Back to the past

Chapter 8

Sam's POV

When the horseman left. Almost everyone gathered to discuss and decide what to do. While going the horseman gave 15 days to think as the army is still behind and was at distance. He had come only with few hundred cavalry to warm about the 20000 soldiers who are brutally killing all the Kotla's and destroying all camps of all the small and large kingdoms of surrounding areas.

We did not know who the king was at the place where we were at that particular time.

One of the advisors said to the leader, "let's challenge them and inform the surrounding Kotla's and fight them. We are 400 here and there are many hundreds in surrounding Kotla's."

The leader looked at him while another person said

"Let's send a scout and see if they really are that big"

The discussions were going on and the most seniors soldiers were advising the leader. After listening to all of them the leader looked at us and showed his finger towards me and invited me to go closer to him.

I went near him. "you don't look normal to me, all of you, your clothes, your hair looks, the ring you are wearing looks royal, tell me who are you" he looked at me straight in my eyes. He had noticed my zircon ring that looked like a diamond. It was shining in sunlight.

I looked at him and said, "I am sam, I am from Himalayas....." I paused before cooking up another story

He looked at me and said, "if you don't want to tell me who you are it is ok........but, .... what do you think about the current situation, do you know anything with them" he meant the horseman.

I knew the what was about to happen as I was a avid history reader and I liked history a lot. I knew that the mongols will soon invade India. But I did not know the details what war tactics they used to conquer our motherland. So after a little pause I said.

"These people are very dangerous, they are called the mongols, I heard they are very brutal and are not easy, they have conquered Kabul, Iraq, Multan, Peshawar and many more places, this area is their next target"

He looked at me in a different way and asked me to go with him inside. When we got in I saw a beautiful girl wearing a nice dress in her 20's. She looked much alike Janet, but her eye colour was blue. She got up from the living area and went inside. The way she looked in my eyes while going almost killed me. She looked so familiar.

The leader said she is my daughter. His sons are at another Kotla. He mentioned his wife has some kind of fever. She gets chills and feels cold etc etc.

Once we got in he asked me how I know about mongols. I made up a story and he believed my story. He was getting friendly and wanted my advice.

I really did not know what to advice as I did not know what would happen next. All I could do was ask him what he wanted to do.

He did not want to run away and wanted to fight. So I had no other option than helping him plan the battle. He told me his name is Rafeeq and he is the head of this Kotla. He also mentioned that they had fought the Ghurids and killed their generals. Now the Delhi is taken over by Mamluks and they are now independent owners of small areas. He mentioned they have no one king. He said they had helped the Mamkuns to get rid of Ghurids and for that they let us take this land. They have a committee that rules the area till Satluj river. They have established small Kotla's and every committee member runs 20-30villages. He said he has control of  31 villages.

He also told me about how they collect tax in form of crops, milk other forms of things to run the unit of 400 soldiers. Most of the soldiers are from those 31 villages.