Clash of Eagles

by Alan Smale

  With some difficulty Marcellinus had persuaded the elders to send the squads of Cahokian lumberjacks north for their trees, to chop them down far from home and float the trunks down the river to Cahokia and so preserve the forests closer to home that sheltered their deer and could be farmed for nuts and forest fruits.

  At least, he thought he’d persuaded them. Time would tell.

  His Cahokian language skills were now quite functional. At his age he would never be fluent, but with his spoken Cahokian augmented with hand-talk he could make himself understood. For their part, Tahtay, Kimimela, and Enopay spoke excellent Latin, and Enopay could write and figure in Latin better than most quartermasters Marcellinus had known during his twenty-five years in the Roman army. Nahimana’s Latin was pidgin but passable, and Latin words were even weaseling their way into Cahokian, with the native tongue having no equivalents for the military, metallurgical, and diplomatic terms that were becoming current. In fact, the First Cahokian Cohort responded to orders given in Latin more readily than they did to those given in Cahokian.

  It was, of course, not mere vanity that made Marcellinus drill Latin words into as many Cahokian heads as possible. When Romans came again to the shores of Nova Hesperia, the more Cahokians that could speak to them, the better.

  The worst-case scenario—all-out war between a new Roman army and a Cahokia formidably equipped with Roman steel as well as native air power—had to be avoided at all costs, even at the cost of Marcellinus’s life and liberty.

  And to achieve that, he needed to start his preparations in earnest.

  “Sintikala, something is not right.”

  Twenty feet above him in the Longhouse of the Wings, Sintikala sat cross-legged on a narrow rafter with what looked like a bone needle and sinew, mending a tear in the fabric of one of the Hawk wings. “And,” he added, “if it would help, I could make you a steel needle much thinner than that.”

  She squinted down past the wing. “What is not right?”

  “You. And the way we first met, when I was still a Roman Praetor.”

  Sintikala grinned tautly. “All of that was not right. Perhaps if I had killed you then?”

  Marcellinus did not rise to the bait. In fact, he did the reverse, which was to pull up one of the trestles and sit. “My guards would have killed you first. And even if you had managed it, Lucius Domitius Corbulo would just have taken charge. The war between Cahokians and Romans would still have happened.”

  “Oh, well.”

  “But tell me this: Back then, when we first met, how did you get to my army so quickly? Where did you really go afterward?”

  “Only today you think of this?”

  “You asked me to help you make the wings better. I have done a little, but I can’t do any more till I know how good the wings are now.”

  Sintikala tied off her sewing and pulled a Roman pugio from her belt to trim the end of the sinew. Without using her hands, she swiveled on the narrow rafter. She was uncannily comfortable with heights.

  “The Catanwakuwa are very good. Light. Smooth. It is the Wakinyan that,” she said with a gesture, “pull on the air, come down fast. You help us now with Wakinyan.”

  She was changing the subject, and both of them knew it.

  Bluntly, Marcellinus said, “One day, more Romans will come. Another legion. We must plan what we will do when that happens.”

  “We?” Their eyes met.

  “Sintikala, how far can you fly?”

  “Today? Yesterday? Winter? Summer?”

  “My legion landed on the shores of the Mare Chesapica. Made castra. Figured out what we were about. We got ready, and we left. And in that time, less than a moon, word of our coming got all the way here to Cahokia, and then you got almost all the way across to the Chesapica.

  “And later, here on the mound, you told me that the Romans are gone, all dead. Which means that once again you went to Chesapica and came back here in what, a few weeks? I am not a fool, Sintikala.”

  She smiled. “But slow in the head.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I will show you. We go outside? I draw it for you. Then sometime, I show you much better.”

  And making Marcellinus leap half out of his skin, Sintikala dropped out of the rafters to the floor in front of him, a fall that might have at least twisted the ankle of a normal person.

  “Yes,” he said, a little breathless. “All right.”

  It had rained that morning, which helped. Sintikala’s fingers moved adeptly in the mud, drawing a long, thin snake. She placed a stone by the side of the serpent. “This, Mizipi. The stone is this mound, here in Cahokia.”

