by Alan Smale
“Yes,” Kanuna said. Howahkan shrugged. Matoshka blew a gout of smoke over their heads, passed the pipe, and cleared his throat.
They didn’t get it. Marcellinus leaned forward. “What do you do when you want to talk to your neighbors down the Mizipi?”
“We visit them. Or they come here and feast. Cahokia provides to all.”
“Yes, yes. So my words are these: to make a league between five tribes—five!—the Iroqua must meet and talk and smoke. And afterward they must feast.”
“Yes.”
“So where do they feast?”
“Ah,” said Great Sun Man, but Kanuna had figured it out ahead of him and was already saying, “Powwow.”
Ogleesha was offering him the pipe. Marcellinus took it but did not put it to his lips. “Yes, yes? What is powwow?”
A big meeting, they told him.
“All the tribes, in one place?”
“Of course.”
Like the folkmoots of the Germanics and the Celts. Marcellinus sat back.
“But, but …” Great Sun Man poured water over the hearthstones, which sent up a sizzling gout of steam. Boiling water splashed Marcellinus’s forearm, but he managed to keep still. He didn’t want to flinch in front of these grand old men of Cahokia. “But Haudenosaunee powwow is deep inside Iroqua land. No Cahokian army could go so far.”
“An army can march a very long way. If it’s the right army.” Marcellinus grinned at them narrowly. Some things he would be proud of to his dying day, and even the Cahokians could not take that away from him.
But Great Sun Man was right. It would be impossible for a Cahokian army to march deep into enemy territory, living off the land and building a castra every night. They could not make roads as they went and would not enslave men to haul the giant wagons such a trip would take. To do all that, not only would Marcellinus have to teach them Roman methods, they would have to become Roman. That wasn’t going to happen in anyone’s lifetime.
Well, then, time to put that aside and focus on something more likely.
They needed to protect and support the other cities down the Mizipi. They needed much quicker communications. And they needed all those things while remaining Cahokians and not magically turning into Romans.
As with all things, he would have to start at home.
“Iroqua will come soon,” said Marcellinus. “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. But soon.”
Great Sun Man looked around him as if he expected to find a Senecan brave reaching for his scalp that very moment. “Yes?”
They stood on the shore of the Mizipi. Cahokian birch-bark canoes and dugouts navigated carefully around the mudflats. It was the first quarter of the Grass Moon, and the river was already swollen with melt-water and much higher than usual. In days it would flood the low-lying areas of Cahokia; the first market would be held the following week, and the Spring Planting Festival two weeks after that. Ducks and other waterfowl had recently returned and now quacked cheerfully in the shallows. The air was tart with smoke from a controlled burn of the scrub in the copses to the south of the city.
“Iroqua? You know this how?”
“Because it’s what I would do.” Marcellinus sketched it out to Tahtay and then walked to a canoe while Tahtay explained it to his father.
At Woshakee, the Cahokians had hit the Iroqua squarely in almost the last week the rivers had been navigable. They had struck the last blow of the season, and the Haudenosaunee League would have spent the whole winter angry about it. They would want to make redress and cause some mourning of their own as soon as they possibly could.
Also, if they had been able to scout the Cahokians at all over the winter, the Iroqua would know about the much larger stockade that even now was growing up around the city. But it would take several more months and thousands more logs to complete, and the Iroqua would be eager to burn the wall that already existed before it was long enough to form a substantial defense.
Great Sun Man and Tahtay joined him at the canoe. “And we must keep their traders away,” Marcellinus added.
“Traders?”
Despite the war, the Cahokians still traded with the Iroqua. They traded with everyone. They traded with the Hurons of the Great Lakes to the north for the copper they used for their ceremonial face masks and their ear spools and necklaces and now for Marcellinus’s bronze. They traded with tribes all the way down the Mizipi as far as the giant river delta where the river flowed into the sea; here they got the conchs and other seashells they prized for necklaces, gorgets, headpieces, and masks. They imported dried fish from the north and east to supplement the trout, catfish, and carp they pulled out of the Mizipi, furs of beaver and fox from the north, and from the western grasslands they obtained more furs and meat and horn culled by the tribes there from the large buffalo-like creatures that apparently abounded, creatures Marcellinus had yet to see with his own eyes.
