Clash of Eagles

by Alan Smale

  “All right. Then we make Iroqua come to us, bring big army. Pretend to be wounded deer, bring hunter. Then we turn on them like lion. Um, I mean like wolf, like bear. Just like you Cahokians, uh, defeated my army.”

  A broad-shouldered elder whose name Marcellinus could not recall stirred and raised his hand to be heard. “Iroqua know we have Wakinyan. Iroqua not bring army here.”

  “I …”

  Perhaps Marcellinus should shut up now. He bowed his head, exhausted. There would be other nights; with luck this would not be the last time he was invited to smoke by the elders. So long as he did not completely embarrass himself tonight.

  Great Sun Man prodded him. “Wanageeska say more.”

  The mental sharpness instilled by the pipe remained. He obviously needed to know more about the Mourning War, but fighting was not Marcellinus’s only skill. His ambitions here were greater than just the bloody slaying of Iroqua. They were the immediate problem, but a future wave of Romans would be the ultimate threat. Marcellinus still had his duty to the Imperator.

  If he were legate here and not merely a tolerated prisoner, what would he do next?

  “All right,” Marcellinus said. “I will say more, ask some questions, tell you things I know. Things I think we might do …”

  The sweat lodge broke up some two hours later. By then even the Cahokians were hoarse and beginning to nod off. It was a cold, crisp night, and Marcellinus walked into the middle of the plaza. A dog lying across the threshold of a Cahokian home awoke and studied him suspiciously before resting his head back down on his paws. Aside from the elders ambling home, no one was afoot, although Marcellinus knew sentries were now keeping watch, looking out from the top of the Master Mound and patrolling the perimeter of the Great City. Never again would Cahokia be caught by surprise by raiders and saboteurs in the night.

  It was good to feel the sweat drying on his skin, to feel the energy of the smoke drain from his body, to be replaced by a healthy solid weariness. Good to look up at the stars in their familiar shapes and constellations even this far from home.

  Marcellinus drank his fill of the heavens, then turned and gazed on the Great Mound of Cahokia, tall and stark against the night, surrounded by its palisade of wooden logs.

  Another palisade should encircle the whole city, at least the central square mile or so. With bastions and lookout posts every few hundred feet. Even with the new sentries Great Sun Man had assigned after the granary burning, Cahokia was ridiculously vulnerable to a night attack. It was something else to think about over the winter.

  His skin was grimy. He reeked of smoke. After the palisade, the next thing Cahokia needed was a bathhouse.

  Walking toward the mound, he followed the line of its palisade around to the right. Beyond it snaked the Cahokian creek, and despite the chill of the night air and the even sharper bite of the water, Marcellinus waded in and splashed his legs, arms, and chest until the layer of stale smoke was almost gone. Then he realized it must be in his hair as well and, before he could talk himself out of it, ducked his head into the icy creek.

  Baths and a basilica. The plebs of Urbs Cahokiani should have the right to hear the decisions of their leaders, not just the patrician classes, or at least their local equivalents in the sweat lodge.

  A proper forum. The central plaza was a good start, though it was more like the Campus Martius or an arena without seating than a real forum. Theaters next, amphitheaters and circuses, and then aqueducts, sewers. The march of Imperium was surely irresistible.

  He ran through the list of items he had shared with the elders in the sweat lodge, attempting to commit it to memory before he slept, since this city had no parchment or wax tablets on which he could take notes. And he realized that of all the things the Cahokians needed, a forum and law courts were among the least of them.

  Marcellinus walked back to his house, savoring his solitude, looking forward to his blanket and his mattress. Only then, approaching his front door, did he consciously realize that despite everything, despite his own extensive personal failures, he was no longer unhappy.

  It was something of a revelation, and he did not know what to make of it.

  Pulling aside the deer hide that covered the door of his hut, he stepped down into the darkness.

  A warning bell rang in his head. His nose, ears, and soldierly instincts all reacted at once. Marcellinus was not alone in the hut.

  He reached for his belt, but of course his gladius no longer hung there. It was in the corner of his hut, where he had left it hours before.

