by Alan Smale
Now Sintikala walked to the front of the room, a long roll of deerskin in her arms. A rough easel stood there, Roman-made. She raised the deerskin, attached it carefully to the top of the easel, and released it. As it unrolled, even the Imperator gasped.
“Gods,” Sabinus said quietly, and glanced reproachfully at Marcellinus as if accusing him of keeping secrets.
All stood spellbound. Made of deerskin cured and scraped thin and etched with tattooing ink, Sintikala’s map showed the broad swath of Hesperia from the eastern coasts to the great mountain chain in the west and from north of the Wemissori clear down to the gulf of the Mare Solis. Shappa Ta’atan, Etowah, and other large Mizipian towns were marked, as were the lakes of the Iroqua and—added since Marcellinus had last seen it—the paths of several rivers that led into the Mizipi. Indicated with the crude sketch of a birdman were various mountains and ridges Sintikala could use to land her Hawk and take off again.
Sintikala stepped aside and said nothing. Her knowledge of Latin was growing day by day, but it was not sufficient for an occasion like this. She stood mute, regarding the Romans assembled before her.
Even without speaking, her presence dominated the room. Sintikala was slender and shorter than most of the men present, but muscular and fit. Everyone there, Roman and Cahokian, well knew her prowess in the air and her competence in commanding her clan. Her face was severe but was made striking by her high cheekbones and clear brown eyes. She was fiercely attractive, but daunting. During these moments as she gazed around the longhouse, even the Imperator said nothing.
Reluctantly, Kimimela stood and went to her mother’s side. “Here is Hesperia,” she said in fluent Latin. “Here, the bay of the Powhatani that you call Mare Chesapica. Up here, the Great Lakes of the Iroqua, Huron, and Ojibwa peoples. Cahokia is here, and this is the Great River of the Mizipi, leading down to the Market of the Mud. Here is Ocatan; here, Shappa Ta’atan.”
Kimimela glanced at her mother, whose expression was guarded. Marcellinus knew Sintikala had mixed feelings about sharing her precious map with Roma. But Tahtay had insisted, and Tahtay was the only person who could command Sintikala to do anything.
“Here is the Wemissori River,” Kimimela continued. “Hereabouts, this area, is where the Blackfoot roam and hunt the buffalo. This area and below is all grass. Until the line of the Great Mountains here in the west.”
Tahtay stepped forward. “As best the Hawk chief or any of the rest of us know, the mountains run all the way south. Which is good, because they must have held back the Mongols until now. Without the barrier of the mountains, your Mongols might have been here already.”
Sabinus nodded. “That matches the intelligence—the news—our scouts have brought us. The mountains are only four or five weeks distant, on horseback and riding at a fast scout’s pace. We have come across Mongol outriders on the eastern slopes, but they are few. Chinggis’s challenge will be to find a mountain pass clear enough to bring across several tumens of cavalry, and perhaps trebuchets and carts of weaponry besides.”
“Trebuchets are throwing engines,” Marcellinus explained. “Lighter than our onagers. They cast smaller missiles but are deadly for all that. The Mongols can strike quickly on horses, but for a long trek like this they will bring a baggage train with carts. Their armies must travel much more slowly than their scouts.”
“Tell me about the people who live here.” Hadrianus pointed to the bottom left of Sintikala’s map. Here there were no markings at all; Sintikala could not fly that far.
“The People of the Hand,” Marcellinus said. He held up his right hand with the fingers splayed. “So named because of the marks they etch on the rocks.” He looked at Kanuna and the others to see if anyone else wanted to speak, but apparently he was on his own. “I have heard stories of cruelty about them from Son of the Sun of Shappa Ta’atan, although his words may not be reliable. In the past, his people were at war with the People of the Hand.”
“Why?”
Marcellinus did not know, and neither did Kanuna or any of the other Cahokians. Tahtay leaned forward. “Why do they interest you, Caesar?”
The Imperator smiled tightly. “Were I the Mongol Khan, faced with a line of treacherous mountains, it might occur to me to travel around them rather than across them.”
“We do not know how far they extend.”
“They end well short of the coast, according to the scouts of Calidius Verus,” said Sabinus. “And also…” He waited, looking at Hadrianus for approval.
