Clash of Eagles

by Alan Smale

  And she did.

  It was the roll of what he had taken for wing material, but it had been cured and scraped and stretched to almost parchmentlike thinness, and inscribed on it was the outline of a great continent.

  Marcellinus was looking at a giant ornate map with the coastline, mountains, lakes, and rivers of Nova Hesperia etched in black ink. “Holy Jove …!”

  She smiled, happy at his awe.

  “Charcoal and bark!” he said to her accusingly. “I have been teaching finger-talk with charcoal and bark, and here you have this?”

  Sintikala pointed to the fabric. “This is the ink we use for war tattoos, on skin that is thin like a wing. It is not hard to make. But not so easy that we can give it to children to learn finger-talk.”

  He understood, of course, but his eyes were already roving the map, devouring the detail. Here was the Mizipi, there the Oyo, and on the other side was the larger tributary of the Wemissori, a great river in itself that drained into the Mizipi after its meandering journey through the western grasslands. Towns and villages were marked with large and small circles, labeled with small pictures, as Sintikala was only now apparently learning to write.

  It was not as fine as the maps of Europa and Asia he had seen, but to a man living in the middle of a continent he could scarcely visualize, it seemed miraculous. “How?”

  “Many flights. Many traders I have spoken to. I have added much, but it was my father who began it. Others help, chiefs and warriors who have gone far and returned. Kanuna. Ojinjintka.”

  “This is much better than the shapes you made in the mud.”

  “Is it?” she said, mocking him.

  All right. “Where are the nearest Iroqua? Where is the nearest threat?”

  “Here is Chesapica, and all down here by the big water is where the Powhatan live. More speakers of Algon-Quian live far up in the northeast, beyond the Iroqua. But all this, across here … this is all Iroqua.”

  In fact, the area she gestured over was smaller than Marcellinus had supposed. To the north and east of Cahokia were a series of five, maybe six huge lakes. The Iroqua land formed a swath beneath all but the westernmost of them and fell almost entirely above an invisible line that joined Chesapica with Cahokia, the line that marked the trek of the Romans. “But we found Iroqua all along here, too,” he objected, gesturing at this middle area.

  “Yes, many peoples who speak Iroqua words, peoples related like family to the Iroqua. And below the line are the lands of the Cherokee, and the Delaware and Shawnee, friends to the Iroqua. But the five tribes of the real Iroqua, the Seneca, Caiuga, Onondaga, Onida, and Mohawk who attack us often, they are here in a line in the hills below the Great Lakes.”

  “And above the lakes?”

  “The Hurons. Another people.”

  He judged distances. “Could we ally with the Hurons against the Iroqua?”

  Sintikala shook her head. “They are not Iroqua, but again they speak the same Iroqua tongue. They do not build mounds. They band with the Iroqua and can be their strongest fighters.”

  “And north of the Huron lands?”

  Above the lakes the map had few markings, but Sintikala pointed anyway. “Many Cree here, and then Ojibwa and Cheyenne. Other tribes who like to be cold all the time.”

  Marcellinus was still awed that they could be dismissing areas the size of whole provinces in Europa in a few sentences. He turned his attention southward again. “Where is Shappa Ta’atan?”

  The blob she indicated was halfway between Cahokia and the Market of the Mud, as Great Sun Man had told him. “And Etowah?”

  Etowah was farther east of the Mizipi than he would have guessed. “And the People of the Hand?”

  Many times farther away to the southwest. “Why are they called by that name? The People of the Hand?”

  “Because of the signs they paint on rocks. They are a noble people. They do not build mounds but houses of stone, like you build the Big Warm House. But much bigger even. With, on top …” She gestured, hand on hand. “Layers.”

  “Several floors? Like a hut on top of a hut on top of a hut?”

  “Yes.”

  Tenements. Houses with many floors. Maybe the People of the Hand had independently invented brick. “They are a long way away.”

  “It is very hot there, sandy and dry. It does not rain, and plants do not grow well.”

  “Desert,” Marcellinus said. “Do they have camels? Large beasts that men can ride, tan beasts with humps?”

