by Alan Smale
The second bird disgorged its stream of liquid torment over the first of the drekars, but in a concerted effort the warriors on board had raised a wide swath of fabric over their heads to protect themselves. Marcellinus swore. More evidence of Iroqua intelligence and innovation: they were using the spare Viking sails, tough and fireproof, to protect themselves.
From the second drekar came a ballista bolt in an almost leisurely arc to punch a ragged hole through the right wing of the rearmost Thunderbird. The wing crumpled, and the Wakinyan went into a spinning cartwheel, plunging into the Mizipi moments later.
The Iroqua had clearly practiced this, their set piece and surely the prime reason for developing their own ballista: negating the Cahokian air advantage by blowing the Wakinyan out of the sky.
Again came that almost supernatural pause in the battle, and then the clamor of Iroqua chants struck up again and the enemy surged over the Cahokians with renewed vigor. In front of Marcellinus, the protective line cracked.
“Back!” His crew was struggling to roll another rock into the cup of the onager, but they would have no time to launch it. “Fall in! To me! To me! Close order!”
Seneca and Onondaga rushed toward them. Marcellinus bellowed and took three steps back onto the lowest slopes of the Mound of the Flowers. Around him, Cahokians nocked quick arrows and let them fly.
“Spears! Pila!”
They were not the First Cahokian, but they were quick enough in their own defense. The warriors formed a close line, shoulder to shoulder, spears and axes at the ready. Several paces backward up the mound gave them the advantage of height. “Second rank! Arrows!” They were doing it already, of course; Marcellinus was surrounded by men who knew how to fight, who had watched the First Cahokian and the Wolf Warriors for years and well knew the advantage of dropping into a tight formation under pressure.
They had lost the siege engines—the Iroqua now clambered over them and hacked at the throwing mechanisms to disable them. But they had not lost their lives. From halfway up the mound the Cahokians hurled spears and shot arrows, and from above them came further covering fire.
An onager ball thudded into the mound not twenty feet from him. Startled, Marcellinus glanced out over the river. The two drekars had turned broadside, and both were rocking back and forth in reaction to the firing of the Iroqua siege engines on their decks.
In the water there was no sign of the crew of the crashed Wakinyan. Marcellinus had no idea whether the other one had retained sufficient height or determination to make it back to the plaza in western Cahokia.
Looking closer, his heart sank. The Mound of the Flowers was almost completely surrounded, and a hundred yards away the Mound of the River had already been overrun by the Iroqua. Downriver, the third drekar was making for the bank unopposed; despite their size, the dragon ships were shallow draft, well capable of beaching.
At the foot of the mound below him, the Iroqua bayed like wolves. Presumably Great Sun Man still stood at the mound’s crest.
The Iroqua were within arm’s reach of capturing the paramount chief of Cahokia and Marcellinus himself.
Given Akecheta and the First Cahokian, Marcellinus might have consolidated the warriors on the mound into a dense column in close rank and attempted an eruptio, a sudden sortie to break out through the surrounding Iroqua and regroup with the main Cahokian force, which was pinned down several hundred yards away. As it was, all he could think to do was retreat to the highest ground—the mound top—and defend it for as long as possible.
“Stop shooting! No arrows! Don’t throw your spears! Save them! No shoot!”
Gathering his wits, alert to every surge and ebb in the Iroqua line, Marcellinus did his best to manage their upward retreat.
As they regained the plateau of the Mound of the Flowers, Great Sun Man’s Wolf Warrior general pointed. “Here it comes.”
It had taken time, but it was worth waiting for.
From afar it appeared that a giant raft was adrift on the Great River, a floating island of wood several hundred yards wide, like the beard of an ancient god. Branches not yet shorn from the trunks jutted up, pointing toward the sky. A wooden wave sweeping toward the invading ships.
From the natural harbor north of Cahokia a thousand logs floated downriver, herded and guided by some braves in dugouts and others who walked fearlessly from tree to tree with wooden poles in their hands. An almost stately progression of tall oaks, pine, and hemlock swept inexorably toward the Iroqua fleet. The Cahokian palisade had arrived.
