Another fierce jag overreached its mark, the vicious beast he rode threw up its head, flung out its feet, so losing half a stride, and Khodadâd, beside himself with sheer temper, struck it madly over the ears with his polo-stick. That finished it. With a scream of rage and fear it plunged forward almost knocking over the smaller horse by force of its superior weight, but the next instant it was on its hind legs beating the air vainly, while the little bay at full racing stride swept under the battling hoofs. Only, however, to find itself in fresh danger. A horseman unseen till then had been creeping up on the right in support of Khodadâd.
Akbar who had been giving Bijli the rein in reckless devilry uttered a sharp cry as he recognised Salîm. Collision was inevitable, and the wonder as to which would suffer most flashed through the King's mind as after one vain, almost unconscious, tug, he realised the position, flung his stick from him, dug spurs to the bay and gripping it all he knew with his knees, rode straight to the crash. It came, but as it came Akbar's arm clipped his son, and borne on by the fierce impetus of Bijli's pace the two shot forward--Akbar underneath--over the bay's head to lie stunned for a moment by the fall.
The King was the first to speak. "Thou art not hurt, Shaikie?" he gasped, the breath well-nigh pommelled from him by the Prince's weighty body.
"Not I!" gasped Salîm in his turn, beginning to realise what his father had done for him--"but--thou--thou art bleeding."
"From the nose only," replied Akbar cheerfully, as a crowding posse helped him to rise, "it was thy foot did it--God sent as much strength to thine arm. Nay gentlemen! we are unhurt!"
The assurance was needed, for already on all sides the cry had risen: "The King is down--the King is killed!" and folk were, in the dusk and gloom, pressing round a figure which still lay prostrate on the ground.
And those on the outside of the ever-thickening ring could not see that it was only Khodadâd knocked out of time for the moment by that backward flung stick of the King's, which had caught him fair on the cheek bone and felled him like an ox.
Akbar walked over and looked at him contemptuously.
"Lo! Tarkhân," he said briefly to the man struggling back to consciousness in Ibrahîm's arms, "ride not so--so reckless again, or ill may befall thee, Tarkhân though thou be."