by Alan Smale
Even as they landed on the east bank, Mahkah raced out of the city on a piebald steed, leaning forward into the gallop. He had taken to riding as if he had been doing it all his life. Marcellinus half expected to see Hanska by his side. She was also an instinctive rider, and the two of them drilled other members of the First Cahokian together.
The Mizipi bank was boggy, and Mahkah could not bring his mount all the way to its edge. He slid off the horse and stood beside it, patting its neck to calm it. Marcellinus hurried forward. “What? What is happening?”
“Fight. Big fight.”
“Another?” Enopay looked accusingly at Marcellinus.
“What is it this time?”
“A boy of the Chipmunk clan caught stealing in the barracks of the 27th. They flogged him. Our warriors protested. Their soldiers turned on ours. Then?” Mahkah threw up his hands, and his horse reared. “Battle. Many dead already. You must go, Hotah. Take my steed to the Great Plaza, then another south.”
As the Roman seized the reins, the stallion backed up, eyes wide and rolling. Marcellinus looked dubious. “He won’t throw me?”
Mahkah grinned. “Maybe.”
Marcellinus stepped into the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle. The horse sidestepped but quickly stilled as Marcellinus took control. “Enopay, come on. Mahkah, lift him up behind me.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Me? No. I will get there when I get there.”
“Maybe you can help.”
“Not if my skull is broken!”
“Go!” Mahkah slapped the horse’s rump, and as he lurched forward, Marcellinus grabbed the reins tightly and leaned in. Mahkah’s legs were longer and the stirrups hung low; this would be a dodgy ride.
As he galloped through western Cahokia dogs barked at him, and more than one Wolf Warrior instinctively grabbed a spear or a club. Even now, mounted Romans in armor were a rare sight in the streets of the Great City. Especially with the alarums still sounding, a Roman at full gallop could only be seen as a threat. But Marcellinus was well known, and Cahokians scattered to let him pass.
Hanska awaited him in the Great Plaza astride her black Barbary, with a second horse beside her, a tan Thracian. Ciqala, the young son of Takoda and Kangee, stood close by, gaping.
Marcellinus slid off Mahkah’s horse, which was already blown and panting, and pulled himself aboard the second mount. “Bad?”
“Fuck the 27th,” Hanska said tersely. Spurring her horse, she took off southward like an arrow.
“Hanska…” Marcellinus swore again and looked around him. “You!” he shouted, and Ciqala took a step back, wide-eyed.
“Run to the longhouses. Find Sintikala and Chenoa and say to them: ‘Mud!’ ”
The boy narrowed his eyes. He obviously had inherited his mother’s distrust of the Roman. “Mud?”
“Bring mud! Tell them now!” Marcellinus dug in his heels, and the Thracian leaped forward.
Galloping after Hanska, Marcellinus passed Cahokian warriors running south with weapons in hand. Their destination was obvious. Marcellinus could hear the clang of steel even over the thunder of his horse’s hooves. As he passed the Mound of the Women and the castra of the 27th Augustan hove into view, he saw Cahokians and Romans in bitter armed combat spilling out past its earthen embankment. It was less a battle than a brawl, gladius against ax, pugio against short spear, fists and rocks against similar weapons.
The fortress of the 27th was nowhere near as impressive as that of the Third. Agrippa’s men had commandeered the site of the old Cahokian castra, which had been built soon after the sack of Cahokia, when a Mizipian army was preparing to march on the Haudenosaunee. The Romans had built up the existing earthworks and topped the earthen ramparts with wooden crenellations and walkways. The towers that loomed over the gates and corners of the fortress had none of the stout permanence of those of Sabinus’s legion. It would take an earthquake to dislodge the fortifications of the Third. It might take just this battle to compromise the castra of the 27th Augustan.
Viewing the scene through a soldier’s eyes, Marcellinus had to admit his Cahokians were doing a fine job of bottling up the forces of Roma. Agrippa’s cohorts had obviously tried to pull the gates closed and failed; the gates now lay in the mud, splintered and wrecked. A phalanx of First Cahokian warriors twenty men wide and five deep now blocked the entranceway instead, pushing and shoving against the legionaries within. Their front line was protected by the Roman scuta shields they had acquired long before from the 33rd, and those in the second and fourth ranks of the phalanx were holding more of the broad shields over their heads in an admirable testudo.
