by Alan Smale
“No.” Marcellinus had not forgotten the mutilated corpse of his Norse scout and friend Thorkell Sigurdsson, with its burned legs and missing heart. It still appeared in his dreams, its dead eyes staring in reproach. “I do not dwell on it.”
“You must.”
Their Iroqua escort waited patiently, faces blank. As always they were a little too far away to hear the conversation, though Marcellinus did not think any of them spoke Cahokian, anyway.
She persisted. “Gaius, you must know. You must be ready.”
“I prefer to think positively.”
“What?”
“It means don’t tell me. I cannot be distracted by fear.”
Marcellinus strode away. He heard her footsteps as she hurried to catch up to him and then her voice. “First, they will make you run between two rows of warriors.”
Running the gauntlet. “Shut up.”
“Warriors with sticks and clubs will strike you. You must run fast. If at the end you are still running, if you can dodge and defeat every threat and get up whenever you fall, then you may be freed. That does not happen often. Very few can do this. So after running you may be dead already, or if not they will tie you up high on a frame—”
“Be quiet!” Marcellinus turned on her. “I cannot hear this! Don’t you understand? Such knowledge puts fear into me, robs me of my confidence.”
The Caiuga chief appeared at Sintikala’s side, club held high, glaring at Marcellinus with a face already made ferocious by red and black war paint.
An Iroqua was protecting Sintikala from him.
Appalled, Marcellinus took a step back.
She muttered words in the Iroqua tongue that Marcellinus did not know. Still wary, the Caiuga lowered his club but stayed by her side.
“You must know of this,” Sintikala said remorselessly. “You must be ready. Hear me. They will tie you up high on a platform. They will slice away your fingers. They will cut and burn you. They may take your scalp, cut your stomach, and pull out your guts. As they do so, you must mock them.”
Fear struck Marcellinus like a fist. Gone were the days when he could sneer at the prospect of pain. “Mock them?”
“It may take many days for you to die, but you must be brave. You must sing your war song. You must laugh at the Iroqua and never show pain. You must not be broken. Only that way will they eat your heart.”
“Eat my heart?”
“Always sing your war song.” Her eyes drilled into him. “Always mock. Then, when you are dead, they will know you for a great warrior, and they will eat your heart to gain some of your courage. They will remember you. And, just as important for you, they will fear other warriors like you when they come. I mean the Romans.”
The wind caught the leaves around them. The trees shivered.
“Choose your song now,” Sintikala said. “When the knives cut you, you will not be able to think. You must be ready. Do as I say.”
No moisture remained in Marcellinus’s mouth. He swallowed painfully. “We should walk on.”
“I will be there when you die,” she said, her voice catching at last. “Make me proud. Make Cahokia proud.”
She raised her hand toward him. He did not know if she meant to seize his chin and pull his face down to meet her gaze or merely touch his arm in support, but he hastily stepped away.
Marcellinus did not need to see into Sintikala’s soul, and he hardly wanted her to see into his. Terror had hold of him. His stomach churned, and his heart was icy.
He began to shake. Had she crushed his resolve and sapped his confidence beyond all recovery? If so, she had already condemned him to the agonizing death she had described so eloquently.
Again she reached out. He knocked her hand away. “Damn you,” he said. “Now that you’ve told me, be quiet. Do not speak again.”
—
Without conversation, the days stretched into an endless walk. Marcellinus strode on as late into the evening as his Iroqua guards would allow, regardless of the blisters on his feet. Deep in his thoughts, he rejected Sintikala’s attempts at reconciliation, and after a day the Hawk clan leader walked instead with the Caiuga war party’s chief.
Gradually the heavy forests of oak and basswood pine gave way to lighter woodland of beech and birch. Marcellinus saw more signs of husbandry again, the low brush cleared or carefully burned, the fruits of the forest nurtured under Hesperian care.