  She leaned toward him and scribbled in the mud, another long line roughly parallel to the Mizipi, with a small flat loop in it. “This is the big water, and here is Chesapica. Where you sit, this is east, the direction of the sun in the morning. You and your army walk here.” She sculpted a mountain chain in the mud that ran from northeast to southwest. “Over Appalachia—but see up here? It is easier to cross the mountains here than where you walked. Anyway. Your army came to us this way, across flat, to river flood lands.” She scrawled another serpent. “Here is Oyo River, which you cross here, in thinner place.”

  She drew more, filling out the map. “Much far down here, there is also big water. Market, where Mizipi goes out into big wide water.” And farther up. “Here are Great Lakes. All this is Iroqua, to here and to here. If you march souther, you hit Oyo where it is wider, or walk along it. If you march norther, you find more Iroqua.”

  “And so?”

  “Iroqua told us your army come.”

  Marcellinus had not expected that. “Iroqua?”

  “Of course. Why not?”

  “Oh, perhaps because you’re slaughtering each other in the Mourning War?”

  “But also we trade. Furs, hoes, copper, shells. Gaius, it is their land, it is our land. It is not your land. Of course they tell us. Iroqua runners come under pipe of peace, tell us of you.”

  “All right.”

  “And then I go to see your army.”

  “By Mizipi and Oyo,” Marcellinus said, taunting her.

  She snorted. “Water is for ducks.”

  “And so you flew.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I flew there.”

  In spring and summer, the sun heated the ground and made the air rise. The wings could ride higher up into the sky on the heated air. This, of course, was old news; even on the battlefield Marcellinus had seen the Hawk wings soar up from the burning huts, and now he watched them daily, spiraling for height by using the hot invisible column from the brick kilns and, when Sintikala wasn’t looking, the steelworks. However, he had never imagined that a Hawk could rise so high and stay up so long using just the heat from the ground.

  “Only on some days,” Sintikala said. “Days of good, with little white sky fluff?”

  “Clouds.”

  “Yes. And good winds that go where I want to go.”

  Sintikala had waited more than a week for conditions to be right, and then she had launched in early morning and flown east. By late afternoon she had made it almost all the way to her goal, the Black Mountain in Appalachia, but had lost too much height and came to ground. Two days later, after carrying her wing halfway up the Black Mountain, she launched again; with the wind blowing onto the face of the mountain, she had risen up through the air, looping around and around, spiraling higher. She had followed the Appalachia north, using only the lift from the ridge, and had then found another set of thermal upwellings that had carried her a few dozen miles farther eastward. There her luck had run out a second time, but she had landed just a few days’ march west of Marcellinus’s army. After she dismantled and hid the Hawk wing, all she had to do was move into the Legion’s path and wait.

  “So far?” he said, still shocked. “To Appalachia in just one day?”

  “Of course,” she said. “One other day last year, I never come down until sunset. Only up. Some day is good, others not.
”

  “But still …”

  “Gaius, I fly. It is all I do. I am clan chief. And so was my mother. All my life I do this. In this one thing, Sintikala is big clever. Other Hawks not as much. I fly higher. No one flies more far than me.”

  “I bow to you,” Marcellinus said, and did so.

  “And then,” she said with a sigh, “sometimes I have to walk back.”

  “I’m working on that. We will talk of it. But … then, after we met, you walked back through Iroqua, alone?”

  “The Iroqua know me. And I am not warrior.”

  “What?”

  “If I carry no weapon, I am not warrior. If I am not warrior, I am safe.”

  Marcellinus shook his head, not comprehending.

  “Yes. Trails are safe for traders, people who travel. To all people who are not warrior. People can walk everywhere in the land. A man or a woman with a child, all are safe if not carry weapons.”

