“A fallen foe can be more neatly skewered,” added one of my guides. “The earth makes a firmer stop than the air, to pin him against.”
“However, we disdain too easy a stroke,” said another. “When the foe is unhorsed, we ride back a way from where he lies, and wait for him to cry defiance—or mercy.”
“Yes, and then plunge the lance point through his open mouth,” said another. “That is a fine feat of aim when done at the gallop.”
Those remarks put my hosts in a mood of happy reminiscence, and they went on to recount for me various stories of their people’s wars and campaigns and battles. None of those engagements seemed ever to have ended in a defeat for the Mongols, but always a victory and a conquest and a profitable pillage afterward. Of the many tales they told, I recall two with special clarity, for in them the Mongols contended, not just with other men, but with fire and ice.
They told how, once upon a time, during their siege of some city in India, the cowardly but cunning Hindu defenders had tried to rout them by sending against them a cavalry troop of unusual composition. The horses bore riders made of hammered copper in the shape of men, and each of those charging riders was in reality a mobile furnace, the copper shell being filled with burning coals and flaming oil-soaked cotton. Whether the Hindus intended to spread conflagration among the Mongol Horde, or merely consternation, never was known. For the furnace-warriors so singed their own mounts that the horses sensibly bucked them off, and the Mongols rode unimpeded into the city, and slaughtered all its less-incandescent defenders, and made the city their own.
Again, the Mongols waged a campaign against a savage tribe of Samoyeds in the cold far north. Before the battle began, the men of that tribe ran to a nearby river and plunged into it, and then, on emerging, rolled in the dust of the riverbank. They let that coating freeze upon their bodies, then repeated the process several more times, until they were armored all over with thick mud-ice, and judged themselves safe against the Mongols’ arrows and blades. Perhaps they were, but the frozen armor made the Samoyeds so thick and clumsy that they could neither fight nor dodge, and the Mongols simply trampled them under the hoofs of their steeds.
So fire and ice had unsuccessfully been used against them, but the Mongols themselves had occasionally used water, and successfully. In the Kazhak country, for example, the Mongols once besieged a city called Kzyl-Orda, and it long held out against them. The word Kazhak means “man without a master,” and the Kazhak warriors, whom we in the West call Cossacks, are very nearly as formidable as the Mongols. But the besiegers did not simply sit encircling the city and waiting for it to surrender. They made use of their wait by digging a new channel for the nearby Syr-Daria River. They diverted its course and let it flood Kzyl-Orda and drown every person in it.
“Flooding is a good way of taking a city,” said one of the men. “Better than pitching in big boulders or fire arrows. Another good way is the catapulting into it of diseased dead bodies. Kills all the defenders, you see, but leaves the buildings intact for new occupants. The only bad thing about those methods is that they cheat our leaders of their favorite enjoyment—making their celebration banquet on human tables.”
“Human tables?” I said, thinking I must have misheard. “Uu?”
They laughed as they explained. The tables were heavy planks supported on the bent backs of kneeling men, the vanquished officers of whatever army they defeated. And they laughed right heartily as they imitated the moans and sobs of those hungry men bowed under the weight of planks laden with high-heaped trenchers of meat and brimming jugs of kumis. And they positively guffawed as they imitated the even more piteous cries of those table-men when the feasting was done, when the Mongol celebrants vaulted onto the tables to do their furious, stamping, leaping victory dances.
In telling their war stories, the men mentioned various leaders under whom they had served, and the leaders all seemed to have had a confusing variety of titles and ranks. But I gradually divined that a Mongol army is really not a shapeless horde, but a model of organization. Of every ten warriors, the strongest and fiercest and most war-experienced is made captain. Similarly, of every ten captains, one is chief, thereby having command of a hundred men. And the ordering continues to progress by tens. Of every ten chief-captains, one is flag-captain, with fully a thousand men rallying to his pennant. Then, of every ten flag-captains, one is the sardar, having command of ten thousand men. The word for “ten thousand” is toman, and that word also means “yak’s tail,” so the sardar’s standard is a plume of yak tail on a pole instead of a flag.