In fact, few missiles were being launched down upon them because the wooden battlements were burning, alight with Cahokian liquid flame. Farther along the embankment a few legionary archers leaned over the crenellations to loose arrows obliquely into the Cahokian force, but they themselves were the targets of a group of Cahokian bowmen fifty feet back from the walls.
In between the archers and the castra walls a melee raged. A few hundred legionaries of the 27th Augustan fought in untidy hand-to-hand combat with a roughly equivalent number of Cahokians. Some Romans were in full armor, but others fought in their simple off-duty tunics. Similarly, the locals were a mix of Wolf Warriors, First Cahokian, and ordinary townsfolk. Some had Cahokian wooden or mat armor covering their chests and backs, others wore Roman helmets or breastplates, and still more had no armor at all, but they all howled with anger and fought like demons. It was sheer bloody mayhem, and the fact that scores of men were not already lying dead on the ground was a comment on both the evenness of the battle and its disorganization.
Marcellinus saw many warriors he recognized, but few of his lieutenants. Akecheta was away on the Wemissori River, captaining the Concordia on a trip to the Blackfoot territory, and Mahkah was somewhere behind him, presumably still running in from the Great City. Hanska had arrived ahead of Marcellinus and was off her horse and shoving herself into the roughest part of the scrap. Whether she was trying to break up the fight or crack some Roman heads together was not immediately apparent. Marcellinus did not see Tahtay or any of the elders of Cahokia, and for that matter he saw no Roman tribunes.
Marcellinus swore in several languages. This had gone to Hades in a handbasket much too quickly. He could not allow this battle to rage on. It must be quenched by whatever means necessary.
Gritting his teeth, Marcellinus slid off his horse and strode into the mess of soldiers and warriors. He seized two men wrestling over a gladius, shoved one back, and kicked the other, hardly caring which was which. “Stop!” Walking between them, he came upon two more men trading blows with sword and ax. “Break it up!”
Ah, there was Wahchintonka, similarly marching into the fray as though he were made of steel. Although his voice was lost in the furor, the seasoned war lieutenant was clearly bellowing, commanding Cahokians back, dragging combatants apart wherever he could. A few Roman centurions were doing likewise, yelling orders and trying to pull men back from the brawl. Again came the bray of trumpets as the cornicens signaled the legionaries to disengage. The men took little notice.
Marcellinus exhaled long and hard and strode deeper into the chaos, grabbing, pushing, shoving. Echoes of running the Iroqua gauntlet came suddenly back into his mind: the deafening hubbub, the whirl of limbs around him, the spitting.
Now as then, he held his head high and pushed on. Around him were braves he knew, or at least recognized, from the plazas and markets and fields. He could well die today at the hands of a man or woman he had known for half a dozen years.
In between Roman helmets Marcellinus caught a glimpse of Matoshka, of all people, also shouting and trying to order Cahokians back. The half-crippled elder was not so foolish as to place himself within reach of a Roman gladius, but when this hoary old bear shouted at a Cahokian, that brave took heed.
Matoshka and Wahchintonka were trying to stop Cahokians fighting with Romans, while Marcellinus’s First
Cahokian assaulted the enemy’s gate. The irony was acute.
A dozen Cahokians had backed an equal number of Roman soldiers up against the wall of their own fortress. Marcellinus knew he could never get there in time, and he did not. Cahokian blades slid up under Roman steel, dug deep into Roman bodies. The legionaries crashed onto their knees. Cahokian pugios sawed away at Roman scalps.
Guided by a sixth sense, Marcellinus glanced up at the skies.
Two Thunderbirds roared low over his head, the new lighter seven-person birds developed over the winter by Chenoa of the Wakinyan clan. The Thunderbirds disgorged their loads at the same time. Two wet black streams cascaded down over the mob. Mud; the Thunderbirds were strafing the combatants with the thick Mizipi mud they used for training. Ciqala must have taken Marcellinus’s message after all. Chenoa herself piloted the lead Wakinyan, her body stocky and strong, her movements decisive.