Even as Marcellinus spoke the words, he knew it would be impractical to keep the Iroqua traders out. Yes, sure as eggs, some of them would be taking intelligence back to the Iroqua war chiefs. But Cahokia thrived on commerce, and no one would be willing to inhibit trade.
He relented, but only a little. “We must keep outlanders from the kilns and the foundry, at least. And the armory as well. Just as you already keep them from the Longhouses of the Wings and Thunderbirds. I have spoken.”
“All right,” said Great Sun Man, which from him could mean either “yes, absolutely” or “yes, yes, I heard you.” Marcellinus made a mental note to mention this to Kanuna and Matoshka and Howahkan and the other elders who might support him on this, as well as the warriors and boys who jealously preserved their own status in running the forge and the brick kilns. It would not hurt to tell Sintikala and Ojinjintka, the chiefs of the Hawk and Thunderbird clans, either.
“And the steel weapons,” he continued. “In the autumn I caught Cahokians trading away Roman breastplates and Roman daggers. We spoke of this.” In fact, Great Sun Man had not taken the matter as seriously as Marcellinus would have liked, and Marcellinus had ended up raising his voice to the war chief in an attempt to make him fully understand the danger. The canny old warrior Matoshka, at least, had stood at his shoulder on this issue. “Now, as the rivers open again, just yesterday I found Cahokian women gathering Roman helmets and speaking of trading them at the market next week.”
“But we must make trade for Cahokia,” Great Sun Man said.
“Not with steel,” Marcellinus insisted. “Never with steel, whether it be pilum or pugio or shield or breastplate or helmet. We must trade none of these things.”
Tahtay cleared his throat. “Father. Think of an Iroqua war party raiding one of our upland homesteads with Roman helmets to protect them against the clubs of our Cahokian farmers. A Caiuga wearing a helmet cannot be scalped. Wanageeska is wise about this.”
“Steel is our major advantage,” Marcellinus said remorselessly. “The Iroqua do not have iron and steel. We must guard our advantages jealously.”
“Some of the weapons already go to other cities,” said Great Sun Man. “Our mound-builder cities upriver and downriver. To protect against Iroqua.”
“Yes,” Marcellinus said. “But we agreed to send those weapons after much talk in the sweat lodge. And those cities must account for those weapons and produce them when we ask.”
“All right,” said Great Sun Man readily, knowing as well as Marcellinus did that such an accounting would never occur.
“Kimimela,” Tahtay said, and pointed.
Marcellinus knew something was up as soon as he saw how Kimimela was walking. These days, determined to seem grown up and preserve her dignitas, she was having difficulty not skipping with excitement.
“So, what?” he said as the girl arrived.
“Sintikala, she tell me to tell you. Today you fly.”
Marcellinus glanced upward involuntarily. Puffy clouds hung lazily in the sky. The last snows had melted away several weeks since. But Marcellinus had been by
the sacred Plaza of the Cedars as often as anyone else, and he knew what the date was, at least in Cahokian terms. “What? No. Spring Planting Festival weeks away, tomorrow-and-tomorrow.”
Kimimela shrugged and grinned. “Sintikala,” she said, as if that were the only justification needed.
“But today we will cast an arm. I mean, at the foundry we make a long metal pole, like a bow. I must be there to watch over the metalworkers …”
“Sintikala say you come now. She say we must be ready, maybe tomorrow Iroqua come. Gaius must know how we fly.”
As the hurry-up logic matched Marcellinus’s own, it was inescapable. “Damn.”
“Unless you frightened, of course,” the girl said innocently.
Marcellinus wiped the sweat off his forehead. “You’re your mother’s daughter, you know that?”
“Yes,” Kimimela agreed. “Come now?”
“We shoot you,” said Sintikala. “In air.” She pointed upward at forty-five degrees and made a whooshing sound. “Shoot you up, you fly down. Big brave Roman falcon warrior birdman. Yes?”