It is a superbly efficient system of command, since any officer at any level from captain up to sardar need confer with only nine other equals when making his plans and decisions and dispositions. There is only one rank higher than sardar. That is orlok, meaning roughly a commander-in-chief, who has under him at least ten sardars and their tomans, making a tuk of a hundred thousand warriors, sometimes more. His power is so awesome that the rank of orlok is seldom given to any man but an actual ruling Ilkhan of the Chinghiz family line. The army then camped in bok about Kashgar was a part of the forces commanded by the Orlok-and-Ilkhan Kaidu.
Any Mongol officer, besides being a good leader in combat, must at other times be what Moses was to the Israelites on the move. Whether he is the captain of ten men or the sardar of ten thousand, he is responsible for the movement and the provisioning of them and their wives and their women and their children and many other camp followers—such as the aged veterans who have no usefulness whatever, but who have the right to refuse retirement into garrison inactivity. The officer is also responsible for the herds of livestock that go afield with his troops: the horses for riding, the beasts for butchering, the yaks or asses or mules or camels for pack carrying. To count just the horses, every Mongol man travels with a string of war steeds and kumis-milk mares that number, on the average, eighteen all together.
Of the various leading officers mentioned by my hosts, the only name I recognized was that of the Ilkhan Kaidu. So I asked if they had ever been led in battle by the Khakhan Kubilai whom I hoped to meet in the not too distant future. They said they had never had the high honor to be directly under his command, but had been fortunate enough to glimpse him once or twice at some remove. They said he was of manly beauty and soldierly bearing and statesmanlike wisdom, but that the most impressive of his qualities was his much-feared temper.
“He can be more fierce even than our fierce Ilkhan Kaidu,” said one of them. “No man is eager to raise the wrath of the Khakhan Kubilai. Not even Kaidu.”
“Nor the very elements of the earth and sky,” said another. “Why, people call out the name of the Khakhan when it thunders—‘Kubilai!’—so the lightning will not strike them. I have heard even our fearless Kaidu do that.”
“Truly,” said another, “in the presence of the Khakhan Kubilai, the wind does not presume to blow too strongly, or the rain to fall harder than a drizzle, or to splash up any mud on his boots. Even the water in his pitcher shrinks fearfully from him.”
I commented that that must be rather a nuisance when he was thirsty. That was a sacrilegious remark to make about the most powerful man in the world, but no one present raised an eyebrow, for we were all quite drunk by then. We were seated again in the yurtu, and my hosts had gone through several flagons of kumis, and I had imbibed a goodly amount of their arkhi. The Mongols will not ever constrain themselves to have just one drink, or let a guest have just one, for when the one is downed they exclaim:
“A man cannot walk on one foot!” and they pour another. And that one foot requires another, and that another, and so on. The Mongols go even into death still drinking, so to speak. A slain warrior is always buried on the battlefield under a cairn of stones, and he is interred in a seated position, holding his drinking horn in his hand at waist level.
The day had given way to darkness when I decided that I had better stop drinking or risk qualifying for interment myself. I climbed to my feet and t
hanked my hosts for their hospitality and made my farewells and took my leave of them, while they cried cordially after me, “Mendu, sain urkek! A good horse and a wide plain to you, until we meet again!”
I was not on a horse, but afoot, and therefore staggered somewhat. But that excited no comment from anybody, as I weaved through the bok and back through the Kashgar gate and through the scented streets to the karwansarai of the Five Felicities. I lurched into our chamber, and stopped short, staring. A large, black-garbed, black-bearded priest stood there. It took me a moment to recognize him as my Uncle Mafio and, in my fuddled condition, all I could think was, “Dear God, what depth of depravity has he sunk to now? Uu?”
3
I slumped onto a bench and sat grinning as my uncle preened piously in his cassock. My father, sounding peeved, quoted an old saying: “The clothes make the man, but a habit does not make a monk. Let alone a priest, Mafio. Where did you get it?”
“I bought it from that Father Boyajian. You remember him, Nico, from when we were here last.”
