"Salaam, Highness. May Allah lay His hand on both our swords and temper them once more with fire." He seated himself easily, as he might with an equal, and when no servant came forward, he poured himself a glass of wine from the decanter that waited on the carpet beside his bolster. Is there anything, he wondered, I despise more than these presumptuous young princes from Agra? "I rejoice your journey was swift. You've arrived in time to witness my army savage the Abyssinian unbeliever and his rabble." "How many troops are left?" Jadar seemed not to hear the boast. "Waiting are fifty thousand men, Highness, and twenty thousand horse, ready to tender their lives at my command." Ghulam Adl delicately shielded his beard as he drank off the glass of wine and--when again no servant appeared-- poured himself another. Jadar remained expressionless. "My reports give you only five thousand men left, most _chelas_. Chelas, from the Hindu slang for "slave," was a reference to the mercenary troops, taken in childhood and raised in the camp, that commanders maintained as a kernel of their forces. Unlike soldiers from the villages, they were loyal even in misfortune, because they literally had no place to return to. "What troops do you have from the _mansabdars_, who've been granted stipends from their _jagir_ estate revenue to maintain men and horse?" "Those were the ones I mean, Highness." Ghulam Adl's hand trembled slightly as he again lifted the wineglass. "The _mansabdars_ have assured me we have only to sound the call, and their men will muster. In due time." "Then pay is not in arrears for their men and cavalry." "Highness, it's well known pay must always be in arrears. How else are men's loyalties to be guaranteed? A commander foolish enough to pay his troops on time will lose them at the slightest setback, since they have no reason to remain with him in adversity." Ghulam Adl eased his wineglass on the carpet and bent forward. "I concede some of the _mansabdars_ may have allowed matters of pay to slip longer than is wise. But they assure me that when the time is right their men will muster nonetheless." "Then why not call the muster? In another twenty days Ambar's troops will be encamped at our doorstep. He could well control all lands south of the Narbada River." And that, Ghulam Adl smiled to himself, is precisely the plan.