by Alan Smale
Tahtay had few people to confide in, and nowhere he truly belonged.
“Gaius?” Hurit peered up at him from the floor, worried.
Marcellinus had been lost in his thoughts. “Sorry. I was remembering long ago, when I was the chief of the first Roman legion that came to Cahokia.” He waited for a caustic comment, but Hurit just handed him a beaker of tea. “It can be lonely being a chief. And dangerous. One of my friendships was nearly the death of me, and I was only barely saved by the other.”
“Aelfric. He told me the story.”
Marcellinus nodded.
Hurit leaned forward. “I would be there for Tahtay. It’s what I want. To be by his side. And I would…protect him. If he needed it. Die for him if I had to.”
She was staring deep into his eyes as she said this, and for all her tendency toward drama, Marcellinus utterly believed her. He did not doubt her courage.
Hurit shook her head. “But he no longer even notices me.”
Tahtay might be lonely but could also be maddeningly touchy and obstinate. And proud. Especially having been rejected by Hurit once already.
But perhaps that could be mended. And if so, Marcellinus had no fear that Hurit would ever tire of Tahtay or he of her. For all her inflated opinion of herself, Hurit would be a sparkling and intelligent match for Tahtay and loyal to the death. She was fast with numbers and could read and write almost as well as Enopay. And she could wield a gladius like no one else her age.
Marcellinus nodded. “I will talk to Tahtay when next I see him.”
Hurit’s jaw dropped almost comically. “You will?”
“Yes, I will. But you will have to do something for me in return.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Does it involve sewing?”
“No. It involves gears.” Marcellinus had a moment of inspiration. “Tahtay is very interested in my waterwheel, you know.”
Again she looked startled. “He is?”
“Yes. It’s at his urging that I started working on it again. With a waterwheel you can grind corn much more quickly, between two round flat stones.” Marcellinus mimed the way the stones ground together. “You can power bellows without needing people to constantly pump. If you have fast water, you can even make a sawmill and cut wood more easily.”
He had lost her already, and no wonder. “So what do you need from me?”
“Gears.” He held up his hands at right angles and interlocked his fingers. “Two wheels that connect like this. Turn one wheel, and it makes the other turn.”
Hurit shook her head. “If I can barely thread a needle, I certainly cannot fashion wood. I can bake bricks, fight, and collect buffalo chips. That’s about all. And this looks much harder than bricks.”
“Sometimes the hardest things to achieve are those which are the most worth doing.”
“Are they?”
He grinned. “Help me talk to the woodturners. Help me put together a group of them to do nothing but this until we get it right. My novelty value in Cahokia is over. They will do it for you long before they do it for me.”
She gave him an arch look, and he pointed at her face. “Exactly, Hurit. That expression is what I need. And if you can do this, Tahtay will be pleased.”
Hurit wagged her finger at him. “You think you are big clever, but I know what you are doing.”
He smiled back. “Is it working?”
“Yes. I will talk to the woodturners. You will talk to Tahtay. But Gaius, you should really come to Ocatan with Anapetu and me.”
Now it was Marcellinus’s turn to be confused. “What?”
“Ocatan. They are the real workers of wood. You have seen their palisade? It is much better work than the palisade here in Cahokia even though some of their men came to help us. And their bowls and canoes are better. The Concordia’s oars were made in Ocatan. The men who came south with us and patched the ship and did the woodwork we needed? Many were originally Ocatani.”
“Hmm.” Marcellinus vaguely recalled that now. He also knew that Anapetu, their Raven clan chief, regularly went to Ocatan to spend time with her sisters and daughter and their families. Hurit and Dustu sometimes went with her; they had friends among the brickworkers and presumably among the woodworkers as well, since the Big Warm House required a great deal of wood as well as brick.
But still. At this time of year they could not go by river, and it would be a long hike, a hundred fifty miles or more. Despite the heat in his hut, Marcellinus shivered involuntarily.
“Cold already?” Hurit said, her natural impertinence returning.
“Yes.”
