Tiger Claws (27 page)

Authors: John Speed

BOOK: Tiger Claws

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As the elephant pitches toward him, Dara is perfectly placed: facing the tiger’s dripping jaws, staring into its fright-crazed eyes. He holds his spear in form—hands opposing, elbows in, shoulders down. With unerring accuracy, he drives the long spear into the neck of the astonished tiger.

In awe, Jai Singh watches through the fog of smoke. Dara moves as in a dance, smooth and fluid, and with unearthly speed.

As the bright metal bites through his throat, the tiger’s roar turns into an unearthly squeal, like a burning child. Blood and bile pour over its black lips. Its heavy, muscled body writhes and twists on the spear that runs through its neck like a pin.

Dara jams the shaft of the spear into the ground, and the elephant’s forward motion impales the tiger on its point.

Before Jai Singh has a chance to respond, his smarting eyes notice a darkness swirling in the clouds of dust and smoke. Like a bad dream, the black bear steps suddenly forward.

The bear. He had forgotten.

Blood streams from its snout, for the bear’s nose has been shot off. It staggers forward on its hind legs, arms spread, mouth open, eyes rimmed with white, mad with pain. In one paw it clutches a partially eaten hand, a ring still on the thumb.

The bear is heading right for Dara.

Dara doesn’t see his danger. The mad bear approaches from behind like a rakshasa in fury. “Shoot, shoot!” Jai Singh shrieks.

It can’t be up to me, he thinks, hoisting the fallen matchlock. Jai Singh’s bad marksmanship is legendary. The matchlock’s barrel is cold, and so heavy that the sight sinks slowly downward as he starts to aim.

The bear is nearly on Dara.

As the fuse clip flips to the strike pan, it occurs to Jai Singh that the barrel might be obstructed from its fall. I’m going to die, he thinks.

There is a terrific boom and a belch of smoke.

The bear collapses as though a carpet had been pulled from under its feet. Dara looks up from the struggling tiger to see the bear behind him, flailing and bellowing on the ground. In an instant his sword flashes and the bear’s head rolls from its body in a spray of dark blood. Dara stares at Jai Singh lowering his matchlock. Then he turns around and pierces the squirming tiger through the eye. That way, he knows, makes the best trophy.

From a half dozen voices around the circle, Dara hears a feeble cheer. No one else has seen what happened. “Bring the
hakims
!” Dara shouts. “Men are hurt here!”

Jai Singh slips off his horse and begins to move among the bloody men. Some are struggling to their feet; Jai Singh urges them back to the camp, and focuses instead on the bodies lying on the cleared ground. He turns the dead on their faces and the injured on their backs for easy identification. Some of the men marked as dead thrash desperately, trying to turn themselves on to their backs.

Dara is doing the same task. All too many men are being turned facedown. What a waste, thinks Jai Singh. Dara approaches him, his handsome face blood-spattered and beaming. “What a hunt!” he says. Jai Singh can’t find the heart to answer. “General, I owe you my life.”

“Anyone might have done the same, lord,” Jai Singh replies.

Dara face is flushed. “Did you see that kill?” he asks, nodding toward the tiger. “Do you think Aurangzeb could have done such a thing?”

“I doubt he would ever have done so,” Jai Singh answers truthfully.

There he is, thinks Jai Singh, the next emperor: a man who will leap into the path of a tiger, who will risk his life and others’ for a kill. Reckless and brave and foolhardy. So unlike Aurangzeb. So much more exciting.

Around him, the
hakims
have come to tend to the wounded. There are calls for water and stretchers. Dara waves for his servants to help.

“And we must mount this bear, general!” Dara calls.

“Yes, lord,” Jai Singh calls back.

“We’ll have paintings made; you shooting that bear while I spear my tiger. We’ll have a poem written.”

“Thank you, lord,” Jai Singh replies. Then he looks away, for in the midst of so much death, he suddenly remembers Shanti and his son.

Dara senses his distraction. “You’re concerned about your wife, general.”

Jai Singh is surprised by Dara’s insight. “Yes, lord.”

“I received Captain Mohmoud’s dispatch. Terrible thing, treachery.”

