Chapter IX

Now the battle’s fought with the iron-spiked club, and as
they close, with the clenched fist, and the din of war
ascendeth to the heavens! They cry, “Pursue! strike! fell
to the ground!” so that a horrid and tumultuous noise is
heard on all sides.

MAHABHARAT.

As evening approached, the warriors, already accoutred for the journey, might be seen here and there in the retired glens near the encampment, engaged in soothing the alarm of the maidens, to whom many of them had been betrothed from infancy. But this scene of affection, and of renewed vows of constancy, the shrill trumpet speedily disturbed, and as the shades began to rise in the east, the troop was assembled before the hut of the prince. He gave them the banner of the tribe, whose glory in war he bade them to remember; they answered his command by a hurra! and then, with Suleiman, who was accompanied by Seirami, at their head, they set out for Karaman. For a few moments the paces of the horses, as they bounded over the green turf, and the clatter of the arms of the riders were heard; but the sounds grew fainter and fainter in the distance, and the moving mass soon ceased altogether to be discernible through the misty night.

The grief of Kazim, which had been respected by the special desire of Suleiman, and which had kept him confined to his hut with Mangeli, prevented both from becoming acquainted with the event which had just taken place. Nor was it until the next morning, when Kazim went to return thanks to the prince for the honourable attentions that had been paid to the remains of his father, that he learned the intelligence. He was in some degree hurt, that he had not received from Seirami, at least, some intimation of the plan which had been adopted, but as he entertained no doubt that Mirtas would be taken by surprise, and that the affair would be terminated within a few days, he turned all his thoughts again to Mangeli, who stood in need of his best care.

Day after day passed on, and still no tidings came from Karaman. The matrons of the tribe began to feel apprehensive of the results of the expedition, but they still hesitated to give way to any general sense of alarm, hoping that news would momentarily arrive which might shew it to be without foundation. A vague rumour on the sixth day found its way through the encampment, that a most sanguinary engagement had taken place in the streets of Karaman between the hostile forces, and that not only Suleiman, but every one of his followers had been slaughtered, without the exception of even a solitary trooper to bring away the melancholy tale. The report spread from hut to hut with a thousand aggravations, but none of those who were questioned about it, not even of those who related it with the most minute particulars, could say how or whence it had originated, as no stranger had been seen at the encampment since the departure of the expedition.

Calamity sometimes casts its shadow before, which, like a supernatural messenger, carries to the mind unerring intelligence of events that have either happened at a distance, or are already on the march towards their fatal accomplishment. The seventh sun had scarcely risen on the horizon, after the funeral day of Gulbeg, when a horse, fully accoutred as for the field of battle, without a rider, and with broken rein, entered the precincts of the camp, running here and there, snorting and pawing the ground, as if he had some dreadful tale to tell. He easily permitted himself to be caught, when it was discovered that the animal had been much gashed on the shoulders by sabre-cuts, that the saddle was stained with blood, with which his mane was also clotted, and that, moreover, it was the steed on which Suleiman had been mounted. The ominous forebodings of the elders thus received a degree of confirmation that filled the whole tribe with terror. Some were for sending messengers instantly, in order to ascertain the results, however dreadful they might be.

The proposition was no sooner made than it was acted upon by three spirited youths, who had not yet been permitted to try their strength in battle. Kazim offered to be their guide to Karaman, and horses being prepared in a few moments, they were already mounting, in the midst of the crowds that had assembled round them, when an old man, to whom the wounded steed belonged, rushed into the circle holding up a letter, which he found under the pommel of the saddle, on removing it from the heated back of the animal. It was immediately opened by Kazim, but from being worn away in many places by the friction of the saddle, he could read it aloud only in fragments. It was in the hand-writing of Seirami:--

“If this brave steed find his way back to the encampment, he will
indeed be the messenger of woe... never were such days of strife
known before... they were a host, for the three chieftains had joined
their forces, and believing that Suleiman was no more, they were
marching to seize his dominions, when we met them near the gates of
Karaman... in the streets, which ran with torrents of blood... we...
The re-appearance of Suleiman threw the enemy at the onset into
affright... evil spirits they said, flying back to the town, were
come to attack them,... every where the houses were closed: as we
hastened after the fugitives it looked like a city of the dead...
Mirtas slain at his feet... recovering from their terror the second
day, burst forth... from street to street the battle raged for three
days... those valiant youths of the tribe, their deeds are beyond all
praise... not one remains to”--

