Daughter of Xanadu (26 page)

For Suren!
I said to myself each time I hit one.
For Suren!
It was as if each Burmese soldier was responsible for killing my beloved cousin. Killing five enemy soldiers for each of ours seemed like it was not enough. I wanted to kill them all.

Finally, a Mongol soldier grabbed me to prevent me from pursuing any further. “Stop!” he said. “We have won.”

I turned, my heart still full of hatred, and swung my mace, nearly hitting him. Suddenly, I realized that he and I had run much farther than any of the other Mongol troops, who had stopped fighting. The Burmese soldiers were retreating in disarray.

The battle was over. We were victorious. Flush with triumph, I thrust my bloody sword into the air. The soldier smiled. When I sheathed my sword, I noticed that my hand was trembling. We headed back toward our troops. Now I had to find Suren.

The scene revolted me. Soldiers in black and red scattered across the battlefield, wounded or dead, many trampled by horses or elephants. Squashed faces, flattened bodies. Legs and arms and heads blown off from corpses. Dead or thrashing horses. Elephants lying on their sides in huge pools of blood, squealing. Moans and screams from piteously wounded men. The smells of blood and horses and filthy bodies and excrement. The sharp, acrid taste of despair.

I saw the head of a Mongol soldier I had met during our five-day journey from Carajan, his eyes staring at the sky. Eerie screams came from a quivering mass of wrinkled elephant. I looked for Baatar and saw a horse the same golden color lying on his side, his guts spilling out. But it was not Baatar.

The stench of death caused bile to rise in my throat. I vomited, heaving again and again. I wiped my mouth,
covered my nose, and plunged into the writhing bodies. I had no idea where Suren might be but kept searching.

“Regroup at the tents!” someone commanded. I did not obey this order.

I wandered far longer than I should have, looking into the faces of the dead and wounded Mongol soldiers, who were broken and bleeding. The vomiting made me light-headed and I stumbled. I saw one man pull an arrow out of his ear and grab his head in pain. I glimpsed a young Mongol soldier, still alive, holding his hands over a bleeding gash in his abdomen. Each of these soldiers had a family who loved him, somewhere.

Again I vomited, though there was nothing left in my stomach.

I pushed on, still searching. One Burmese soldier tried to grab my foot. When I pulled it away, I looked into his eyes and saw a haunting, pleading look. His leg had been nearly hacked off. He was begging for help using words I didn’t understand. Perhaps I had cut off his leg. I could not tolerate his anguish. I tore my eyes away and stumbled on.

“Emmajin Beki. Come,” someone said. But I refused. Where was Suren?

Finally, I found his body, with its deep throat wound. His spirit had already fled. He was lying in a pool of blood. A drop of that blood was mine, given freely to my
anda
, my blood brother.

I had to get his body out of there. I tried to pick him up, but he was too heavy. So I dragged him. My hands were so weak I kept losing my grip.

A Mongol soldier confronted me. “Leave him. We cannot help them all.”

“This is the Khan’s eldest grandson, son of the crown prince Chimkin,” I said.

He looked at me in surprise, hearing my woman’s voice. Then he picked up the body and heaved it onto his broad shoulders. “Come,” he said. “Are you injured?”

Now that I was not swinging my sword, I could feel the deep soreness in my upper arm, and my whole body trembled. “No,” I said. But I was spent. I followed him back to camp, trudging through the mayhem.

On our way, we passed a company of Mongol soldiers heading toward the woods. They told us they had been ordered to capture as many of the elephants as possible. The Khan would be pleased.

One side of the camp had been set up to treat the injured. We headed for the other side, where the survivors were meeting and regrouping, exchanging news of who was lost and who had fought valiantly. The mood was jubilant.

Abaji and Nesruddin rushed toward us. They appeared ruddy and uninjured, but both looked stricken when they realized that Suren was dead. They lay his body flat on the ground so that it would not stiffen in an awkward position. Abaji closed Suren’s eyes. “Thank Heaven you are not injured,” Abaji said to me.