  Traveling unarmed through barbarian territory was an odd definition of “safe.” But Sintikala was the living proof, and so were the merchants who traveled considerable distances to the Cahokian markets or passed through on their way north or south. “All right. So you spoke Algon-Quian and hand-talked with Fuscus. And after I freed you, you warned the Algon-Quian and Iroqua villages in our path. And they avoided us, every single one of them, until the Iroqua warriors were ready to attack us. And you passed safely through all those Iroqua villages without harm.”

  “Yes.”

  “And so my plan worked.”

  “Big clever plan. Brave Roman.”

  “Yes, yes … But even so. And, of course, the Iroqua were happy to let us march on and fight you instead of them.”

  “We wanted you to go past us, too. You said you would. Pass through to west, you said. But once you saw corn, once you saw Cahokia, we knew you and your hungry men would not pass through. Not leave us in peace. Not ever.”

  Far above their heads, heavy clouds were gathering. Marcellinus might not have long before their conversation—and their map—was washed away.

  “Sintikala, it is now the Flower Moon. For all I know, a Roman legion could already be ashore at Mare Chesapica, in Powhatani lands, or anywhere along the coast to the north or south.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You think so?”

  “I don’t know. But today-now, this is about the very soonest it could be done, if news of my defeat reached Roma quickly.”

  “And what does Great Sun Man say?”

  “Great Sun Man cares only about the Iroqua. He fights only the enemy he can see. He cannot see the Romans yet. They may not come this year or even next, so he does not worry about them. But we must. We need to make a plan.”

  She nodded soberly. Once again, her perspective was different from Great Sun Man’s; she had seen a Roman legion at the peak of its power and efficiency. Great Sun Man had only seen one burned, wrecked, destroyed.

  Marcellinus looked at the crude map in the mud again. It had taken his legion weeks to march from Appalachia to Cahokia, and Sintikala had done it in a day? It still boggled his mind. “Well, then. When they land, I must know as quickly as possible. And then I need to get a message to their Praetor, their commander. I will go to them myself as soon as I can, but—”

  “You, through Iroqua lands?”

  “Yes, but … you can fly over those lands. When the Romans come, we must get word to them, perhaps a written message, with the finger-talk, words in Latin on bark?”

  “You would send me again to a Roman Praetor?” she said, her face dark. “Into the middle of their army of men?”

  “With a letter from me …” Marcellinus stopped, faintly appalled that he could have suggested such a thing. Send Sintikala into the maw of Roma again, alone?

  “A message for the new Romans,” she said slowly. “And what would you say to them?”

  “That the 33rd Legion was defeated but that I am alive and have allied with you in peace and am … helping you. That war is not necessary. Perhaps that Cahokia will feed the Roman troops and help them on past Cahokia and beyond? We can talk with the elders, agree on what to say. But perhaps we would send someone else. Another Hawk. Not you.”

  Sintikala put her head on one side. “Now you think I am afraid?”

  “I think I am afraid,” he said.

  “Other Hawk clan fliers could not fly half the way to Appalachia.”

  From Great Sun Man, it might have been boasting. From Sintikala, Marcellinus accepted it as simple fact. “Perhaps you fly over them and drop the letter.” An aerial messenger would certainly get the attention of any Roman commander.

  “Or perhaps if you ask me instead of telling me.”

  Sintikala was sitting very still. Marcellinus knew her well enough by now to recognize the danger he was in if he said one more foolish thing. “I am sorry. What should we do?”

  The Hawk chief brooded, stabbing her index finger in the mud to make an irregular line of holes linking the coast and Cahokia. He thought she was merely doodling until she spoke.

  “The Romans will bring their big ships to where you landed. They will want to use the bay, and the road you made. They will not land far north or far south and do extra work. One place.” She stabbed the Mare Chesapica with her finger. “And so we send words now to the Powhatan or the Nanticoke, and when Romans come, the tribe chief can give it to the Romans.”

  “Ah,” Marcellinus said. The coastal chiefs would have no love for Marcellinus, but it was certainly in their interest to help if it would prevent further bloodshed.