“Well, sometimes the hardest things are the ones most worth doing.” She stuck out her tongue. He made a face at her.
Hurit sobered. “Also, I think it may be good for you to get out of Cahokia for a while. There is less talk of the war in Ocatan. Let them prepare here in Cahokia without you, since you are not helping anyway. After you have talked to Tahtay about how wonderfully forgivable I am, of course.”
Marcellinus laughed.
“Treaty?” she said.
“Treaty,” Marcellinus replied, and clasped her forearm in the Roman style.
—
As Marcellinus walked through the streets of Cahokia, he tried to see it through Roman eyes. Behind him and to the left a Sky Lantern was suspended from the mound adjacent to the brickworks, ably piloted by Chogan himself. A few small wheeled carts traveled along the edge of the Great Plaza, pulled by men; the Cahokians had developed the carts themselves, using Marcellinus’s wheelbarrows and the carts of the Romans as inspiration. Over to the northeast the steel foundry belched its smoke into the air, the harbinger of Cahokian industry.
Despite being the greatest city in Nova Hesperia, despite all Marcellinus’s work and improvements, perhaps it would still look very muddy and provincial to them.
He was looking for Kimimela but found Aelfric, who was leaning against a brand-new red cedar post on the eastern edge of the Great Plaza while the Cahokian army did charge-and-retreat drills, looking for all the world like a man watching a chariot race or an athletic contest.
“They’re not bad, these boys,” the Briton said. “They’ll do you proud when they go up against the legions.”
Marcellinus grunted. Akecheta was drilling the First Cahokian to the north of the plaza while Wahchintonka was bellowing orders to about six hundred Cahokian warriors who stood in a credibly straight formation, five ranks deep, with frequent breaks in it.
Aelfric pointed. “They’ve already figured out to leave spaces for the horses to charge in between if they want to. And then they can pick ’em off at leisure. And all this before they’ve even seen cavalry in action. You didn’t tell them to do that?”
“No.”
Aelfric pointed again. “And reserves. I haven’t asked, but it looks like Akecheta is keeping men in reserve so they’re not all fighting at once even though Wahchintonka’s lot outnumbers them. Fresh men.”
“I did tell them that,” Marcellinus admitted. “But that was when they were fighting Iroqua.”
“Well, I’m sure that’ll be all right with Roma, then.”
“Have you seen Kimimela?”
“Nope.”
Marcellinus squinted upward, then looked down at the ground at the pole’s base. “How long has this pole been here?”
“They winched it up yesterday morning. Only took five of them. Usually takes dozens.”
Whenever war was coming, the Cahokians erected more cedar poles. Even now Marcellinus didn’t know why.
“You know they use that winch to pull throwing engines up onto their mounds right quick?” Aelfric said quietly. “You gave them this stuff for the best reasons, but—”
“I know. At least I can’t see them fighting Hadrianus with a waterwheel.”
“I wouldn’t put it past Tahtay.”
In front of them on the plaza, Akecheta’s men had repulsed another charge by the Wolf Warriors. “So when do you and Chumanee leave?”
&nbs
p; “First thaw. Maybe. I’m having trouble persuading her to go.”
“Oh?”
“Here comes your child prodigy.”
Enopay had just walked out of the Great Mound’s side gate. Spotting Marcellinus and Aelfric, he made a beeline straight across the Great Plaza, ignoring the military maneuvers going on all around him.
The last Marcellinus had heard, Chumanee would be guiding Aelfric off into the upland villages as soon as the Romans came within a week’s march. And as far as was necessary. They weren’t the only ones making plans to leave in the spring, Marcellinus knew. “Chumanee doesn’t want to go, now?”
“Loyalty to Tahtay and Cahokia.” Aelfric shrugged and grinned. “Ridiculous.”
“Of course. What about Isleifur?”
“He can come if he likes. He hasn’t asked.”
Enopay reached them. “You have changed your mind about helping us fight? Or you are memorizing our battle tactics so you can tell Roma?”
Marcellinus was not completely sure Enopay was joking. “Neither. Is Tahtay busy? Have you seen Kimi?”
