Almost before he realised it, he was on his feet, every eye upon him. All were used to him just sitting there, their boy emperor listening to their advice and quietly acquiescing in their decisions. ‘Enough of this. How dare any of you even think of abandoning the empire?’ he said loudly. ‘It’s not yours to surrender. I am the rightful ruler here. My duty — our duty — is to win new lands, not yield those our ancestors won to petty usurpers. We must attack Hemu at once and crush him like a melon beneath the elephant’s foot. I will lead the troops myself.’
As Akbar sat down again, he looked instinctively towards Bairam Khan, whose almost imperceptible nod told him his outburst had pleased his commander-in-chief. His other counsellors and commanders were on their feet now and suddenly the great tent was filled with their voices, this time all shouting one thing: ‘Mirza Akbar! Mirza Akba!’ His first reaction was relief, then pride. Not only were they acknowledging him as one of the Amirzada — the blood-kin of Timur — but they were affirming their readiness to follow him to war in his first campaign as emperor. He had asserted himself and despite his youth they had listened. Command was sweet.
An hour later, Akbar visited his mother in the royal women’s quarters. The sleeping tents and bathhouses were protected by a fence of tall, gilded wooden screens lashed together with thongs of oxhide in which there was only one well-guarded entry gate. As he entered her tent, he smelled the sweet spicy scent that ever since childhood he had associated with Hamida — sandalwood. It was coming from a silver incense burner in the centre of the floor, from which a thin wisp of smoke was curling upwards to a vent in the roof.
Hamida was lying against a bolster of flowered silk while Zainab her attendant combed her long hair, dark as Akbar’s own. On one side sat his aunt Gulbadan, frowning with concentration as she plucked the strings of a somewhat battered round-bellied lute that had once belonged to Akbar’s great-great-grandmother, who had carried it strapped to her back during the Moghuls’ flight from Central Asia. Akbar knew the story of that lute as minutely as he knew all the family history. He also knew that his aunt, clever as she was, had no talent for lute-playing and that that annoyed her, hence her persistence.
On the other side of Hamida, embroidering a shirt, was his wet-nurse or milk-mother, Maham Anga. In Moghul society, the bond between wet-nurse and the royal child she had suckled was lifelong. It also made Maham Anga’s own son Adham Khan — just a few months older than himself — his milk-brother, bound to him with ties as strong as those of blood.
At the sight of Akbar, the faces of all three women lit up. His mother Hamida, barely thirty and slender-bodied and smooth-skinned still, jumped up and hugged him. Gulbadan put down her lute and smiled. A little older than Hamida, tiny lines already wrinkled the corners of her tawny eyes, and had her long hair not been hennaed, silver threads would have run through it. Maham Anga came forward to embrace him warmly. She was taller than either Hamida or Gulbadan and handsome in a big-boned, almost masculine way.
Akbar was pleased that the three women who meant most to him were here together. ‘I have come to you straight from the war council. Hemu’s advance force has captured Delhi but he won’t hold it long. Tomorrow I will lead our forces to intercept him and his main army before he can join his troops in Delhi. We will defeat Hemu and retake what is ours.’
While he spoke, Hamida’s eyes — amber-brown like his own — were fixed on his face. As he fell silent she continued to regard him steadily. What was going through her mind? he wondered.
‘My son,’ his mother said at last, emotion in her voice, ‘I always knew, even when I carried you in my belly, that one day you would be a great warrior and a great leader. The realisation that that time has come fills me with joy. I have something for you.’ She whispered something to Zainab, who hurried off. When she returned several minutes later she was carrying an object wrapped in green velvet which she laid on the carpet at Hamida’s feet. His mother knelt and threw back the velvet, and Akbar saw his father’s golden breastplate and eagle-hilted sword, Alamgir, in its sapphire-studded scabbard.
The armour and the sword evoked the image of his father so powerfully that for a moment Akbar closed his eyes lest his mother see the tears in them. Hamida, helped by Maham Anga, buckled the breastplate on him. Humayun had been tall and muscular but Akbar was already nearly as broad and the armour fitted well. Now Hamida was holding Alamgir out to him. Slowly, he drew the blade from the scabbard and made a few tentative cuts through the air. The weight, the balance, felt good.
‘I was waiting until I was sure you were ready,’ said Hamida, as if she had read his mind. ‘Now I see that you are. Tomorrow, when I watch you ride away, I will feel a mother’s anxiety but also the pride of an empress. May God go with you, my son.’
Chapter 2
The horizon shimmered beneath the heat haze of the late afternoon sun as Akbar stood, shifting nervously from foot to foot, on one of the few small hills on the otherwise featureless plains northwest of Delhi. Suddenly he saw emerging through the haze a troop of about fifty mounted men. As they approached, he said to Bairam Khan at his side, ‘That’s Ahmed Khan at their head, isn’t it?’
‘I can’t be sure. Your young eyes are better than mine, but that is definitely a green Moghul banner that one of the leading riders is carrying.’
Soon it became clear that it was indeed Ahmed Khan returning from the scouting expedition on which Akbar, on Bairam Khan’s advice, had despatched him three days previously to locate and confirm the strength of Hemu’s army. About a quarter of an hour later, the familiar straggle-bearded figure approached them and, as Akbar remembered him doing so often in front of his father, briefly prostrated himself.
‘Rise, Ahmed Khan. What news have you?’
‘We found Hemu and his main force without difficulty. They’re encamped at Panipat, only twelve miles north of here.’ The name Panipat was both familiar and a source of pride to Akbar. There thirty years ago his grandfather Babur had defeated the Lodi Sultan of Delhi, Sultan Ibrahim, to found the Moghul empire. Only eighteen months before, Akbar himself had ridden through the battlefield, still littered with the great bleached bones of some of Sultan Ibrahim’s war elephants, as he had accompanied his father Humayun on his victorious march to recapture Delhi and refound the empire he had lost to an ambitious ruler from Bengal, Sher Shah. Fate had not been kind to his father. After so many struggles against Sher Shah and his own traitorous half-brothers, Humayun had lived only six months after regaining his throne. Now, it seemed that it would be Akbar’s turn to command a Moghul army in battle at Panipat. Young as he was he must do everything to ensure he lived up to his father’s and grandfather’s memories.
‘How many men does Hemu have with him, Ahmed Khan?’ he asked.
‘We estimated more than a hundred and twenty thousand, at least half of them mounted and of good quality. And he also has around five hundred war elephants.’
‘Then as we expected he will outnumber us by about twenty thousand men. How many cannon and muskets does he possess?’
‘They’ve fewer cannon than we anticipated, perhaps thirty in total, many of them small. From what we could see, most of the foot soldiers are equipped with bows and arrows, not muskets, although they do of course have some musketeers.’
‘We’ve got the advantage there then, Bairam Khan, haven’t we?’ Akbar turned to his commander-in-chief. ‘There’s no reason we shouldn’t give battle at Panipat, is there? It is a place of good fortune for our people. Wouldn’t fighting there give added confidence to our troops, even if we are outnumbered?’ Akbar’s expression was almost pleading.