by Alan Smale
The Catanwakuwa looped around for another pass. Marcellinus stayed absolutely still as it swooped by, barely above the treetops. The Hawk wing banked and swung back up, regaining height almost effortlessly.
Marcellinus stood. There was no mistaking that particular style of flying, the almost magical way the Hawk’s pilot had detected an invisible rising air current and ridden it back up into the sky.
She had located him with her usual uncanny skill. He assumed that she would fly home and report his whereabouts to Great Sun Man. She had not called down to him, so obviously she had brought no message.
Instead the Hawk weaved in between the tree trunks, fluttering back and forth like the butterfly after which she had named her daughter.
Sintikala alighted on the forest floor at a run, tilting her wings even as she landed to scamper in a curve and avoid a dense stand of silver birch. She came to a halt, panting, and pushed up her falcon mask.
She surveyed Marcellinus in his Roman helmet with its plume, his breastplate, shoulder greaves, tunic, ring buckle belt, and sandals. The forked pattern painted around her eyes emphasized her glare. “Huh. Who are you today?”
“I am Gaius Publius Marcellinus. As I have always been.”
“Now you dress like a Roman?”
“Yes.”
A short silence. “I do not like it.”
“It’s important,” Marcellinus said. “I’m here to bring peace. As a Roman.”
Sintikala snorted. “Now it is Roman to bring peace?”
At the point of a sword or without one. “Roma always brings peace.” Eventually.
Sintikala knelt, lifted the frame of the Hawk wing from her shoulders, and started to dismantle it. “You wear those things to not look Cahokian. You want to look like someone else. This will not fool the Iroqua.”
“Of course not,” said Marcellinus. “Nonetheless.”
“Means what?”
“It means that even though you speak truly, today I will dress like a Roman.”
Marcellinus was impressed at how quickly Sintikala broke the Hawk wing down into its component parts. Even during this short conversation it was becoming a collection of unremarkable skins and wooden rods. Anyone coming across it in its deconstructed form might assume it was a tent or a hide for hunting birds. Left out in the open, it would rot away to nothing in a year, leaving no evidence a flying craft had ever existed.
“It was foolish to land,” he said. “You should have stayed aloft. You’ll have a long walk back.”
“Back? Gaius is going on.”
“But Sintikala is not.”
She shoved the remains of the wing under a bush. Rising, she brushed twigs and scraps of sinewy thread off her fingers. “Huh.”
“Sisika, go back to Cahokia.”
“While you walk to the Iroqua?”
“Yes.”
“You go to kill them all, perhaps? By yourself?”
“No.”
“Then the Iroqua will kill you.”
“Once I get near the Iroqua powwow, I will hide my weapons and go unarmed. Then I will be safe. Protected. Right?”
“In that helmet?” she said skeptically.
“Just a traveler. A man who would speak with them.”
“Gaius, you are not a Mizipi merchant. You are Roman. You are important to Cahokia. Just a few moons ago, Iroqua warriors killed many Cahokians who held no weapons. The Iroqua will use you or kill you.”
“If so, maybe I deserve it.”
“After all you have done, the Iroqua may take a long time over it.”
After an awful pause, Marcellinus blinked. “Let them.”
He checked the sun’s position and began to walk. She watched with amazement as he strode off into the trees.
Presently he heard her jogging after him. Catching up, she eyed him shrewdly. “Why?”
“Because this is all my fault. Ever since I came to you…” In his emotion, his spoken Cahokian weakened. The only words he could recall were simple and direct. “I come to the land, to Cahokia, and bring weapons and smoke and heat. I bring Iroqua to attack you. All I bring is war.”
“Your head is big,” Sintikala said with scorn. “This is all you? What of us? Cahokians work and fight. What of the Iroqua? Fighting is their life; fighting is all they do. Did you make the Iroqua? Did you make Cahokia? Did you make the Mourning War?”
“I made it worse. Wherever I go, death follows me. However much I try to help. Just more death.” He shook his head. “So. No more.”
“Long ago, you promised me you would not go to the Iroqua.”
Marcellinus considered. “No, I promised I would not help the Iroqua against Cahokia.”
Sintikala stepped in front of him. Marcellinus had to halt abruptly or barge into her. When he moved left to go around her, she grabbed his chin so roughly that his jaw snapped closed, catching his tongue between his teeth.
He knocked her hand away. She shoved him back against a tree trunk.
Marcellinus raised his fist again but let it fall by his side. Sintikala tugged his head down, trying to skewer him with her gaze, but he pulled back and stared past her, up into the treetops. “No. Today you do not get to see my soul.”
But Sintikala had seen enough. “You do not just go to die.”
“No.”
Her voice was low and dangerous, and she flexed her fingers as if she was already squeezing his neck.
“The Iroqua want.” She tapped his forehead with her knuckles. “They want what is in you, in here. They want you to help them. Against us. As I said long ago. And you will do it.”
“I will never help the Iroqua. I swore that to you. Sisika, I’m of no use to them. Before, yes. Now Cahokia has everything I have to give, and the Iroqua have already taken what they need through their traders and spies.”
“So instead they will kill you slowly, over a fire. And Cahokia will not have you.”