“Tahtay is on the sun.” Enopay gestured, meaning the Mound of the Sun, where Tahtay lived. “No one else is with him at the moment. I think he is eating. You will teach him more Latin?”
“Perhaps. And Kimimela?”
“I just saw Kimimela walking up the Master Mound to the Longhouse of the Wings.”
“Hmm.” Marcellinus glanced at both mounds and regretfully decided that Tahtay was the higher priority. “I will be going to Ocatan soon, Enopay. Do you want to come?”
Enopay shook his head, dismissing the question. “We are your people now, Eyanosa. Not the Romans. If you cannot bring us peace with them, then you should help us with war.”
“Oh, I think the Eyanosa has helped you quite a bit already,” Aelfric said. “In all directions.”
“That’s what you’d do?” Marcellinus demanded of Enopay. “If the Iroqua had captured you, and you had made friends there, and then Cahokia attacked? You would fight Cahokians?”
“No, because I would never make friends with the Iroqua in the first place.”
Marcellinus felt his nerves fraying. “Do you wish I had never come here, then?”
Enopay was quiet, looking out across the plaza. “I have always been glad I met you. And even now we have more hope with you here than without you. But you should ask me that question again in six moons if any of us are still alive.”
“I will,” Marcellinus said.
“And now I have a message for the rope makers, and so I must go.” Enopay walked off.
“What a little ray of sunshine,” said Aelfric.
Marcellinus followed the boy with his eyes. The Romans were not there yet, and already he felt he was losing all his friends. “He’s not wrong. Anyway. I have to talk to Tahtay.”
—
Marcellinus and the Raven clan group hiked wearily back into Cahokia’s Great Plaza a month later to find an Eagle craft being launched off the mound, crewed by Sintikala, Kimimela, and a Hawk clan boy of a similar age. Immediately the blood began rushing around Marcellinus’s body much more quickly. “Juno,” he said.
“Do not worry,” Hurit advised him. “Kimimela has such a hard head that even if she lands on it, she won’t do herself any harm.”
“Hurit,” Anapetu said warningly. Hurit had been tormenting Marcellinus all day, and even Anapetu was wearying of it.
The three-person Eagle was banking left and then right. The turns looked a little shaky, and the craft was losing height quickly in the cold of the day even with the heat from the Cahokian fires to provide something of an updraft.
Hurit yawned. “I would wrestle a bear for a beaker of sarsaparilla tea. Whose fire can we steal?”
“I’ll see you later,” Marcellinus said, and remembered to bow to his clan chief. “That was an excellent trip, Anapetu. Thank you for allowing me to accompany you.”
The Raven chief nodded. “You are always welcome, Gaius Wanageeska.”
For a heart-stopping moment Marcellinus thought the Eagle had gone into a death spiral, but apparently Sintikala was doing it deliberately. The Eagle continued its tight corkscrew down to the plaza, where its three pilots ran it to a halt.
The sand of the Great Plaza looked chewed up and slushy. As he walked over to the Eagle, Marcellinus wondered what kind of military maneuvers he had missed on his trip south to the confluence town. By the time he arrived at their side, the three of them had unstrapped and four men of the Hawk clan had arrived to take the craft from them and run it back to the Great Mound. “Sintikala. Kimimela.”
Sintikala smiled at him with a warmth that made his heart skip a beat, but then turned to the boy copilot to lecture him about the line of his body in the air. The boy was already pale and shaking, and Marcellinus pitied him a little.
“You had a good time in Ocatan?” Kimimela asked.
“Very successful. But very cold.” Marcellinus pulled two cogwheels each a foot across from his buffalo-skin pouch. “See? This is how the teeth fit together. A pole through each wheel, and a horizontal torque can be converted to a vertical one and magnified. The woodworkers of Ocatan are making much bigger cogs, and frames for the waterwheels. I’ll be going back again soon, after I have taught Tahtay more Latin for negotiating with Roma…Kimimela, I am very happy to see you again.”
