Jadar laughed. "Just save some of your foul-tasting feringhi brandy for our victory celebration. And perhaps I'll drink with you one more time." His eyes darkened. "If not, then tomorrow we'll be eating lamb side by side in Paradise."
[CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT]
A drum roll lifted across the dark plain, swelling in intensity like angry, caged thunder. It rose to fill the valley with a foreboding voice of death, then faded slowly to silence, gorged on its own immensity.
"That's the Imperial army's call to arms. Prince Jadar was right. Inayat Latif is attacking now, before dawn." Shirin was seated next to Hawksworth in the dark howdah. She rose to peer over the three-foot-high steel rim, out into the blackness. Around them were the shapes of the zenana guard elephants, silently swinging their trunks beneath their armor. The zenana waited farther back on female baggage elephants, surrounded by hundreds of bullock carts piled with clothing and utensils. "Merciful Allah, he must have a thousand war drums."
"You saw the size of the Imperial army mustering at Fatehpur." Hawksworth rose to stand beside her, grasping the side of the rocking howdah and inhaling the cold morning air. "The queen had begun recalling mansabdars and their troops from every province."
Suddenly a chorus of battle horns cut through the dark, followed by the drums again, now a steady pulse that resounded off the wooded hills, swelling in power.
"That's the signal for the men and cavalry to deploy themselves in battle array." Shirin pointed toward the sound. "The Imperial forces are almost ready."
Below them fires smoldered in Jadar's abandoned camp, a thousand specks of winking light. Although the east was beginning to hint the first tinges of light, the valley where the Imperial army had massed was still shrouded in black.
The drums suddenly ceased, mantling the valley in eerie, portentous quiet. Hawksworth felt for Shirin's hand and noticed it perspiring, even in the cold dawn air.