Clash of Eagles

by Alan Smale

  He made a forlorn figure, walking alone among the fallen. Marcellinus’s heart came a little closer to breaking. “Enopay.”

  The boy turned away and made another note on his bark.

  “Enopay. Who said you must do this?”

  “Nobody,” Enopay said. “Leave me alone.”

  Within arm’s reach, Marcellinus stopped, his hands by his sides. “I will help you, Enopay. Or I will do this instead. You should—”

  “Do not tell me. Do not speak at all. Why are you still here?”

  “I want to help,” Marcellinus said. “I want to make this right.”

  “Giving orders, you are a big man. When there is work to be done burying the dead, where are you? Nowhere. Always you fall down.”

  The breeze felt cool on Marcellinus’s forehead and neck.

  “Go away,” Enopay said. “Go away and make another clever new thing we do not need in Cahokia, so more of us can die.”

  Bitter phlegm rose in Marcellinus’s throat. He could not speak, could not move. Enopay walked on, looking about him and scribbling on his bark.

  “I will make this right,” Marcellinus said again, more to himself than to the boy.

  As the sun set the next day, Great Sun Man addressed his people from the top of the Master Mound. From where he stood alone, several hundred yards away on the edge of the Great Plaza, Marcellinus could barely see the paramount chief, but through luck or good design he could hear the man’s words clearly.

  Understanding was harder to come by. In his polemic, Great Sun Man invoked gods and mythologies with which Marcellinus had only a glancing familiarity. The chief told his people how boldly they had fought against the Iroqua, and drew parallels with a story about the folk hero, Red Horn, that Marcellinus did not know, at which point everyone cheered so loudly that he had to look off to the side to watch the hand-talkers who were relaying the chief’s words back through the crowd. He supposed it was the equivalent of a Roman Imperator giving a speech to the legions assembled in the Campus Martius before a campaign, invoking the battles of Julius Caesar and Trajan.

  Great Sun Man came back to reality, and Marcellinus paid attention again. He knew enough about oration to know that the climax of the speech was coming. Besides, the rays of the sun were falling obliquely across the sand of the Great Plaza, the shadows enormous, and Marcellinus knew that Great Sun Man’s speech would end exactly at sunset.

  “The Iroqua have gone home for the winter to eat their corn and get fat and rest. The Iroqua think they have dealt us a heavy blow, but we will rise to our feet again. The Iroqua think they have won, but they have not won. Because after the winter, in the Grass Moon or the Planting Moon, Cahokia will take the Mourning War back to the Iroqua, and this time their rivers will run with blood and their mountains will wail. This time the Iroqua will be the people who mourn.”

  Marcellinus had barely slept the previous night, and his headaches continued unabated. If he slept as poorly tonight, he might as well volunteer to serve as a sentry. At least that way he would put his wakefulness to good use.

  “Our Hawks patrol the lands to the north and east, mapping the land, learning where the Iroqua gather. We will send the stealthiest of our scouts deep into Iroqua territory. Soon I will send some of our great warriors down the Mizipi to demand that other mound-builder towns and villages ready their warriors in the springtime, in our time of need, to help us wipe away the stain of the Haudenosaunee from our lands and let us live in peace forever.”

  The small figure of Enopay stood on the Master Mound with Great Sun Man’s shamans and battle chiefs. Akecheta was there, and Wahchintonka, and other strong men of the Wolf Warriors.

  Sintikala was not there. She was leading the air patrols.

  The shadows lengthened, and the golden rays of the setting sun sparkled like fire off the thatched roofs that remained unburned. Great Sun Man’s rhetoric was coming to an end, and spread out before him the Cahokians rallied and cheered.

  “We will take the Mourning War back to the Iroqua, and we will destroy them. We will come upon them from the air, and the rivers, and the land. We will burn them and scalp them; we will place our feet on their necks and drown them in their own Great Lakes. Once before, long ago, we pushed the Iroqua back from the Oyo. Now we must push them farther yet. This wide land cannot hold Cahokia and also the snakes of the Iroqua. I have spoken.”

  This was not the Great Sun Man Marcellinus had come to know. The battle had changed the chieftain. They were in new territory now.

  “By the bones of my dead fathers and the broken bones of my living son, I promise to do this.”

