Moving quietly and methodically through the darkness, eight hundred men had formed a qamargah, a huge circle about a mile across, around the forest. Then, striking brass gongs and beating small, cylindrical drums suspended on thongs round their necks, they had begun closing in, forming a tighter and tighter human barrier and driving all kinds of game — black buck, nilgai, and squealing wild pigs — into the centre. Eventually, as the light grew stronger, some of them had spotted tiger tracks and sent word to Akbar, following the beaters on elephant-back.

The beast on which Akbar was sitting high in a jewelled canopied howdah also sensed that the tiger was close. It was swinging its great head from side to side and its trunk was coiling in alarm. Behind him Akbar could hear the elephants carrying his bodyguards and attendants also restlessly shifting their great feet. ‘Mahout, quieten the beast. Hold it steady,’ he whispered to the skinny, red-turbaned man balanced on the elephant’s neck. The mahout at once tapped the animal behind its left ear with his iron ankas, the rod he used to control it. At the familiar signal, the well-drilled beast slowly relaxed to stand motionless again. Taking their cue from it, the other elephants also ceased their fidgeting and a profound silence fell.

Excellent, thought Akbar. This was the moment when he felt most alive. The blood seemed to sing in his veins and he could feel his heart thump, not with fear but with exhilaration. Though not yet fourteen, he had already killed several tigers, but the battle of wits and of wills, the danger and unpredictability, always excited him. He knew that if the tiger suddenly broke cover, it would take him only an instant to pluck an arrow from the quiver on his back and fit it to his taut-stringed, double-curved bow — the weapon most hunters would use against such quarry. But Akbar was curious to see what a musket could do, especially against such a monster as this was reputed to be. He prided himself on his skill with a musket, and despite his mother’s remonstrances had spent far more hours practising his marksmanship than at his studies. What did it really matter if he couldn’t read when he could outshoot any soldier in his army?