The mud had spared Marcellinus but doused the combatants at the center of the fighting, Romans and Hesperians alike. Men slipped and went down. Some took advantage of the distraction to cut throats and slide spears into other men’s guts, but the ferocious energy of the battle was wavering.
“Centurion! And Wahchintonka! To me!”
The Roman of the 27th thus hailed glowered at Marcellinus, gladius in one hand and vine stick of office in the other, held up before him like a shield. Marcellinus reached out his weaponless right hand and in Latin said, “We must join to stop the fighting. Come.”
Wahchintonka was still a dozen feet away, out of earshot and only half looking at him, wary of the muddy legionaries to his right and left. To him Marcellinus waved three broad gestures in the Hesperian hand-talk: Warrior! Halt! Come!
If they didn’t get it yet, they weren’t going to. Marcellinus shoulder-barged a Cahokian, knocking him down, and shoved the man’s Roman assailant back, jabbing his finger at the man’s face in stern command. Nonetheless, the legionary raised his club.
“Stand down, soldier,” snapped the centurion to his right, and Wahchintonka grabbed another Cahokian’s belt to yank him away from the legionary. “Back off!” Marcellinus shouted in two languages. “Fall back! Fall back!”
He hurried on. In front of him two more men traded blows, but the Cahokian was quicker, and the Roman’s feet appeared to give way beneath him. Another slash from the Cahokian and the Roman private was down and drowning in his own blood. Marcellinus’s head threatened to start aching again, as it often did in times of bloodshed and stress. He clouted the Cahokian over the head, empty-handed. “Get away! Away!”
It was Dustu, whom Marcellinus had known since he was a boy, now as much a man as Tahtay was; indeed, he was one of Tahtay’s most trusted lieutenants. Roman blood glistened on his gladius and was spattered along his forearm. His eyes were bright with battle fury as he raised his sword.
Marcellinus stood firm. “Fall back, Dustu. I have spoken.”
At last the young man’s mouth dropped open in recognition. He took an involuntary step back. Marcellinus nodded as if Dustu were in full retreat and moved on to the next man.
With dazzling speed Sintikala zoomed low over them, a long white streamer fluttering behind her Hawk. Behind her flew her daughter, Kimimela, and the Hawk clan deputy, Demothi, both of them also trailing flags of parley. Shocked, startled, soldiers on both sides threw themselves back away from the craft. But just ten feet away three Cahokians died almost at once, a woman and two men clad in only the shirts they had been wearing to sow crops in the fields, hacked down by two legionaries, their armor parade-ground bright.
Marcellinus’s head pounded, and at the same time an ax blade clanged off his chest plate from a random, flailing backswing. Marcellinus slapped the Cahokian down, an openhanded blow. The brave’s opponent, a Roman in the chain mail hauberk of a cavalryman, leaped forward to take advantage of the situation, and Marcellinus lunged and kicked him. Cahokian and cavalryman both snarled, and for a moment Marcellinus thought they might team up against him in their fury.
“Step back, soldier! Break it up, now.” Mollifying words in both Latin and Cahokian, conciliatory in tone but shouted at full volume. “We’re all-done here. This helps nobody. Stop!”
Chenoa’s Thunderbird came around again. Another torrent of mud rained down upon them.
Gradually, they made headway and the brawl subsided. Men disengaged, stepped back. Few Romans would assault one of their own, and Marcellinus now cut through the crowd like a blade. Most Cahokians now retreated rather than cross him, and once their own battle had paused, they moved to hold back the others.
A third Wakinyan, one of the original monsters with a full twelve-man crew, lumbered through the air toward the castra from the northwest. In the melee zone the Cahokians were beating a hasty retreat while their Roman opponents regrouped by the walls, at last forming an impromptu squad line.
Now Marcellinus was only thirty feet from the gateway of the Augustan castra, where the Cahokian squad still wrestled with the Romans within. “First Cahokian! To me! Retreat in good order!”
Some already were reversing carefully, and Marcellinus saw Hanska at the far end of their line berating the men, ordering them back, while still holding out her gladius toward the mass of armored Romans that threatened them from the gateway. Marcellinus took the near end of the line, and between them they got the First Cahokian backed up en masse, one pace, two, then more, while still holding the line, awkwardly retreating as a unit without letting their guard down.