From their elevation on the high mound, Marcellinus and the other Cahokians saw it long before the enemy did. Then the Iroqua aboard the leading ships called the alarm, and pandemonium ensued.
The vanguard of the floating forest kissed the prow of the first longship. The tree trunks twisted and parted, spreading out on either side of the great Norse vessel as if daunted by the frown of the dragon at its prow. Logs flanked the ship, knocking the vessel askew and interfering with the efforts of the Iroqua oarsmen. The Cahokian log drivers and carpenters steering the trees ran back along the trunks, dived into the river, and swam to shore.
The full force of the barrage hit. Tall trees longer than the longships banged into them. The foremost ship listed to port, the cries of its warrior crew drifting clear across the water.
The Iroqua on the drekars had been slow to see the danger, as their view had been blocked by the ships ahead and their attention devoted to firing on the Cahokians onshore. Now they broke off the attack, their oarsmen jamming their oars desperately into the water to spin their vessels and flee from the incapacitating wood. Snared by the tree trunks, they would be immobilized at best, destroyed at worst. The smaller longships behind them veered toward the far bank of the Mizipi in an attempt to escape the path of the giant trees.
Now the true genius of the riverborne assault became evident: not just the relentless momentum of the wood but the traps hidden within it. For the Cahokians had jury-rigged their palisade with a few surprises for the Iroqua. Dugout canoes and birch-bark war canoes still floated amid the pristine trunks, and all carried cargos of Cahokian liquid fire.
Hawks flew overhead. With a succession of flame-tipped arrows, Sintikala and her clan sprang the trap. Gouts of fire shot up, exploding almost as high as the longships’ masts, and quickly spread across the surface of the raft.
The blaze reached the first of the Norse longships. An explosion rocked both the leading longship and the one that came second. Even on the Mound of the Flowers, Marcellinus felt its warmth on his face.
In the time it took the Mizipi to flow a thousand feet, the threat of the Iroqua longships had been neutralized.
Below Marcellinus, the Iroqua land army faltered. Around him, warriors cheered. Great Sun Man stood nodding quietly.
Off in the Cahokian front line the war-party leaders shouted directions and spread orders by warrior-sign. Freed from the pinning fire from the boats, the main Cahokian army surged south toward the Mound of the Flowers. The Iroqua were falling back from the foot of the mound to regroup with their main force. Marcellinus allowed himself a single long exhalation.
“More warriors come.”
Great Sun Man was right. Cahokian warriors marched in formation from the east; it was the First Cahokian under Akecheta. Even from here Marcellinus could see the tall figure of Mahkah in the second line, Takoda on the end of the third.
He squinted again at his First Cahokian warriors. Some of them appeared to have shrunk.
Tahtay and Dustu marched in the front line.
“Shit, shit.” Marcellinus swallowed. “Sir? Great Sun Man?”
The war chief looked again and became very still.
“Sir. May I go and take command of the First Cahokian?”
“Yes.” Great Sun Man’s face was ashen as he looked down at the small marching figure of his son. He glanced quickly to the left and right. The Iroqua had dropped back and fallen in quickly, and already were advancing to engage the Cahokians. “Y
es, quickly. Go now.”
Marcellinus set off down the back of the Mound of the Flowers at a run.
He had misjudged the range of the Iroqua bows. Several arrows flew by his legs or thwocked into the ground at his feet as he danced across the hundred yards that separated him from the First Cahokian. He should have brought a shield. Fortunately, Akecheta saw him coming and commanded a wave of covering fire. Cahokian arrows flew over Marcellinus’s head, and for a startling moment he thought he was being attacked from both sides.
As he made it to the First Cahokian, he stumbled and fell. It was Mikasi, Hanska’s husband, who grabbed him and stood him upright.
“Thanks,” Marcellinus said. “Akecheta!”
Nobody seemed more relieved than Akecheta to have him back in command. His centurion raised his spear to the skies in salute.
Dustu’s face was calm, strong, and determined. Tahtay’s eyes were wide, but he seemed no more distracted or panic-stricken than anyone else. Neither carried bows; indeed, only half the front rank did. Those who did, however, had arrows nocked.