Jai Singh recognizes at once the two-edged thrust of an ambiguous remark. “It is indeed a terrible thing when a friend is revealed as an enemy, lord.”

The prince has not yet wiped the tiger’s blood from his face. He lifts his hands toward Jai Singh. “General, you have lost a friend. Let me replace him. Let me be a better friend to you than that traitor.”

“Then you would be a friend indeed, lord.”

“When your own bodyguard betrays you, who can you trust, general?” Dara looks him square in the eye as he says this. Suddenly it seems to Jai Singh that much of Dara’s foppery could be an act, a ruse to appear weaker than he really is. Dara’s look now, in fact, reminds him of Aurangzeb, but with a worldliness that Aurangzeb will never have.

“I tell you, lord, I know no longer whom to trust,” Jai Singh says.

“Except Shanti. Your dear wife Shanti. And your son.”

Is that a threat, Jai Singh wonders. With Dara, it’s so difficult to tell.

“Be glad my guard is there. I myself will guarantee your family’s safety. Take this from this,” Dara says dramatically, pointing to his head and neck, “if there be any dishonorable act.”

“Lord …,” Jai Singh protests, but Dara
tut-tuts
and stops him. In any case, Jai Singh knows that cutting off Dara’s head would be only the first of his reprisals in the case of treachery.

But now is not the time for suspicion, for there is Jai Singh, facing Dara, his cousin and the heir presumptive; and there is Prince Dara offering Jai Singh his friendship. “What must I do, lord?” Jai Singh asks.

“Why, cousin, I beg you, do nothing at all. Trouble yourself not at all. It is I who must do for you. Return to Amber. If I may offer some advice, take my men for your bodyguard. Send your Rajputs to the main army. Let them prove themselves in battle, and only then offer them reinstatement. For there will be battles soon enough, cousin.”

“I like this advice,” Jai Singh replies.

“But cousin, come back quickly. I shall have need of you soon.”

But before Jai Singh leaves, he turns. “So you know this Captain Mohmoud? You trust him?”

“Trust him? Yes, cousin, yes! Even though I have never met the man. Is he not Aurangzeb’s old playmate? My brother recommended him for that post. And whatever you may think of my dear brother, you must admit, he is a great judge of the character of men.”

Again Jai Singh bows, now anxious to be home. Instead of calm, his heart is more turbulent than ever.

Aurangzeb!

That evening, after celebrating the hunt at a grand banquet, Shaista Khan—lover of a princess, killer of guards, favorite of Dara, secret ally of Aurangzeb—stands with a few of his fellow courtiers, watching the fading sunlight from a sandstone balcony of the lake pavillion. A half dozen cranes, white as ashes, sweep across the somber sky, ruffling the heavy air with the rush of wings. Fishermen in long rowboats bob gently on the barely flowing surface of the water, singing as they wind their lines and prepare to scull to shore. The men watch in silence.

“It has been more than a month,” he says at last.

“A month, Ibrahim?” the man in black beside him asks.

While Ibrahim stares across the river, the other two men glance at the garden behind them. Their aides have been stationed at the stairways. There may be listeners hidden in the shadows, but at least the balcony is free of spies. Even so, they keep their voices hushed.

“A month since that night. You know when I mean, Khurram. The night that eunuch drowned.”

Odd, thinks Shaista Khan, that Ibrahim recalls it as the night the eunuch drowned. So much happened on that night Shaista Khan had nearly forgotten about that part. “A month, then, Ibrahim,” he says politely.

General Ibrahim seems reluctant. “I’ve heard nothing. Have you?”

“Nothing, Ibrahim,” Khurram says.

“Nor I,” Shaista Khan says flatly.

“How am I to believe you? Either of you?” Ibrahim asks.

“What you believe is your look-to, general. If my word is not enough then the hell with you.” Shaista Khan turns on his heel.

If he leaves, Khurram thinks, then he is lying. His fingers slip unconsciously to the jeweled dagger hanging from the belt of his black jama.

But Shaista Khan turns back to the railing. Khurram’s fingers relax. “Do you think it’s off?” Khurram asks.

