Chapter 39
Garden of the Taj
January 1636
Two, three, then five, then eight, three more behind them issuing from the archway. The assassins kept coming. There were too many of them, and now they were past the choke point of the stair.
Atisheh drew comfort from her sisters as they pounded toward the foe: They had the advantage of being armored, at least.
“Kill these bitches and find Satan’s whore!”
The men spread out before them, trying to get around the armed women and at those unable to defend themselves.
They charged into their midst; she-lions among jackals.
One turned to face her. Expression a hateful mask, he attacked. Atisheh swayed a hair’s breadth out of the assassin’s reach and countered. Her blade slipped past the man’s guard, his defense sending her blade-tip low and between his legs.
He gave a frightened hop to avoid being made a eunuch.
She rolled her wrist to put the edge up. Pushing the tip out and away from her body, Atisheh turned full circle, loading weight on her lead leg to drop beneath another enthusiastic attempt to take her head.
She felt the drag along edge that told her she’d cut across the soft flesh of the man’s inner thigh even before he started shrieking louder than Nadira’s child.
He clutched at the bloody wound, dropping his guard.
Her left-hand blade took him in the ear, ending the wailing.
Pulling it free, she stepped past the corpse that had yet to fall.
Atisheh found another assassin, met him blade to blade, let the first shock roll through her and into the ground, turning his blade out and away. She moved the left-hand blade in a counter.
Faster, he threw a punch at her face.
Atisheh lowered her chin, taking the blow on her forehead. Stars exploded as she heard knuckles break. She staggered.
Made of sterner stuff than the first assassin, this one ignored his hand and attacked again. Her defense was slow, his blade sliding inside her guard and grating against the mail covering her arm.
She recovered her stance, raised her sword in line with his eyes.
Injured hand curled at his gut, the assassin growled and launched a series of fast attacks which she managed, barely, to keep from finding her again.
“Time to die, woman!” he snarled, slapping her blade aside.
A ululating Gulruhk charged him from the side, blade in both hands, hammering at him.
Together they made short work of the fanatic.
Searching out the next threat, Atisheh glanced around in time to see Umida go down, clutching one assassin to her like a lover, sawing with the dagger she’d lodged in his back while another man hacked at her.
Atisheh looked at Gulruhk.
Panting, her sister nodded.
They charged together.
The River Entrance of the Taj
Another of Father’s guards reeled out of the opening, an arrow high in his chest. Pulling his man out of the line of fire and into the shelter beside the door, Javed screamed in angry frustration.
Mastering his temper, the captain of guards set about exhorting his remaining men to make another attempt.
Hoping the man would take notice of him but unwilling to press, Dara pulled at his beard in helpless frustration.
John looked at him, one brow cocked.
Dara gestured at the guard captain, spoke quietly and as calmly as he could: “He might be forgiven for seeing my presence here as a sign I am the source of this attack.”
“Your own father?” John blurted.
The up-timer’s loud question attracted Javed’s attention. Unwilling to speak, Dara simply nodded in answer.
Javed rushed to his side and bowed anxiously. “Shehzada, they have the top of the stair. We cannot force the passage!”
“Where are the rest of your men?”
“I sent a party around the other side but the harem guards refused them entry. The guard said there were sounds of fighting within, but the eunuchs still refused them entry on the grounds that whatever the conflict, we guardsmen have no right to see the emperor’s women.”
“And Father is not in the garden, he’s…” he trailed off.
“Up there. Yes.”
Wishing Salim present, Dara looked past the up-timers at his own guard. They would fare no better. “And you can’t force your way through?”
Javed’s eyes filled with tears of frustration, “God help me, no, Shehzada. At least, not until they run out of arrows. They have set rubble on the floor and erected barricades at the top of the stair.” He pointed at the screened-in gallery, midway up the wall of red sandstone that rose from the riverside.
This was even worse than Ramdaspur. How many times must Dara suffer defeats before he learned whatever lesson God would have him apprehend?
“What kind of barricades?” John asked.
Javed cast an irritated glance at the up-timer, opened his mouth to reply.
Dara cut him off: “Answer the question.”
The guard captain looked at Dara, back at John. “Bricks from the scaffolds.”
“Let me take a look, Shehzada?”
Dara, wondering at the man’s aim, waved him to it.
Gervais stepped into the space John departed, waited only a moment before blurting: “My daughter, is she safe?”
The question made Dara’s heart freeze. Nadira! My sisters!
“Quickly, Javed: were the sounds of fighting coming from the harem enclosure or only up there?”
