The Moghul

flick the black-and-white striped tips of their tails in anticipation.
    Prince Jadar caught their motion and reined in his dun stallion; the bright morning sunshine glanced off his freshly oiled olive skin and highlighted the crevices of his lean angular face and his tightly trimmed short beard. He wore a forest-green hunting turban, secured with a heavy strand of pearls, and a dark green jacket emblazoned with his own royal crest. His fifty-man Rajput guard had drawn alongside, and their horses tossed their heads and pawed impatiently, rattling the arrows in the brocade quivers by each man's saddle.
    Then Jadar spotted the nilgai , large bovine Indian deer, grazing in a herd upwind near the base of a low-lying hill. With a flick of his hand he signaled the keepers who rode alongside to begin removing the leopards' saddlecloths. He watched as first the male and then the female shook themselves and stretched their paws in readiness.
    "Fifty rupees the male will make the first kill." Jadar spoke quietly to Vasant Rao, the moustachioed young Rajput captain who rode alongside. The commander of the prince's personal guards, he was the only man in India Jadar trusted fully.
    "Then give me two hundred on the female, Highness."
    "A hundred. And half the hides for your regiment's shield maker." Jadar turned toward the waiting keepers. "Release the female. Then count to a hundred and release the male."
    In moments the chitahs were bulleting toward the unsuspecting deer, darting from bush to bush, occasionally kicking up dust with their forefeet and hind legs to create camouflage. Then, as they approached the final clearing, they suddenly parted—the female to the north, the male to the south. Seconds later, as though on some private signal, the female sprang. She seemed to cover the remaining twenty yards in less than a second, and before the nilgai realized she was there, she had already pawed down a bleating straggler.
    The striped ears of the other nilgai shot erect at the sound, and the herd panicked, sweeping blindly away from her—and directly toward the cover where the male crouched. He waited coolly, and then, as the deer darted by, pounced.
    What followed was a fearsome devastation, as he brought down one after another of the confused prey with his powerful claws.
    "The female killed first, Highness. I assume our bet was in gold coins, not silver." Vasant Rao laughed lightly and turned to study the brooding man at his side. Can it be true what many suspect about the prince? he again found himself wondering. That he choses his strategy for a campaign from the final hunt of his chitahs !
    But what strategy is left for us? The Deccanis have already reclaimed the city of Ahmadnagar, deep in their territory, and once again made it their rebel capital. They drove the Moghul garrison north to the fort at Burhanpur, and now they threaten that city as well, the most important station in the vital route between Agra and Surat. We haven't the men and horse to turn them back. Not this time.
    This was Prince Jadar's second campaign in the Deccan, India's revolt-torn central plains, which lay far south of Agra and east of the port of Surat, and the second time he had led his army to regain cities lost to Malik Ambar, the Abyssinian adventurer and military genius who periodically rose to lead the Deccan against Moghul rule. The Deccan had never been secure, even under the Moghurs father, Akman, but under Arangbar it had become a burial ground of reputation. One of the Moghurs finest generals, whose dispatches from Ahmadnagar, only the previous year, had boasted that the Deccan was finally subdued, now cowered in the fortress at Burhanpur. Arangbar had no choice but to send Jadar again.
    "Did you see how they planned their attack?" Jadar fingered the edges of his short beard, then pointed. "She drove them toward his trap. By attacking the weak, she frightened the strong, who flew to their doom."
    "We're not facing nilgai , Highness." Vasant Rao shifted in his saddle to face the prince and shielded his eyes against the sun. "And our position is much worse than on the last campaign. This time we have only eighteen thousand men, all encamped here at Ujjain, all weary to their bones from our siege at the Kangra, north in the Punjab, and then the long march down country. While Malik Ambar waits rested and secure in Ahmadnagar, his own capital, a two months' march south."
    "We'll bring Ambar to terms just as before, three years ago. By