  Marcellinus wondered how Tahtay felt about such a pledge.

  But perhaps it was not so different from the speech he had made himself to the Fighting 33rd the evening they had discovered the burned and mutilated body of Thorkell Sigurdsson. In that speech Marcellinus had promised to “grind the redskins’ bones to powder,” and he might have invoked the memory of a long-ago Germanic slaughter or two to make his words resonate.

  Great Sun Man would do what he must to save his people. As Marcellinus had tried to do for his legion and then for Cahokia, only to fail both times.

  But while Marcellinus still breathed, he would keep fighting. For Enopay. For Kimimela and Tahtay, and all the Cahokians who had just died trying to protect their city, and those who wept for them.

  It would not be easy. Marcellinus was no longer a leader. He was once again a man without a job, a foreign interloper in a giant metropolis, potentially as invisible as any cobbler or tanner or message runner on the streets of Subura. But he would think of something. He would do whatever it took.

  Great Sun Man was a worthy chief, a man of immense strength and power. Marcellinus was sure Great Sun Man would work night and day to lead the Cahokians to victory the next year. He just hoped it would be enough.

  The afternoon Great Sun Man and Enopay returned from Ocatan, Marcellinus was helping a party of Wolf Warriors raze a fire-gutted granary in Cahokia-across-the-water.

  Oddly, in all the time Marcellinus had lived in the Great City he had never paddled across the Mizipi to visit the third Cahokia. By all accounts it had been a pleasant little township, a quiet colony of the larger and more rambunctious city. It had its own mounds, its own more human-scaled central plaza, even its own Big Warm House.

  Cahokia-across-the-water had possessed a calm rhythm and an air of quiet contentment. People from central Cahokia had poked good-natured fun at their country cousins on the far bank in the same way they joked about the bumpkins of the upland villages. But nobody was laughing now.

  Now Cahokia-across-the-water was a ghost town, wrecked and burned. Carrying away the bodies of the dead to the base of a new mound, pulling down the charred huts, destroying what remained of the town in order to rebuild it: this was hard, dirty, and thankless work, and it was where Marcellinus needed to be. Cahokia proper was regaining its spirit and determination; people had begun to smile again, if a little grimly. Humanity was returning. Hope and confidence were building. But Cahokia-across-the-water was a mortuary.

  The canoes that had escorted the war chief home from Ocatan had peeled off for the east bank, but Great Sun Man, Wahchintonka and six other warriors, and Enopay had already pulled their canoe ashore and were striding toward them, Enopay as usual having to take an additional skipping step to keep up.

  Marcellinus stood in silence. Great Sun Man passed him with a curt nod and went to clap the other men on the back, thanking them for their efforts. Enopay stopped and looked up at Marcellinus unblinking.

  Tahtay still could not travel, could barely stand. Marcellinus wondered what he thought of his father taking Enopay on a weeklong journey downriver. “Hello, Enopay.”

  “Eyanosa. Why are you here?”

  “There is work to be done, burying the dead,” Marcellinus said with a straight face.

  Enopay grimaced. “I am sorry for what I said.”

  “But you were right.”
/>   “You should rest your head. It is bleeding again.”

  Marcellinus did not reach up to touch his wound. His hands were filthy and blistered, caked in charcoal and ash. “I know.”

  The silence grew. To fill it, Marcellinus asked, “And how was Ocatan?”

  “Hot. Even hotter than here.” Enopay paused. “But not damaged. Not burned. Their women do not weep. In Ocatan, we could pretend this had not happened.”

  The massive army of the Iroqua had shot a few waves of arrows into Ocatan from their longships, lobbed liquid flame at its gate, and then passed it by. Cahokia had been their target, and they had barely broken step to swat at the smaller town.

  So much for the fortress the Cahokians had designed to guard their southern reaches, where the rivers met.

  “They will send us food, and wood, and strong men and women to help us rebuild. To feel less guilty.”

  Marcellinus grunted. He hoped that worked out better for the Ocatani than it was working for him.

  “And when we avenge ourselves on the Iroqua, they will march by our side.”

  Great Sun Man had completed his tour of the workers, had cast an unhappy eye over the silent blackened remains of the town, and was heading back toward his canoe. Enopay shuffled his feet. “Also, I have something you wanted.”

