“Yes! These fools—”
One of the architects emerged from the mausoleum, silks far darker than when he went in.
“Sultan Al’Azam!” Salim grabbed the emperor’s arm, hauling him to a stop.
Shah Jahan’s response to being touched was instantaneous and showed the man’s fine martial training: half-turning toward him, the emperor grabbed the offending hand across the fingers and rolled it up and away, little finger first.
The painful move weakened Salim’s grip and freed Shah Jahan’s arm. “You dare—?” Shah Jahan began, reaching with his free hand for the dagger at his belt.
The architect staggered, then collapsed not five paces from them, exposing a back carved to bloody meat by cruel sword strokes.
Backing off, Salim raised his hands and pointed at the dead man, shouting: “Assassins, Sultan!”
He wasn’t sure if it was his warning or the men boiling from the shadows of the mausoleum, but the emperor slid into a fighting stance and drew blades into both hands.
There were too many to fight, and they were too close to run without risking a blade in the back.
Cursing his lack of weapons and hoping Shah Jahan would use the time to good advantage, Salim bellowed “assassins!” as loud as he could and threw himself at the men who would kill his emperor.
He was on the first man in a few strides, ducking a cut meant to cleave his skull and putting his shoulder into the man’s belly. They both went down. Rolling in a tangle of limbs, Salim clutched at the other’s wrist with one hand while seeking at the man’s waist for the dagger he’d seen there.
Dimly aware of the feet of other men running past them at the emperor, Salim strove to finish his opponent as quickly as possible.
White pain flashed as the assassin bit his right shoulder through the silks.
“Dog!” Salim grunted, questing fingers wrapping around the fist the assassin’s hand made over the hilt of the dagger.
Heavier, and a bit stronger than his opponent, Salim used his advantages to the fullest: rolling over his opponent, Salim reared back and hammered his shoulder into the man’s jaw. The strength in the man’s arms went, allowing Salim to snatch the dagger free and shove it into the assassin’s gut, sawing upward. Feeling the popping of organ meat as the blade carved innards, Salim sat up and quickly took his bearings.
Shah Jahan must have run several steps before turning to face his attackers, as he was now much closer to the entrance to the harem and backing slowly. A crescent of five swordsmen was trying to bring him down, but the emperor was keeping the assassins at bay with an impressive display of skill.
Others were closing on the emperor, but still more were running past, heading toward the stairs.
“Into the harem. Quickly! Kill him and get to the others!” someone shouted.
“You will not have my children!” Shah Jahan screamed, sidestepping one attack and bringing his sword across in an whistling arc that ended in a spatter of red on the other side of the legs of one of the men trying to run past.
The runner fell in two pieces.
They could not hope to survive this, so they hurried, hoping to swamp the emperor and the harem guards with numbers before dying themselves.
Salim collected the assassin’s sword and surged to his feet. Stalking toward the men pressing Shah Jahan, he took one from behind with a crosscut that smoothly separated head from shoulders.
Blood from the corpse shot across the emperor’s fine silks. Salim couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a grim smile pulling Shah Jahan’s beard.
Stepping over the corpse, Salim attacked the next man, clearing space to join the emperor in the center of the shrinking ring of blades.
The emperor kept weaving a flickering curtain, blades of Damascus steel the only thing between flesh and the questing blades of his attackers. Salim, knowing he had neither the quality of blades nor the training to equal the emperor, protected his ruler’s back with grim resolve.
The failing of fanatics: lacking the greater skill at arms, they could not overcome Shah Jahan and Salim quickly. And so, uncertain they would succeed with a single rush, they delayed.
If they could but hold, the guards would reach them.
It was then he heard the emperor’s labored breathing and finally felt the blood from his wound sliding down his arm.
If.
Garden of the Taj
Jahanara sat back, enjoying the cool air as she listened to Monique regale her and several others of the harem with an outrageous tale.
A shout drifted across the garden, the word lost in the distance.
Jahanara looked toward the Taj, saw the eunuchs stationed there turn and step through the partition to deal with the disturbance. She returned her attention to Monique, irritated she’d missed something that had the other women laughing.
“Shehzadi,” Atisheh said, jogging up with a smiling Guaharara riding her shoulders, “get the children together. Get ready to move.”
“What?”
Distant, discordant sounds reached Jahanara’s ears.
Atisheh lifted Guaharara from her seat and pushed the five-year-old into Jahanara’s arms, nodding toward the Taj. “Someone has raised the alarm. We sent a number of guards off with Roshanrai, so we do not have our usual complement. Get the children together. Stay calm. Get ready to fight. Trust no one.”
“But, where are you going?” she asked, even as her ears identified the sounds: Fighting? But—
Oh, no! Father!
“To defend you, of course.” Atisheh turned away. She hadn’t made it three steps when one of the eunuchs reeled through the jali, bright blood on his face.
“Merciful God!” Jahanara prayed.
Atisheh drew steel and started to trot forward. Two of her tribe joined her, converging from the groups of harem inmates scattered through the garden.
