Khakhan as evidence that his order was obeyed.” The sardar saluted, and began to lead the prisoner away. “One moment,” I said, and again addressed Pao. “Speaking of speaking—did you ever have occasion to whisper the words, ‘Expect me when you least expect me’?”
He denied it, as he probably would have done in any case, but his expression of genuine surprise and bafflement convinced me that he had not been the whisperer in the Echo Pavilion. Very well, one after another, I was diminishing my list of suspects: the servant girl Buyantu, now this Minister Pao … .
But the next day I found that Pao was still alive. The whole bok woke late, and most of its people with aching heads, but all of them immediately set to preparing for Ukuruji’s sepulture. Only the shamans seemed to be taking no part in the preparations, now that they had readied the funeral’s centerpiece. They sat apart, in a group, with the condemned Minister Pao among them, and they appeared to be solicitously feeding him his breakfast meal. I went in search of the Orlok Bayan, and asked in annoyance why Pao had not been slain.
“He is being slain,” said Bayan. “And in a particularly nasty way. He will be dead by the time the tomb is dug.”
Still somewhat testily, I inquired, “What is so nasty about letting him eat himself to death?”
“The shamans are not feeding him, Polo. They are spooning quicksilver into him.”
“Quicksilver?”
“It kills with cruelly agonizing cramps, but it is also a most efficacious embalming agent. When he is dead, he will keep. And he will retain the color and freshness of life. Go look at the Wang’s corpse, which the shamans also filled with quicksilver. Ukuruji looks as healthy and rosy as any bouncing babe, and will look so throughout eternity.”
“If you say so, Orlok. But why accord the same funerary rites to the treacherous Pao?”
“A Wang must go to his grave attended by servants for the afterlife. We will also be killing and entombing with him all the Yi who emerged from the disaster yesterday—and a couple of Bho women survivors, too, for his afterlife enjoyment. They may get handsomer in the afterlife; one never knows. But we are giving special attention to Pao. What better servant could Ukuruji take into death than a former Minister of the Khanate?”
When the shamans adjudged the hour to be auspicious, the troops did a lot of marching about the catafalque on which Ukuruji lay, some afoot and others on horseback, with commendable dash and precision, and with much martial music and doleful chanting, and the shamans lit many fires making colored smokes, and wailed their foolish incantations. Those performances were all recognizably funerary of aspect, but some other details of the ceremony had to be explained to me. The troops had dug for Ukuruji a cave in the ground, right at the edge of the avalanche rubble. Bayan told me the position was chosen so it would be unnoticeable to any potential grave robbers.
“We will eventually erect a properly grandiose monument over it. But while we are still occupied with the war, some Yi might sneak back into this valley. If they cannot find the Wang’s resting place, they cannot loot his belongings or mutilate his corpse or desecrate the tomb by making water and excrement in it.”
Ukuruji’s body was reverentially laid in the grave, and about it were laid the fresher cadavers of the newly slaughtered Yi prisoners and the two unfortunate Bho females, and close beside Ukuruji was laid the body of the Minister of Lesser Races. Pao had so contorted himself in his death agonies that the proceedings had to be briefly delayed while the shamans broke numerous of his bones to straighten him out decently. Then the burial detail of troops set up a wooden rack between the bodies and the cave entrance, and began to affix to it some bows and arrows. Bayan explained that for me:
“It is an invention of Kubilai’s Court Goldsmith Boucher. We military men do not always scorn inventors. Regard—the arrows are strung so they aim at the entrance, and the bows are hard bent, and that rack holds them so, but on a sensitive arrangement of levers. If grave robbers ever should find the place and dig into it, their opening the tomb will trip those levers, and they will be met by a killing barrage of arrows.”
The gravediggers closed the entrance with earth and rocks so deliberately untidy that the tomb was indistinguishable from the nearby rubble, at which I inquired:
“If you take such pains to make the tomb undiscoverable, how will
Bayan merely glanced to one side, and I looked over there. Some troopers had brought one of their herd mares on a lead rein, closely accompanied by her nursling foal. Some of the men held to the lead rein while the others dragged the little infant horse away from its mother and over to the grave site. The mare began to plunge and whinny and rear, and did so even more frantically when the men holding the foal raised a battle-ax and brained it. The mare was led kicking and neighing away, while the buriers scraped earth over the new body, and Bayan said:
“There. When we come this way again, even if it is two or three or five years hence, we have only to let the same mare loose and she will lead us to this spot.” He paused, and champed his great teeth thoughtfully, and said, “Now, Polo, although you deserve much credit for the victory here, you did it so thoroughly that there is no plunder for you to share in, and I think that deplorable. However, if you care to continue riding with us, we shall next assail the city of Yun-nan-fu, and I promise that you will be among the high officers who are let to take first choice of the loot. Yun-nan-fu is a large city, and respectably rich, I am told, and the Yi women are not at all repulsive. What say you?”
“It is a generous offer, Orlok, and a tempting one, and I am honored by your kind regard. But I think I had best resist the temptation, and hurry back to tell the Khakhan all the news, good and bad, of what has occurred here. By your leave, I shall depart tomorrow, when you march on southward.”
“I thought as much. I took you to be a dutiful man. So I have already dictated to a yeoman scribe a letter for you to carry to Kubilai. It is properly sealed for his eyes only, but I make no secret of its highly praising you and suggesting that you deserve more praise than only mine. I will go now to detach two advance riders to leave immediately and start making ready your route for you. And when you depart tomorrow, I will provide two escorts and the best horses.”
So that was all I got to see of Yun-nan, and that was my only experience of war on land, and I took no plunder, and I had no chance to form any opinion of the Yi women. But those who had observed my brief military career—the survivors of it, anyway—seemed to agree that I had acquitted myself well. And I had ridden with the Mongol Horde, which was something to tell my grandchildren, if I ever had any. So I turned again for Khanbalik, feeling quite the seasoned old campaigner.
XAN-DU
1
IT was again a long ride, and again my escorts and I rode hard. But, when we were yet some two hundred li southwest of Khanbalik, we found our advance riders waiting at a crossroads to intercept us. They had already been to Khanbalik, and had ridden back along the route to inform us that the Khan Kubilai was not presently in residence there. He was out enjoying the hunting season, meaning that he was staying at his country palace of Xan-du, to which the riders would lead us instead. Waiting with them was another man, and he was so richly attired, in Arab- style garments, that at first I mistook him for some gray-bearded Muslim courtier unknown to me. He waited for the riders to give me their message, and then addressed me exuberantly:
“Former Master Marco! It is I!”
“Nostril!” I exclaimed, surprised that I was glad to see him. “I mean Ali Babar. It is good to see you! But what do you out here, so far from city comforts?”
“I came to meet you, former master. When these men brought word of your imminent return, I joined them. I have been given a missive to deliver to you, and it seemed a good excuse to take a holiday from toil and care. Also, I thought you might have some use for the services of your former slave.”
“That was thoughtful of you. But come, we will make holiday together.”
The Mongols led the way, the two advance riders and my two escorts, and Ali and I rode side by side behind them. We turned more northerly than we had been traveling, because Xan-du is up in the Da-ma-qing Mountains, a considerable distance directly north of Khanbalik. Ali groped about under his embroidered aba and brought out a paper, folded and sealed, with my name written on the outside in Roman letters and also in the Arabic and Mongol letters and in the Han character.