“I only heard it from up there, Shehzada. I had no report of whether there was fighting inside the harem. I shall send someone immediately…”
“But they will likely be turned away, just as your earlier effort was.”
“Gervais and I will go. They know we’re some kind of doctors, and can help,” Rodney said, a desperate edge to his voice.
“And leave me behind?” Bertram asked, eyes mad with unspoken threat.
“I wasn’t saying that, Bert.”
“Stop shortening my damn name!”
John returned. Praying he would make it quickly, Dara saw the painful decision and the cost to the up-timer’s heart of making it.
John spat and turned back to his companions. “Rodney: the boys and I will handle this here. You go see to the ladies with Bertram and Gervais.” He turned back to Dara. “With your permission, Shehzada?”
“Permission?”
“To kill those shits up there, and any other that might stand in the way of all of us being certain our families are safe.”
Dara smiled, “Permission granted, if you will suffer me to stand with you?”
“Of course.” John turned to his fellow up-timers. “Boys, get the guns.”
Taj Mahal
Salim sucked in another breath, the shallow cut across his chest burning.
“Die, heretic!” one of the men screeched, lunging.
Too tired to thank God for the man’s stupidity in announcing his attack, Salim merely grunted, steel skirling as he turned the blade aside and sent his attacker reeling into the path of another with a hard shove.
“My children!” Shah Jahan rasped.
“I know.” Salim flicked a slash at another fellow who looked ready to charge.
“How close”—the emperor was interrupted by the clash of steel on steel, then resumed—“are the stairs?”
Salim looked. They had moved closer during the fight, and were but ten paces from one of the staircases that pierced the plinth and opened into the garden below.
It might as well be a kos, though, he thought, fending off another attack.
“Ten, maybe twelve, steps.”
“Save”—another clash, grunt—“my”—he felt rather than saw the emperor step away as he cut at someone and returned. “—children, Salim.”
“I will not leave you to die.”
“Already going to.”
“What?” he said, half-turning.
An assassin made him pay for his distraction, adding another cut to those he’d already taken.
“Gut. First few exchanges.”
Salim lashed out, pressing his opponents hard before falling back again. He used the brief respite to look at the emperor: Shah Jahan’s fine silks were no longer emerald, but black with blood from hip to ankle.
“The up-timers can—”
“No. Go.”
“Your guards. They could—”
“Cannot save them and me.”
“Sultan…”
“GO!”
Still Salim hesitated.
Shah Jahan gave him no time to formulate another argument. He stormed forward, taking two of his tormentors down in as many steps. His rush continued, staggering now, sword slowing, but still drawing the killers to him.
Torn between command and conviction, Salim nearly had his sword knocked from his hand.
Fugue broken, he lashed out. The thoughtless blow found its mark, half-severing his opponent’s wrist. He ran past while the man dropped his sword to clutch at torn flesh, making the stairs in eight strides.
Corpses littered the stairs, their life-blood slick beneath his feet.
Gunfire erupted. The noise made him flinch, miss a step, and sent him sliding down three stairs in a barely controlled fall.
He stopped at the foot of the stairs.
Too fast for fewer than twenty guns. He grinned, mad hope seizing him: The up-timers! With such weight of fire, they may yet reach Shah Jahan.
Steel on steel and cries in the garden reached his ears.
Would God extend such a hope where none exists?
Reassured that he did the right and proper thing in following Shah Jahan’s command, Salim ran off the sandstone court and down into the garden.
Garden of the Taj
Smidha found her among the cypress. The sweating Hindu gave a barely adequate nod before launching into her message: “Nur Jahan, Begum Sahib asks that you join her and the other ladies of the harem until this disorder is ended.”
“Am I an antelope, forced to hide in a frightened herd by jackals?”
“No.”
“No. I am Nur Jahan, wife to one emperor, mother to another, and I will not hide while danger lurks.”
Face twisted in anger, Smidha tossed her head. “As you wish.”
“Just as I led the charge to free my husband, so I will not shy from whatever this day brings.”
Smidha left, her haste unseemly in one so old.
Beside her, Tara sniffed.
Nur turned to her. “You have them?”
Tara nodded, showing the circlets.
She pointed to a place between two trees to one side. “Wait there. Be ready.”
Two men emerged from the trees opposite her, swords clutched in bloody fists.
“I saw an old one come this way. She might be the one the mullah wants dead,” one said, peering into the shade. And so, from their lips, the architect of this insanity: Mohan. He persisted in using blunt instruments where a fine blade was required.
