‘Majesty, we have captured the only outpost of Sekunder Shah’s that we picked out in daylight as protecting this approach to his camp. Thirty of my men crept up to and silently climbed a section of its low mud wall which was crumbling away in the rains. Then they rushed the garrison, which numbered a dozen men, and quickly and quietly slit their throats or strangled them with thin cords. None escaped to give the alarm — none even raised a cry.’
‘As usual you’ve done well, Ahmed Khan,’ Humayun had said and Ahmed Khan had departed to despatch more of his scouts to advance stealthily towards Sekunder Shah’s camp. Their task now was to try as best they could in the conditions to pick out the worst quagmires between Humayun’s current position and the camp which lay unseen in the darkness no more than a mile away so that Humayun’s assault troops could skirt them, avoiding becoming bogged down.
Impatient as he was to bring on the battle that would decide his destiny, Humayun knew their task was a crucial one and that it would be worth the wait for their report. In any case, the distances were small and they should soon return. After what seemed to Humayun an age but was, in fact, no more than a quarter of an hour, Ahmed Khan reappeared with six of his scouts, all mud-spattered and soaked like himself. Ahmed Khan spoke.
‘The mission was so important I went forward myself with these brave men. We were not detected. We used lances to probe the firmness of the ground and the depth of the mud. We found that if we ride directly forward we will indeed come upon great stretches of extremely boggy ground which would impede our advance and might even cause some of the horses to become completely stuck. However, if as we ride we take a rightward arc we will have a better if still very muddy approach. We will reach the earth barricades that Sekunder Shah has thrown up around his camp at their northern corner. Here they stand higher than a man. We may need to use the ladders that you ordered to be brought with us.’
‘Thank you, Ahmed Khan. Jauhar, tell Bairam Khan to choose some pairs of soldiers from among the vanguard, each to carry slung between their horses one of the ladders we have brought this far on the backs of pack animals. Ask him to let me know once he is ready and I will join him in the advance.’
Jauhar rode off and Humayun could just distinguish by the lightning flashes Bairam Khan’s horsemen forming up in battle order. Now combat was imminent, Humayun realised that he felt no fear but a general heightening of his senses which made a moment last a minute and a minute an hour and even seemed to sharpen his vision, enabling him to see Bairam Khan beckoning him through the murk before Jauhar appeared to tell him he was ready.
Humayun tugged on his leather gauntlets and instinctively touched his father’s sword Alamgir in its jewelled scabbard at his side. Then he repositioned his feet in his stirrups to ensure they would not slip and finally kicked his black horse into motion and rode over to where Bairam Khan was waiting with Ahmed Khan.The latter would lead the advance with his six scouts who had made the reconnaissance. They had each draped white linen sheets around their shoulders to make themselves easier to follow in the gloom.
‘May God go with us,’ Humayun said. ‘Lead off, Ahmed Khan.’
Ahmed Khan simply nodded and rode forward. He was quickly followed by the other six scouts and then by Bairam Khan and his young qorchi, now looking fully composed with a stern, concentrated expression on his young face. Humayun turned his horse and headed with them into the murk and falling rain towards Sekunder Shah’s camp.
The conditions meant that they could not advance at much more than a canter. Even then, the horses’ hooves threw up large amounts of mud and water which splattered those following. After they had ridden for no more than two or three minutes, Ahmed Khan reined in his horse by a small cluster of boulders on a low rise and Humayun rode up to him.
‘Majesty,’ Ahmed Khan spoke softly, ‘these rocks are the last important marker. From here, the walls of Sekunder Shah’s camp are about six hundred yards directly in front of us.’
‘Summon up the pairs of men with ladders.’
As they rode up, the rough ladders slung between their horses by leather thongs, the rain slackened and almost as if by a miracle the moon appeared, pale and watery, through a gap in the scudding clouds. In the few moments before it disappeared again, Humayun glimpsed the walls of Sekunder Shah’s camp.They were as Ahmed Khan had described, about eight feet high and made of earth, some of which appeared to have slipped down in places, making those sections more like steep hillocks.
There was no sign of sentries as moments later the men rode up to the walls and, dismounting quickly, positioned the ladders and scrambled up them on to the walls. There they began pushing the mud down, some kicking at it with their feet, others using spades they had carried strapped across their backs. Soon, about thirty feet of the wall had been reduced to no more than a low mound and Bairam Khan, followed by his qorchi, was leading his horsemen quietly into the camp. The rain was falling more heavily again and still there were no signs of alarm as Humayun himself and his bodyguard crossed the remains of the wall.
Suddenly, however, a startled cry rang out from somewhere in front of Humayun. ‘The enemy!’ Another fainter shout came from along the mud walls, then the much louder blare of a trumpet from the same direction. Perhaps the dozing personnel of a guardhouse had woken to the peril that was flowing all around them and were giving the alarm. There were answering trumpet blasts from towards the centre of the camp.
Now that surprise had been lost, Humayun realised that he and his men needed to advance as quickly as possible to destroy their enemy before they had time to arm and to form up. As he rode over towards Bairam Khan to give him the order to ride for the centre of the camp, a straggling volley of arrows fell, slanting down among the raindrops from the direction of the guard post. One implanted itself in Humayun’s saddle. Another struck Bairam Khan’s breastplate and bounced harmlessly off but a third caught Bairam Khan’s qorchi in the thigh. The youth clutched at his leg and as the blood began to run through his fingers stifled a cry.
‘Bind his wound tightly,’ shouted Humayun. ‘Get him back to our camp to the hakims. He’s young and has been brave. He deserves to live.’ One of Humayun’s own bodyguards rushed to comply.
Another volley of arrows fell but they were few in number and the only casualty was a cavalryman’s bay horse which slipped to the ground, two black-flighted arrows protruding from its neck. Its rider, a squat Tajik, jumped clear as it fell but slipped as he landed heavily in the mud, lying winded for a moment before scrambling to his feet.
‘Bairam Khan, send forty men to locate the position those arrows came from and destroy the enemy archers. The rest of you, charge with me to victory.’
As Bairam Khan quickly detached the men to deal with the guard post, Humayun drew Alamgir. Holding the sword straight out in front of him, and with his bodyguard around him and Mustapha Ergun and his Turkish mercenaries close behind, he kicked his black stallion into as near a gallop as it could come to in the mud, riding deeper into the camp. By now there was a slight lightening of the sky on the eastern horizon, the precursor of dawn, but Humayun could still see little through the rain as he rode, head low over his horse’s neck. Then, after a minute or so, he managed to distinguish the dark shapes of close-packed lines of tents ahead and at the same time heard the cries of Sekunder Shah’s men as they emerged from them, pulling their weapons from their scabbards.
‘Push the tents over to trap the enemy beneath. Ride down any who are already outside.’ Following his own orders, Humayun leaned down from the saddle and slashed hard at the guy ropes of a large tent, which crumpled to the ground. Then he cut at a shadowy figure who, after emerging from a second tent, was raising his double bow. Humayun felt Alamgir slice deep into the unprotected flesh of the man’s chest before biting into his ribs. The archer twisted and fell beneath the hooves of one of Humayun’s advancing cavalrymen, who was in turn thrown.