“You don’t need me anymore.”
“But we do,” she said.
Her hand was still on his steel breastplate, pushing at him. Gently, he moved her arm away.
She studied him. “Whatever you intend to do, it will not work.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Yet still you go.”
“Yes.”
“I should kill you now rather than let the Iroqua get you.”
Marcellinus pointed northeast. “Sintikala, kill me or let me walk, but I go that way.” He waited.
She stood aside, and he walked by her.
Marcellinus hiked another ten miles before the darkness and the growing chill stopped him. He wrapped himself in a blanket at the foot of a tree. His hand never left his sword hilt.
Sintikala arrived. Without a word she sat barely two feet away from him and curled herself up in her blanket. She was small enough that it almost covered her.
Settling herself for sleep, she pushed up against him, so close that he could taste her on the air. He knew it was not a physical advance or even a gesture of friendship. Sharing warmth was the warriors’ way, and as he knew she did not want him, it had little effect on him.
He did not understand what she hoped to gain, why she was still there at all, but he was too exhausted to think about it. It was her business, just as what Marcellinus was doing was his.
Marcellinus had one job now and one alone.
—
In the dawn they lay entwined at the base of the tree. Somehow in the night his arms had gone around her and her arms around him.
Carefully, Marcellinus disengaged. Sintikala lay like a tiger. Even in repose she was muscular and dangerous. She smelled of sweat, war, and the forest.
He went on, leaving her asleep on the forest floor. It took half an hour to work the stiffness out of his muscles, and he ate only the berries and fruits that were close enough to pick as he walked by.
By midmorning she had caught up to him. Now she walked by his side.
“You did not tell me you would leave Cahokia. You
did not tell Kimimela.”
“No.”
The wind rustled the leaves at the crowns of the trees. “You know how she fears the Iroqua will kill you. You did not have the courage to say good-bye.”
It had never occurred to Marcellinus to do so. “It was not lack of courage. I had to leave secretly.”
“Kimimela would not have given you away.”
Marcellinus laughed.
“She would not. Even to me.”
He shook his head. Sintikala shrugged. “Believe me or not, she—Gaius, your sword. You still have it.”
“Yes.”
“You should not. Put it down here, quickly. Leave it behind. We are now in Iroqua land.”
“Already?” Marcellinus looked around him as if expecting warriors to erupt out of the trees. Now he saw the marks of the controlled burns, the traces of soot near the tree roots. How could he have been so lost in his thoughts that he had missed them?
He touched the egg-shaped pommel of the gladius. He had no attachment to this particular sword, having left his favorite blade in Cahokia, but it still went against his instincts to relinquish it and proceed unarmed. “Wachiwi said there were bears in Iroqua territory.”
“There are. They do not carry swords, either.” She paused. “Keep it and you are a warrior. The Iroqua will cut you down where you stand. You know this.”
“Yesterday you said that they would kill me anyway.”
“Without it you at least have a chance.”
It had to be done. Marcellinus unbuckled the sword and laid it behind a bush, scraping soil and leaves over it. Sintikala watched quizzically. “You will come back for it?”
“You want an Iroqua brave to use it to kill a Cahokian?”
She raised her eyebrows. Despite Marcellinus’s obsessive caution about the Cahokians trading away gladii or perhaps because of it, the Roman swords had not caught on with the Iroqua. During the whole assault on Cahokia, Marcellinus had never once seen a gladius in an Iroqua hand. “Nonetheless,” he said.
“When you have no answer, it is always ‘Nonetheless.’ You have another weapon in the bag? Your small knife you can keep to cut food. If you have a sling, you can keep that, too. Nothing else.”
“Just the gladius. I am now unarmed.”
Unarmed and in Iroqua territory.
“And not happy about it,” he added.
Sintikala grinned thinly. “Let us walk on.”
“Wait.” Marcellinus had made another connection, again very belatedly. “That’s why you first came to my legion with no weapon. You believed you would be safe if you were unarmed. Because it is the custom of your people, you believed it would be the custom everywhere.”
Her mouth twisted. “I learned fast.”
For Marcellinus, learning always seemed a long, drawn-out process. “Yes. Let’s walk.”
—
Sintikala said: “Tell me more of what you think you will do when you arrive at powwow. The Iroqua will not stop fighting us just because they have captured you. You understand this?”
“Of course.”
“Then what do you hope to do?”
“I’m going to try to talk them out of fighting.”
“What?”
“Sintikala, did you never wonder how five ruthless warrior tribes made peace among themselves in the first place? How they put aside their animosities and allied?”
“They had a strong leader. A strong man. An Iroqua strong man.”
“That’s right, but even a strong man was not enough to bring them to make a treaty.”
“What, then?”
“Necessity.”
She shook her head. “They will listen to you? No. Gaius, you will die.”
“And you care?”
“My daughter has been sad once. I do not want to see her sad again.”
“Huh.”
If Sintikala did not understand him yet, she never would. Marcellinus walked on.
“I think perhaps you are mad,” she said.
“Do you mean angry? Or insane?”
“Angry.”
“It is not hatred that I feel,” he said. “It is guilt.”