She hugged him. “I am glad you came back. I was getting bored here with nobody to tease.”
Sintikala clapped her hands. “Enough. Kimimela, we must fly again before the wind drops. Gaius, I would talk with you later.”
“Yes. I would like that.”
Sintikala nodded and smiled again and turned to jog back to the Great Mound.
Kimimela bounced on the balls of her feet. “Oh, and Father?”
“Yes?”
“Go to the baths first.”
And with a wicked wink that almost managed to be solemn, Kimimela sprinted after her mother.
—
“Gaius?”
Marcellinus turned at the top of his mound to see Sintikala striding up the cedar steps. He expected to see the Hawk paint still around her eyes and the leather tunic she had worn in the air, but her hair was down and her skin clear and glistening. “We may speak?”
“Yes, if I may sit.” It had been a long day. He led the way to the bench outside his door. By now he had almost grown accustomed to the way the Great Mound loomed over it.
“Perhaps inside.” She walked past him through the doorskin and stepped down into his hut.
He followed her in and found her looking at his lares in their shrine, with the golden Shappan birdman amulet resting next to them and a bark fragment with “Kimi thank Gaius” written on it in looped charcoal finger-talk on the other side.
“You have been gone so long, yet you go back to Ocatan again soon?” she said.
“Once more. One final trip before…” He grimaced.
“Before we leave for Roma.”
“In a way. Where is Kimimela?”
“She talks to Tahtay and Enopay. Tahtay relies on her just as he relies on his elders.”
Marcellinus nodded. “And on Enopay. Sometimes when Tahtay speaks with such assurance, I hear Enopay’s words in what he says…Hmm.”
“What?”
It had just occurred to Marcellinus that perhaps one of the most beneficial consequences of his coming to Cahokia was the closeness between Tahtay, Kimimela, and Enopay. “I was wondering if those three would be friends if I had not come.”
Sintikala shook her head. “So much would have been different if Great Sun Man had killed you as I suggested.”
His hut, which once had seemed so large to him, now seemed intimately small. Suddenly he did not know what to do with his hands and feet. “Sometimes you are disconcertingly honest.”
“I am?” She picked up the birdman amulet and examined it thoughtfully. “Lately…I have had bad dreams.”
Well, so had Marcellinus. “Dreams are just d
reams.”
“Blood and fighting. Romans in steel. Thunder and lightning.” She put the amulet back and turned away from the lares. “You are sure that the Romans will not kill us as soon as we enter their camp? You they may murder immediately, for losing your men and living with us. And I walked into a Roman camp once before and was lucky to walk out again.”
“That was not luck,” he said.
“Yes, it was.”
He shook his head again.
“Neither do I,” she said, just as if he had answered No, I do not know whether the Romans will kill us. “Gaius…”
She walked over to him and looked up into his eyes. He felt himself reacting to her stare, to her stern beauty and her strength, and did not know what to say.
“Have you chosen your death song?” she said, and smiled.
He grinned back, recovering his composure. “Romans do not torture. Usually.”
“That is comforting.”
“They do execute, though.”
“How?” she said with genuine interest. “For you, if they did, how? Sword? Rope? Knife?”
Bizarre how Sintikala could be so matter-of-fact. “For me it would be a sword.”
“How?” She raised her hand, palm up. “If it would take your confidence, we need not speak of it.”
“They would probably have me kneel and drive the gladius downward by my neck, through my shoulder, into my heart.” He gestured, showing the vertical path the sword would take. “Or they would tell me to do it myself, to fall on my sword and cut open my own stomach. Or perhaps they’d take me back to Roma and the senators could hold a lottery to see who gets the honor of cleaving the head from my shoulders.”
He had meant the last as a dark joke, but now Sintikala was looking at him very seriously. Their eyes locked, and for the first time it was he who read the message in hers. His heart leaped. “Sisika?”
Finally she said, “Gaius, if I ask you to do one thing, will you do that one thing and no more?”
“Yes, I will.”
She opened her arms, and he drew her in. She clung to him, her face against his chest. His arms enfolded her.