The Confusion

“The Moguls have proved little different from other martial races that controlled the north in millennia past, which is to say that the weapons and tactics that served them well in the plains and deserts proved ineffective in breaching the mountain-wall of Satpura. But unlike some who have been content simply to make the Narmada their southern border, they have nursed the ambition of making all Hindoostan a part of the dar al-Islam and so probed southwards via the only route that is passable: which happens to be the very road that we are treading on now. Coastal cities such as Broach on the Narmada and Surat on the Tapti they have conquered with ease, and, with a great deal of difficulty, retained. But south of Surat, the interior of Hindoostan is guarded from the western sea by a formidable range of mountains, the Ghats, which are ever a refuge into which the Hindoo resistance-the Marathas-may withdraw when they desire not to meet the Moguls in pitched battle in the plain. Likewise the Satpura Range is mottled with strongholds of the Marathas, even as far west as the Rajpipla Hills. From time to time the Moguls will venture up there and expel them, for those Hills, because of their situation, are like a blade against the throat of the Moguls’ commerce; all Western trade, as you know, comes in to the ports of Daman, Surat, and Broach, and the Maratha chieftains well know that they may sever those ports’ links to the north by issuing from their forts in the Rajpipla Hills and descending the Ravines of Dh?aroli to the Broach Plain-which is where we are now-and catching the caravans when they are backed against the River Narmada. Surat is infested with their sympathizers, and you may be assured that their spies saw us mustering there, and preceded us along this road and have already sent them word of our movements.”

“Can we rely on them to attack us at night?” Jack asked.

“Only if we are so foolish as to reach the south bank of the Narmada at dusk and attempt a night crossing.”

“So be it then,” Jack said. “Clever stratagems are quite beyond my powers, but if it is rank foolishness you require, I have no end of it.”

JACK RODE AHEAD to view the battle-field in daylight, and to put the mercenaries where he wanted them. With help from a hired guide, he found a suitable place to feign a crossing. A few miles inland of where the Narmada broadened to an estuary, it described a Z, swept around in an oxbow, described an S, and resumed its westward course. In the center of the SZ was a mushroom-shaped head of gravel and sand bulging northwards into the oxbow, and connected at its southern end by the neck of land pinched between the opposing river-bends. In each of these bends, the river’s flow had undercut the banks, which rose above the water to no more than the height of a man, but were steep, and covered with scrub. Anyone coming to the river from the south would be funneled through a quarter-mile-wide gap between these bends. Beyond that narrow pass, the neck broadened and flattened, sloping imperceptibly down to the inner bank of the oxbow. The river was broad and shallow there, and seemed an inviting place for a ford; but this was of course the inner or concave surface of the oxbow-bend, and anyone who knew rivers would expect the opposite bank-the oxbow’s outer or convex face-to be steeper. Looking across, Jack saw that this was likely the case, though it was obscured by reeds. His local guide assured him that camels, horses, and bullocks could ascend the far bank, and thereby cross over into the North of India, but only if they attempted it in certain places known to him, which he would divulge for a fee. Beasts of burden attempting to ford the river in the wrong places would, however, face slow going through the reeds, only to find their way barred by a bank too steep to scale.

“I’ll pay you the amount you have named,” Jack promised him, “and I’ll double it if you allow me to strike you a few times with this riding-crop.”

This required lengthy and difficult translation; but the result in the end was that a ferang on a horse could be seen chasing the poor guide all the way out of the oxbow, flailing at him wildly, and cursing the wretch for his greed. Having done which, he wheeled his mount, rode back to the ford, and began pointing out, to his mercenaries, those places that to him seemed best for a crossing.