Knowing he would see her before long and detesting the idea that she should hide from the likes of them, Nur stepped from the shade and smiled demurely at the assassins.
Because Tara might want certainty to aid in the thing, she addressed the men: “So touching of Mullah Mohan, to think this dried up thing worthy of his rupees.”
Startled, both men nearly jumped out of their skins.
Her bitter laughter made them snarl and clutch their blades the tighter.
Come closer, now, this mongoose desires an end to the hissing of snakes. Nur held her arms out at her sides as if in welcome.
Reassured by her lack of weapons, they approached.
Tara’s hurled chakram caught the light as it spun across the garden. By luck or skill the steel ring slashed across one man’s neck, severing windpipe and arteries.
“Godhhhch!” the man murmured, blood drowning whatever his last words might have been.
The other turned to face the threat. Another of the spinning steel rings struck him high in his inner thigh before sticking in the earth.
He bit back a scream. Using his sword as a cane, he lurched toward Tara.
Spinning her last chakram on her forefingers, Tara launched it at the assassin.
The sharpened steel ring tore his other thigh, bouncing from the bone and away.
He fell, screams an assault on the ear.
She walked the ground between the dead and the dying, and bent to pick up the first man’s sword. It required three steps to reach the screaming man, then a slight effort to raise the sword. The blade flashed brightly as she brought it down, bringing mercy to her ears and blood to water the dry earth.
River Entrance of the Taj
“Randy, load slug.”
The young man rapidly cycled the action on his Remington, ejecting the buckshot shells. “You bet, John.”
“You and Ricky set up on the right side.” Left-handed, he would be most comfortable shooting from the right side of the opening. “When Bobby and I start in with the buckshot, you pick your targets and put ’em down.”
All the young men nodded as Randy ratcheted six heavy shells into his gun.
“Once I start up, follow me. Watch for ricochets. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.” He took a deep breath, slowly let it out. “Get going.”
A few minutes later they were set up: Dara and the emperor’s guard captain at the head of a line of men behind Bobby.
“Ready when you are, John.”
John looked around the corner and up. While he couldn’t quite ignore the corpses littering the stairs, he still made out two men crouching behind a low barricade of bricks, composite bows in hand.
One of the men at the barricade raised his bow, but John pulled back before he could loose.
John held up two fingers.
Bobby and then Randy nodded.
He took a long step away from the wall before turning around and kneeling.
Bobby, half-facing the wall, slid over to stand in his place.
John brought the shotgun to his shoulder, leaned sideways, covered the target with the bead, and pulled the trigger. The stock punched his shoulder as he sent nine .32 pellets up the stair.
Bobby’s shot hammered his ears a moment later.
He pumped, the emptied shell flying, and settled the bead again as Randy’s slug thundered.
The man he’d been shooting at reeled back.
John pulled the trigger again, just to be sure.
The man fell out of view.
With a conscious effort, John scanned across for another target.
The other man was slumped face down over the barricade.
Another man appeared behind the first two.
John fired, Bobby and Randy a split second later.
The man’s head and upper chest didn’t so much explode as dissolve under the impact of the 12-gauge slug and the lion’s share of buckshot sent his way.
Three pumps worked in near-unison, spent casings pocking on the flagstones.
John closed his eyes. Gonna have that shit in my head as long as I live.
The thunder of Randy and Bobby’s guns pried John’s eyes open.
A fourth man must have appeared while his comrade fell, because another corpse was sliding down the steps.
Silence settled as the man’s slide came to a halt a few steps short of the bottom.
“Cease fire!” John shouted, surging to his feet and mounting the stairs. Slipping twice on things that didn’t belong under foot, he made it halfway up before someone got up the nerve to step into view.
John didn’t get the shotgun couched in his shoulder before firing. The stock punched him viciously in the collarbone for it even as the redoubled roar created by the close stone walls jabbed needles in his ears. Worse yet, John’s haste made for a miss: chips flew from the bricks at the fellow’s knees.
The fellow shouted, leaping up.
Ignoring the pain, John seated the gun properly, cycled the pump and fired again.
The man fell back out of view.
A hand grabbed his shoulder, making John start. A sweating Randy stepped past, gun up, seated properly, and ready.
Shaking, John continued after, Dara and the rest of the men a flood behind.
It wasn’t until he got to the top of the stair and stood among the corpses that he thought to reload. The stair opened in the middle of a corridor, the sun-dappled river visible through the jali.
“Stairs at either end,” Dara said.
