Bending over the horse’s neck to whisper words of encouragement, he guided it carefully around dead and dying bodies and gained the hillock safely. Looking down, he saw Ashok Singh about a quarter of a mile away fighting like a man possessed. Nicholas watched him decapitate one Turkoman with a swing of his double-headed battle axe, then hack into the right arm of a second who dropped his spear and turned away, his arm hanging limp at his side. All around, Turkomans suddenly seemed to be riding or scrambling across the stony ground out of the battle. His own French and Danish troops had fought their way clear of their encircling opponents and were joining up with Ashok Singh’s men. Not for the first time in the campaign the Rajput prince and his warriors indeed seemed to be turning the battle in the Moghuls’ favour.
Exhilaration surging through him, Nicholas kicked his horse and galloped towards Ashok Singh, who acknowledged his arrival with a smile and a wave of his gauntleted right hand. ‘They’ve had enough — they’re running away,’ Nicholas gasped. It was true. Surveying the action he could see that in some places the fighting was nearly over. Elsewhere knots of Turkomans were determinedly holding their ground but only because their path of escape was cut off. To Nicholas’s right about thirty of them had formed a defensive ring but were steadily being cut down by Rajput swords and lances. Nearby a smaller group had taken refuge behind an overturned wagon, but some of Nicholas’s mercenaries were now driving them out from behind it into the open and despatching them one by one.
Two hundred yards away to his right he noticed a group of dark-robed riders. They were still fighting fiercely, sweeping and lunging with their broad-bladed scimitars as they attempted to force a way through some Moghul horsemen. Better mounted and better equipped than most of the Turkomans, they were led by a bushy-bearded man on a black horse. Perhaps he was a local khan and they his bodyguard.
‘We’re teaching these savages a lesson.’ Ashok Singh grinned. ‘Perhaps they’ll think twice about attacking Moghul troops again.’
Before Nicholas could reply he heard the beat of hooves on stony ground behind them. Turning, he recognised one of Aurangzeb’s young qorchis with an escort of six soldiers. Reining in, the youth addressed Ashok Singh. ‘Highness, I have a message from Prince Aurangzeb.’
‘You can tell the prince that when he leads the main troops out of the defile he’ll have nothing to fear — we’ve routed the men waiting to ambush us,’ said the Rajput.
The youth looked from Ashok Singh to Nicholas as if uncertain what to say and his face, speckled with pale dust, was anxious. ‘I’m sure my master will be glad to hear that, but I bring an order from him. You are to retreat immediately.’
‘What? Did I hear you right?’ Ashok Singh leant forward in his saddle.
‘Prince Aurangzeb wishes you to fall back and re-join him in the defile.’
‘Why? If we fall back now the enemy will reoccupy the ground we’ve fought so hard to capture. We’ll have to fight them all over again to secure our troops a safe passage as they exit the defile.’
‘My master didn’t give his reasons.’
Glancing at Ashok Singh Nicholas saw a vein pulsing at his temple. Ashok Singh and Aurangzeb had lately often been at odds, the latter seeming to resent the Rajput’s advice, something which the proud and occasionally quick-tempered Ashok Singh was finding increasingly difficult to accept. As for himself, he could scarcely believe what the qorchi had said. To give up and turn back when they had almost succeeded in coming through the mountains and an easier road awaited ahead seemed insane.
‘What’s happening in the defile? Are those musketeers in the rocks above still firing down on the main army just as they fired on the vanguard? Is the prince recalling us because he needs our help?’ Ashok Singh demanded, failing to keep anger as well as disbelief from his voice.
The qorchi shook his head. ‘When I left we had secured much of the higher ground.’
‘Why then must I retreat? It makes no sense militarily. To withdraw now without good cause would be an affront to my honour and to the memory of my men who have died securing this position.’
‘I can only repeat that these are the prince’s orders and he was insistent that you should obey them immediately.’
While Ashok Singh sat in grim-faced silence Nicholas and the qorchi eyed one another uneasily. Not for the first time Nicholas reflected how glad he was not to be a senior commander bearing all that weight of responsibility upon his shoulders. A few moments ago he and Ashok Singh had been brothers in arms, equals, sharing a moment of victory. Now he was only a subordinate, waiting for orders.
‘If the prince has ordered my return, I must, of course, obey,’ Ashok Singh said slowly before, voice rising, he added, ‘but he previously ordered me to clear the exit from the defile and that task is not yet quite accomplished. Since I received that order first I will complete it first.’
Before Nicholas realised what Ashok Singh was intending to do, the Rajput drew his sword and throwing back his head yelled the hoarse battle cry of his people. Then, driving his heels hard into the sides of his white stallion, he shot forward towards the battling khan and his dark-robed warriors without even waiting for his bodyguard who, as soon as they saw what was happening, urged their own mounts in pursuit. Nicholas didn’t hesitate either. Galloping across the stony ground, one hand on his reins, one on his sword hilt he tried to see ahead but his view was obscured by the riders in front of him. Suddenly a gap appeared as two Rajputs swerved to avoid a rock. Nicholas caught the flash of Ashok Singh’s white horse and saw that the Rajput prince, still far in advance of his bodyguard, had almost reached the fighting. Then he saw something else: a single spear arcing through the air towards the prince. Instinctively Nicholas shouted a warning, but the noise of battle muffled his cries. Ashok Singh flung up his arms, grasping at the spear transfixing his neck, before sliding slowly from his horse to fall beneath the hooves of his bodyguard behind.
Nicholas hurled himself into the fighting, cutting and slashing with grim determination. Barging two of his opponents aside he aimed for the bearded warrior. The khan thrust at him with his scimitar but Nicholas turned the weapon aside with his sword, before jabbing his own blade into his opponent’s groin. The man screamed and fell. Reining in, Nicholas saw that most of his followers lay sprawled on the ground, dead or dying. Like that of the whole battle, the outcome of this hard-fought skirmish had never been in doubt, but Ashok Singh had chosen to sacrifice himself to save his honour. Nicholas pondered the waste and pity of it as four muscled Rajput warriors, honed by countless battles but openly weeping, retrieved their prince’s battered and bloodied body and hoisting it on their shoulders carried it away as the sun, a blood-red ball, began to sink beneath the mountains. Soon, using whatever wood they could scavenge among these grey desolate hills, they would build a great funeral pyre whose flames would light the night sky as they reduced Ashok Singh’s mortal remains to ash.
Wearily, Nicholas sheathed his sword and turning his horse called to one of his mercenary captains, a scarred French veteran from Navarre. ‘Gather our men. The prince has ordered us to retreat. The reason why defeats me, but do so we must.’
Alone on the terrace of his apartments Shah Jahan stared ahead, blind to the grace of a flock of geese flying in arrow formation across the Jumna. Once more, just as when the cossids had first brought news of the disaster in the north three months previously, all he could see were thousands of his men lying dead or crippled through hunger and frostbite in the chill passes of the Hindu Kush as they had tried to fall back once more on Kabul. So many casualties as well as twenty million rupees lost to the imperial treasuries and not a single inch of territory gained. These campaigns were proving the first serious and lasting military reverses of his entire reign … Once more he asked himself how Aurangzeb could have failed him so badly, even worse than had Murad the previous year. This time the Moghul army hadn’t even reached the Oxus … hadn’t exchanged a single sword stroke with the Uzbeks. Instead they had allowed motley bands of hit and run Turkoman and Afghan raiders to hold them up so long that winter — the most relentless and implacable foe of all — had overtaken them as they had tried to retreat back to Kabul.