King-Errant. Flora Annie Webster Steel
the general scrimmage of claims and clans.
"Nay!" retorted Hussan, "I desire diplomacy, not dare-devil disregard of common precautions."
Babar, however, frowned at both as he sat listening to the council of war or peace. He favoured neither pugnacity nor deceit.
"Look you, gentlemen," he said, frowning. "All admit my Uncle Ahmed to be a fool whom fools lead by the nose; but is that cause why I should treat him foolishly, and so disgrace myself? I will neither fight nor yield till I have made him understand how the matter lies. So, let a scribe be brought and I will indite him a letter."
"No letter ever did any good," grumbled illiterate Kâsim.
"Especially if it be not received nor read," suggested Hussan sardonically. "The King of Samarkand is supreme and may refuse aught but a personal interview."
Kâsim shot furious glances: such talk savoured to him of treason; but Babar only looked gravely from one adviser to the other.
"So be it," he said cheerfully. "If he refuse reception or understanding, then--if so it pleases God--I can defeat him at my leisure. Meanwhile write thus, O scribe!--with all proper titles, compliments and reverences--'I, Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar, rightful heir, and by acclaim (underline that, scribe!) of this Kingdom of Ferghâna, do with courtesy and reasonableness point out that it is plain that if you take this country you must place one of your servants in charge of it, since you reign at Samarkand. Now I am at once your servant and your son. Also I have a hereditary right to the government. If therefore you entrust me with this employment, your purpose will be attained in a far more easy and satisfactory way than by fighting and killing a number of people (and horses) needlessly. Wherefore I remain your loyal feudatory Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar.'"
He beamed round on the council for approval of this logical argument, then added hastily, "And, scrivener! put 'Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar' large; and 'King of Ferghâna' larger still at the very end. That will show him my intentions."
If it did, the effect was poor: for though the letter was duly engrossed on silk paper sprinkled with rose-essence and gold-dust, enclosed in a brocade bag, and sent to the invading camp at Kâba, the only answer to its irrefutable logic was a further advance of spear-points and pennons to within four miles of the citadel.
Kâsim was jubilant. Jocose and bellicose he routed out armouries for catapults, and kept long files of men busy in passing up stones from the river bed, while forage parties raided the bazaars for provisions.
If there was to be a defence it must be the longest on record, even if it were unsuccessful in the end.
Babar himself donned mail and corselet for the first time. But he discarded the latter soon; it made him, he said, feel like a trussed pheasant, and he preferred the wadded coatee which would turn most scimitar cuts. It made him look burly as he strode round the ramparts, so that the sentries smiled to themselves and felt a glow at the heart remembering how young he was.
The stoutness, resolution, and unanimity of his soldiers and subjects to fight to the last drop of their blood, the last gasp of their life, without yielding, filled the boy with unmixed admiration. It was part of the general splendidness of things which almost dazzled him.
"My younger troops display distinguished courage," he said gravely, and Kâsim hid a smile with difficulty as he replied, "They have youth in their favour, Most Excellent. It is a great gift."
Then he went out and roared over the joke on the ramparts to the sentries' huge delight. When next the young King went his rounds, smiles greeted him everywhere. He was a King to be proud of, and his family was worth fighting for--all of them! Especially the tall, slim figure with close-drawn veil which would often accompany the King at dusk. For Dearest-One was keenly interested in things militant, and was free to come and go, as the Turkhi women were, with due restrictions. And these were few in Babar's clan, which, as Grandmother Isân-daulet would boast, was "desert born."
But, after all, the preparations were unnecessary. The little cherub intervened, rather to the boy's chagrin, though he admitted piously that Providence in its perfect power and wisdom had brought certain events to pass which frustrated the enemies' designs, and made them return whence they came without success, and heartily repenting them of their attempt.
An exceedingly satisfactory but at the same time a disappointing end to his first chance of a real fine fight; and he watched one reverse after another overtake his foes on the other side of the Black-river with almost sympathetic eyes.
"There is a murrain amongst their horses now," reported the chief farrier one day, "my sister's son who is in service with the Samarkandis crept over last night to beg condiments for Prince Baisanghâr's charger which is down--the same that the Most Excellent gave him three years agone."
"Baisanghâr?" echoed Babar hurriedly. "I knew not that he was--amongst mine enemies!" Then he paused, and reason came to him. "Likely he is with his father of Tashkend who hovers on the edge of invasion, and hath ridden over--there is no harm in that. What didst give the fellow?"
The farrier laughed. "A flea in his ear, Most Clement! A likely story, indeed, that I should help our enemies."
Babar frowned and turned away. "'Twas a good horse, poor beast," he murmured. And afterwards, he went over to the women's quarters, and, as his wont was, retailed the story to those three, Isân-daulet, his mother and Dearest-One. The grim old Turkhoman lady was sympathetic about the horses, as a daughter of the Steppes must needs be, but stern over the necessities of war. His mother, more soft-hearted than ever by reason of her mourning, wept silently. But Dearest-One, was, as ever, a joy.
"I would bastinado the farrier," she said vindictively. "The poor brute; and then think of cousin Baisanghâr. He loved the horse!"
Her beautiful eyes flashed and yet were melting, her long brown fingers gripped her embroidery closer yet more caressingly. Her brother sate and looked at her admiringly, yet with a certain diffidence. Sometimes Dearest-One went beyond him; she seemed to unfold wings and skim away into another world. And when he asked her whither she went, she would smile mysteriously and say:
"Thou wilt unfold thy wings also, some day, O little-big-one, and find a new world for thyself."
There was little leisure now, however, for aught but watch and ward. Any moment of the day or night might bring assault; but the days passed and none came. And then one morning broke and showed a smaller camp than had been on the low lying river bank the night before; there was a bustle, too, about the still-standing tent pegs, and with the first glint of sunlight one Dervish Mahomed Turkhâu rode over the narrow bridge and demanded, on the part of his master, an audience with Hussan. Old Kâsim looked daggers, but there was no objecting. By virtue of his position as Prime-minister Hussan was the man to go, and he went. So out in the Place-of-Festivals beyond the gates, they met and parleyed: thus patching up a sort of peace, as Babar reported contemptuously to his faithful three. He was intensely disgusted and disappointed, while Kâsim looked sorrowfully at his piles of stones.
"They will do for next time," he said finally, cheering himself up with the remembrance that there were many other claimants to the throne of Ferghâna to be reckoned with besides Sultan Ahmed. And by evening most of the garrison had found solace for their disappointment in overeating themselves, after the disciplined rations which Kâsim-Beg, mindful of the possibility of a long siege, had already ordained; but Babar and his foster-brother Nevian were out all day on their little Turkhoman horses, chasing the white deer and shooting with their bows and arrows at a cock pheasant or two.
They brought home one in the evening which, as the boy boasted, was so fat, that four men could have dined on the stew of it!
"'Twill do for our dinner anyhow," said Babar's mother, and thereinafter she and Isân-daulet bullied cooks and scullions and gently quarrelled with each other for a good two hours over the proper family recipe for making "ishkânah."
And afterwards they sat together in an arched sort of balcony vestibule between the women's apartments and the men's rooms and talked happily, yet soberly of the future. Old Isân-daulet indeed, waxed prophetic.