King Errant Part 17

My love! my love! have you come at last?

Drop the pitcher and hold me fast!

There are my lips before we fly Out to a new world--you and I.

"And now for India!" Babar would cry when the applause was over. "I want to hear about the size of it, and the fruit and flowers of it, and all about it. See you, grandmother, begin and tell me of the young woman thy man met at Lah.o.r.e--then thou wilt remember to a nicety!"

So the summer pa.s.sed, until old Isan-daulet arriving from Samarkand with news of Dearest-One, set Babar's mind a-jogging once more over his enemy Shaibani. But there was nothing to be done in winter time: such a bitter cold winter, too. More than one man died of it, and even Babar himself admitted that, after diving sixteen times in swift succession into a river that was only unfrozen in the middle by reason of its swift current, the extreme chilliness of the water quite penetrated his bones; as well it might.

Then early spring brought a great grief which gave pause to energy.

Nevian-Gokultash was done to death, by a scoundrel who was jealous of Babar's affection for him, and who had the temerity to say that faithful creature had fallen over a precipice when he was drunk.

Nevian, who adhered so strictly to the law of Islam! Nevian, who had always sided for sobriety, who had been to the full as urgent as old Kasim Beg against a King giving himself up to wine. Babar, helpless to follow the murderer, felt deeply the death of his playmate in childhood, the companion of his boyhood. There were few persons for whose loss he would have grieved so much or so long. For a week or ten days, he thought of nothing else and the unbidden tears were ever in his eyes.

After this, a great restlessness set in, fostered by old Isan-daulet, whose whole life had been one long succession of battles and murders and sudden deaths, and whose belief in Moghul troops never wavered.

Why, she suggested, not go to his uncles the Khans at Tashkend? His mother had been ill; she would like to see him once more. And if his tongue was sufficiently careful amongst his thirty-two teeth, he might get substantial help.

"For what?" gloomed Babar--"to get back akshi and lose Andijan or get Andijan and lose akshi? 'Tis all one in the end."

"Not the fine fighting, child!" replied the old lady craftily. "That is the same, be it in _Gehannum_ or _Bihisht_." (h.e.l.l or Heaven.)

That was undoubtedly true; and there was no good to be gained by rambling from hill to hill as he had been doing.

So, once more, the young adventurer gathered together a very scanty band of followers; for old Kasim Beg, who till then had never left him, had come to words with Isan-daulet over these same Moghuls, and refused to accompany him.

"I say not, sire," remonstrated the wise old soldier, "that these men are bad soldiers for me; but they are for the Most Exalted, who has ideas of discipline. Besides, I care not to risk my own neck for a chance. In obedience to the Most Exalted's commands I beheaded quite a number of these men in the last campaign, for marauding. Wherefore, therefore, should I go amongst their mourning relatives? I will come if there be fighting. Then there is no leisure and little desire for private revenge; blood can be let anywhere and one corpse is as good as another."

So Kasim went with his immediate adherents towards Hissar; and Babar set off to Tashkend with rather a heavy heart. In a somewhat didactic mood also, for resting for a day or two beside a spring in the lower hills, he caused a verse to be inscribed on a stone slab which formed one side of the well where the water gushed in from the hill above, to disappear into the earth when it had run through a masonry trough.

"Many a man has rested and has drunk Thy water, and like thee, O spring, has sunk Swift to a grave where he lies all forgot, Conqueror or vanquished, libertine or monk."

He was not, however, at home in the _rubai_, as he had not, at that time, studied with much attention the style and phraseology of poetry.

Indeed, one of his first actions on reaching Tashkend was to submit some of his compositions to the Khan who had pretensions to taste, and who, moreover, wrote verses himself; though his odes, to be sure, were rather deficient in manner and substance. The younger poetaster, however, did not get either explicit or satisfactory criticism, and came to the conclusion that his uncle had no great skill in poetic diction. He did not know, for instance, that in the Turkhi language it was allowable, by poetic licence, to interchange certain letters for the sake of the rhyme.

"He will think thee a nincomp.o.o.p," stormed Isan-daulet. "Why did'st not show him thy sword play?"

"He may see that ere long," quoth Babar, grimly, and went straight away to write the first _ghazel_ of six Couplets he ever composed.