She was teasing him. It was still an unusual feeling. Marcellinus tried to take it in stride. “Hawk? No. Maybe tomorrow. But Wakinyan, yes, today. Why not?”
“Why not?” she mimicked in Latin, and walked with him around the base of the Great Mound.
The doors were already off the longhouse, and a Thunderbird had been dragged out of it almost as far as the rail. Ten warriors still wrestled the heavy launch machinery into place, and the launch cable had not yet been put under tension. Akecheta and Mahkah, of all people, were helping to lug the mechanism out, grinning. A couple of falcon warriors ran to help them install it in place at the end of the launcher. Nearby, four Thunderbird warriors pulled on flying tunics and sang their preflight rituals. Ropes and cables were strewn all across the ground.
Birds were singing as well, and much too cheerfully. “They do not look ready. Maybe I come back later,” Marcellinus said.
Sintikala took his arm. Marcellinus jumped as her fingertips touched his skin, but the chief of the Catanwakuwa clan was all business. She ushered him through the door of the Longhouse of the Thunderbirds to the back wall, where more flying suits hung. “Choose,” she said.
“You have a mask that covers my eyes?”
“Ha ha,” she said. “No mask for you. Battle mask, the armor for face: that has to be …”
“Earned,” Kimimela said from the doorway behind them. “Earned in fight. Fight in air. Not yet for Wanageeska.”
“Oh,” Marcellinus said. “Are you coming up into the air with us, Kimi?”
“Me?” Kimimela shivered in mock fear and made big eyes. “You joke? Not me!”
“But you’re a butterfly!”
“Butterfly fly near ground,” she said.
Sintikala looked at her daughter appraisingly and said something in Cahokian that Marcellinus didn’t catch.
“What?” Kimi asked.
“You my daughter,” Sintikala said to Kimimela in Latin with a sideways glance at Marcellinus. “You want to fly, you fly. Go with Roman. Fly high in air.”
Kimimela’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes lit up. “Yes? Merda!” She clapped her hands.
“Kimi!”
Sintikala looked at him quizzically. “Merda means what?”
“It means she’s happy about it,” Marcellinus said diplomatically. “Happier than I am, anyway …”
They fastened the Thunderbird to the rails. Then they fastened the pilots to the Thunderbird.
Marcellinus watched as they lifted Kimimela into place and strapped her to the underside of the wing. They had no leather tunic small enough for her, so she wore her everyday tunic with extra ties at the wrists, waist, and ankles to keep them from billowing in the air. Sintikala tied her daughter under the broad strut of the Wakinyan herself. Marcellinus tried to console himself that if this flight were truly dangerous Sintikala would hardly put Kimimela at risk, but the knowledge did not reassure him.
Then it was his turn. Smiling broadly, three braves hoisted him bodily off his feet and latched him up under the wing on the right-hand side. Cinching broad leather straps across his chest and waist, they pushed his feet up under a retaining bar that held him firmly at the ankle. Now Marcellinus dangled prone, a few inches below the wing, three feet off the ground; a thin wooden bar hung down in front of his chest not for his safety but so that he could help steer the bird. His flight tunic was uncomfortably hot and tight and already chafed him at the neck. What would it be like to wear such a thing in the heat of summer?
Fully loaded, a Wakinyan held twelve people. Today only ten would fly, so there was an empty harness beside Marcellinus, closest to the wingtip, and a similar gap on the opposite side of the bird beyond the warriors. They had lightly loaded four of the bomb sacks before fastening the pilots in place for balance, and the nearest sack partly blocked his view of the opposite men hanging below the left wing.
The Thunderbird rocked as the other warriors were installed into position. The crewing of the bird was happening a little too fast for Marcellinus’s comfort; a steadier pace would have helped him come to terms with being strapped under a wing that was about to be thrown into the air.
Into the air … Even now it seemed impossible.