  She sat up on the mattress, rubbing her eyes. Marcellinus’s first thought was that she had been crying, that something had happened.

  Then she stood, and the blanket fell away, leaving her naked.

  “Wachiwi?” he said.

  Wachiwi reached for him. Now it was she who smelled and tasted smoky; she had warmed herself by the fire pit earlier that evening.

  “Is this really a good idea?” he murmured, but the hand-talk had deserted him and his hands were already busy of their own accord. His fingertips had itched to explore Wachiwi since the first night she had shown up for dinner. She was pretty and not so young that it felt indecent. And, very obviously, she was here because she wanted to be.

  She kissed his neck, murmuring in Cahokian as her fingers stroked his chest and then ran up his arms to his shoulders, lingering on his scars. Marcellinus shivered even as his hands traced the curve of her hips and moved up her back.

  He didn’t know what she was saying aside from his names. Early on as she looked up at him with sparkling eyes and tugged him back toward his bed, she called him Wanageeska, and the music of her low voice and the unknown Cahokian syllables flowed over him like water. Then, later on, as she moved fiercely against him, trying not to cry out, then she called him Gaius.

  Wachiwi eventually went back to sleep with her body sprawled across his, and Marcellinus gazed up into the roof of the hut at the small part of the night sky he could see through the smoke hole. He had had many women before; as a Subura youth and a young centurion stationed in Galicia-Volhynia there had been almost too many to count, and then had come his wife Julia, Vestilia’s mother, for four wonderful years followed by six more of increasing unease, with resentments building up on both sides, compounded by her dalliances during his constant absences. After they parted, there had just been long intervals of giving himself over fully to the Imperator’s work, punctuated by occasional commercial transactions in the brothel districts of distant cities where nobody knew him. Now that Marcellinus had the leisure to do the arithmetic, he realized it must be ten years or more since a woman had actively sought his company in bed.

  He supposed he should have thought Wachiwi a triumph, quite literally: a heroic battle won, prestige earned with the elders, and to the victors went the spoils. He ought to be feeling contented, even rejuvenated, but he did not. Instead he felt a nagging guilt he would not name, not the usual one of blood and soldiers and death but something more subtle.

  Half awake in the early dawn, he felt Wachiwi’s hands moving over him again. This time he yielded all restraint and became animalistic with her, hard and rough, and this time her happy squeals must have carried halfway across the Great Plaza, but Marcellinus gave no thought to that in the desperation of the moment, and it was only after their third and final coupling that he felt truly spent.

  In the afterglow, Wachiwi rolled him over and kissed him long and hard, scoring his thigh with her nails, drawing blood from his lip with her teeth. For a while, he let her have her way.

  He got out of bed. Wachiwi lay there watching him. She said something in a low voice, eyes slitted, hands moving over her own body. It sounded dirty, and back came Marcellinus’s internal censor, back came the guilt. This was not what he had expected, not, despite the physical satiation, what he had wanted at all.

  And that was the day Sisika returned.

  They dressed in silence. Marcellinus was starving. “We should go separa
tely,” he said. “To breakfast. Uh …” He resorted to hand-talk. Breakfast, first me, then you. Gaius, go, Wachiwi stay. Then, after: Wachiwi go. Yes?

  She laughed at him, and they went together.

  Breakfast that day was quiet, just Nahimana and Takoda, Wachiwi and Marcellinus. The Roman would not have given much credence to Takoda’s perceptiveness, but to his chagrin the young warrior picked up on the new development within a few moments and could barely eat for the grin on his face.

  “I go,” Wachiwi said. “Wash, grind corn.” She gave Marcellinus a smoldering stare and, as she went, bopped Takoda lightly on the arm.

  “Did Wanageeska sleep well?” Takoda asked as soon as she was out of earshot, and grinned even more widely.

  Nahimana grunted. “Why Gaius choose Wachiwi?”

  “I did not choose,” he admitted.

  Her eyebrows went up. “No? Then Gaius is a fool.”

  “Wachiwi is your woman now?” Takoda broke in.