"I have found no faithful friend In the world save my own sad soul.

Dear heart! thou must give and spend On thyself thy confidence whole.

Nightingale sings to the rose, Roses give scent to the bird, Dreams one of the th.o.r.n.y foes?

The other of pa.s.sion deferred?

The exile must live apart, To his coffers none give or lend.

The banished one holds his heart To his soul as lover and friend."

He was quite pleased with this effusion and sang it at a festive party soon after with great gusto; but the next morning he found that the golden clasp of his girdle had been stolen by one of the appreciative audience!

Moghuls again!

CHAPTER X

"A blow or two and then the Fighting ends, The Sword seeks Scabbard, and the Warrior wends Through Death's wide Door. Were it not wiser then To sleep until Retreat its message sends?"

So, vaguely thought Babar as life went on dully with the family party at Tashkend. Most of his servants had left from absolute want; one, or at most two attendants were all that he could muster when he went to pay his compliments to the Khan, his uncle. Once, indeed, he accompanied the latter on a foray; but it was a useless sort of expedition. He, the Khan, took no part, beat no enemy; he simply went out and came back again.

The young man spent much of his time with his mother who was convalescing but slowly; and she naturally, after so many years of absence, saw much of her sisters and cousins; most of them elderly women, inclined to make much of the handsome young King-errant whose melancholy never could withstand the faintest joke.

For all that Babar, at the bottom of his heart, was utterly dissatisfied with himself and his world. Never since the debacle at Samarkand had he found himself again, the light-hearted, intensely vital person, who, taking things as they came, could yet turn them to his own uses. He began to tell himself privately that, rather than pa.s.s his life as he was now doing, homeless and purposeless, it would be better to retire into some corner where he might live unknown and undistinguished; that, rather than exist in distress and abas.e.m.e.nt far better were it to flee away from the sight of man, so far as his feet could carry him. In his infancy he remembered he had always had a strong desire to see China, but had never been able to accomplish his wish because of being a King and having a duty towards his relations and connections.

Now he no longer had a throne. Now, his mother--the only tie left, for Ayesha his wife had never returned to him--was safe with her mother and her brother.

Now, therefore, was the time. His mother, however, he knew well would not support the proposition; besides he had still a few followers who, having attached themselves to him with very different hopes, would be bitterly disappointed at his project. He could not bear to hurt anyone's feelings, so he devised a plan in order to get away quietly.

He had never seen his other uncle, the younger Khan of Outer Moghulistan. Why should he not go, in this slack time, and pay him a visit?

There seemed, indeed, no reason against this; and Babar was on the very point of starting when a messenger arrived hot haste, to say that the younger Khan himself was on his way to see his nephew and his nephew's mother!

It was a blow; Babar's plan was utterly disconcerted, but being, like all his race, full of family affection, he set off with ever so many elderly Khanums with beautiful high-sounding names to meet his uncle.

Such a meeting as it was; so many embracings and kneelings and yet more embracings; some ceremonious, others quite without form or decorum. After which the great circle of cousins and aunts, and uncles and nephews, sat down and continued talking about past occurrences and old stories till after midnight.

His younger uncle had, according to the custom of his tribe, brought Babar a complete dress of state. A cap embroidered with gold thread, a long frock of China satin ornamented with flowered needle-work. A cuira.s.s of fine chain-mail, Chinese fashion, with a whetstone and a purse-pocket from which were suspended a lot of little trinkets such as women wear, including a bag of perfumed earth. He looked very smart in it indeed, and when he returned to his own, tricked out in all this finery, they declared it was only by his voice they recognised him; that they had thought he was some grand young Sultan!

Life at any rate did not seem quite so empty; since the two Khans, having got together, began to propose a joint expedition to recover Andijan--_for Babar_, being an understood corollary so long as they remained under the influence of stern old Isan-daulet, who ruled her sons in matriarchal fashion.

