Taken by surprise, Salim’s mind had gone blank for a moment but then, taking courage, he had begun. ‘Only that I will do my best in the battle and that I hope I can be as brave as your commanders and of course you, Father. . and live up to what you expect of me. .’
As Salim had stuttered to a halt, the commanders seated around his father had begun to applaud and his father had said, ‘I am sure you will.’
However, as Akbar had turned quickly away from him back to a discussion of the command of the rearguard, Salim had wondered whether he had detected in his father’s tone and expression a disappointment that he had not spoken better and more originally. Then excitement at the prospect of his first battle had eclipsed all other concerns in his mind.
Now, eighteen hours later, the excitement was still there as Salim gazed at the rhododendron-covered hillside. Suddenly, he saw a movement behind one of the most heavily leafed bushes. ‘What’s that? Is it the enemy?’ he asked Suleiman Beg.
‘No. It’s just a deer,’ his milk-brother replied. As if in confirmation, the deer sprinted out from behind the bush, to be shot down by one of the column’s outriders with an arrow hastily drawn from his quiver.
‘At least some of the men will eat well tonight, Suleiman Beg.’
Ten minutes later, Salim thought he again detected movement, this time on the tree-lined crest of a ridge about a mile away. Chastened by his previous mistake he tugged at Suleiman Beg’s arm, pointed to the ridge and whispered, ‘Do you see anything up there?’
Before Suleiman Beg could answer, it became clear that there was something and it wasn’t another deer for tonight’s pot. There was a blast of a trumpet from one of the Moghul scouts. Soon he appeared over the crest, hands and heels working frantically as he urged his horse down between the trees and shrubs. A musket shot crackled out from behind him. Then several other riders appeared in hot pursuit. One, on a black horse, was gaining fast on the scout despite his zigzagging, ducking and dodging beneath and through the bushes and branches. When he was only about twenty yards from the scout, the rider — without doubt a Kashmiri — pulled back his arm and moments later the Moghul fell, presumably hit by a throwing dagger.
By then, many more Kashmiri horsemen were pouring over the crest and charging towards the column, crashing down through the vegetation. The Moghul cavalry on the flanks were turning their horses to face the threat and mounted musketeers were jumping from their saddles to prime their weapons and ready their firing tripods. Somehow the Kashmiris must have evaded Abdul Rahman’s screen of scouts, or perhaps killed all of them before they could get a signal away except for the man who had just fallen so bravely.
Salim’s heart began to beat faster and he felt all his senses heighten. Behind him in the howdah of his war elephant, two of his bodyguards were preparing their muskets. He could see others doing the same on the elephants immediately ahead, while on each the two mahouts sitting behind the elephants’ ears were striking the beasts’ skulls to make them turn to face the attack, at the same time trying to make themselves as small a target as possible in their exposed position. Suddenly one fell, arms flailing, from the elephant two ahead of Salim’s and crashed to the ground with an arrow in his neck. The following elephant carefully avoided his prone body although the man was probably already dead.
Moments later, Salim heard an arrow hiss through the air close beside him. Then he saw a phalanx of Kashmiri horsemen with steel breastplates and domed helmets ornamented with peacock feathers come crashing into the line of flanking Moghul cavalry. They unhorsed several of their rivals by the impetus of their downhill charge. Penetrating swiftly towards the elephant column, they were followed by more and more of their comrades galloping down the green hillsides, some with turquoise battle banners billowing behind them. From time to time a Kashmiri or his horse fell, hit by musket balls or arrows.
Once, a thick-set, green-turbaned Moghul officer charged at a Kashmiri banner bearer and slashed him across the eyes with his sword as they clashed, even succeeding in grabbing the Kashmiri’s banner before the now sightless rider dropped from the saddle. However, a second Kashmiri thrust his lance into the officer’s abdomen as he attempted to wheel his horse to re-join his comrades. With the turquoise banner flapping around him, the Moghul fell from his horse, but his foot caught in his stirrup and he was dragged head bumping along the ground a little way behind the bolting animal before his body caught beneath the hooves of some charging Kashmiri cavalry. Freed from the stirrup, it was left sprawling bloody and mangled on the stony earth.
Other Kashmiri riders were now within fifty yards or so of Salim’s elephant, kicking and urging their mounts forward through the Moghul cavalry, slashing around them with their swords as they advanced. Both Salim and Suleiman Beg put arrows to their bows and fired, while behind them the muskets of their two bodyguards crackled. Salim saw his target — one of the leading Kashmiris — fall from his horse, a white-flighted arrow embedded in his cheek. Salim was exultant. That was his arrow, wasn’t it? He’d brought him down. But his delight was short-lived. One of the bodyguards behind him — a black-bearded Rajput named Rajesh who had guarded him and his brothers for many years — uttered a strangled cry and fell from the howdah clutching at his throat. Moments later, one of the two mahouts behind his elephant’s ears too collapsed to the ground. The elephant in front, turning in obedience to its own mahouts’ urging to face the Kashmiri horsemen, couldn’t help trampling the body, releasing a rank, nauseating smell as the man’s stomach and intestines ruptured, bursting under the pressure of the elephant’s foot.
Salim fired again at another Kashmiri cavalryman within thirty feet of his elephant. This time he missed but his arrow hit the man’s horse in the neck. Thrashing its head about and whinnying in pain, it skittered sideways, causing its rider to drop his lance as he fought with both hands to control his mount. Salim heard a thump behind him and the howdah swayed violently. Glancing round, he saw that his second bodyguard lay slumped on the floor. Suleiman Beg was already trying to staunch a bullet wound to the man’s right thigh that was bleeding profusely, using a yellow cotton scarf he had pulled from his own neck.
Meanwhile Salim could see a strong body of Moghul cavalry was now in turn charging into the flanks of the Kashmiris, attempting to beat them back. Several Kashmiris fell — one, a burly, heavily bearded man carried clean out of the saddle and transfixed by a well-aimed lance thrust from one of the captains of the imperial bodyguard. Another was decapitated by the heavy stroke of a Moghul battleaxe which caught him across the throat just beneath the jaw, sending his head flying backwards amid a spray of blood. The Moghuls were succeeding as he knew they would, thought Salim, but then the elephant beneath him lurched once more. The second mahout, a small, dark, elderly man wearing only a rough cotton loincloth, had fallen from behind its ears to the ground. Lashing its trunk, the riderless beast began to turn away from the conflict. As it did so, it knocked a Moghul horseman from his saddle. If Salim didn’t do something the frightened elephant would kill more men and panic more horses.
Disregarding the noise and the fierce conflict around him, Salim climbed over the raised wooden front of the howdah. He managed to get his legs on either side of the elephant’s body and to slide down on to its neck. Grabbing at the elephant’s steel plate head armour to steady himself, he drew his sword. Reversing it, and despite the cuts its sharp edge made to his hand, he used its hilt instead of the mahout’s steel rod to tap the elephant’s skull to give the command for it to halt. Reassured by the weight of a rider on its neck once more, the animal began to calm and soon halted. In its panic, it had moved fifty yards away from the centre of the fight. Turning round, Salim could see that the survivors of the Kashmiri cavalry charge were breaking off the battle and retreating back through the rhododendrons up towards the ridge over which they had emerged less than an hour previously. Many did not make it. Salim saw one cream-turbaned Kashmiri, realising that he could not outride his four Moghul pursuers on his blowing black horse, turn and charge back towards them, striking one from the saddle before being cut down himself by a blow to the head.