“It’s not like Aurangzeb to make a plan and not execute it,” Ibrahim says.

“How would you know?” Shaista Khan snaps. “How many coups have you plotted with him before this?”

“Calm yourself, general,” Ibrahim says. “Let’s just say that I would have expected some communication from Aurangzeb.”

“For that matter, general,” Khurram says, “why did Aurangzeb not take you with him when he went to Golconda?”

“Because, general, I’m supposed to be Dara’s man,” Shaista Khan replies. “You know that.”

“Maybe he left you here to spy on us, general?” Ibrahim suggests.

Shaista Khan glares back. “You two are priceless,” he growls. “You focus on me like I’m your enemy, you focus on Aurangzeb the same way. Haven’t you noticed that we’ve got some real problems?” He struggles to keep his voice low. “So, we haven’t heard from Aurangzeb. Is that so difficult to understand? I think not. But what about those others, eh? The
khaswajara,
for example, that damned
hijra,
Hing. You can find him sucking Dara’s farts, two or three times a week. What’s that about, if he is supposed to be Aurangzeb’s man?”

“Maybe he’s trying to lull Dara …”

“I say never trust a
hijra
. Hing’s like every goddamned
hijra,
Khurram—they can none of them decide which hole they prefer. What if he’s using both of them?” Shaista Khan spits over the balcony. “Second point,” he continues. “Where’s damned Jai Singh?”

“Shaista Khan, really, you must be calm. Jai Singh went to Amber. An assassination attempt—” Khurram looks annoyed at having to explain.

But Shaista Khan interrupts. “Doesn’t that story seem a little … how shall I say it … contrived?”

“But he told me that that captain of his bodyguard had attacked his wife!” Ibrahim protests.

“And you believed him?”

“Why should I doubt him? I’ve known him twenty years! Longer than I’ve known you, general.” Ibrahim straightens. “If not for the captain of the imperial honor guard, Jai Singh’s family might be dead.”

“Oh, yes,” Shaista Khan drawls. “Captain Mohmoud. Isn’t it fortunate that the imperial guard was there just when it was needed?”

“Mohmoud is Aurangzeb’s man,” Ibrahim says.

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” Shaista Khan replies. “Dara sent that company to Amber, and Dara gave Captain Mohmoud command.”

“I’m just a simple soldier, general,” Khurram says to Shaista Khan. “Perhaps you’d better explain this to me.”

“I’m just pointing out the obvious, gentlemen. Don’t worry about Aurangzeb. That’s a distraction. What you should ask is: What’s Jai Singh’s game?” A boom of thunder throbs through the humid air. “This empire depends upon the Rajputs! Think about it—the great Akbar couldn’t beat them. That’s why he married a Rajput bitch. Since then every Mogul emperor has had a Rajput wife. Shah Jahan himself is three-quarters Rajput. Three quarters! And still he calls himself a Muslim and a Mogul. Ever wonder why the Moguls bow and scrape to the Rajputs so? Why they have so many Rajput brides?” Shaista Khan asks. “Can it be that Rajput women have such nimble yonis?”

“Nimble my ass. They just lie there and make you do all the work,” Ibrahim says.

But Shaista Khan’s eyes glint. “I’ll tell you why they love those Rajput wives: Rajput soldiers. But face it: they’re Rajputs first, soldiers second. They’d follow a Rajput general into the jaws of hell—but what about a Mogul? Would they obey one of us, for example? Depends on what they had for breakfast.” Shaista Khan looks at them. “Not clear enough yet? Try this: To control the empire you must control the Rajputs. And who controls them? Not a Muslim. Not a Mogul. So who?”

“Jai Singh,” Khurram whispers.

“Right. And who controls Jai Singh?”

Khurram glances uncertainly at Ibrahim then back to Shaista Khan. “Well, Dara says that he does. But we know …” His voice trails off.

“Aurangzeb?” Ibrahim says, somewhat doubtfully.

“And why do you say that, general?” Shaista Khan says carefully.

“Well, didn’t he tell us …,” Ibrahim replies, his face clouding with uncertainty at what had seemed to him a fact just a moment ago.