzlement at his brother’s behaviour and the knowledge of how close he might have come to death at his hands if Askari had used his weapons rather than discarding them, combined to make him take refuge in a simpler emotion — anger.
‘How dare you bring destruction and havoc to my people — our people?’
Askari said nothing.
‘You’ve never had the guts to act alone. Kamran must be nearby. Where is he?’
Askari wiped away the blood that was still leaking from the cut on his face. ‘You’re wrong. I haven’t seen Kamran for over five months. I don’t know where he is.’ His black eyes met Humayun’s.
Humayun came closer and dropped his voice so they could not be overheard. ‘I don’t understand. You could have attacked me from behind before I even knew you were there.’
‘Yes.’
‘So what stopped you?’
Askari shrugged and looked away. Humayun gripped his shoulder. ‘You don’t baulk at attacking innocent people, allowing these vermin’ — he gestured at a couple of sullen Chakraks whom his men had trussed up with rope — ‘to rape and murder, so why hesitate to attack your own flesh and blood. .?’
‘Humayun. . ’
‘No, now I think about it, I’m not interested. It was probably cowardice.You knew my men would kill you if you attacked me. I don’t want to listen to any more of your lies about how sorry you are and how everything that’s happened has been Kamran’s fault.’ Humayun turned away and shouted to his guards, ‘Take him away and keep him from my sight until we reach Kabul. Just looking at him shames me.’