I scrambled up quickly, fearful that the animal might still have one last convulsion left in it. When it only lay still and bled, I plucked out my knife and then the arrow, and wiped them clean on the quill-like black hairs. Closing the trusty squeeze-knife and putting it back into its sheath, I mentally sent another thank-you into the far away and long ago. Then I turned and gave a not-so-thankful look at the elephant and the mahawat. He sat up there gawking with awe and perhaps some admiration. But the elephant only stood rocking gently from foot to foot, her eye regarding me with self-complacent feminine composure, as if to say, “There. You did it just as I expected you to,” which no doubt was the offhand remark made by the liberated princess to San Zorzi after he slew her dragon captor.
2
BACK at the Xan-du palace, Kubilai took me walking with him in the gardens while we waited for the cooks to prepare a dinner of the boars—my own trophy and the several others brought in by other hunters of the party (who had speared theirs from the more usual and safer distances). The afternoon was waning into twilight as the Khakhan and I stood on an inverted bridge and looked out over an artificial lake of some size. That lake was fed by a small waterfall, and the bridge was built in front of it, not arching over it, but in the form of a letter U, with stairs going down from one bank and upward to the other, so that at the middle of the bridge one stood at the foaming foot of the little cascade.
I admired it for a time, then turned to look at the lake, while Kubilai perused the letter from the Orlok Bayan, which I had given him to read before the light was gone. It was a lovely and peaceful autumn evening. There were flaming sunset clouds high in the sky above the lake, and then a patch of clear ice-blue sky between them and the black serration of the farther lakeside’s treetops, which looked as flat as if they had been cut from black paper and pasted there. The mirror-smooth lake reflected only the black trees and the clear blue of the lower sky, except where a few ornamental ducks were leisurely paddling across it. They rumpled the water behind them just enough that it reflected there the high sunset clouds, so each duck was trailing a long wedge of warm flame across the ice-blue surface.
“So Ukuruji is dead,” sighed Kubilai, folding the paper. “But a great victory has been accomplished, and all of Yun-nan will soon capitulate.” (Neither the Khan nor I could have known it at that moment, but the Yi had by then already laid down their arms, and another messenger was riding hard from Yun-nan-fu to bring the news.) “Bayan says that you can tell me the details, Marco. Did my son die well?”
I told him all the how and where and when of it—our employment of the Bho as an expendable mock army, the laudable efficacy of the brass balls, the dwindling of the battle into two final skirmishes, man against man, one of which I had survived, the other which Ukuruji had not, and I concluded with the capture and execution of the treacherous Pao Nei-ho. I had meant to show Kubilai the yin seal of the Minister Pao, but I realized as I spoke that I had left it in my saddlebags, which were now in my palace chamber, so I did not mention it, and of course the Khakhan demanded no such proof.
I added, perhaps a little wistfully, “I must apologize, Sire, that I neglected to follow the noble precepts of your grandfather Chinghiz.”
“Uu?”
“I left Yun-nan at once, Sire, to bring you the news. So I took no opportunity to ravish any chaste Yi wives or virgin Yi daughters.”
He chuckled and said, “Ah, well. Too bad you had to forgo the handsome Yi women. But when we have taken the Sung Empire, perhaps you will have occasion to travel to the Fu-kien Province there. The females of the Min people of Fu-kien are so gloriously beautiful, it is said, that parents will not send a daughter out of the house even to fetch water or cut firewood, for fear that she will be abducted by slave hunters or the emperor’s concubine collectors.”
“I shall look forward to my first meeting with a Min girl, then.”
“Meanwhile, it appears that your prowess in other aspects of warfare would have pleased the warrior Khan Chinghiz.” He indicated the letter. “Bayan here gives you much of the credit for the Yun-nan victory. You evidently impressed him. He even makes the brash suggestion that I might console myself for the loss of Ukuruji by making you an honorary son of mine.”
“I am flattered, Sire. But please to reflect that the Orlok wrote that while he was flushed with triumphal enthusiasm. I am sure he meant no disrespect.”
“And I still have a sufficiency of sons,” said the Khan, as if he were reminding himself, not me. “On the son Chingkim, of course, I long ago settled the mantle of heir apparent. Also—you would not yet have heard this, Marco—Chingkim’s young wife Kukachin has recently been delivered of a son, my premier grandson, so the continued succession of our line is assured. They have named him Temur.” He went on, as if he had forgotten my presence, “Ukuruji most earnestly desired to become Wang of Yun-nan. A pity he died. He would have been a capable viceroy for a newly conquered province. I think now … I will award that Wang-dom to his half-brother Hukoji …” Then he turned abruptly to me again. “Bayan’s suggestion that I insinuate a Ferenghi into the Mongol royal dynasty is unthinkable. However, I agree with him that such good blood as yours should not be ignored. It might profitably be infused into the lesser Mongol nobility. There is precedent, after all. My late brother, the Ilkhan Hulagu of Persia, during his conquest of that empire, was so impressed by the valor of the foemen of Hormuz that he put them to stud with all his camp-following females, and I believe that the get was worthwhile.”
“Yes, I heard that bit of history, Sire, while I was in Persia.”
“Well, then. You have no wife, I know that. Are you bound or vowed to any other woman or women at present?”
“Why … no, Sire,” I said, suddenly apprehensive that he was thinking of marrying me off to some spinster Mongol lady or minor princess of his choosing. I was not yearning to be married, and certainly not to una gata nel saco.
“And if you neglected to take advantage of the Yi women, you must by now be aching for an outlet for your ardors.”
“Well … yes, Sire. But I can myself seek—”
He waved me to silence and nodded decisively. “Very well. Shortly before I brought the court from Khanbalik, there arrived this year’s accumulation of presentation maidens. I brought here to Xan-du some two score of them whom I have not yet covered. Among them are about a dozen choice Mongol girls. They may not be up to the Min standard of beauty, but they are all of twenty-four-karat quality, as you will see. I will send them to your chambers, one a night, first bidding them not to employ any fern seed, that they may readily be impregnated. You will do me and the Mongol Khanate the favor of servicing them.”
“A dozen, Sire?” I said, with some incredulity.
“Surely you do not demur. The last command I gave you was that you go to war. A command to go to bed—with a succession of prime Mongol virgins—is rather more eagerly to be obeyed, is it not?”
“Oh, assuredly, Sire.”
“Be it done, then. And I shall expect a good crop of healthy Mongol-Ferenghi hybrids. Now, Marco, let us wend our way back to the palace. Chingkim must be apprised of his half-brother’s death so that, as Wang of Khanbalik, he can order his city draped in purple mourning. Meanwhile, the Firemaster and the Goldsmith are in a fever to hear exactly how you utilized their brass-ball invention. Come.”
The dining hall of the Xan-du palace was an imposing chamber, hung with painted scrolls and stuffed animal-head trophies of the hunt, but dominated by a sculpture of fine green jade. It was a single, solid piece of jade that must have weighed five tons, and God knows what it was worth in gold or flying money. It was carved into the semblance of a mountain very like those I had helped destroy in Yun-nan—complete with cliffs and crags and forests of trees and winding steep paths like the Pillar Road, being toilsomely climbed by little carved peasants and porters and horse carts.