Kazim’s faltering voice was here interrupted by a general burst of anguish, which not even the breathless desire of the listening crowd to hear every particular, could repress. “Oh, my son! my son!” were the only words to which the matrons could give utterance, as, tearing their hair, they threw themselves prostrate on the earth, overwhelmed with grief. Kazim, looking still at the fragments of the letter, could not resume, though he perceived that it was of the utmost importance that they should hear the remainder of the communication. Again and again he motioned to the multitude that he would go on, but the agony that swelled his heart, when he beheld the mothers of the slaughtered warriors demanding their surviving children to be brought before them, that they might count them, and ascertain whether _he_, the bravest of them all, had indeed gone to the battle, never, never to return,--appalled his senses, and stifled the language to which he in vain endeavoured to give articulate sound.

The voice of mourning having at length in some degree subsided, Kazim was directed to proceed.

“There can be no doubt that in the first instance the enemy will
direct their march towards the encampment.”

“Let them come,” answered the veterans; “we may yet revenge the
butchery of our children!”

“And that from their numbers, all being well armed, flushed with
conquest, and in need of provisions, they will contend with too many
advantages against a pastoral tribe. Fly, therefore, while yet you
can.”...

The remainder of the letter was worn quite away, except a very small fragment, on which the words “Kazim” and “Hindostan” were legible.

The prince who mixed with the crowd without any emblems of his rank, to hear the tidings of calamity, which for a moment reduced all the members of the tribe to the same level, retiring to his tent, called a council, by which it was resolved, that the encampment should be broken up, and that they should proceed across the desert.

Kazim, who feared at first that he might have been sacrificed to the grief or indignation of the tribe, inasmuch as he was the friend of Suleiman, to whose rashness they justly imputed the calamity which had befallen so many of their bravest warriors, asked permission from the prince to return to his home on the Ilamish. But that excellent person, who was an epitome of all the virtues of the tribe, taking him by the hand, assured him that he need have no apprehension for his safety. Nobody thought of blaming the husband of Mangeli, who was a favourite in every quarter; and as to returning to his defenceless cottage, at a period when the exasperated troops of Mirtas would probably leave no part of the country unexplored, and would visit no cultivated spot without laying it waste, such an idea would be the extreme of imprudence. “No,” said the good prince; “we have adopted you and yours for our own; with us you shall remain; of our wealth you shall freely partake; and our home, wherever we may find it from season to season, shall be your home too. Put up your hut, my son, like the rest; you will find a camel of burthen at your door, and a horse of my own for yourself and Mangeli. Your goats form part already of the common stock.”

The huts having been all speedily taken down, the materials of them were carefully packed up, together with all the utensils and furniture which they contained; and in three hours after the command was given, the tribe was on the march towards the vast desert, which spreads many days’ journey to the west as well as to the south of Arjun. The enemy, it was thought, would hardly venture in pursuit of them into the waste, if in want of provisions; and at all events, in those immense solitudes upon whose arid surface the hoof of the horse or the camel made no impression, it would be difficult to trace the footsteps of the fugitives.

Very different was now the appearance of the cavalcade from what it was when the pastoral nation first met the eyes of Kazim. They moved on necessarily at a slow pace, as their herds of sheep and other animals, which brought up the rear, were of essential importance for the supply of food. But the brave warriors, lately the pride of the people to whom they belonged, were missed from a scene usually remarkable for splendour and gaiety. The tones of mirth were changed into lamentation, and the procession seemed like a funeral train, engaged in performing the last obsequies of some departed chieftain.

After journeying over the desert for three weeks, without perceiving any token of pursuit on the part of the enemy, the fugitives had at length the consolation to observe the weather setting in with more than ordinary severity. The snow began to fall by the time they crossed the mountains on the borders of Astracan, when finding an extensive and well-watered valley, completely sheltered from the cold winds of the north, they resolved on sojourning there at least until the winter was over.

