The Moghul

Hawksworth told himself, its cavalry outnumbers Jadar's easily three to one, and its officers are at full strength. There are at least a hundred and fifty thousand men ready to march. How many can Jadar have? Fifty thousand? Perhaps less. Jadar can never meet them. The most he can possibly do is skirmish and retreat.
    Perhaps, he thought ruefully, it was all just as well. A decisive defeat for Jadar would resolve the paralysis at court, and the indecision in Shirin's mind. She would realize finally that Jadar had attempted to move too fast.
    The mission might still be saved. With the Portuguese resistance neutralized—there were even rumors that Arangbar had ordered Father Sarmento back to Goa—there would be no voices in Agra to poison Arangbar's mind daily against the firman for King James. After all, he asked himself, who else could Arangbar turn to? England alone has the naval strength to challenge Portugal, even if it might require years to break their monopoly completely. He would bargain for a firman in exchange for a vague promise of King James's help against the Portuguese. It was a bargain England surely could keep. Eventually.
    He slipped through the doorway of his tent and groped for the lamp, an open bronze dish of oil with a wick protruding through the spout. It rested where he had left it, on a stand near his sea chest, and he sparked a flint against the wick. Suddenly the striped cotton walls of the tent glowed around him. He removed the sword at his belt and slipped it onto the carpet. Then he removed his leather jerkin and dropped against a bolster, still puzzling about Shirin.
    Her status during the past few days had been ambiguous. As a divorced Muslim woman, she was free to move about as she chose. But everyone knew she was on very uncertain terms with the Moghul. After they had arrived outside the western wall of the old city of Fatehpur, Arangbar had been too preoccupied to remember his threat to move her into the zenana . She had remained free, able to move inconspicuously about the camp, mingling with the other Muslim women. And each night, after the final watch was announced, Hawksworth had been able to slip unnoticed to her tent. Once, late one night, he had suggested they try to return to the old palace of Akman, inside the walls of Fatehpur, but they both finally decided the risk would be too great.
    He had hoped the days, and nights, at the camp would bring them closer together. And in a way they had, although Shirin still seemed to retreat at times into a special realm of mourning she had devised for herself. She could never stop remembering Samad and his brutal death.
    Something, he told himself, had to change. He had begun to wonder if he should gamble and tell her of the terms the Moghul had demanded for her release. Would she then understand she had no choice but to return to England with him?
    He rose and rummaged through his sea chest, finding another bottle of brandy, almost his last, and to fight his despondency he poured himself a cup. The liquor burned its way down, like a warm soothing salve, and he turned to begin assembling his few belongings for packing in the morning. He had reprimed and loaded his remaining pistol, and now he laid it on the table beside his chest. Then he drew his sword from its scabbard to check its edge and the polish on the metal. Holding it to the lamp, he spotted a few random flecks of rust, and he found a cloth and burnished them away.
    His few clothes were already piled haphazardly in the chest, now virtually empty save for his lute. He found his leather purse at the bottom and counted his remaining money. Five hundred rupees. He counted them twice, beginning to wonder if he might eventually have to walk all the way back to Surat.
    He searched the floor for any stray items, and came across Vasant Rao's katar caught between the folds of the carpet. It seemed years now since the Rajput aide of Jadar had slipped it into his hand in the square of the Diwan-i-Am, and he had almost forgotten he had it. With a smile of recollection he gingerly slipped it from its brocade sheath and held it in his hand, puzzling how such a curiously constructed weapon could be so lethal. The grip was diagonal to the blade, so that it could only be used to thrust, like a pike head growing out of your fist. Rajputs were said to kill tigers with only a katar and a leather shield, but he wasn't sure he believed the stories. He grasped it and made a few trial thrusts, its