Marcellinus glanced upward. The sun was a little past the meridian. His men had been fighting for more than half a day already. “Shit,” he said again, almost an involuntary tic at this point.
No time to rest now, though. The Iroqua were coming. And Great Sun Man’s son was under his protection.
“First Cahokian, fire! First Cahokian, trade!”
His second rank of archers stepped through to take their turn. Mercifully, Tahtay and Dustu passed back into the rear of the cohort, vanishing from Marcellinus’s sight.
At last, an army that did exactly what it was told.
“Second rank, fire!”
Another wave of sleek arrows sped across the short distance that separated them from the Iroqua. Dozens of Iroqua warriors fell.
A Wakinyan soared overhead. Turning, it commenced a strafing run along the river.
“First Cahokian, spears!”
From behind, someone pushed a spear into Marcellinus’s hand. Fair enough. He was, after all, now standing in the front rank.
The Iroqua advanced not at a charge but at a steady walk, keeping their wind, keeping eye contact with the Cahokians. Outnumbering the First Cahokian three or four to one, they brandished spears, clubs, and axes and looked absolutely deadly.
It was time to get his gladius bloody again.
“First Cahokian,” Gaius Publius Marcellinus roared. “Forward! Take scalps!”
The two lines joined, Iroqua facing Cahokians over a bristling forest of spears. The momentum was with the invaders, and the Cahokian battle line swayed. “Steady!” Marcellinus shouted. “Rear ranks, hold us!”
The men at the back hurled themselves forward to support their comrades. Irresistible forces collided. It became a shoving match. With blades.
Axes flew. The Iroqua were throwing them, a move Marcellinus had not seen since the Romans’ first incursion onto Nova Hesperian soil, when the Powhatani had tried it. The Powhatani axes—tomahawks—had not deterred the Romans in the slightest, but the Iroqua ax blades were of iron rather than stone and carried a keen edge, and the center of the Cahokian line wavered.
Marcellinus shouted in frustration, dangerously distracting the men closest to him.
The hacking began. Iroqua pulled at the spears of their enemy and hauled themselves up to swing at the Cahokians with swords and clubs. Three braves in the center of the Cahokian line—who were they? who?—had gone down under the Iroqua axes, and the warriors in the Iroqua front line surged forward while their second rank fired arrows from a distance of a few feet, in between their own men, into the Cahokians. It was an insane tactic—the odds were high that they would shoot their own comrades in the back—but it worked. The center line of the Cahokians folded, and the First Cahokian became two halves.
Marcellinus glimpsed this only peripherally. The Iroqua were right up against his own line, and he was yanking and thrusting with his pilum along with the Cahokians on either side of him.
A Huron giant powered himself up onto the spear wall. His face and arms were bright red with war paint, his head bald aside from a roach of porcupine hair, and his eyes looked manic. The vivid scarifications on his flesh were only partially obscured by the wooden matting chest armor he wore. His ax swung down and cleaved the skull of the Cahokian two steps to Marcellinus’s right, passing clear through into the man’s shoulder.
The Huron’s ferocious gaze turned to Marcellinus, and he raised his ax again. Relinquishing his hold on his spear, Marcellinus leaned back and tugged at his gladius, and an Iroqua arrow plinked off the side of his helmet. “Shit!”
The Huron’s ax came down, and Marcellinus only just managed to get his sword over his head in time to deflect the killing blow. As best he could, jammed as he was between Cahokian warriors, Marcellinus stabbed at his attacker. The Huron knocked the blade aside with contemptuous ease and was gone, almost falling into a new gap in the line beyond Marcellinus’s reach. The Cahokian warrior the Huron had just killed was still standing, held in place by the crush of bodies. Blood sprayed over Marcellinus’s breastplate.
Cahokians shoved forward. Marcellinus snatched another glance along the line of melee. Would the line hold? Where the hell was Tahtay?
There he was, forty feet away and still alive, and his gladius was up and stabbing. The crush of the melee eased. But now two more Iroqua sighted Marcellinus and threw themselves at him, screaming their war cries.