They came to the edge of a great lake and walked along its shore for several days. Fishing boats dotted the lake’s surface, mostly coracles and canoes, but once Marcellinus saw a broad-beamed vessel that looked like a Norse knarr, one of the oceangoing trading ships that had accompanied them across the Atlantic, being sailed by Iroqua braves.
After an eternity of hills and forests occupied by only the occasional tipi, they passed a succession of stout Iroqua villages that lined the lakeshore. These were a far cry from the hardscrabble Iroqua homesteads Marcellinus had marched through and over during the 33rd Legion’s westward trek years earlier. They appeared fine and well kept, with hundreds of healthy-looking inhabitants in each one.
The first village they came through was palisaded, and Marcellinus could not see within it easily. The people came out to see him, though, especially the children. None had the air of warriors, and none ever could have been mistaken for Cahokians. The women wore wraparound skirts of a kind he had not seen before in Nova Hesperia or even what appeared to be buckskin dresses laced together with cords of sinew. The men wore britches or red leggings, again corded together, and ornate geometric tattoos. He saw an astonishing variety of colored beadwork in belts and braids and pouch trimmings, much more than he was used to from the Mizipians. The lakes Iroqua were a proud people.
The children were eager to see the pale stranger and came running. Just as in Cahokia after the first battle, the Hesperians did not keep their young ones away from Marcellinus. There seemed to be no thought that he might pose a danger to them. Nor did he, of course.
However, it was the Iroqua matrons, the senior members of the community, who showed the most interest. They studied him intently with that keen Hesperian female gaze that always seemed to pass right into his brain. They did not seem hostile, but at least from the older female perspective he was clearly a man to be evaluated and understood.
Despite the scrutiny, there was a festive air about the villages. The people were preparing for powwow. Children were excited. The healthy babble of voices had a calming effect on Marcellinus, and the lake breeze refreshed him. He tugged off his helmet and let the air cool his damp brow.
“You will smile at the Iroqua but not at me?” said Sintikala. “Me you hate, for preparing you for what you might face here?”
Her words were harsh, but her face betrayed her hurt. Marcellinus gave in. “I feared that the knowledge would weaken me. It has not. It has merely made me more focused.”
“Focused?”
“I am thinking more. Concentrating.”
“Shall I tell you how much longer till we arrive at powwow? Or will you hate me again for that?”
He raised his hand to touch her shoulder but dropped it back to his side before he made contact. Being even this close to her made his thoughts flow more slowly.
“I have never hated you,” he said. “I cannot hate you. I’m glad you’re here.”
Sintikala cut him off with a hand gesture, but gently. Perhaps she was worried about what he might say next. “Three days more, Gaius. Then powwow and the Council of the Haudenosaunee. There not everyone will smile.”
Marcellinus nodded. “Good. We need to speak of serious matters.”
He expected Sintikala to probe him yet again about how he intended to handle this. She did not, and he was glad, for he knew now and had no intention of telling her.
After all, there were still three more days in which she could kill him.
—
The next village they passed had no palisade. Marcellinus saw four longhouses in a row alongside a sma
ll plaza surrounded by neat gardens of corn, beans, and berries.
The Iroqua residential longhouses were neither as huge nor as square-cut as the Longhouses of the Wings, Thunderbirds, and Sun that Marcellinus knew from Cahokia, yet they seemed sturdier and better established. They stood fifty feet long and twenty feet wide and were only a single story high. Roughly rectangular in floor plan, they had rounded corners and curved roofs formed by bending branches across in arcs and binding them. The longhouses had doors and curving porches at each end and were walled and roofed with shingles of elm bark. Up to five chimneys along each roof’s center gave evidence of the many hearths that must line the spine of each longhouse.
“Many families live in each,” Sintikala said. “Inside the houses are separate rooms. Two families live in every room and share the fire in the center.”
It seemed entirely too snug an arrangement to Marcellinus, and he said so.
“Winters are harsh here,” she said. “Do you think Cahokia is cold? Spend a winter here. Then you would want to be in such a house with your neighbors close.”
“Have you? Wintered somewhere like this?”