“Yes, yes, tell them.”
“From the Market, we are hearing intelligence that the People of the Sun, those other peoples from south of the Mare Solis, have thrown in their lot with the Mongols. They have moved from being foes of Roma to being allies of Roma’s enemies.”
This was a tough linguistic nut for most of the Cahokians to crack, and there was a pause while Marcellinus and Enopay clarified. Sabinus waited patiently and then added, “If the Mongols were also able to recruit the People of the Hand, we would face a broad coalition from the west, southwest, and south. Thus, the Imperator needs to know whether the People of the Hand may be valuable allies, fearsome opponents, or merely irrelevant to the overall venture.”
Several Cahokians looked irritated. Sabinus was not a man who used language simply. This time Marcellinus left it to Enopay to translate.
“The Mongols do make treaties, then,” Taianita said suddenly, and everyone turned to look at her. “Today you speak of a Mongol treaty with the People of the Sun. But before you have told us that Mongols do not negotiate.”
Agrippa looked pained. “Nor do they. Mongols do not make treaties. They serve ultimatums: ‘Fight alongside us or die.’ The People of the Sun already hated Roma, thanks to the bumbling of Calidius Verus. And the Sunners are a bloody people, in love with the brutal sacrifice of living humans. They would take little persuasion to join against a mutual enemy.”
Taianita looked obstinate. “And are the People of the Hand also your enemy?”
The Imperator shook his head, bemused. “That is exactly what I am attempting to find out, Taianita.”
“Speak more,” Tahtay said. “Tell us of the Mongols, and why Cahokians should consider them our enemy.”
“I have fought the Mongols myself,” Lucius Agrippa said. “So let me try to be clearer about this. Your Wanageeska, our rogue Praetor, went to address the Haudenosaunee. From them he managed to wring out a truce, a cease-fire from the Mourning War that your tribes had been fighting for…a thousand moons.” Marcellinus stifled a smile. Agrippa might not be well versed in Hesperian methods of reckoning time, but at least he was making a valiant effort. “You, Tahtay, spoke with Caesar on the battlefield, and the two of you managed to reach an agreement that halted the bloody war between our peoples that would otherwise have occurred on that day.”
Agrippa’s face betrayed no indication that he himself had strongly advocated for that battle. He continued: “No such conversations could take place between Roma and the Mongol Khan or between your people and his. The Mongols accept only immediate surrender. When cities resist, everyone in them is slaughtered. If they surrender without a fight, their lives may be spared as long as they serve the Mongols absolutely. The Mongols are merciless if their subject populations do not bend the knee.”
“We are far from the Great Mountains,” Tahtay objected. “Farther still from the western shores. None in Cahokia have been so far, not even Sintikala of the Hawk clan. And never before have we had news from so far away. The distance itself—”
“The distance is no barrier,” Agrippa said. “The Plains, the big grass: they are no barrier. Mongols conduct campaigns over huge distances.” Kimimela and Enopay started to translate again, and Agrippa simplified. “In Asia, Mongols have made war across distances much greater than the length of the Mizipi River, much farther than from Cahokia to the Chesapica or from Cahokia to the Great Mountains. And your plains are perfect terrain for the Mongols, just like their homelands. F
rom the spring through the late summer there is plenty of grass for their four-legs. Even in winter, the Mongols fight. Frozen rivers provide smooth paths for their armies, and their four-legs can dig through the snow for the remaining grass beneath. Only the mud of early spring and late autumn can hold them.”
Hadrianus nodded. “I am no shaman, but I will make a prediction for you, Tahtay, and your wise men and women of Cahokia. I predict that when the Mongols come, they will drive ahead of them Hesperians from the west, perhaps also captives from the People of the Grass, the prisoners of their wars. The Mongol Khan often allows ragged, damaged survivors to escape from their battles so that their tales will spread terror ahead of his army. Hopelessness. Despair. The myth—the story—that the Mongols are invincible, in the hope that the cities ahead of them will surrender without a fight. And that’s not even the half of it. Deception, intimidation, cruelty, confusion. The Mongols are masters of them all.”