I stared at Suren’s body, then sank to my knees next to him. His hand was cold. His death was my fault. If I had left with him, as he had insisted, he would still be alive. Driven by dreams of glory, I had not thought my decision could endanger him.

Someone brought a sleeping fur and lifted Suren’s body onto it. I reached into my clothing and pulled out the blue scarf Marco had given me. It had kept me safe. Now Suren
needed it, for his journey to the spirit world. Somewhere, unseen to me, he was being welcomed by the Great Ancestor himself.

I started to cover his neck wound with it and discovered the dragon’s tooth, hanging on a thong around his neck. So much for that good luck charm. I cut the thong and replaced it with the blue scarf, covering his neck. I wanted to toss the dragon’s tooth away, but instead, I tucked it into my waistband. It had been precious to Suren, the symbol of an adventure he had loved.

“Keep his arm flat at his side,” someone said. “You don’t want it to stiffen at that angle.” I lay his arm flat but wrapped my fingers around his hand.

Suren had saved my life, but I had failed him.

“I saw her. She fought valiantly,” I heard someone say.

“Of course,” said Abaji. “She has the Great Ancestor’s blood in her veins.”

“She killed over a hundred soldiers, wielding her mace with fury and chopping off heads,” someone else said. I could hear the admiration in his voice.

“She brought us good luck,” said another.

It was the praise I had longed to hear. But I was not in the mood to be celebrated as a hero. What was valor compared to the loss of life? Suren and I would not return together to Khanbalik and boast of our exploits on the battlefield. Hundreds of other Mongol soldiers still lay out in the field, dead or dying in agony, never to return home.

Again, bile rose in my throat, but I choked it down. I was beyond tears.

Suren had been part of my life since my earliest memories, always there, ever eager to learn with me, to compete
with me, ever good-tempered, ever smiling. I had shared countless meals with him. I had learned swordsmanship with him. We had been comrades-in-arms, sharing a dream. Now his dreaming was over.

But what of me? I had tasted battlefield victory. And it was bitter.

F
or a long time, I knelt at Suren’s side. Behind me, men crowed of their battlefield prowess. With ardor, they recounted heads they had severed, arrows that had pierced an eye or a nose, elephants and horses they had slain. Their mirth rose and overlapped like flames of a newly stoked fire.

They cheered the joy of victory, a thrill I had always longed to feel. But I felt empty. Inside me was a huge hole, dark and deep.

“…  the foreign merchant,” I overheard someone say.

My head bobbed up and I listened through my black fog.

“Yes, killed. He didn’t even fight.”

The news hit me like a bolt of lightning. Marco was killed, too? I turned quickly to the men behind me. “How?”

The soldier laughed. “The fool. When the battle was nearly over, he went to the woods to see the elephants and was trampled.”

I could barely sputter out the words. “Marco Polo? The Latin?”

“Beard like fire. Strange eyes. They say he was a storyteller.”

I couldn’t breathe. A lifetime of unrealized possibilities flashed before my eyes and faded.

Marco. I remembered how intensely he had held me by the stream near the Tibetan village. How he had wrapped the rope around the snout of the dragon. I thought of our walks in the Khan’s garden in the heat of summer. I recalled standing next to him, teaching him Mongolian archery skills. I remembered how he had listened to Abaji’s stories of Mongol glory. He could not be dead.

I squeezed Suren’s hand and stood up, my knees stiff from kneeling. I shook off a moment of dizziness. If Marco’s body was out there, I had to find it. Already some soldiers were stacking up corpses, which would be burned. If I did not move quickly, I might never see his body.

Baatar picked that moment to find me in the chaos. How, I would never know. I hugged his neck and buried my face in his mane, coated stiff with sweat and blood. He whinnied, and I felt sure I saw relief in his eyes. I had no time even to find water for him. I mounted him and rode across the battlefield. Soldiers were busy dragging the dead to the side and carrying the wounded to camp.

