Within two or three minutes Nicholas was galloping through the thick smoke drifting across the battlefield and stinging his eyes and nostrils. Through the breaks he could see that Dara’s elephant had halted three or four hundred yards ahead. As he drew closer, urging on his horse with hands and heels, he saw why. Dara was climbing down from the howdah. As soon as he was close enough to be heard above the crashes and screams of battle, he shouted to a captain of Dara’s bodyguard, ‘What’s the matter? Why is the prince dismounting? Is the elephant wounded?’
‘No, the elephant is fine. His Highness wishes to change to a horse so he can move more quickly about the field to meet the unexpected threat from Khalilullah Khan’s treachery.’
Within a minute or two, Dara was mounted on a black stallion with a distinctive white blaze on its forehead and galloping towards the crisis on the left flank, followed by his bodyguard and Nicholas and his men and leaving the mahouts to turn the imperial elephant with its empty howdah back towards Dara’s camp.
Soon Dara, Nicholas and their followers were charging a large phalanx of well-equipped rebel riders who were arrowing their way into Dara’s ranks, hacking and thrusting as they rode. Nicholas drew his long double-edged sword and slashed hard at a rebel fighter as their horses passed. The man knocked Nicholas’s blow aside and in the same movement aimed a swing with his scimitar at Nicholas, who in turn swayed back in his saddle to avoid the blade as it carved the air in front of his nose. Almost immediately, the rebel had turned his nimble horse — which was little larger than a pony — and was once more attacking Nicholas, who remained slightly off balance from his first assault.
Seeing this, and eager to finish his opponent, the rider carefully drew his arm back behind his head to deliver a decisive blow with his scimitar using all the power he possessed. His deliberation gave Nicholas just the short pause he needed to recover and to exploit the reach his height and the exceptional length of his sword gave him by thrusting the weapon into the rebel’s unprotected armpit. The man screamed and swerved away, dropping his scimitar. A second rebel thrust at Nicholas with his lance but its tip splintered against Nicholas’s strong steel breastplate and Nicholas succeeded in slashing into the man’s upper arm with a hurried sword stroke. This rebel too sheered off, throwing down his now useless lance as blood from his wound coursed down his arm.
Looking round, Nicholas saw that Dara’s bodyguard and his own mercenaries were steadily pushing back Aurangzeb and Murad’s troops, several of whom lay sprawled dead or wounded, but there had also been casualties among his own men. A Burgundian who had served with him for many years was lying face down in a pool of blood with his brains spilling into his ginger hair from a great gash in his skull. Nicholas was preparing to re-join the fight, determined to avenge the waste of his comrade’s life on those who by rebelling had caused it, when he heard above the general din of battle a drumming of many fast approaching hooves behind him. Turning, he saw a group of horsemen with a green banner galloping wildly for the rear, all clearly Dara’s men. He shouted to the leading riders, ‘Why are you retreating?’ The first few who passed him were too intent on securing their safety even to respond, but one horseman, who appeared little more than a youth, reined in for a moment. ‘Prince Dara is fleeing, so we must too. So should you if you value your life.’
‘But the prince has not fled,’ Nicholas shouted back.
‘You’re wrong. We’ve seen the imperial elephant head for the rear.’
‘But didn’t you see the howdah was empty?’
‘No. But in that case the prince must be dead.’ With that and before Nicholas could utter another word the young man dug his heels into the flanks of his blowing horse and urged it after his quickly disappearing comrades. Nicholas looked round to see where Dara was but he had been carried away from him by the press of the fighting. Even as his eyes searched the heaving, sweating battle line in front of him, he heard more horses galloping behind him. Turning once more he saw the oncoming riders were also from his own side and fleeing headlong.
‘Prince Dara is safe! We are winning the fight!’ he yelled at them as they passed, knowing that even if he could be heard he would be unlikely to be heeded. He was right. The group passed quickly without even a glance in his direction, all except for one green-clad horseman whose mount stumbled over the body of a dead rebel and fell, throwing the man from the saddle to land in a crumpled heap. As he struggled to rise he was knocked down and trampled by the riders following, who in their fear did not even seem to attempt to avoid him.
Dara needed to show himself and soon or it would be too late. The battle would be irretrievably lost and the road to Agra open for Aurangzeb and Murad. As Nicholas scanned the fighting he suddenly saw the black stallion with the white blaze emerge from a melee about two hundred yards away. It was limping and had a great bleeding gash in its rump but no one in its saddle. Dara must have been knocked or fallen from the animal. Nicholas urged his horse towards the place where he had first seen the stallion. Getting closer he saw three of Dara’s green and gold-clad bodyguards, still mounted, trying to protect a recumbent figure in a gold breastplate lying motionless on the ground.
Almost immediately one of the guards dropped from his saddle, hit by a stroke from a black-clad rebel rider. Only a few moments later a second fell forward on to his horse’s neck, clearly wounded. The third fought on against four attackers. Yelling as loudly as he could for all his men to rally to him, Nicholas kicked towards the action, fearing he would be too late. Suddenly he remembered his brace of pistols. Throwing off his heavy gauntlet, he pulled one from his sash. His sweaty hand slipped on the rounded handle but he quickly restored his grip, levelled the weapon and fired. One of the rebels flung up his arms and fell from his horse, hit by what Nicholas knew was a lucky shot at a distance. As he grabbed for his other pistol, the bodyguard knocked another rebel from the saddle with a sword stroke.
Levelling the second pistol, Nicholas fired at one of the two remaining enemy fighters but as he did so his horse skittered and he missed the rider and instead hit his horse in the rump. The rebel lost control as his frightened and wounded animal twisted and reared, running from the battle, but it only covered a short distance before collapsing, trapping the rider beneath it. That only left one man, but as Nicholas closed on him he knocked the remaining bodyguard from his horse with a stroke of his sword. By then Nicholas was up with him. The man thrust hard at Nicholas. Nicholas still had one of his pistols gripped in his hand, and he reversed the weapon and smashed its bulbous handle into the rebel’s mouth. Frothing blood and broken pieces of tooth mingled with the man’s black beard, and before he could recover Nicholas threw aside the pistol, drew his sword and with a reverse stroke slashed into the nape of his adversary’s neck just beneath his helmet, crunching into bone and sinew. The man fell.
As more of Nicholas’s own troops as well as of Dara’s bodyguard arrived Nicholas jumped from his horse and ran across to Dara’s motionless form. Turning the prince on to his back, Nicholas quickly examined his body. There were no obvious wounds beyond a large and swollen bruise on his forehead. Pray God he was merely knocked out. Pulling his water bottle from his belt, Nicholas unstoppered it and tipped some of its contents over the face of Dara who seemed to stir, then carefully poured a little of the liquid into the prince’s mouth. Dara began to cough.
‘He’s alive,’ Nicholas shouted to the men now surrounding him. ‘Whoever’s got the best horse, dismount and we’ll use it for the prince. That rider, double up with someone else. See if any of the three bodyguards have any life left in them. If so, get them on horseback too, even if you have to tie them across your saddles.’