For several days the snow continued to descend so thickly, that it darkened the air, wrapping the mountains and the plains in one general mantle, and investing the trunks and branches of the trees that were scattered here and there, with its fleecy covering. In the early part of the morning the huts were not to be distinguished from the hillocks, which the snow, drifted by the winds, had raised in different parts of the valley. But after the fires were kindled, and the smoke had curled from the tops of the huts to mingle with the clouds on the mountains, the black roofs and sides of those pastoral habitations became quickly discernible. The weather necessarily prevented their inmates for some time from all out-door amusements; but their days, nevertheless, seldom appeared to hang heavily upon their hands. When the usual meals were over, chess and cards and dice, the song and the dance were resumed. When the mountain torrents were at length suspended in their course by the frost, and the trees were ornamented as if by genii, in the beautiful filagree icicles, which afforded an assurance that the red deer might be followed over the ridges of the mountains without any danger of sinking in the snow, the hunters were out with their poles bounding from height to height, with an agility that rivalled the fleetness of the animal of which they were in pursuit.

For Kazim, however, none of these amusements possessed any great attraction. Though he could not well avoid joining the many social circles formed in the camp throughout the long winter nights, nevertheless his thoughts were far away from those scenes, communing with higher spirits. The game of chess, which he now learned for the first time, had more charms for his mind than any other pastime; it engrossed his attention, and set the intellect at work. But when the excitement of the hour was over, he reverted to his recollections of the books he had read, and even sometimes prevailed upon his associates to listen to the verses of Asefi, which he recited with the most engaging gracefulness.

From poetry Kazim sometimes changed the theme to history, especially to that of the empires of Persia and Hindostan, of which he appeared to have made himself complete master. He related how Timur, setting out from Samarcand with a million of troops, advanced along the vast plains of Bactria, and climbed the Himalas, though opposed by the native tribes of those rugged and lofty mountains at every step. The difficulties of the ascent were often less than those that opposed his downward progress, for the steep precipices, or rather mural ramparts, which lay in the line of his march, offered no means of descent. Under these circumstances, that brave commander ordered himself to be let down by ropes; and in this manner he and his followers, together with their horses, were enabled, after incredible toils, to behold at length, stretching at their feet, the fertile fields of Hindostan. Kazim shuddered while he described the sanguinary battles, by means of which Timur established his throne at Delhi, with a degree of imperial splendour unknown before his time. The adventures of his grandson, Baber, the knight-errant of the East, had peculiar charms for the youths of the tribe. One day, in the possession of absolute power, and clothed in all the sumptuousness of unbounded luxury, the next he was rendered an outcast and a mendicant by the changing fortunes of war. After tasting for a season of adversity in all its most painful forms, he was again raised to sovereign power, which he graced by his intellectual accomplishments. The feeble reign of Humaioon that followed, was, in a great measure, redeemed from oblivion by the patronage which that prince, though somewhat fantastic in his taste, bestowed on letters and the sciences, especially the science of astronomy. But his son Acbar, who had ascended the throne of India at the age of thirteen,[1] and who was now the reigning prince, seemed, from all that Kazim had heard of him at Samarcand, to have already acquired a fame, both in the field and the council, which promised to outshine all his predecessors. From the exploits he had already performed, having reduced nearly the whole of India under his power, it was conjectured that he would soon add even Persia to his already magnificent empire. Rumour had spoken much of his wise minister Abul Fazeel, to whose councils, it was said, he was indebted for the retention of the conquests he had made. It was the province of that distinguished person, to heal the wounds inflicted on the mass of the people by war. Wherever the arms of Acbar had carried terror and devastation, Fazeel followed in the bloody footsteps of his imperial master, like a benevolent genius, redressing, as far as it was possible, the complaints of the injured, and substituting for disorder and contention the blessings of organization and peace.

[1] In the year 1556.

Sometimes, if the night were favourable for his purpose, Kazim induced the young men, who often crowded to his hut, to ascend the nearest height, whence he bade them watch the countless orbs of fire which glowed in the azure firmament. They expected that he would read in that splendid page the destinies of their nation, and importuned him to impart to them that species of knowledge which the stars can teach. He told them of the difference that existed between the planets, which, like the earth, moved round the sun, and the spheres which apparently had no motion. So far they understood his explanations. But they began to look upon him as a magician, when he added, that the congregation of lights which they beheld crowded together in the sky, were absolutely as nothing compared with the multitudes hidden from their gaze in the remoter oceans of space, and that, nevertheless, each of these orbs was a sun in itself, attended by worlds of its own peopled by every order of created being; and that the whole, instead of being stationary, as they seemed, were moving, together with our sun and its system, round the centre of the universe, where the Great Spirit reigned in a region of glory, that knew not beginning or end, day or night, winter or summer.