Daughter of Xanadu - Dori Jones Yang [75]
Marco was serious. “I don’t care about the legend. Many will die.”
I nodded. “I know. Too much blood. I could be killed. But I will not.” Certain that I would be protected by the valor of my ancestors, I didn’t think of how many of them had been killed in battle.
Marco pulled out a blue silk scarf and handed it to me. “In Christendom, soldiers take these to battle, given by their loved ones.”
I laughed. “The ladies give them to the men, though, right?” He did not smile. As I took the scarf, a strange, unsettling premonition swept over me. Would Marco find the scarf on my corpse? I quickly tamped down that thought. “This will bring me luck?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will take it into battle.” I wished I had brought the Tara amulet my father had given to me. I wished I had reconciled with him before leaving home.
“Emmajin. I …” I could tell that Marco wanted to embrace me, but there were too many soldiers around. We could not show any emotion.
I took his hand in mine and held it longer than I should have, wishing I could experience one more bacio. “No need for words. I will see you tomorrow night.”
That night, I could not sleep. I did not think it would be my last night on earth, but I knew it might. Would death be painful? I thought of my mother, my sister, my father, the Great Khan. It was possible I would never see any of them again. Mostly, though, I thought of Marco, of all the possibilities I had secretly dreamed of with him. Why had I hesitated?
Beside me, Suren lay awake, too, tossing. At one point, I reached out and put my hand on his arm. “Suren.” He turned toward me. “It will be a good outcome.”
He nodded.
We arose well before daybreak and donned our armor. I wrapped Marco’s blue scarf around my neck but tucked it out of sight. We were each given a chunk of mutton and told to fortify ourselves, but my stomach was unsettled. A light breeze was blowing across the plain, and small high clouds glowed red in the morning sky. The rising sun etched the hilltops so clearly the rest of life seemed blurred.
We mounted and stood in formation, twelve thousand horsemen of the great Mongol army, in our brown leather armor. Baatar was skittish, so I patted his neck, trying to calm his nerves and mine. He had carried me from Khanbalik to the jungles of Carajan and now to the battlefield at Vochan.
We recruits were four rows back, since Nesruddin wanted his best archers and most experienced warriors in the front line. I wished I could have been in front, but it was, after all, my first battle. The strategy was to attack with a constant barrage of arrows, one unit replacing another as our arrows ran out.
My squad, under Suren’s command, was near the woods at the right side of the plain. Across from us, a row of armed elephants, several hundred abreast, stretched from one side of the plain to the woods on the other. I could see, even from a distance, that the Burmese soldiers wore uniforms of red.
Seated straight in my familiar saddle with its silver ornaments, on the golden palomino stallion I had ridden almost every day for four years now, I kept my mouth in a firm line. Our orders were to keep still. But my mind raced. My life had been too short, too inconsequential to end on this day. If I survived, I decided, I should make my life count, do something that mattered.
The Mongol way was to begin each battle in total silence, allowing the enemy to advance first. I watched as the front line of Burmese troops moved forward, advancing toward us. At first, it seemed just a line of red; then I could hear the grinding of horses’ hooves.
When the enemy was close enough to hear, our war drums broke the silence. That was the signal. All of us Mongol soldiers, as if with one voice, let out war cries meant to terrify the enemy. Shouting amidst such a host made me feel invincible.
Our front line surged forward, then the next rows, and finally mine, advancing with order and discipline. Baatar seemed eager to join the battle. So much dust was kicked up around me, I could no longer