Sintikala nodded. “Not with the Iroqua, of course, but along the Mizipi in our upriver towns where the weather is the same. There, even mound builders build houses like these to survive the winter.”
“At least we won’t still be here when winter comes,” said Marcellinus, and immediately regretted it. The truth was that he might well be still here, dead and buried in the frozen soil.
Seeing his expression, Sintikala stepped in quickly. “Longhouses have five hearths and five chimneys. Each of them. You see?”
“Yes, five. So?”
“Five chimneys. Five tribes of the Iroqua. The number is important.” Raising a hand, she spread her fingers. “Five. In their own tongue, the Iroqua are the Haudenosaunee, which means ‘the People of the Longhouse.’ See the real houses here? Always they are set northeast to southwest, just like the tribes. From northeast to southwest the five tribes are the Mohawk, named for the river that flows through their homeland, then the Onida, Onondaga, and Caiuga, each named after the lake where they live, or perhaps the lake is named after the tribe. Farthest west are the Seneca, and I do not know what they are named for.”
“Yes,” said Marcellinus, who already knew most of this.
“The council is like the longhouse,” Sintikala persisted. “This is why I tell you of it. The Mohawks are called the Keepers of the Eastern Door. The Seneca are the Keepers of the Western Door, and the Onondaga are the Keepers of the Central Fire. This is why the high chief of the council must always be of the Onondaga tribe.”
“All right.”
“And the remaining two tribes, the Onida and Caiuga, are called the Younger Brothers. But when you see the sachems in the Council of the Haudenosaunee, the Older Brother chiefs sit together, so the Mohawk and Seneca on one side, and Younger Brothers sit together on the other, and the Onondaga sit always in the center. The Onondaga high chief of all the Haudenosaunee is always called the Tadodaho no matter what his real name is. When you are presented to them, you must find and address the Tadodaho first, then the Older Brothers, then the Younger Brothers, but show respect to all.”
This was new. Kidnapped by the Cahokians at a young age, Wachiwi had been able to tell him little of the council. Marcellinus nodded. “How do they reach decisions?”
“Decisions must be unanimous among all the sachems and are then binding on all the tribes. Any chief can say no.”
“All five sachems must agree?” That was worrying.
Sintikala stared at him. “Five? The Council of the Haudenosaunee is fifty sachems. Fourteen chiefs from the Onondaga, ten Caiuga, nine of the…Gaius, you did not know this?”
He had not.
Marcellinus had to convince fifty Iroqua war chiefs of his sincerity. All must agree. Any could veto.
“Well, that makes it easy,” he said.
She looked at him, baffled.
“I’m joking. Roman sarcasm.”
“Do not joke,” Sintikala said severely. “Focus.”
—
They spent the next day again walking along the lakeshore, mostly in silence. The villages they passed now were mostly empty, their residents already at powwow. Behind them and in front of them, a steady stream of Haudenosaunee hiked the same lakeshore trail on their way to the big meeting. The sheer volume of Iroqua surprised Marcellinus, along with the hatred on the faces of the men dressed and painted as warriors. The dozen braves of the Seneca and Caiuga who formed their escort could easily have been overpowered, but they showed no fears for their own safety.
That night, an hour after they had made camp on the shore of the lake and finished a dinner of beans and fresh fish, Sintikala came to him. “Gaius?”
Marcellinus was staring out over the darkening lake. Their escort formed a loose semicircle behind them; the nearest was a score or more paces away. No other Iroqua were near. “What?”
“You still speak little to me.”
He had been thinking of his youth, his early campaigns. His wife, Julia, Vestilia’s mother. Bad decisions made, now regretted. Thoughts, he realized, more appropriate for a man on his deathbed than for a legate with a job of diplomacy ahead of him.
“Do you hate me?”
Marcellinus did not know why she harped on this. “Sintikala, not all my thoughts are about you.”
“Have you chosen your song?”
His death song. “Yes. Do not ask me what it is.”