Deciding on the left-hand stair, John and Randy led the way. As they rounded the corner John was almost skewered by an arrow.
Randy grunted beside him. There was a clatter.
“Shit!” John shouted. Scrambling to safety around the corner, he realized Randy wasn’t with him.
John turned.
Randy lay against the wall, an arrow through his chest and shotgun on the floor.
He wasn’t moving, not even to breathe.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he screamed, kicking the wall in frustration.
The pain brought him back, made him think through the hurt: “Bobby, Ricky: pull him in while I cover you. Then we’ll dig these ticks out.”
Tears made aiming difficult, but he managed to cover the boys as they collected Randy.
West, Temporary Gate
Gunshots floated in the air as they left their horses.
A lone eunuch stood in the gateway that would be a mosque once the complex was completed, but was currently being used to bring building materials into the site.
“Hear me! You cannot enter!” the eunuch shouted as they approached.
“No, you listen to me: I’m about ready to tear your fucking arms off and beat you with them,” Rodney said. While he used English, his tone and mallet-sized fists certainly carried his meaning across the language barrier, as the eunuch clutched his weapon tight in one fist.
Gervais held up a hand to forestall Rodney carrying out his threat, and said in Persian: “I understand that you are alone, left here while your comrades enter and put down the disturbance, but we must be granted entry. You see, you may have heard that we are up-time doctors, skilled in healing. So you must allow us entry in order to treat the wounded inside. If you do not, imagine the Sultan Al’Azam’s wrath when he learns you prevented us aiding his children in their time of need.”
More gunplay, followed by a scream, floated in the air.
The eunuch’s round shoulders slumped. “Merciful God, do as you must.” He stepped aside. “I am surely dead anyway, killed for the failures of others. What’s one more thing to take the blame for?”
The party rushed through the gate, following the clash of blades and screams.
They ran along a wide stretch of red sandstone, temporary jalis erected some distance to their right, the tops of trees visible above the screens, and the raised plinth foundation of the Taj directly ahead.
“The stairs up to the top of the plinth are around to the right,” Gervais panted, struggling to remember the layout from the mock-up in Shah Jahan’s quarters. “The entrance to the harem will be there as well.”
“More damn eunuchs?” Rodney grunted.
“We’ll at least learn from them whether the women—” Gervais stopped speaking as the wreckage—human and otherwise—came into view at the garden entrance.
“Pris!” Rodney screamed, sprinting now.
Putting his head down, Bertram managed to lose only a little distance on the big up-timer while Gervais lagged behind.
Garden of the Taj
Jahanara, Priscilla, and Ilsa stood between the women and children of the harem and three bloody-handed killers, the only weapons among the ladies a few branches and a knife more suited to carving lamb than combat.
Monique appeared beside her, a brick in hand.
All three of the assassins came to a halt, half-mad eyes drinking in the forbidden sight of another man’s women.
Jahanara twitched the silken scarf from her shoulders, revealing more flesh and drawing their eyes to her. She would die before they touched the children. Die before they defiled any of Father’s wives.
A rattle of gunfire drove them all from the stillness of the moment.
“We want only the witch, Nur Jahan. Give her to us and the rest of you will not be harmed, I swear it!” the shortest of the men shouted.
Jahanara shook her head in confusion.
He mistook the gesture for denial, stepped forward and made his sword cut the air. “I have no wish to kill women and babes. Give us the witch and the rest of you can go on living.”
They have no idea what she looks like.
“She is not here,” she said. Truthfully, Smidha having reported Nur’s refusal to join them just moments before.
He pointed his sword at her. “Lying bitch! We saw the old woman come this way.”
Jahanara drew herself up to her full height, hissed: “I am no liar. I am no bitch. I am Jahanara, daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, daughter of emperors reaching back to the mighty Timur, and I am here to pay the proper respects to my mother, you filthy pig!”
“I see her there behind you, lying bitch!” he repeated, sword point moving to point over her left shoulder at Smidha.
A blood-covered Atisheh limped into view some distance behind the men.
She looked away from hope and met the man’s eyes. Forcing laughter from a throat made tight with fear, she mocked him: “You name my servant a former empress?”
Trying to keep their attention, she breathed deeply enough to strain her silks and half-turned, presenting her profile. “What think you, Smidha? Should Nur Jahan relinquish her former titles to you, my servant?” she asked, voice heavy with every bit of contempt she could muster.
Smidha sniffed. “I think not, mistress.”
Close enough, Atisheh started her charge.
“Nor I.”
“Lying, filthy-minded whore!” the man shrieked, advancing.