  All Marcellinus wanted was peace and an end to his infernal headaches. “Oh?”

  The boy dug into his pouch and held out a small copper figurine. It was a birdman amulet of a type sometimes worn by shamans, a flat plate the size of Marcellinus’s thumb bearing the incised image of a winged Hawk warrior, complete with sharp-beaked mask.

  “What of it?” Marcellinus rarely associated with shamans. He took it from Enopay and almost dropped it.

  The amulet was not copper. Its weight left no doubt.

  Marcellinus blinked and felt an emptiness yawn beneath his feet. Today was a day determined to roll back the calendar, strip away the years, and send his thoughts back to their roots.

  Gold. The main reason he’d been sent to Nova Hesperia in the first place.

  For gold, Marcellinus had marched a legion over a thousand miles into one of the deadliest wildernesses on earth. His first conversation with Sintikala had been about gold. In a way, Marcellinus had given his life for gold. His old life, anyway.

  He had never found any. But Enopay had.

  “Where?”

  “I traded a sword and two shields for it in Ocatan. But it came up from the south, not long ago. From Shappa Ta’atan, maybe, or farther down the Mizipi.”

  Marcellinus had a sudden urge to throw it as hard as he could and watch it sink into the muddy waters of the Mizipi.

  Enopay looked disappointed. “You are not happy?”

  “There is gold in Nova Hesperia, after all,” he said.

  Shivers radiated up his spine. Somehow this golden amulet’s very existence convinced Marcellinus that the Romans would return in force to pillage Nova Hesperia again, and soon.

  The Romans would die for gold. And they would kill for it. They would stop at nothing to possess it.

  He wondered how long he would have to wait.

  For Karen

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m sure all readers and writers of alternate history are aware of how key events in their own lives could have gone very, very differently. And so …

  Huge, world-spanning gratitude to Dario Ciriello, who took a chance on my original novella, A Clash of Eagles, and published it in the Panverse Two anthology, which led to its winning the 2010 Sidewise Award for Alternate History. Sincere thanks to the Sidewise Award panel of Stephen Baxter, Evelyn Leeper, Kurt Sidaway, Jim Rittenhouse, Stuart Shiffman, and Steven H Silver, who paid me the awesome compliment of that award and helped to enable the next steps.

  Sincere and devout thanks to the beta readers who soldiered heroically through the novel-length Clash of Eagles manuscript in its various incarnations and provided detailed and perceptive critiques. Karen Smale, Chris Cevasco, Peter Charron, Fiona Lehn, Galen Dara, Wendy Wagner, Darrin McGraw, Duncan Kuehn, Lisa May, Stephen Blount, Ed Rosick, Jim Strickland, and Carole Ann Moleti: you all went above and beyond the call of duty. I was lucky to have each and every one of you.

  For feedback on the opening chapters I’d like to thank the members of Taos Toolbox 2011 not already named above: Christie Yant, Jeff Petersen, Jeff Duntemann, Sean Eret, Scott Hawkins, Lisa Morton, and instructors Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress. Go Dieselbears!

  I am forever indebted to my agent, Caitlin Blasdell of Liza Dawson Associates, for taking me on in the first place, for astute editing suggestions and business acumen, and for continuing sane guidance as I march forward on this epic trek.

  My deepest gratitude also goes to my editor Mike Braff at Del Rey/Penguin Random House for his enthusiasm and good cheer, dedication, and keen story instincts.

  Finally, my wife, Karen Smale, has served as first reader, proofreader, travel companion, angst wrangler, and my most essential cheerleader, and I can’t thank her enough.

  Of course, despite the earnest efforts of everyone named above to keep me flying straight, the responsibility for any errors or outright peculiarities that remain in Clash of Eagles rests solely with me.

  APPENDIXES

  APPENDIX I:

  CAHOKIA AND THE MISSISSIPPIAN CULTURE

  Many people are familiar with the Aztecs and the Maya and the other great civilizations of Mesoamerica. Far fewer seem to know of the thriving and extensive cultures of North America in the centuries before the arrival of European ships.