So they set off with flaunting pennons and kettledrums, after the manner of Moghul armies, and at their first halt held a muster of the troops, also in the Moghul fashion. In groups of three, three horse-tail standards were erected, and from the centre staff of each a long strip of white cloth was fastened, on the loose end of which stood the foot of the leader of that division. All around, in a huge circle, the troops were drawn up. Then with many ceremonials and sprinklings of mares'-milk spirit, each leader estimated the total number of the force. The final verdict being received with a wild war-shout; and then, at full speed, the whole army galloped centre-wards, the foremost troopers drawing bridle within a foot or two of the standards. On this occasion Babar looked with a certain awe, yet some misgiving, at no less than thirty thousand wild hors.e.m.e.n of the desert.

But he had more certain aid than this. He found that he was not all forgot in the little valley at the extreme limit of the habitable world; and the country people welcomed his return with acclaim. So as soon as he could, with that curious distrust of Moghul blood, which makes the name given to the dynasty he founded in India so quaintly ironical, he parted company with his uncle's forces, and pushing on with such of his own people as had come together, sought for fine fighting.

And he got it. Still reckless, almost without definite aim, he followed swift on every opportunity for a skirmish. When he saw a body of the enemy, he advanced at full gallop without minding order or array; and in nine cases out of ten the sheer daredevil clash succeeded. The enemy could not stand the charge and fled without exchanging blows. But sometimes his ill-luck with the Moghuls pursued him. Once when he, with his staff, was waiting outside Andijan for the return of a messenger. It was about the third watch of the night, and some of them were nodding, others fast asleep on their horses, when all at once the saddle-drums struck up with martial noise and hubbub.

The few men who were with Babar were seized with a panic and took to flight; except three, all the rest ran off to a man. In vain these four galloped after the fugitives; in vain they horsewhipped some of them.

All their exertions were ineffectual to make them stand.

There was nothing for it but to try and check the pursuers themselves as best they could. So the four turned, stood and discharged flights of arrows, until the enemy was almost within sword thrust; then, wheeling swiftly, they galloped on to take up a fresh position of offence.

In this way they covered and protected the retreat, until by good fortune they fell in with a patrol party of their own. Then, of course, came immediate charge, to discover that the pursuers were Moghuls from his uncle's force, who were out on a pillaging expedition of their own! In this manner, by a false alarm, the plan which Babar had conceived came to nothing, and he had to return after a fruitless journey.

Truly, if the young man had wished to throw away his life, he could scarcely have dared Fate more recklessly. More than once he found himself almost alone facing stupendous odds. Once, when surprised at night in negligent security without advanced guard and without _videttes_, he had to gallop out almost unarmed to meet a large body of the enemy and found himself in the midst of them with but three supporters. Even so Fate was against him. He drew out of his quiver by mistake a green-tipped finger guard instead of an arrow, and being unwilling to throw it away because his uncle the Khan had given it to him, lost as much time in returning it to its place as would have sufficed for the despatch of two arrows, and, ere he was ready, his companions had been swept back by the onslaught and he was alone. To draw up to his ear and let the foremost foe have it for all he was worth was easy, but at the same instant an arrow struck him on the right thigh unsteadying his aim, and the next moment that foremost foe was on him and smote him such a blow on the head with a sword, that, despite his steel cap he was nigh stunned. And then, through his having neglected to clean his sword after swimming a river, it had rusted a little in the scabbard and he lost time in drawing it. Still, he won through that time, and, despite continual anxiety and irritation because of the behaviour of the Moghul troops which his uncles detached to help him, and who _would_ insist on plundering and were with difficulty restrained from putting honourable prisoners to death, he was fairly successful, until a final act of treachery threw him on his beam ends, and he was forced to retreat, fairly beaten.

He was invited to a parley by the enemy and the Moghuls urged him to accept the invitation, and by hook or by crook, to seize or murder the leaders. Babar was indignant. Such artifice and underhand dealing were, he said, totally abhorrent to his habits and disposition. If he made an agreement for peaceful interview, he would not violate it.

Nor did he. But whether from perversity or sheer stupidity, his orders were disobeyed, and he found himself committed to battle in the very heart of the opponents' defences, and without a sufficient force to secure success. Even then he challenged Fate, by waiting for personal retreat a full hour or more, unwilling, as he thought, to leave some of his friends in danger. Finally news came that having been beaten, at the other side of the city in about as much time as milk takes to boil, they, and half Babar's men, had escaped long before by another gate!