Empire of the Moghul: The Serpent's Tooth by Alex Rutherford Read Free Book Online Page A

glare of the late afternoon sun, Shah Jahan saw the scouts he had despatched under Rai Singh to sweep the arid countryside ahead of his main force galloping into the camp. Five were holding the reins of the horses on which, hands bound behind their backs, the prisoners were swaying. Four of the prisoners were men of about his own age but the fifth was much younger – a tall youth whose dirt-streaked red and gold tunic hung loosely on his slender frame. The guards were keeping him separate from the rest and the youth’s eyes flicked nervously from side to side.
    ‘Did you interrogate them, Rai Singh?’ Shah Jahan asked.
    ‘Yes, Majesty. Two of us took them individually into the herdsman’s hut. We kept them blindfolded and my comrade interspersed promises of reward with my threats of torture. The four men were brave enough, refusing to reveal anything, but that youth began to piss himself with fear when I suggested that iron claws were being heated ready to rip his bowels from his belly. He was only too eager to accept my friend’s subsequent softly voiced promises of his freedom and poured out all he knew. The other Bijapurans suspect he has betrayed them and have been yelling threats of what they’ll do to him. That’s why we’ve kept them apart.’
    ‘Good work, Rai Singh. What did he tell you?’

    ‘Charge!’ yelled Shah Jahan. He and his horsemen kicked their mounts into a gallop towards the Bijapuran camp one and a half miles away. The camp was a collection of tents and makeshift shelters made from the dead branches of trees clustered around the sticky mud which was all that remained of a small lagoon. At the far side of the lagoon were the huts of what looked to have been a poor village even before the onset of the drought. After a brief consultation with his officers about the information provided by the captured youth on the whereabouts of his enemy’s camp and their strength, Shah Jahan had decided on an attack just after dawn when his opponents should be preoccupied with their ablutions and their breakfast.
    During the long moonlit ride towards the camp he had worried whether – since two Bijapurans had escaped – his enemy might be on high alert. However, he had convinced himself that even if his opponents attached any importance to the seizure of their scouts, from their past experience they would not expect his own forces to respond so quickly to any information they obtained. Neither would they expect them to cover the thirty miles between the point of capture and their camp so fast.
    But his fears seemed to have been groundless, Shah Jahan had thought as, breasting some low hillocks, he and his men had looked down on the camp with its smoking cooking fires and lines of tethered horses and soldiers moving to and fro on their normal duties. His men had quickly overwhelmed the few sentries posted around the hillocks. Now as he and his troops galloped, green banners streaming in the wind and horses’ hooves pounding the hard-baked ground, towards the Bijapuran camp his enemies were running towards the horse lines buckling on their swords, grabbing lances from their pyramid racks and preparing to face his onslaught. But they would not be in time, thought Shah Jahan, urging his horse into an even faster gallop.
    Then above the battle cries of his men and the drumming hooves he heard a loud crash, and then another. The sounds were coming from his front and left. Turning his head in that direction he saw the branches of several of the Bijapuran shelters had been thrown aside to reveal cannon which were already being brought into action. Musketeers too were crouching behind the cannon, steadying their long-barrelled weapons on the limbers as they fired. Both cannon and musket balls were finding their mark.
    Through the dust thrown up by his charging cavalry he saw the forelegs of one of the leading Moghul horses crumple. As it collapsed it propelled its rider – a standard-bearer – over its head to