Marcellinus had tried not to think about it, but once Sintikala had set him the task, it had eaten away at him till he had come to a decision. He had, in fact, chosen two: a drinking song from his Sindh campaign, with words simple and profane enough that he felt confident of remembering them under duress, and a lullaby he had sung to Vestilia when she was very little, which would serve as his lament. War song be damned: if it really came to this, let his Iroqua tormenters share his sorrow as well as his rage.
“I do not hate you,” he said. “But perhaps I should.”
She sat down by his side, holding a knife with an obsidian blade that he had not seen before.
“You’ve decided,” he said.
For an instant, he found himself looking around for a weapon, checking the ground underfoot, preparing for the battle to come. And then he realized he could never cause her harm. A fight to the death with Sintikala was unthinkable.
For himself, he had no regrets. Death at her hand would surely be kinder than torture at the hands of the Iroqua. Nevertheless, he regretted the lost opportunity.
“It’s a mistake,” he said. “You should let me try. But as you wish.”
“No,” she said almost tenderly. “What we shall do now, we cannot do as enemies.”
“You are not my enemy.”
“No. And for what we must do at powwow, we must be more than friends.”
The blade glinted in the early starlight. Marcellinus suppressed a shiver. “I don’t understand.”
“You gave me a choice. You said I must kill you or ally with you. Either we must be enemies and fight until we die or bury the ax and walk the trail ahead with peace between us.”
“We cannot forget the past,” he said. “And you are holding a knife. So you have decided.”
“Yes,” she said.
She bent forward and sliced gently into her own forearm.
“Sisika!”
She held out the knife to him. Its blade dripped. “I will be your sister in blood.”
Light dawned. “Blood brothers? You and I?”
She nodded. “When we face the Council of the Haudenosaunee, I need to know the blood of Cahokia beats in your heart.”
“But that means that my blood would also beat in yours,” he said.
On the rocky beach of a great lake far from home, Sintikala stared into his soul.
“My Roman blood,” he added, as if this could have slipped her mind.
“Yes, Gaius.”
Her deep brown eyes were hooded in the growing dusk, her body strong and clean. Blood still welled from the wound on her arm. Sintikala shook the blade, urging him to take it.
Instead, he offered her his arm. “You do it.”
Their eyes locked. She moved forward, kneeling close against him, and took hold of his wrist. She braced herself, her hip against his ribs. Her braided hair brushed his shoulder.
The cold obsidian touched his forearm. As furtive as a caress, Sintikala drew the blade along his flesh.
The pain was immediate and ferocious. Marcellinus jerked, and his blood splashed her.
It was a small cut but deep. Blood surged out of it and flowed in rivulets. Sintikala lifted his wrist, and the blood spilled down his arm and pooled in the crook of his elbow.
Their wounds touched. Their blood mingled. Sintikala looped a braided cord around their wrists, pulling it taut. Their arms formed a cross, tied together.
Sintikala leaned forward until their foreheads touched; brothers in breath as well as in blood. The sting of the gash in his arm dwindled, replaced by the rush of an emotion that had no name. It was a bond of an intimacy closer than any he had experienced.
Sintikala was breathing hard. Marcellinus twisted his arm a little, smearing his blood against hers. She clutched him.
Minutes went by. Marcellinus felt their breathing synchronize. He imagined that their hearts did, too. In that moment, he seemed to be flying.
This was not a meeting of souls. More visceral than that, it was a meeting of blood, of true warriors.
Sintikala raised her other hand, fingers extended. He clutched it with his own free hand, palm to palm, fingers to fingers.
“Nothing is the same now,” he said.
She sighed, not her usual impatience but something deeper. “Always change. With Wanageeska, always there is change.”
“And always, too, with Sintikala.”
“For you,” she said, “I am Sisika.”
Marcellinus opened his eyes. She stared at him from less than an inch away. Her intensity made his heart skip. He straightened, and their foreheads parted.
He let go of her hand, put his arm around her. Sintikala let him hold her for a moment, her head resting against his shoulder. Then she unlooped the cord that bound them. “It is done.”