“Yes. An Armeniyan would probably peddle the Host. Why did you not make him an offer for that?”
“A sacramental wafer would mean nothing to the Ilkhan Kaidu, but this disguise will. His own chief wife, the Ilkhatun, is a converted Christian—at least a Nestorian. So I am trusting that Kaidu will respect this cloth.”
“Why? You do not. I have heard you criticize the Church in utterances that verge on heresy. And now this. It is blasphemy!”
Uncle Mafio protested, “The cassock is not in itself a liturgical garment. Anybody can wear one, as long as he does not pretend to its sanctity. I do not. I could not, if I wanted to. Deuteronomy, you know: ‘An eunuch, whose testicles are broken, shall not enter into the Church of the Lord.’ Capòn mal caponà.”
“Mafìo! Do not try to justify your impiety with self-pity.”
“I am only saying that if Kaidu mistakes me for a priest, I see no need to correct him. Boyajian gives it as his opinion that a Christian may employ any subterfuge in dealing with a heathen.”
“I do not accept a Nestorian reprobate as an authority on Christian behavior.”
“Had you rather accept Kaidu’s decree? Confiscation, or worse? Look, Nico. He has Kubilai’s letter; he knows that we were bidden to bring priests to Kithai. Without any priests, we are mere vagrants wandering through Kaidu’s domain with a most tempting lot of valuables. I will not claim that I am a priest, but if Kaidu supposes it—”
“That white collar never protected anybody’s neck from a headsman’s ax.”
“It is better than nothing. Kaidu can do as he pleases to ordinary travelers, but if he slays or detains a priest, the ripples will eventually reach Kubilai’s court. And a priest whom Kubilai sent for? We know that Kaidu is temerarious, but I doubt that he is suicidally so.” Uncle Mafio turned to me. “What do you say, Marco? Observe your uncle as a reverend father. How do I look?”
“Magnissifent,” I said thickly.
“Hm,” he murmured, regarding me more closely. “It will help, yes, if Kaidu is as drunk as you are.”
I started to say that he probably would be, but I fell suddenly asleep where I sat.
The next morning, my uncle was again wearing the cassock when he came to the karwansarai’s dining table, and my father again began berating him. Nostril and I were present, but did not participate in the dispute. To the Muslim slave it was, I suppose, a matter of total unconcern. And I stayed silent because my head was hurting. But both the argument and our breaking of our fast were interrupted by the arrival of a Mongol messenger from the bok. The man, dressed in splendid war regalia, swaggered into the inn like a newcome conqueror, strode directly to our table and, without any courtesy of greeting, said to us—in Farsi to make sure we all understood:
“Arise and come with me, dead men, for the Ilkhan Kaidu would hear your last words!”
Nostril gasped so that he choked on whatever he was eating, and began to cough, meanwhile goggling his eyes with terror. My father pounded him on the back and said, “Be not alarmed, good slave. That is the usual wording of a summons from a Mongol lord. It portends no harm.”
“Or it does not necessarily,” my uncle amended. “I am still glad that I thought of this disguise.”
“Too late to make you doff it now,” muttered my father, for the messenger was pointing imperiously toward the outer door. “I just hope, Mafio, that you will temper your profane performance with priestly decorum.”
Uncle Mafio raised his right hand to each of the three of us in the sign of benediction, smiled beatifically and said with utmost unction, “Si non caste, tamen caute.”
The mock-pious gesture and the mock-solemn Latin play on words were so typical of my uncle’s mischievously cheerful bravado that I—even feeling as sour as I did—had to laugh aloud. Granted, Mafio Polo had some lamentable shortcomings as a Christian and as a man, but he was a good companion to have standing by in an uneasy situation. The Mongol messenger glowered at me when I laughed, and he barked his command at us again, and we all got up and followed him from the building at a quick march.
It was raining that day, which did not do much to lighten my mal di capo, or to make more cheerful our trudge through the streets and beyond the city wall and through the packs of yapping and snarling dogs of the Mongol bok. We hardly raised our heads to look around until the messenger shouted, “Halt!” and directed us to pass between the two fires burning before the entrance to Kaidu’s yurtu.