  Marcellinus did not know how to answer. It was hardly his intention to take a wife, but he could neither deny nor reject what had just happened. He felt an almost inconceivable awkwardness. Once again he had acted rashly, with no facts at his disposal, this time literally in the dark. How old would he have to be before he learned common sense? “I don’t know.”

  “You are without eyes,” Nahimana said. “Without ears and foolish. But this,” she continued, lewdly swinging her hand between her legs, miming something dangling there. “This, Gaius has.”

  Marcellinus cringed, mortified.

  When he arrived at the plaza, Akecheta was running sword drills with a couple of dozen warriors. Marcellinus was happy to see some new faces in the Cohort, less cheered to see that Takoda was there before him, still smirking. Three other people had made kissing noises behind his back as he had walked there from his hut. Marcellinus had not deigned to give the culprits the satisfaction of reacting.

  Akecheta might be a journeyman where discipline was concerned, but he certainly had the positions of the sword down cold. Marcellinus let him carry on and himself walked up and down the lines of Cahokians, adjusting a grip on the hilt here and the position of the feet there and greeting the new arrivals. It was still early in the morning, and no one’s enthusiasm was yet getting the better of him. That was good.

  Tahtay showed up, chewing on a corncob and looking worried. “Be happy,” Marcellinus said, waving at the sweating ranks of gladius-wielding warriors. “No one dead here yet.”

  “Wachiwi?” the boy demanded.

  “What?”

  “The women are saying. You and her.”

  “No one has anything better to think about?” Marcellinus said in some desperation. “We beat Iroqua! We made Cahokia safer! But more work to do. And people say to me, Wachiwi?”

  Tahtay grimaced, shrugged.

  “You should learn sword, get strong,” Marcellinus said. “You are a warrior now. Get a sword. I give you numbers.”

  Tahtay moved closer. “What was it like? Wachiwi is … good to look at.”

  “Juno’s sake, Tahtay! What are you, eleven winters? We’ll talk when you’re older. Go and fetch a sword.”

  “Near twelve winters!”

  After another hour Akecheta called a halt. Even in the chilly air the men were sweating. As they took swigs from their water skins, the centurion walked over to Marcellinus. “So, sir. Good sleep?”

  He grinned widely.

  Marcellinus raised his eyes to the heavens.

  At exactly that moment, a Wakinyan soared into the air off the top of the Great Mound. An urgent babble of conversation instantly broke out. Many of his warriors stood, their water skins falling to the hard ground unnoticed.

  “Merda,” Marcellinus said. “Akecheta, what? Is it an Iroqua attack?”

  Even now, surrounded by Cahokians, the sight of the giant Thunderbird sent a stab of fear down Marcellinus’s spine and through his heart. For a moment he almost felt sorry for any Haudenosaunee army that might be foolish enough to assault the city. But as he watched, colored streamers unfurled behind the Wakinyan. At the same moment the cheering and jubilation of its twelve pilots reached him. This was not a battle but a celebration.

  Launching at a run, a half dozen Catanwakuwa drifted from the top of the mound and followed in the Thunderbird’s wake, flying in a credible straight-line formation. With only the small cooking fires of a Cahokia morning to provide hot updrafts their range could be only a few hundred feet. But that was apparently sufficient for today.

  Following his warriors, Marcellinus jogged to the south edge of the Great Plaza. From there they could see a dozen Cahokian braves walking into the city. From their posture it was obvious they had walked a long way, perhaps all night, but they did not have the look of men who had been in a fight. They were proud, weary, happy to be home.

  As they neared, Marcellinus saw that they formed an honor guard around a small figure with a falcon mask draped casually around her neck.

  The Hawk wings spilled air and landed gracefully around the woman and her party of braves, stepping into the group to walk with her. The Thunderbird roared by overhead again only a couple of hundred feet up. Marcellinus ducked, still daunted by it, but it passed quickly beyond Cahokian city limits and came down to earth.

  People cheered. Everyone was smiling, including Tahtay.

  “Tahtay!” Marcellinus pointed accusingly at the woman at the center of the warrior escort. “That is Sisika! Why you pretend to not know Sisika?”

