The only peculiarity I saw in the two girl children was that each of them bore a discoloration, like a birthmark, on her lower back just above the buttock cleft. It was a purplish spot on the creamy skin, about the size of a saucer, somewhat darker on the nine-year-old Ryang than on the older girl. Since the children were not sisters, I wondered at the coincidence, and one day asked Ukuruji if all Bho females had that blemish.
“All children, male as well as female,” he said. “And not just those of the Bho and Drok. The Han, the Yi, even Mongol infants are born with it. Your Ferenghi babies are not?”
“I never saw any such thing, no. Nor among the Persians, the Ar-meniyans, the Semitic Arabs and Jews … .”
“Indeed? We Mongols call it the ‘deer dapple,’ because it slowly fades and disappears—like the spots on a fawn—as a child grows older. It is usually gone by the age of ten or eleven. Another difference between us and you Westerners, eh? But a trifling one, I suppose.”
Some days later, the Orlok Bayan returned from his expedition, at the head of several thousand mounted warriors. The column looked travel-weary, but not much decimated by combat, as it included only a few dozen horses with empty saddles. When Bayan had changed into clean clothes at his yurtu pavilion in the bok, he came to the Pota-là palace, accompanied by some of his sardars and other officers, to pay his respects to the Wang and to meet me. We three sat around a table on the terrace, and the lesser officers sat at a distance apart, and all were attended by chabis dispensing horns and skulls of kumis and arkhi and some native Bho beverage brewed from barley.
“The Yi did their usual cowardly evasions,” Bayan grumbled, by way of report on his foray. “Hide and snipe and run away. I would chase the cursed runaways clear to the jungles of Champa, but that is what they hope for—that I will expose my flanks and outrun my supply lines. Anyway, a rider brought me word that a message from my Khakhan was on the way to here, so I broke off and turned back. Let the misbegotten Yi think they repulsed us; I do not care; I will savage them yet. I hope, Messenger Polo, you bring some good advice from Kubilai on how to do that.”
I handed over the letter, and the rest of us sat silent while he broke its waxen yin seals and unfolded it and read it. Bayan was a man of late middle age, sturdy and swarthy and scarred and ferocious-looking as any other Mongol warrior, but he also had the most fearsome teeth I ever saw in a human mouth. I watched him champ them as he perused the letter, and for a while I was more fascinated by his mouth than by the words that came out of it.
After some time of watching closely, I made out that the teeth were not his. That is to say, they were imitation teeth, made of heavy porcelain. They had been constructed for him—he told me later—after he lost all his real ones when a Samoyed foeman hit him in the mouth with an iron mace. I eventually saw other Mongols and Han wearing artificial teeth—they were called kin-chi by the Han physicians who specialized in the making of them—but Bayan’s were the first I ever saw, and the worst, evidently having been made for him by a physician not very fond of him. They looked as ponderous and granitic as roadside milestones, and they were held together and held in place by an elaborate grid of garish, glittering goldwork. Bayan himself told me that they were painfully uncomfortable, so he only wedged them between his gums when he had to call upon some dignitary, or had to eat, or wished to seduce a woman with his beauty. I did not say so, but it was my opinion that his kin-chi must have revolted every dignitary he champed them at, and every servant who waited upon him at table—and their effect upon a woman I did not wish even to speculate on.
“Well, Bayan,” Ukuruji was saying eagerly, “does my Royal Father command that I am to follow you into Yun-nan?”
“He does not say that you are not to,” Bayan replied diplomatically, and handed the document to the Wang for him to read for himself. Then the Orlok turned to me. “Very well. As Kubilai suggests, I will cause a proclamation to be made, loud and within hearing of the Yi, that they no longer have a secret friend in the Khanbalik court. Is that supposed to make them surrender on the spot? It seems to me that they would fight the harder, out of sheer peevishness.”
I said, “I do not know, Orlok.”
“And why does Kubilai suggest that I do the very thing I have tried to avoid doing? Penetrate so far into Yun-nan that my flanks and my rear are vulnerable?”
“I really do not know, Orlok. The Khakhan did not confide to me his ideas for either strategy or tactics.”
“Humph. Well, you must know this much, Polo. He appends a postscript—something about you having brought me some new weapon.”
“Yes, Orlok. It is a device that might help prosecute a war without too many soldiers being killed.”
“Being killed is what soldiers are for,” he said decisively. “What is this device?”
“A means by which to employ in combat the powder called huo-yao.”
He erupted, rather like the flaming powder himself, “Vakh! That again?” He gnashed his ghastly teeth and bellowed what I took to be a terrible profanity: “By the smelly old saddle of the sweaty god Tengri! Every year or so, another lunatic inventor proposes to replace cold steel with hot smoke. It has never worked yet!”
“This time it might, Orlok,” I said. “It is a totally new kind of huo-yao.” I beckoned to a hovering chabi and sent him running to my chambers to fetch one of the brass balls.
While we waited, Ukuruji finished reading the letter and said, “I think, Bayan, I perceive the intent in my Royal Father’s tactical proposal. So far, your troops have failed to close with the Yi in a decisive battle, because they continually melt away before you into the mountain recesses. But if your columns were to proceed far enough—so that the Yi saw an opportunity of utterly surrounding you—why, then they would have to trickle down from their hideaways and collect in mass at your flanks and rear.” The Orlok appeared both bored and exasperated by this explication but, out of respect for rank, he let him go on: “Thus, for the first time, you would have all the Yi foemen gathered and exposed, and distant from their bolt holes, and engageable in close combat. Well?”
“If my Wang will permit me,” said the Orlok. “That is all very likely true. But my Wang has himself mentioned the egregious flaw in that argument. I would be utterly surrounded. If I may draw a parallel, I submit that the most practical way of extinguishing a fire is not to plump one’s bare rump down on it.”
“Hm,” said Ukuruji. “Well … suppose you ventured only a portion of your troops, and held others in reserve … to swoop down when the Yi had collected behind the first columns … ?”
“Wang Ukuruji,” the Orlok said patiently. “The Yi are shifty and elusive, but they are not stupid. They know how many men and horses I have at my disposal, and probably even how many women usable for warriors. They would not be drawn into such a trap unless they could see and count that I had committed my entire force. And then—who is in the trap?”
“Hm,” Ukuruji murmured again, and subsided into a thoughtful silence.
The chabi returned, bringing the brass ball, and I explained to the Orlok all the incidents leading up to its contrivance, and how the Firemaster Shi had seen in it a new potential for military usefulness. When I had done, the Orlok champed his teeth some more, and gave me much the same look with which he had received the Wang’s tactical advice.
“Let me see if I understand you correctly, Polo,” he said. “You have brought me twelve of these elegant baubles, right? Now, correct me if I am wrong. From your own experience, you can assure me that each of the twelve will effectually demolish two persons—if they are both standing closely over it when it ignites—and if they are both unarmored, delicate, incautious and unsuspecting women.”