Tahtay’s eyes were narrowed. Marcellinus could guess why: the Romans themselves played a pretty good game in spreading despair ahead of their armies. The survivors of the Sixth Ferrata’s storming of Ocatan had poured into Cahokia a few days after the battle. Marcellinus could only wish with his deepest heart that his brave young friend Hurit and his wise Raven clan chief Anapetu had lived to be among them.
“Why?” Sintikala asked, once Kimimela had caught up with the translation. It was the first word the Hawk chief had spoken since entering the Longhouse of the Sun.
“Why what?” Agrippa eyed her warily.
She switched to Cahokian, which Kimimela translated even as her mother spoke the words. “ ‘Why does the Mongol Khan do this? Why does he want more and more? How can he hold the lands he has taken if he keeps moving forward? What does he want?’ ”
“Wealth and power,” said the Imperator. “The Mongols have learned to love war and the booty it brings. Wealth beyond the dreams of warriors of the steppe. And so, to ensure the loyalty of his generals and his men, the Khan must continue to fight.”
“Chinggis sits always on a knife edge.” Sabinus spoke now. “He needs more war and more plunder, or his own people will take him out of his tent one night, break his back, and leave him for the buzzards.”
The Imperator inclined his head. “And that aside, the Mongol Khan wishes to defeat me. For I have stood in his way all across central Asia, and prevented him from ravaging Europa as he did Asia, stealing riches that do not belong to him.”
There was a long and acid pause while the translators caught up, and then Tahtay nodded. “And so it is your fault that the Mongol Khan is here. You brought this evil man to our land.”
Sabinus shook his head. “Chinggis Khan came to Hesperia even before Caesar’s later legions. Caesar sent his armies here to fight the Mongol Khan once they learned he was here.”
Tahtay turned to Marcellinus. “But not before your legion came here.”
“No.” Marcellinus met Tahtay’s eye. “My legion came first, the Mongol Khan’s army afterward. In all likelihood the Khan decided to come to Nova Hesperia in response to the news that my legion had come here. But let us be clear. Chinggis Khan wants the world. Not just this land. The world.”
“And so does the Imperator,” said Tahtay.
Marcellinus paused, wondering if he was about to get into trouble, and then pressed on regardless. “Yes. So does the Imperator. This is a battle for the world, and the battle will be fought here.”
Sabinus looked sharply at Marcellinus. Hadrianus and Agrippa stood calmly. Tahtay put his hand up to his head. Kimimela watched him, alert to his moods.
Into the silence came Enopay’s young voice, cracking a little as he said, “Caesar, how many legions do the Mongols have?”
Hadrianus looked thoughtfully at Enopay, then nodded to Decinius Sabinus, who answered. “Mongols number their forces differently. By the Mongol numbering, one hundred warriors make up a jaghun. Ten jaghuns make a mingghan. Ten mingghans make a tumen. According to our spies in the faraway lands of Jin and Song, where the Khan’s big canoes sailed from, the Mongols shipped over at least four tumens to Nova Hesperia.”
“Forty thousand men and women,” Enopay said in Cahokian, and whistled.
“Womans, no,” Sabinus said in Cahokian. “Mongol war parties, like Roman war parties, only mans.” In Latin he continued: “They will surely have brought others, men and women who are not warriors. Slaves to look after the horses. Chinggis Khan’s son Chagatai is also here, and Chagatai’s wife, Yesulun Khatun, travels with them. Mongol queens often serve as administrators—as paramount chiefs—while their husbands lead their armies in battle. We suspect that Yesulun will rule in western Nova Hesperia with at least one tumen of warriors while Chinggis Khan and Chagatai bring the rest of their armies to do battle with Roma.”
Agrippa nodded. “Their whole army is mounted. Every warrior of the Khan owns many horses, between four and six. And so they can trade mounts, and if they leave their baggage trains behind them, they can ride as fast as the lightning that comes with the thunder.”
“And you?” Enopay said. “The Roman army, how many warriors in all?”
Sabinus looked at the Imperator.
“Oh, come on,” Enopay said. “Always you are so careful. Why? When you want our help? I could guess many numbers, but let us hear them from you, our trusted allies.”
Kanuna shook his head, left far behind. “Enopay?”