The risk now came from the Romans; the enraged legionaries bottled up within the camp might swarm out and fall upon the withdrawing Cahokians. Marcellinus caught sight of the cornicen on the battlements, watching the events outside the walls of the fortress with troubled eyes. “Trumpeter! Signal the retreat again! Do it now!”
The cornicen eyed Marcellinus but did nothing. Then the centurion to Marcellinus’s right barked out in a strong bellow that would have done credit to Pollius Scapax: “Damn you, trumpeter, sound the stand-down or you’ll have my boot up your ass!” and the soldier raised the cornu to his lips immediately.
The group of muddy Romans was retreating along the outside wall toward the gate. On the battlements the flames from the Cahokian liquid fire were burning out. Wahchintonka had arrived back by Marcellinus’s side, looking around warily. The First Cahokian had retreated twenty feet from the gate, still in close order.
“Hold.” Marcellinus stepped forward, Romans on his right and Cahokians on his left, and called to the guards: “Stand down. Stay inside. Throw away no more lives today.”
The guards’ leader was a tribune, Marcellinus suddenly realized: an older man, wiry and tight-eyed. He looked at Marcellinus with incomprehension and made a hand signal Marcellinus didn’t understand. The legionaries began to surge forward.
“Heed him.” The centurion to Marcellinus’s right stepped up shoulder to shoulder with him. A second centurion joined them, and Marcellinus recognized him as the primus pilus of the 27th. Just last year, far to the east of here during a Wakinyan bombing assault, Marcellinus had come to warn this man about the dangers of the Cahokian liquid flame.
Marcellinus now stood with several bloody and mud-stained centurions of the 27th who saw no reason to add to the death toll of the day. Wahchintonka and Hanska stood to his left, and Matoshka beyond them. All knew that the rule of law had to be reestablished. All stared at the soldiers of Roma arrayed in the gateway and behind them in the Cardo.
Marcellinus raised his chin and addressed the tribune. “Where the hell is Praetor Agrippa? Have him brought here at once.”
The tribune scowled but evidently decided not to take the responsibility for a massacre. “Stand down!” he called. “To barracks, the Fourth Cohort! Sentries, barrier the gate. And someone send for the chief medicus and the other bone boys.”
The giant Wakinyan banked above them. Men cringed, but the great bird released no flame or even mud, merely swung around in the air and made its way north again.
Once again the cornicen sounded the stand-down, and then the call to barracks. The Roman centurions and the remaining legionaries stepped past them and into the camp. The First Cahokian broke ranks and stalked away. Their eyes still brimmed with hatred and bloodlust, but Marcellinus, Wahchintonka, Hanska, and the Roman officers were now in control. The battle was over.
Bareheaded, his helmet thrust under his arm, Marcellinus strode through Cahokia. Some stared as he passed. Others ignored him as if he were beneath contempt or frowned as if they could not decide what to think.
Perhaps they couldn’t. In Cahokia, Marcellinus’s position was as ambiguous as it had ever been. Over the last seven years his actions had led to the deaths of hundreds of Cahokians, perhaps even thousands, but had also saved countless others. Enopay had said it best: “They love you for steel or the Big Warm House, or they hate you for bringing change and confusion. They hate you for bringing war with the Iroqua or love you for bringing peace with them. Blame you for the murder of Great Sun Man or worship you for bringing Tahtay to rule in his place. Fear you anew for being Roman. Cling to you as the only reason Roma has not already razed our city to the ground.” The boy had shrugged. “Everyone has an opinion about you. You are a hard man to ignore.”
These days it seemed that Marcellinus was in an uneasy truce with everybody, fully trusted by no one. But in front of him now was one woman with whom he had never made peace. As he approached Nahimana’s hut, Kangee stood in its doorway, staring at him with a mixture of astonishment and loathing.
Kangee had spit on him once, on one of his earliest nights in Cahokia. Instructed by Nahimana to bring Marcellinus a blanket, she had shown her disdain by spitting on Cahokia’s enemy as he lay defeated at the foot of a cedar pole.
Now he stopped a few feet away from her. “Takoda is safe?”
“Gaius.” The warrior Takoda stepped up out of his hut, easing past his wife. Nahimana hobbled out close behind him.
“I feared perhaps you were in the fight.”