  “Huh?” said Tahtay. “What is Sisika? She? That is not what she called.”

  Sisika had given Marcellinus a false name. The very first thing she had told the Romans had been a lie. Marcellinus felt oddly indignant.

  Sisika’s honor guard of braves and birdmen took her to the gates of the palisade, which swung open for her on cue. She walked on, alone, up the cedar steps of the Great Mound.

  At the top stood a tall brave in a headdress and a colored tunic. Great Sun Man was there to greet his, what, “daughter of chieftain”? Or had that been a lie or a misunderstanding as well?

  It seemed like the whole city was cheering. In terms of the Cahokian response, Sisika’s arrival outstripped the return of Great Sun Man’s triumphant war party the day before. She was clearly an important and popular person.

  Marcellinus couldn’t even pick out the braves of his First Cahokian Cohort anymore in the crowd. He guessed today had just become a holiday.

  Well, all right, then. After his conversations with the elders the previous night, Marcellinus had a lot of questions for Tahtay.

  His heart lurched. Kimimela was running toward him, but she looked terrified, as close to panic as he had ever seen her.

  From behind Marcellinus two men appeared, tattooed in the warrior fashion. Their heads were shaved except for a broad crest of hair, and they carried Roman pila. Even on this cold and breezy morning they were naked to the waist.

  “Wanageeska,” one of them said, and took his arm roughly. “Come.” The second warrior stepped in on his other side. Their intentions were very clear.

  Kimimela’s mouth twisted. “Oh, shit …!”

  “Kimi!” Marcellinus said. “Bad words!”

  The warriors hustled him away.

  Marcellinus was not taken in through the front gate of the palisade; his was not to be a public welcome. The warriors pushed him through a narrow side gate under a firing platform and made him clamber the eastern face of the Great Mound in ignominy. The autumn sun was a pale echo of its summer intensity, but nonetheless Marcellinus dripped with the acrid sweat of exertion and fear by the time he made it to the top. Despite having fought two battles for the Cahokians against the Iroqua, he could tell that this meeting would not be a happy occasion.

  The longhouse was two stories tall and wider than a granary. As he got there, the six birdmen from Sisika’s entourage arrived, too, and carried their wings into the building. Behind them walked Kimimela, her eyes downcast, visibly shaking wit
h fear.

  Not a promising sign.

  Marcellinus took a deep breath. Just a few months ago he had been quite ready for these people to slit his throat in sacrifice or inflict whatever other dire and final tortures they could devise. Unwilling to die at his own hand, he had been prepared to perish at theirs. But since then, that Stoic frame of mind had evaporated, and now he felt only an aching sense of disappointment.

  Would they really take him to war and then into their sweat lodge only to slay him the next morning? Well, they might. Perhaps they had done him honor after the battles only to drain his blood now. Perhaps they felt they had learned all they needed from him. Marcellinus still knew almost nothing of their traditions. Anything could happen.

  Maybe Wachiwi had been their final gift to him before his slaughter. Or maybe he was to die for polluting a Cahokian woman.

  More likely, of course, something had definitively changed with the return of Sisika to Cahokia.

  They made Marcellinus wait for quite a while, far enough from the plateau’s edge that he could not see down into the Great Plaza. He wondered where Tahtay was and whether the boy knew what was going on. If Tahtay were here in Kimimela’s place, Marcellinus would have asked for his insight. But Kimi stood forlorn and trembling twenty feet away, lost within herself, and Marcellinus did not disturb her.

  He heard raised voices from inside the longhouse. A man and a woman were arguing in fast-paced Cahokian. Now Kimimela raised her head to look at Marcellinus, wide-eyed.

  Before he could ask her what she had heard, Sisika and Great Sun Man came out to confront him.

  Sisika’s presence brought a further chill to the heavy autumn air. By her side even Great Sun Man appeared muted.

  Marcellinus stood patiently among his bodyguard of braves. Whatever happened, he would not show fear. The last few weeks rolled back for Marcellinus. He was no longer merely himself; once again, he was the Imperium’s sole representative. If these people were to know only one Roman, let him be a man of dignitas.