  “Ride? No. But above it, far up here west of Cahokia, is the big grass where the thousand-thousand buffalo are, and the warriors of the plains. Those are large beasts, but no one can ride one.”

  “And beyond?” A whole area farther to the west was inscribed onto the skin with a scalloped pattern similar to the markings that indicated Appalachia. “Mountains, there?”

  “Yes, the big mountains I have not been to.”

  “And the People of the Sun? Where are they?”

  “Under the floor,” she said.

  “What?”

  She pointed below the bottom edge of the map. “No one has been so far. But their traders come to the Market of the Mud, here, where the Mizipi comes to the big salt water. The People of the Sun are down farther, across that water. They say their mounds are of stone and that they pull men’s hearts out of their chests to give to their gods.”

  Inscribed on this deerskin was a continent equal in size to the entire Roman Imperium. Marcellinus felt very small and at the same time hugely responsible. “What a land,” he said in Latin. “What a prize.”

  “Gaius?”

  With an effort, he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. He squinted at the map more closely. “Just a moment. These are not streams, I think.” He was pointing at a series of thin lines traced across all the lands east of Cahokia, etched so fine that he had not heeded them earlier. “Streams do not cross and recross like this.”

  “Those are trails. Paths across the land.”

  One of the longest led from Cahokia almost to Chesapica; another, deep into the south. And one led straight from Cahokia northeast to the lakes and beyond. “Trails a thousand miles long? No.”

  “No,” she said caustically. “Of course, I am wrong. Every trader makes a new path every time he travels. Every chief who visits another tribe clears his own road. Every warrior makes a new warpath. Why not?”

  “Ah.”

  “They are small paths, but long. Such paths that a Roman might not even notice.”

  Marcellinus was not encouraged to learn about a system of trails through the wilderness. Again he looked up at the northeast part of the map. “The Haudenosaunee are too near. We must push them back.”

  “Push?” She laughed.

  “Well. Show me again all the mound-builder lands. Point to all the big towns.”

  She did so: broad swaths of land along the Mizipi and Oyo.

  “And the Iroqua, again. The Haudenosaunee League and those tribes that treaty with them.”

  “I am making this simple, you understand? There are very many tribes, hundreds. Very many ways of making talk. Even the Iroqua have many languages, but closer to each other than to ours. The Algon-Quian are many people. Caddo and Muskogee, then People of the Hand, perhaps also many. And as for the peoples on the Plains …”

  It was almost a dance, the way her hands moved over the map. Marcellinus tried not to be distracted by her. “Yes, all right. So …”

  He wondered whether to put into words what he was thinking. Would she be threatened by the idea?

  “Speak,” she said.

  “Sintikala, from this map? The Iroqua see us as the big danger.”

  She shook her head.

  “Yes. Cahokia, mound builders, cities that ally with you are all the way down the Mizipi, along the Oyo. And once the Iroqua had lands along the Oyo, too, that they have no longer? And so now the true Haudenosaunee lands are just these, and because of me, and Roman steel …” It all made much
more sense to him now. Because of Marcellinus, the Iroqua felt under even more threat.

  “Still, they kill us,” she said. “If they did not, what would we do? Stick your Roman swords into them and force them to build mounds in their villages? No. We would leave them in peace, as they should have left us.”

  He looked at the map again, uncertain. But Sintikala was right. Marcellinus was still thinking in Roman terms, as if the Cahokians had an Imperium and ruled over all their land. They did not. Their influence was subtle, based solely on language and culture. Great Sun Man won the compliance of nearby villages and towns by providing free hoes and adzes, but his direct influence barely extended beyond Ocatan.

  Besides, it hardly mattered. Marcellinus was in a city under attack, and all his friends lived in that city. What the Iroqua thought was irrelevant. They were a brutal people, and the aggression flowed in one direction: from the Iroqua lands toward the Cahokian.

  “This area, all of this to the northeast … we need a better map. Bigger, so we can see finer details of where the Iroqua live. And we will mark it with words, in writing, so we do not have to remember all the names.” He glanced at her sideways. “Or maybe you have a bigger map already?”