  For over five hundred years the Mississippian civilization dominated the river valleys of eastern North America, building thousands of towns and villages along the Mississippi, the Ohio, and many other rivers. Like the Adena and Hopewell cultures before them, they built mounds by the tens of thousands: conical mounds, ridge mounds, and the distinctive square-sided, flat-topped platform mounds. In all likelihood the founding events of Mississippian culture took place in Cahokia and then radiated out across the continent.

  In its heyday Cahokia was a huge city covering over five square miles, occupied by about 20,000 people and containing at least 120 mounds of packed earth and silty clay, many of them colossal. In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries Cahokia was larger than London, and no city in northern America would be larger until the 1800s. Cahokia’s skyline was dominated by the gigantic mound known today as Monks Mound, a thousand feet square at the base and a hundred feet high. Monks Mound had four terraces, and archeological data reveal that it was topped with a large wooden structure 105 feet long and 48 feet wide. This great earthwork and longhouse overlooked a Grand Plaza nearly fifty acres in area, meticulously positioned and leveled with sandy loam fill a foot deep. Cahokia’s central 205 acres were protected by a bastioned palisade two miles long and constructed of some 20,000 logs, enclosing the Great Mound and Great Plaza and eighteen other mounds. The downtown area was surrounded by perhaps a dozen residential neighborhoods, some of which had their own plazas. Cahokia was bounded several miles to the west by the Mississippi and to the east by river bluffs of limestone and sandstone, and was surrounded by the floodplains of the American Bottom that allowed the cultivation of maize in vast fields to feed its population.

  Much of Cahokia was built in a flurry of dedicated activity around A.D. 1050, but to this day nobody knows why or by whom. The city and its immense mounds are not claimed by any existing tribe or tradition, and no tales about the city’s foundation or dissolution have been passed down through oral history. The Illini who lived in the area when white settlers arrived appeared to know little about the mounds and did not claim them or show much interest in them. However, archeologists and ethnographers are reasonably confident that the ancient Cahokians were Siouan-speaking, and I have gone along with that assumption in the Hesperian Trilogy.

  We can, however, be certain that the original residents of the Great City did not call it Cahokia. “Cahokia” is actually the n
ame of an Algonquian-speaking tribe that probably did not come to the area until several hundred years after the fall of the city. Nor did the Iroquois call themselves by that name. “Iroquois” is probably a French transliteration of an insulting Huron word for the Haudenosaunee. However, in this case and some others I have used familiar terms to avoid needless obscurity. For the river names, I may be on firmer ground (so to speak). The Mississippi and Missouri rivers are named from the French renderings of the original Algonquian or Siouan words, and the Ohio River was indeed “Oyo” to the Iroquois. “Chesapeake” and “Appalachia” have their roots in Algonquian words.

  Even for names that are unambiguously Native American, it is sometimes not clear when those names started to be used. The individual names of the Five Nations of the Iroquois may not have been in wide use before A.D. 1500, although the ancestral Iroquois certainly had a strong cultural tradition by the 1200s and were building longhouses long before that. I also may have anticipated the foundation of the Haudenosaunee League by a few hundred years. Other aspects of the longhouse culture, along with their clothing and weaponry styles, are taken from the historical and archeological record. As far as the “hand-talk” is concerned, the Plains Sign Language did indeed become something of a lingua franca, though perhaps not as early or universally as I have postulated.

  Otherwise, in writing Clash of Eagles I have tried my best to remain accurate to geographical and archeological ground truth. The size and layout of Cahokia are accurate for the period to the extent that the geography of the city and its environs has often not so subtly driven the plot. Every mound featured in the book exists, and I placed the Big Warm House and the brickworks and steelworks in open areas where there were no known mounds or buildings. The Circle of the Cedars corresponds to a monumental circle of up to sixty tall cedar marker posts designed as an early calendar, based on seasonal celestial alignments. The established large-scale agriculture and fishing, available natural resources, food types and weaponry, pottery and basketry, and so forth, are as accurate as I can make them. Granaries, houses, hearths, storage pits, and so on, all match current archeological findings. Chunkey was a real game. The clothing depicted is true to the times, including details of Great Sun Man’s regalia and his copper ear spools of the Long-Nosed God; much of what later would become stereotypical Native American clothing, including large feather war bonnets and extensive beadwork, probably originated centuries after Cahokia.