“It is true that you are impetuous, Marco,” said Uncle Mafio. “But if a man stopped to consider all the consequences of his every action before he acted, he would be a very old man before he ever did any damned thing at all. Nico, I think that we might keep this fortunately impetuous young man as our companion. Let him not be tucked safe away in Constantinople or Venice, but let him come with us clear to Kithai. However, you are his father. It is for you to say.”
“I am inclined to concur, Mafio,” said my father. And to me, “If you wish to come along, Marco …” I grinned broadly at him. “Then you come. You deserve to come. You did well this night.”
“Perhaps better than well,” said my uncle thoughtfully. “That bricon vechio called himself the most Misguided One of all. Is it not possible he meant also the chief one of them all? The latest and reigning Sheikh ul-Jibal? An old man he certainly was.”
“The Old Man of the Mountain?” I exclaimed. “I slew
I was impressed. I knew we were yet many months of hard travel distant from the court city of that Khakhan Kubilai. But already, here in the western reaches of Persia, already we were within the borders of the domain of that far distant Khan. In school, I had bent my most admiring and enthusiastic study on The Book of Alexander, so I knew that Persia was once a part of that conqueror’s empire, and his empire was so extensive as to earn him the sobriquet of “the Great.” But the lands won and held by that Macedonian comprised a mere fragment of the world, compared to the immensities conquered by Chinghiz Khan, and further enlarged by his conqueror sons, and still further enlarged by his conqueror grandsons, into the unimaginably immense Mongol Empire over which the grandson Kubilai now reigned as Khan of All Khans.