Kimimela squeaked with excitement. She was on the same wing as Marcellinus, slightly forward of his position. She rocked in her harness, shaking the whole Thunderbird and earning her a terse “Be still!” from the lead pilot, who was right then checking his own straps in the front left harness position. Kimimela aside, Marcellinus knew none of the Thunderbird’s crew: braves all, broad and muscular, tattooed and painted.
Sintikala ducked under the bird one final time, checking each harness and footrest and slapping each of the crew on the shoulder as she passed. She treated her daughter and Marcellinus in the same casual way.
The Thunderbird jolted. Marcellinus almost cried out, but the support crew was merely tugging the nose of the craft upward and attaching the twin ropes to hooks near the prow. What would happen to the bird if those ropes failed to disconnect after launch, as the bird passed over the top of the ramp? Yet again, Marcellinus realized he should have invested a little more time in advance study and preparation.
The bird slid forward and up to match the angle of the mound. Marcellinus now dangled directly over the torsion device that would launch the craft. Its tightly twisted cable creaked. Behind him he saw a row of legs; a line of men were pulling a rope taut. Steadying the craft? Auxiliary power?
If a signal passed between the ground crew and the pilots, Marcellinus missed it. He had no warning. One moment he was facing the ground with the first new light green grasses of spring waving in the breeze beneath him, his nerves stretched almost as taut as the ropes and cables. The next instant the world was in furious motion.
Marcellinus cried out as the grass blurred and the wooden blocks of the launch mechanism vanished. The ground skidded by, jarringly close to his face. A roar filled his ears: friction against the wooden ramp, the howl of the ropes, the air beating against his ears, the whoops of the warriors around him.
Impossibly close, the Longhouse of the Wings flashed in front of his eyes and was gone before he could even react.
The ground disappeared. The din vanished. He looked down at a quilt of green and gold, bumps and ants. Somehow he had been plucked out of reality altogether.
His breath caught. He was aloft, dizzyingly high, dangling beneath a Thunderbird.
Marcellinus was flying.
The triumphant war cry that erupted from him startled his copilots and rocked the whole Wakinyan.
He had feared throwing up. He had feared panicking, or losing consciousness, or falling out of his harness, or losing his mind, or doing something foolish that would send the Thunderbird plummeting to the ground. Nothing of the kind had happened. A huge serenity filled him.
Cahokia was laid out beneath him like a map. The shape of the city, formerly
guessed from walking the streets and surveying it, was now clear: a sprawling mass with irregular curving edges and three clusters of huts marking the population centers. The Master Mound was behind him and to the left, with the giant square of the Great Plaza laid out before it. To his right was western Cahokia and another concentration of houses around a longhouse he had never come across on his earthly ramblings. The organization of the smaller mounds in the city was also apparent from this height: hundreds of them, arranged sometimes in lines or groups but more often scattered at random. The Mizipi curved away to the south, the Cahokia Creek almost invisible behind him, and as the pilots shoved their bars to the right and leaned left, the Thunderbird veered leftward and brought the Oyo River into his view on the far horizon.
Kimimela’s voice floated across to him. “Gaius? Good?”
“Spectacular. Incredible. Very, very good.” His tone would have to convey the less familiar words. There could be no hand-talk up here.
The Wakinyan banked, continuing its graceful turn. Marcellinus was chagrined to see how small the Big Warm House looked from this height. For a moment he had trouble picking out the kilns and his foundry, but when the Thunderbird passed over them, there was no mistaking its upward lurch as the bird rode the rising thermals from his early attempts at industry.
If Marcellinus could only build enough foundries, a Thunderbird might stay aloft over Cahokia forever. But today, in the cool of springtime, they had already suffered a considerable loss of height in just a single arc over the city.
With this, Marcellinus began to pay more attention to the other pilots and to imitate their actions and body positioning more closely. After all, he was up here to learn.
The lower the Wakinyan descended, the more precarious his position seemed. At altitude Marcellinus had felt invulnerable, as if he were gazing out of the window of an impossibly high tower. Swooping lower over the houses of Cahokia, back toward the plaza, brought home to him how fast the bird was traveling and how exposed they were, dangling beneath it like grapes on a vine. The slightest miscalculation would smear them across the ground.