Struggling for calm, Jahanara handed Guaharara off to Smidha. Monique’s tale had died with the guard, and everyone was starting to look around. “Ladies, gather your children. Gather here. Quickly.”
A band of armed men burst from the opening, bloody swords in hand.
Atisheh and her sisters charged.
Outside the Taj
“So what will we be hunting?” Rodney asked, fidgeting in the saddle.
Dara smiled. “Lion, tiger, blackbuck, anything else we can get.”
“Tiger?” John asked.
“Yes.”
Dara didn’t miss John’s pained expression. “What is it, John?”
“Nothing, Shehzada.”
“Please, speak freely.”
John shrugged and looked across at Angelo and Gervais. Speaking in English and trusting in their greater facility with Persian, he said: “I like hunting as much as the next hillbilly, but when we came from, tigers are an endangered species, hunted nearly to extinction.”
Dara shook his head. “Really? They are a lethal threat in our lands, killing herdsmen, farmers, and taking their livestock.”
Another shrug. “Hunt too much of anything and it will eventually die out, Shehzada.”
“I cannot imagine us having such an effect on God’s creation.”
A nod in the direction of the massive building being erected on the shores of the river was John’s only reply.
The entire party looked at the growing building that all of them knew would defy the destructive hand of nature for hundreds of years.
They proceeded in considered silence for some time.
“Where are Father’s guards?” Dara asked. “They should be visible, even from here.”
Bertram could see a few running along this side of base of the tall walls that rose from the riverside. He looked higher, a flash catching his eye…steel in sunlight?
“Shehzada! Someone is fighting up there!”
“I see it! Ride!” Dara put spurs to his horse.
The rest of the party rocked into a canter behind Dara, as his personal guard raced to overtake them.
Chapter
39
Garden of the Taj
January 1636
Two, three, then five, then eight, three more behind them issuing from the archway. The assassins kept coming. There were too many of them, and now they were past the choke point of the stair.
Atisheh drew comfort from her sisters as they pounded toward the foe: They had the advantage of being armored, at least.
“Kill these bitches and find Satan’s whore!”
The men spread out before them, trying to get around the armed women and at those unable to defend themselves.
They charged into their midst; she-lions among jackals.
One turned to face her. Expression a hateful mask, he attacked. Atisheh swayed a hair’s breadth out of the assassin’s reach and countered. Her blade slipped past the man’s guard, his defense sending her blade-tip low and between his legs.
He gave a frightened hop to avoid being made a eunuch.
She rolled her wrist to put the edge up. Pushing the tip out and away from her body, Atisheh turned full circle, loading weight on her lead leg to drop beneath another enthusiastic attempt to take her head.
She felt the drag along edge that told her she’d cut across the soft flesh of the man’s inner thigh even before he started shrieking louder than Nadira’s child.
He clutched at the bloody wound, dropping his guard.
Her left-hand blade took him in the ear, ending the wailing.
Pulling it free, she stepped past the corpse that had yet to fall.
Atisheh found another assassin, met him blade to blade, let the first shock roll through her and into the ground, turning his blade out and away. She moved the left-hand blade in a counter.
Faster, he threw a punch at her face.
Atisheh lowered her chin, taking the blow on her forehead. Stars exploded as she heard knuckles break. She staggered.
Made of sterner stuff than the first assassin, this one ignored his hand and attacked again. Her defense was slow, his blade sliding inside her guard and grating against the mail covering her arm.
She recovered her stance, raised her sword in line with his eyes.
Injured hand curled at his gut, the assassin growled and launched a series of fast attacks which she managed, barely, to keep from finding her again.
“Time to die, woman!” he snarled, slapping her blade aside.
A ululating Gulruhk charged him from the side, blade in both hands, hammering at him.
Together they made short work of the fanatic.
Searching out the next threat, Atisheh glanced around in time to see Umida go down, clutching one assassin to her like a lover, sawing with the dagger she’d lodged in his back while another man hacked at her.
Atisheh looked at Gulruhk.
Panting, her sister nodded.
They charged together.
The River Entrance of the Taj
Another of Father’s guards reeled out of the opening, an arrow high in his chest. Pulling his man out of the line of fire and into the shelter beside the door, Javed screamed in angry frustration.
Mastering his temper, the captain of guards set about exhorting his remaining men to make another attempt.
Hoping the man would take notice of him but unwilling to press, Dara pulled at his beard in helpless frustration.
John looked at him, one brow cocked.
Dara gestured at the guard captain, spoke quietly and as calmly as he could: “He might be forgiven for seeing my presence here as a sign I am the source of this attack.”
“Your own father?” John blurted.
The up-timer’s loud question attracted Javed’s attention. Unwilling to speak, Dara simply nodded in answer.
Javed rushed to his side and bowed anxiously. “Shehzada, they have the top of the stair. We cannot force the passage!”
“Where are the rest of your men?”
“I sent a party around the other side but the harem guards refused them entry. The guard said there were sounds of fighting within, but the eunuchs still refused them entry on the grounds that whatever the conflict, we guardsmen have no right to see the emperor’s women.”
“And Father is not in the garden, he’s…” he trailed off.