  “No. In my head I know more of what is there and the high places I can use to get into the air if I come down, but not marked down on a skin. More tea?”

  Marcellinus laughed. In the shadow of the huge map, it was a ridiculously domestic question.

  But he needed to study the map further. There were levels of detail in it, the smaller features of towns and rivers, that he should try to commit to memory. He still had many more questions.

  “Yes, thank you,” he said, and held out his wooden cup. “Really, it is very good tea.”

  When the massed tribes of the Haudenosaunee fell upon Cahokia and ravaged it, they came by land and water, and with them they brought fire. They came from outside Cahokia and from deep within. And it began long before dawn.

  The previous day was midsummer, and Cahokia celebrated long into the night. Many farmers and families had flocked into Cahokia over the past days, bearing their gifts of grain and meat. With their help this was again a year of plenty, with enough food for all. The mound-builder city felt strong and proud.

  The granaries exploded in the middle of the night, depleted from the celebration but still full enough to burn. The city came alive to find death in its midst; skulking assassins were at work. In with the villagers had come members of the Mohawk and Caiuga, Seneca and Onida and Onondaga, their distinctive tattoos covered under tunics and animal skins or otherwise disguised, and they had begun to break necks and slit throats long before the incendiaries claimed the first houses of corn. Once the granaries were aflame, armed bands of Iroqua sped through the streets, sparing no Cahokian they came across.

  The effrontery of their assault worked in their favor. Never had central Cahokia experienced such an attack: massed warriors by night, under cover of a festival of joy. Racing between the houses, the Haudenosaunee warriors snuffed out life after life.

  This was not war. It was murder by night.

  Startled awake by the first explosions, Marcellinus rolled and fell off the bed onto the hard-packed dirt floor. Through the chimney hole he could see the orange flare of liquid flame. The screaming began a moment later.

  Still feeling the effects of Cahokian beer, Marcellinus scrambled for his tunic, pulled it on, and rolled up onto his feet. His head throbbed, and he winced. As he stumbled across the room, his questing hand found his shrine. He knocked his lares to the floor but grasped the hilt of his gladius.

  Trying hard to shake off his befuddlement, Marcellinus swore he would never drink again. Never. Never.

  A babble of voices swelled outside the hut like a wave. More screaming, more shouting. There was fighting close by. And for street fighting he would need his pugio. He searched again and found it on the floor under the shrine.

  Then Marcellinus dived out of the hut into Cahokian streets already filled with chaos.

  A plume of flame reached into the sky from the eastern granary. Aside from that the night was dark, the earlier bonfire and lamps now quenched. Half blind, Marcellinus backed up against the wall of his house and looked away from the flames. Black forms raced between the houses carrying axes and clubs, many of them tall with headdresses. From just thirty feet away came a bellow of agony.

  No doubt remained. The streets of the city were swarming with Iroqua.

  Marcellinus started forward and tripped over a woman’s body. Her throat cut, she had been thrown aside against the wall of the house.

  His nose prickled with the twin stenches of liquid flame and burning flesh. His skin crawled.

  Just around the next corner a brave crouched over the groveling form of a man. His knife glinted red in the reflected flame light. Marcellinus was on the Iroqua in a moment, hamstringing him with a slash of his gladius and plunging the pugio down into his shoulder, inside the collarbone. The dagger was not long enough to reach the man’s heart, but it didn’t matter; a third stroke with the gladius severed the Iroqua’s windpipe, and he was dead.

  Marcellinus ran on, leaving the injured Cahokian where he lay. No time to deal with the wounded. Enemies were running wild, bringing death to the streets of his city. His blood boiled. He needed to kill again.

  He did not have to wait long.

  Even in the darkness it was easy to tell the Iroqua from the Cahokians. The Cahokians were the ones who staggered out of their huts half naked, some with weapons in hand, gaping foolishly at the clamor and carnage. The Iroqua were the ruthless figures who loped through the streets like deer, methodically clubbing men and women to the ground.