I headed for the edge of the woods, where most of the elephants had entered. A few elephants were being led out by our Mongol soldiers. Moving slowly and silently, the beasts no longer seemed threatening.

Human bodies were strewn about, both in black and in red. I held my hand over my nose and searched. Once,
I thought I saw Marco’s body, underneath that of a Burmese soldier, but when I pulled the enemy’s body off, I saw that it was a Mongol soldier I had met on the road. The Burmese soldier on top of him still had his fingers wrapped around his sword, covered with precious Mongol blood. I kicked him.

Nearby, a badly wounded Burmese soldier was moaning. I stabbed his throat. Now I understood why the Mongols refused to take prisoners or treat injured enemies.

The winter sun dipped below the tops of the hills, and the light began to fade. I kept searching, feeling increasingly frantic. Suren was dead, and Marco was, too. No one else meant as much to me. I had no reason to hope that Marco was still alive in these woods. But if he lived, I would find him and make sure he was treated.

Marco Polo. I knew, now and too late, that I loved him. If he was alive, I wanted him close to me, always. If he was dead, I could not go on.

I was not able to find Marco’s body anywhere. Fires had been lit. I could smell roasting mutton. My stomach grumbled, but how could I eat? How could the sun set?

I searched for Abaji. He would know if Marco had died. I found Abaji sitting by a fire, a mutton rib in his hand, listening to Nesruddin talk about the battle.

“There you are!” Abaji said. “I sent a man to search for you.”

My throat constricted but I forced it open to speak. “Marco?” I asked.

Abaji gestured to his left with the rib. There, sitting by the side of a tent, writing furiously on parchment, was Marco Polo.

The tightness inside me burst. He was alive!

I stood before him, soaking up the details: his reddish curls, matted with sweat and glowing in the firelight; his bushy beard; his high nose; his thick eyebrows, drawn together in concentration. His moving hand, his breathing body.

He stopped writing and looked up. A smile of relief lit up his face. “Emmajin!” He dropped his ink brush and paper, stood up, and embraced me in a way no Mongol man ever embraces a woman in public. I was so relieved I didn’t care. He spoke into my hair. “I was so afraid for you, during the battle. I searched and searched but could not find you.”

I buried my head in his chest. “They told me you were dead.”

He laughed. “Oh, no. I’m alive. And you are, too. Thanks be to Deus.” He squeezed me more tightly against him. I was too choked up to speak.

Finally, he pulled back and looked into my eyes. “Abaji has been telling everyone about how valiantly you fought. Everyone praises you. Sit here, and tell me your tale.”

I stared hard at him. “Suren is dead.”

His face darkened. “Yes, I know. He died a hero’s death.”

I nearly gagged. To Marco, the battle was nothing more than a story. He would gather the facts and prepare a good tale for the entertainment of the Great Khan. The battle of Vochan would go down in history, and his would be the official version.

A surge of anger flared through me. Marco had not fought. He had stood to the side and observed. He had done nothing to ensure the victory, yet the Khan and his men would shout, “Good! Good!” as if he himself had laid his life on the line. Suren was dead, and Marco wanted details, like a vulture picking at carrion.

“Emmajin Beki?” He could see the shadow covering my face. I pulled away from his touch. “I loved him, too, you know,” he said.

I looked away, remembering how Marco and Suren had seemed like brothers just a few days earlier, sharing the excitement of dragon hunting. I had never seen Suren so happy.

“You fought well,” Marco said, as if to soothe me. “There is much to celebrate.”

I whipped around and stared into those green eyes, which seemed empty again. “No. Suren lies dead. And you did nothing.” Suddenly, this man, dear to me a moment before, seemed like a court fool.

He dropped his arms to his sides, looking at me sadly.

“You just watched from a hillside as we fought.” I spoke with venom in my voice. “Or were you in your tent, writing?”

Marco looked stricken.

Abaji lumbered over to us. “Emmajin.” He, too, tried to touch me but I pulled away. “Emmajin. You have not heard.”

“What!” My voice cut like a saber across a man’s throat.