“Up there. Yes.”
Wishing Salim present, Dara looked past the up-timers at his own guard. They would fare no better. “And you can’t force your way through?”
Javed’s eyes filled with tears of frustration, “God help me, no, Shehzada. At least, not until they run out of arrows. They have set rubble on the floor and erected barricades at the top of the stair.” He pointed at the screened-in gallery, midway up the wall of red sandstone that rose from the riverside.
This was even worse than Ramdaspur. How many times must Dara suffer defeats before he learned whatever lesson God would have him apprehend?
“What kind of barricades?” John asked.
Javed cast an irritated glance at the up-timer, opened his mouth to reply.
Dara cut him off: “Answer the question.”
The guard captain looked at Dara, back at John. “Bricks from the scaffolds.”
“Let me take a look, Shehzada?”
Dara, wondering at the man’s aim, waved him to it.
Gervais stepped into the space John departed, waited only a moment before blurting: “My daughter, is she safe?”
The question made Dara’s heart freeze. Nadira! My sisters!
“Quickly, Javed: were the sounds of fighting coming from the harem enclosure or only up there?”
“I only heard it from up there, Shehzada. I had no report of whether there was fighting inside the harem. I shall send someone immediately…”
“But they will likely be turned away, just as your earlier effort was.”
“Gervais and I will go. They know we’re some kind of doctors, and can help,” Rodney said, a desperate edge to his voice.
“And leave me behind?” Bertram asked, eyes mad with unspoken threat.
“I wasn’t saying that, Bert.”
“Stop shortening my damn name!”
John returned. Praying he would make it quickly, Dara saw the painful decision and the cost to the up-timer’s heart of making it.
John spat and turned back to his companions. “Rodney: the boys and I will handle this here. You go see to the ladies with Bertram and Gervais.” He turned back to Dara. “With your permission, Shehzada?”
“Permission?”
“To kill those shits up there, and any other that might stand in the way of all of us being certain our families are safe.”
Dara smiled, “Permission granted, if you will suffer me to stand with you?”
“Of course.” John turned to his fellow up-timers. “Boys, get the guns.”
Taj Mahal
Salim sucked in another breath, the shallow cut across his chest burning.
“Die, heretic!” one of the men screeched, lunging.
Too tired to thank God for the man’s stupidity in announcing his attack, Salim merely grunted, steel skirling as he turned the blade aside and sent his attacker reeling into the path of another with a hard shove.
“My children!” Shah Jahan rasped.
“I know.” Salim flicked a slash at another fellow who looked ready to charge.
“How close”—the emperor was interrupted by the clash of steel on steel, then resumed—“are the stairs?”
Salim looked. They had moved closer during the fight, and were but ten paces from one of the staircases that pierced the plinth and opened into the garden below.
It might as well be a kos, though, he thought, fending off another attack.
“Ten, maybe twelve, steps.”
“Save”—another clash, grunt—“my”—he felt rather than saw the emperor step away as he cut at someone and returned. “—children, Salim.”
“I will not leave you to die.”
“Already going to.”
“What?” he said, half-turning.
An assassin made him pay for his distracti
on, adding another cut to those he’d already taken.
“Gut. First few exchanges.”
Salim lashed out, pressing his opponents hard before falling back again. He used the brief respite to look at the emperor: Shah Jahan’s fine silks were no longer emerald, but black with blood from hip to ankle.
“The up-timers can—”
“No. Go.”
“Your guards. They could—”
“Cannot save them and me.”
“Sultan…”
“GO!”
Still Salim hesitated.
Shah Jahan gave him no time to formulate another argument. He stormed forward, taking two of his tormentors down in as many steps. His rush continued, staggering now, sword slowing, but still drawing the killers to him.
Torn between command and conviction, Salim nearly had his sword knocked from his hand.
Fugue broken, he lashed out. The thoughtless blow found its mark, half-severing his opponent’s wrist. He ran past while the man dropped his sword to clutch at torn flesh, making the stairs in eight strides.
Corpses littered the stairs, their life-blood slick beneath his feet.
Gunfire erupted. The noise made him flinch, miss a step, and sent him sliding down three stairs in a barely controlled fall.
He stopped at the foot of the stairs.
Too fast for fewer than twenty guns. He grinned, mad hope seizing him: The up-timers! With such weight of fire, they may yet reach Shah Jahan.
Steel on steel and cries in the garden reached his ears.
Would God extend such a hope where none exists?
Reassured that he did the right and proper thing in following Shah Jahan’s command, Salim ran off the sandstone court and down into the garden.
Garden of the Taj
Smidha found her among the cypress. The sweating Hindu gave a barely adequate nod before launching into her message: “Nur Jahan, Begum Sahib asks that you join her and the other ladies of the harem until this disorder is ended.”
“Am I an antelope, forced to hide in a frightened herd by jackals?”
“No.”
“No. I am Nur Jahan, wife to one emperor, mother to another, and I will not hide while danger lurks.”
Face twisted in anger, Smidha tossed her head. “As you wish.”
“Just as I led the charge to free my husband, so I will not shy from whatever this day brings.”