Daughter of Xanadu - Dori Jones Yang [80]
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.
For 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?”