I had not been near it on my previous visit to the camp, and now I realized that this was the sort of yurtu which must have inspired the Western word “horde.” It would indeed have encompassed a whole horde of the ordinary yurtu tents, for this was a grand pavilion. It was almost as high and as big around as the karwansarai in which we were residing; but that was a solidly built edifice, and this was entirely of yellow-clayed felt, supported by tent poles and stakes and braided horsehair ropes. Several mastiffs roared and lunged against their chains at the south-facing entrance, and on either side of that flapped opening hung elaborately embroidered felt panels. The yurtu was no palace, but it certainly overshadowed the lesser ones of the bok. And next to it rested the wagon which transported it from place to place, for Kaidu’s pavilion was usually moved intact, not dismantled and bundled. The wagon was the most huge I have ever seen anywhere: a flat bed of planks, as big as a meadow, balanced on an axle like a tree trunk and with wheels like mill wheels. The drawing of it, I learned later, required fully twenty-two yaks hitched in two wide spans of eleven abreast. (The drafters had to be placid yaks or oxen; no horses or camels would have worked in such close proximity. )
The messenger ducked under the yurtu’s flap to announce us to his lord, emerged again and jerked his arm to order us inside. Then, as we passed him, he barred Nostril’s way, growling, “No slaves!” and kept him outside. There was a reason for that. The Mongols regard themselves as naturally superior to all other freemen in the world, even kings and such, so any man who is held inferior by their inferiors is considered unworthy even of contempt.
The Ilkhan Kaidu regarded us in silence as we crossed the brilliantly carpeted and pillow-furnished interior, to where he sat sprawled on a heap of furs—all gorgeously striped and spotted: evidently the pelts of tigers and pards—on a dais that set him above us. He was dressed in battle armor of polished metals and leathers, and wore on his head an earflapped hat of karakul. He had eyebrows that looked like detached bits of the kinky black karakul, and not small bits either. Under them, his slit eyes were red-shot, seemingly inflamed by rage at the very sight of us. On his either side stood a warrior, as handsomely caparisoned as the man who had fetched us. One held a lance erect, the other held a sort of canopy on a pole over Kaidu’s head, and both stood as rigid as statues.
We three made a slow approach. In front of the furry throne, we made a dignified slight bow, all together, as if we had rehearsed it, and looked up at Kaidu, waiting for him to make the first indication of t
he mood of this meeting. He continued for some moments to stare at us, as if we were vermin that had crawled out from under the yurtu’s carpetings. Then he did something disgusting. He made a hawking noise from deep in his throat, bringing up a great wad of phlegm into his mouth. Then he languidly unsprawled himself from his couch and stood upright and turned to the guardsman at his right, and with his thumb pressed the man’s chin so that his mouth opened. Then Kaidu spat his hawked-up gob of substance directly into the man’s mouth and thumbed it shut again—the warrior’s expression and rigidity never changing—and languidly resumed his seat, his eyes again on us and glittering evilly.
It had clearly been a gesture intended to awe us with his power and arrogance and uncordiality, and it would have served to cow me, I think. But at least one of us—Mafìo Polo—was not impressed. When Kaidu spoke his first words, in the Mongol language and in a harsh voice: “Now, interlopers—” he got no further, for my uncle daringly interrupted, in the same language:
“First, if it please the Ilkhan, we will sing a praise to God for having conducted us safely across so many lands into the Lord Kaidu’s august presence.” And, to the astonishment of myself—probably also of my father and the Mongols—he began bawling out the old Christmas hymn:
A solis orbu cardine
Et usque terre limitem …
“It does not please the Ilkhan,” Kaidu said through his teeth, when my uncle drew breath at that point. But my father and I, emboldened, had joined in for the next two lines:
Christum canamus principem
Natum Maria virgine …
“Enough!” bellowed Kaidu, and our voices trailed off. Fixing his red eyes on Uncle Mafio, the Ilkhan said, “You are a Christian priest.” He said it natly—loathingly, in fact—so my uncle did not have to take it as a question, which would have required him to deny it.
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