The Moghul

leader, his face framed in a thicket of coarse black hair, stepped through the doorway and addressed Hawksworth in halting Turki.
    "The Shahbandar has requested your presence at the customs house. I am to inform you he has completed all formalities for admission of your personal chest and has approved it with his chapp ."
    The palanquin was nowhere to be seen when they entered the street, but now Hawksworth was surrounded. As they began walking he noticed the pain in his leg was gone. The street was lined by plaster walls and the cool evening air bore the scent of flowers from their concealed gardens. The houses behind the walls were partially shielded by tall trees, but he could tell they were several stories high, with flat roofs on which women clustered, watching.
    These must all be homes of rich Muslim merchants. Palaces for the princes of commerce. And the streets are filled with dark-skinned, slow-walking poor. Probably servants, or slaves, in no hurry to end the errand that freed them from their drudgery inside.
    Then as they started downhill, toward the river, they began to pass tile-roofed, plaster-walled homes he guessed were owned by Hindu merchants, since they were without gardens or the high walls Muslims used to hide their women. As they neared the river the air started to grow sultry, and they began passing the clay-walled huts of shopkeepers and clerks, roofed in palm leaves with latticework grills for windows. Finally they reached the bazaar of Surat, its rows of palm trees deserted now, with silence where earlier he had heard a tumult of hawkers and strident women's voices. Next to the bazaar stood the stables, and Hawksworth noticed flocks of small boys, naked save for a loincloth, scavenging to find any dung cakes that had been overlooked by the women who collected fuel. The air was dense and smelled of earth, and its taste overwhelmed his lingering memory of the wind off the sea.
    The streets of Surat converged like the spokes of a wheel, with the customs house and port as its hub. Just like every port town in the world, Hawksworth smiled to himself: all roads lead to the sea.
    Except here all roads lead to the customs house and the Shahbandar.
    Then, as they approached the last turn in the road, just outside the enclosure of the customs house, they were suddenly confronted by a band of mounted horsemen, armed with long-barreled muskets. The horsemen spanned the roadway and were probably twenty in all, well outnumbering the Rajputs. The horsemen made no effort to move aside as Hawksworth and his guards approached.
    Hawksworth noticed the Rajputs stiffen slightly and their hands drop loosely to the horn bows protruding from their quivers, but they did not break their pace.
    My God, they're not going to halt. There'll be bloodshed. And we're sure to lose.
    Without warning a hand threw Hawksworth sprawling against the thick plaster side of a building, and a large, round rhino-hide buckler suddenly was covering his body, shielding him entirely from the horsemen.
    Next came a melee of shouts, and he peered out to see the Rajputs encircling him, crouched in a firing pose, each bow aimed on a horseman and taut with its first arrow. The musket-bearing horsemen fumbled with their still uncocked weapons. In lightning moves of only seconds, the Rajputs had seized the advantage.
    Not only are their bows more accurate than muskets, Hawksworth thought, they're also handier. They can loose half a dozen arrows before a musket can be reprimed. But what was the signal? I saw nothing, heard nothing. Yet they acted as one. I've never before seen such speed, such discipline.
    Then more shouting. Hawksworth did not recognize the language, but he guessed it might be Urdu, the mixture of imported Persian and native Hindi Karim had said was used in the Moghul’s army as a compromise between the language of its Persian-speaking officers and the Hindi-speaking infantry. The Rajputs did not move as the horseman in the lead withdrew a rolled paper from his waist and contemptuously tossed it onto the ground in front of them.
    While the others covered him with their bows, the leader of the Rajputs advanced and retrieved the roll from the dust. Hawksworth watched as he unscrolled it and examined in silence. At the bottom Hawksworth could make out the red mark of a chapp , like the one he had seen on bundles in the customs house. The paper was passed among the Rajputs, each studying it in turn, particularly the seal. Then there