  Marcellinus killed four more and then got turned around. He had run out into the thoroughfare to face the influx of Iroqua warriors only to find them bearing down on him from behind. His groggy assumption that the Iroqua were running into Cahokia almost got him hacked down with an ax where he stood.

  In fact, the enemy was now racing out of the city, away from the Master Mound. And there were scores of them, far too many to fight and kill.

  Hawk wings were aloft now, fireflies that danced in the skies and shot flaming arrows.

  Marcellinus spun, slashing at the legs of an Onondaga who swerved to swing a chert-studded club at his head. He ducked in between houses and ran around to throw himself into the fray again, coming at an enemy war party from the side. Five more warriors shouting “Cahokia!” joined him.

  With the Iroqua war band down and screaming, Marcellinus left the Cahokians to saw through the Iroqua scalps and jogged on into the plaza. The Great Mound stood silhouetted against the stars, light at its peak. For a moment he thought the Longhouse of the Wings was aflame, but it was merely lit brightly with torches.

  A looming figure ululated and swung at him. Ducking under the ax, Marcellinus slammed his shoulder into the Iroqua’s chest and thrust upward into the man’s abdomen with his sword.

  A Catanwakuwa roared low over their heads, and a nearby hut went up in flames. Marcellinus turned his head from the light, saw Onida tattoos on the shoulder of a nearby warrior, and plunged his pugio into him.

  A hundred feet away another house erupted, its thatch burning a vivid orange. Cahokian Hawk wings were deliberately setting fire to their own houses. Marcellinus understood. It was imperative to bring light to this confused battle scene as quickly as possible.

  Other Catanwakuwa dipped. Arrows flew, Iroqua fell. Marcellinus whirled right and left. Where should he go? Where was the biggest threat? Where was Great Sun Man? Was anyone taking charge of this mess?

  Yes. Ranks of Cahokian warriors lined up in front of the gate to the Great Mound, probably under Wahchintonka’s command. They were not fighting but advancing steadily, arrows at the ready in case a greater Iroqua force burst into the plaza. Marcellinus did not expect that to happen—the enemy tide was flowing the other way, and most of the Iroqua were gone from the plaza—but guarding the mound and
the longhouses was the right thing to do.

  In central Cahokia four of the new brick granaries were aflame, gouts of fire shooting up into the sky from their roofs. To his left he saw a distant plume that could have been the granary that served western Cahokia. But across the plaza and off to the east was a corn house that still looked dark. Safeguarding it seemed imperative; Iroqua warriors could still be sneaking around, and the Cahokian corn reserve was obviously one of their principal targets.

  Marcellinus ran, still shouting “Cahokia!” Distinctive though he was, he wanted no one to doubt his allegiance in the flickering light.

  He was not the first to think of the granary. A squad of fifteen braves from the First Cahokian stood outside it, shoulder to shoulder, pila at the ready. But by the time he saw them Marcellinus was already distracted.

  On top of its platform mound, Sintikala’s house was ablaze.

  It was the heavy conflagration of liquid flame, not the ordinary oil flames with which other houses of the town had been ignited by the Cahokians themselves. Marcellinus’s heart turned over. He hurled himself forward.

  It all made terrifying sense. A night attack. A stealthy assault on the Master Mound, though repulsed by the bands of warriors Marcellinus and Great Sun Man had ensured would guard it night and day. The granaries also targets, some now alight. Had the Iroqua also marked out certain houses of key clan chiefs and elders for attack? Or was it coincidence?

  He pounded up the mound, but intense heat drove him back. The blazing walls of Sintikala’s house collapsed inward, and Marcellinus skidded on the slope and fell forward onto his hands. His gladius slid on the grass, and he snatched it up again and spun as if he expected to find an Iroqua at his back.

  No one was there. But if Sintikala had been in that house when the liquid flame had hit it, she was already dead.

  And earlier that evening Kimimela had been with her mother. Panic bubbled up into his throat.

  Two Iroqua, Onida by their markings, ran toward him. Berserker fury seized Marcellinus. Howling “Roma!” he stormed down the slope and met them head on, slicing the men into bloody wreckage. He stood over their bodies, panting.