Sintikala looked even more frustrated. “Guilt again? For helping us to make war?”
Where to start? He turned on her. “Do you remember Fuscus? The day you and I first met, the Powhatani…the slave whom I used as a translator?”
She grimaced. “I remember him.”
“I murdered him. Killed him when he had no weapon.”
“He attacked you?”
“No. He lied to me. Gave me bad information. I was angry, and so I killed him. I slit his throat, and I watched his life bleed out into the dirt.”
Sintikala did not look as horrified as he had expected. “You have killed many people. Why does Fuscus matter?”
“Killing in war is different. Fuscus, well…it was not right.”
She shrugged, not caring. “You did bad things to us and also to the Iroqua. Cahokians killed many of your people. That is all war, too.”
“There is more. So much more. Other things that were not war.”
“Gaius, we are in Iroqua land. Tomorrow, or soon, we may be dead ourselves. This matters now? What you are almost crying like a little boy to say?”
“Yes. Now of all times.”
“This is not a good time to make me hate you again,” she said matter-of-factly. “I have killed people, too. I have killed Romans. In the night, in the day, as you walk west with your legion. Your men die, yes? One here, two there, three here, when away from your marching line or your castra, hunting deer or shitting in the woods like dogs? Who do you think killed them? Powhatani? No.”
Marcellinus stopped. “Don’t tell me that.”
“You want to know how many Romans I killed? Would you stop talking about Fuscus then?”
His fingers itched, but he had no sword, no weapon beyond a pugio. “Sintikala killed them.”
“Gaius, you are a fool. Sisika and Sintikala? I am only one person.”
Marcellinus closed his eyes. “Not to me.”
“Do you want to kill me yet?”
He took a deep breath. “No. And now I will try very hard to forget that you told me this.”
“So let us make treaty, Gaius. I will shut up if you will shut up.”
Marcellinus started walking again. “I agree. You have your treaty.”
—
In the middle of the afternoon his left sandal broke. Gratefully Marcellinus eased himself down onto a rock by the side of the path and brought out his pugio and sandal tacks to mend it. He had been pushing a strong pace to work out his pain and frustration, but the break was welcome. His stomach growled, but he would not stop to eat until nightfall.
He and Sintikala had not spoken further. Now she took advantage of the halt to disappear into the bushes and then to seek out water.
Marcellinus hammered the sandal with the pommel of the dagger, resisting the urge to swear. He had not thought to bring spare sandals. He had Cahokian moccasins in his pack but did not want to wear them. To think like a Roman again he needed to wear Roman clothes. No matter how uncomfortable or, apparently, breakable they were.
Sintikala returned and perched on a rock beside him. “Gaius. You were a great leader of your people. Big clever.”
“Yes. So?”
“So you are not foolish enough to leave on a journey without knowing the trail ahead.”
Marcellinus kept his expression neutral. “And?”
“And I know that Pezi is no longer in Cahokia.”
That surprised him.
“Cahokians are not as stupid as you think, Gaius. When will you learn this?”
“All people here in the land,” he said. “The Iroqua, with the longships and throwing engines? It is not just your people who have surprised me. And I am hoping they can surprise me again.”
Sintikala would not be distracted. “So where is Pezi?”
“I think you already know.”
/> “Gaius.”
Relenting, he told her.
I know you can get a message to the Haudenosaunee, Marcellinus had said, and Pezi had begun to quiver. Convinced that the boy would flee at any moment or fall to his knees and beg, Marcellinus had shoved him down into the snow.
Standing over the shivering boy, Marcellinus had continued. I know you betrayed Cahokia. If Great Sun Man and the others were not so distracted by grief, they would have realized long ago. And you would die in agony. Those Iroqua prisoners? Those were simple deaths. It would go much harder than that for you.
So what do you want? Pezi had asked, and it had taken all Marcellinus’s strength not to kill him there and then for his calculating determination to live at any cost. Even now, the boy’s devious mind had not stopped working. Pezi knew that if Marcellinus had intended to kill him or yield him up to Great Sun Man, he would have done so already.
I want you to run, Marcellinus had said. Run to your Iroqua brothers in the north. Tell them Gaius Publius Marcellinus will come to speak to the chiefs of the Haudenosaunee when they next meet for powwow.
Pezi stared up at him, wide-eyed. The Haudenosaunee Council?
Remember, Pezi, I own you. And if you do not do as I say, one day I will find you, and that will be the first day of a year of suffering for you, and at the end of that year you will be broken and torn, and maybe then I will let you die.
Pezi shook his head. I could run far. The land is big. Would you follow me to the Market of the Mud? No. Tell me the other reason why I will do this.
Marcellinus grinned. Because you, too, want this war to be over. And I am the only man who can stop it.
And why do I want the war to be over?
Because then you will never again need to hide in a grain pit. And there will be important work for a man who can speak both tongues, whom the Cahokian and Iroqua chiefs both trust.
Trust? Pezi put his head on one side.
Why not? Marcellinus said. I am trusting you now. With my life.
He let the boy up. Pezi stood, shivering, brushing the snow from his skin. And that is all I tell them? That you are coming?
Tell them that I have brought war but that now I will bring peace.