  “Then smoke and runners.” She indicated the line of holes. “These are really hills. We put firewood on the hills, and when the Romans come, we make signals. Words in smoke. In these other places we will need runners instead. And so we will know within two hands of days when the Romans arrive and how many, and they will get your finger-talk letter as soon as the local people can take it. You, we can take along the Oyo River in canoes much quicker than you can walk, with some of your First Cahokian warriors so the Romans will see you are still a leader of men.”

  “I see I’m not the only one who has been thinking about this,” he said, and bowed to her again.

  Sintikala met his eye. “And then?”

  “Then what?”

  “You and your Roman Praetor brother?”

  “We talk. Sintikala, I will not betray you. I will not betray Cahokia. I swear this.”

  She grunted. “But perhaps he will not want to hear what you want to tell him.”

  Marcellinus nodded. That was indisputable.

  With extreme good luck, this new incoming Praetor would be a calm and rational man—perhaps even someone Marcellinus already knew—who would accept him as the incumbent legate over the mound-builder cities. He would take the freely offered Cahokian provisions to resupply his legions, maintain discipline in his ranks, and march past the Mizipi and into the west to continue the task of opening up Nova Hesperia.

  And ideally the Cahokians themselves would embrace the benevolent hegemony of Roma and even tolerate Roman taxation in return for the advantages in goods, trade, education, and wealth the alliance would bring. They certainly had shown no lack of enthusiasm for the changes in their fortunes so far.

  Reality could not possibly be so tidy; it never was. More likely, the incoming Praetor would summarily arrest and execute Marcellinus for losing his Legion and fraternizing with barbarians, and that would be that. Only slightly less harshly, Marcellinus might be taken into custody, formally stripped of his military rank, and kept in chains, eventually to be shipped home in disgrace. Roma was not kind to its failures.

  Finally, Cahokia could reject Roma. Marcellinus had never raised the topic of Roman hegemony with them. Could Great Sun Man and Sintikala accept Imperium? Sometimes Marcellinus thought it might work. At other times he thought he was insane for even contemplating it.

  But already so much had changed in Cahokia. Marcellinus had to hope.

  He pointed to the map in the m
ud, to the land beyond Cahokia, on the side of the Mizipi closest to her, the western side. “So, what is here? The plains, more peoples, then what? How much farther to the edge of this land?”

  “Here are mountains.” She used both hands to raise a tall ridge of mud. “Not like Appalachia. Big. Big-big, white. Cold with snow.”

  “And then?”

  Sintikala knew that eventually there was another sea. But that was from the casual conversation of traders; she did not know how far, or what the land on the other side of the snowy mountain range might look like. She had never been so far herself.

  “A long way, then. A very long march for the Romans. They might be willing to take help rather than fight all the way.”

  Sintikala looked dubious.

  “They must,” he said.

  Marcellinus looked again at the crude muddy sketch of the giant land he was in and shook his head. So large, yet Sintikala could travel so far through it, flying high in the skies.

  Marcellinus was an army man, and his adult life had mostly been nomadic. Aside from the war party to Woshakee, he’d lived in Cahokia almost a year now.

  “I show you more.” Sintikala stood. “A better map. One day. Not today.”

  As the raindrops began to fall, Marcellinus traced the line of the Mizipi with his finger. So much here to see, and he had seen so little of it.

  “All right,” he said. “One day. Thank you.”

  “This pipe? Older than city. Before Cahokia.”

  Marcellinus took a long pull from the carved flint-clay pipe, and the acrid smoke expanded to fill his lungs. His ears buzzed, but he no longer coughed. It was midnight in the sweat lodge, and his skin already had a sheen of wood and pipe smoke. Perhaps he ought to take a speedy visit to the baths by lamplight after this.

  The pipe was carved with the figure of a man. Could it really be older than the city? Marcellinus passed it with exaggerated care just in case. “Great Sun Man, I have been thinking that I need to see more of this land. The river, other towns, villages. I should train centurions in other Mizipi cities and build forges for them so all mound-builder peoples of the Mizipi can be stronger against the Iroqua. They have their Haudenosaunee League. The Mizipi people must have a league, too.” And against Roma, he thought unwillingly, but knew better than to speak it aloud.