“Hotah, left!” came Mahkah’s shout from behind him, and Marcellinus gratefully lashed out at the leftmost of his two attackers. Mahkah’s spear parried the ax carried by the Iroqua to the right, and then Marcellinus was fighting for his life at close quarters with a Caiuga brave.
Fury swept him, that welcome battle fury that cast all fears from his mind. All distractions melted away. It was time to kill, and kill he did.
The Caiuga fell. Another took his place. Marcellinus hacked and twisted and hacked again. The red haze of battle surrounded him.
Panting, he saw that Mahkah had won his battle, too. “Come!” Marcellinus shouted, but he did not wait to see whether the tall warrior would follow.
He pressed on. His world was axes and limbs and spears. Blood dripped from his arms, none of it yet his own. The gladius had been knocked from his hand long before, and he had grabbed up an ax, then that ax had lodged in an Iroqua rib cage, and he had stumbled forward and plucked another sword from the hand of a dead Cahokian and swept it up and moved to the side again, still facing his foes. The swarm of Iroqua kept coming and coming, but always Marcellinus moved the same way, crabbing leftward across the line of battle with the sun in his face, toward where he had last glimpsed Tahtay.
Then conscious thought returned, because Tahtay was in front of him, now fighting bizarrely with a spear in each hand, using them to stab and shove and hold Iroqua at bay. It would not have worked for a full-grown man, but the Iroqua mostly swerved around and past the boy because of his extreme youth, a mercy even in the desperate heat of battle that Marcellinus understood. The Iroqua had boys fighting in their ranks, too, and mostly the Cahokians were striking them with the flats of their blades.
“Give me your back,” Marcellinus gasped; he had been out of breath for an hour, it seemed. Iroqua warriors surrounded them, and Tahtay did not respond, simply dropped one of the pila and seized a sword from the ground, and Marcellinus swung his gladius, and man and boy stood in battle back to back, fighting, panting.
Suddenly the pressure behind Marcellinus vanished as Tahtay was plucked away. Tahtay leaped four feet in the air as if he were taking wing, but no; he had been scooped up, swept into the air by a titanic blow to his thigh. It was the giant Huron whom Marcellinus had last seen at the far end of the line, now wielding a heavy club. Through the battle haze and bloodlust Marcellinus realized the Huron had been following him, hunting him down. He had been set the task of killing Marcellinus or had taken it upon himself, and it was this man who had just sm
ashed Tahtay out of the way without a second thought.
Tahtay was down, knocked flying and crashed back down to earth, screaming and writhing. The Huron stepped over him and came for Marcellinus.
Gladius in one hand, ax in the other, Marcellinus lunged. His ax met the Huron’s club, and the heavier man prevailed. Marcellinus stumbled back.
Here came Hanska, hacking her way toward them, screaming at the top of her lungs not because she was in pain or distress but because it daunted her foes and gave her an edge. And from behind him Mahkah’s cry came again. “Hotah, right!”
He leaped forward and right, and Mahkah came around him to the left, and the two of them fought the Huron with Tahtay lying crumpled at their feet, trying to keep the boy alive for just a few moments more …
Marcellinus never saw the blow that felled him.
His feet left the ground, and the weapons flew from his hands. His head filled with the grating shriek of wood and stone against metal; his eyes were seared by an almighty red flash that might have been liquid flame or a granary exploding, and then his mouth was full of bitter earth.
Intense pain gripped him, agony that came from everywhere and nowhere. This was death. He had not saved Tahtay, and death had come for him …
He was kneeling with no recollection of how he had raised himself up even that far. Blackness assailed him. He clawed at his face, trying to pull off the helmet that crushed and burned, but his limbs were separate creatures that would not obey. If Marcellinus had been instantly dismembered and crudely shoved back into one piece by the gods, the pain could not have been worse, his disorientation more intense.
He screamed. Someone pushed him back down onto the ground.
Now he could not move at all.
Noise came down around him, a curtain of helpless terror.
All at once he could see again. Above him was the twisted mess of his helmet, and behind it Takoda’s face. The warrior had pulled the bent helmet off Marcellinus’s head, freeing his skull from the terrible pressure. Blood and torn flesh dripped from the Roman steel.