Enopay held up his hand and in Cahokian said: “I will translate in a moment. Let me hear the Roman chief’s answer.”
If Sabinus was startled that a boy of maybe twelve winters had taken control of a high-level council of war, he did not show it. “We have two legions here, each of about forty-eight hundred legionaries plus about five hundred specialized cavalry. Add to that four alae, specialized cavalry wings containing, in our case, seven hundred and sixty-eight troopers apiece. And four cohortes equitatae, combined infantry and cavalry, each with six centuries of troops and four turmae of horsemen.”
Enopay stared at him. “And so, some sixteen thousand men, close to five thousand of whom are mounted. Plus, of course, all the soldiers and marines of the Sixth Ferrata, whom you did not include in your reckoning.”
A silence fell in the room. The Cahokians glanced from face to face, trying to understand what had just happened. Decinius Sabinus smiled and nodded in honest admiration. Lucius Agrippa looked peevishly at Marcellinus as if Enopay’s perspicacity were all Marcellinus’s fault. Then Hadrianus opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by Tahtay, who stepped right to the heart of the matter. “Caesar, you are outnumbered. Can you defeat the Mongols?”
“Yes, Tahtay,” the Imperator said. “With your help and the help of Cahokia, with its wings and liquid flame: with those, I believe we can destroy the Mongol Khan once and for all, and send him to hell. And then your land will forever be safe from them.”
“And will it then also be safe from you?” Taianita asked.
Everyone stared at her in disbelief. Enopay winced. Tahtay did not react at all, did not so much as glance Taianita’s way, but from the tightening around his eyes Marcellinus knew he was not pleased with the directness of her question.
“Oh, I’m sure we will come to a suitable agreement,” the Imperator said. “After all, we are already friends and blood brothers. Personally, I will want to get back home to Europa just as soon as possible. But not while the Mongol Khan threatens Nova Hesperia. Right now he is my first concern, and he should be yours as well.”
—
“Praetor, a word.”
Just about to head down the cedar steps to the Great Plaza, Marcellinus looked around. “Decinius Sabinus?”
The two men walked along the mound edge, farther from listening ears. Sabinus glanced around casually. “Listen, Gaius. If we’re drawing your people into this conflagration, it’s important that you realize what we’re dealing with.”
Sabinus’s tone held a trace of condescension. Marcellinus bristled a little
. “I may not have battled the Khan myself, but it is clear enough what we face.”
“Is it? Very well. But let me remind you anyway. Chinggis Khan began as a common herdsman and made himself the warlord and effective ruler of his entire country before he was thirty years of age. And then he conquered the Jin and the Song. The Song alone number perhaps sixty million people. The Song had ships and engineers and extensive military skills of their own, and now the Mongols own those, too.
“Gaius, the Mongols only saw the ocean for the first time in 1213 A.D. Now they’ve crossed the Jin Seas and the great ocean beyond it and are ready to fight us on a whole new continent. They’re expert at campaigning on a variety of terrains: grass, desert, farmland, jungles, and now rivers and seas. We underestimate the Mongols at our peril.”
Marcellinus shrugged. “They had substantial assistance. As you just said, the Song already knew the oceans.”
“Yes, the Mongols learn from the peoples they conquer. No doubt they have brought with them a substantial number of engineers from the Jin and Song. They began as a primitive people, but they now have the Jin salt and the best armaments of a civilization that predates even Roma. They have throwing engines, thunder crash bombs, fire lances. They learn fast, the Mongols. Much faster than Roma, which tends to be…staid. Set in its ways.”
“Roma knows what works.” Marcellinus studied Sabinus more closely. “Quintus, you do not think we can win.”
Sabinus checked around them again for eavesdroppers. “Just between you and me? A private conversation between friends?”
All of a sudden Marcellinus’s mouth was dry. Of all the Romans he had met in Nova Hesperia, he respected Sabinus the most. “A private conversation, my word on it. Let us be candid.”
Sabinus nodded. “Candidly, then: no, I fear we may not prevail. It has been a tough call in Asia these past ten years…”
Now Sabinus met his eye. “I have faced the armies of the Mongol Khan, and they are utterly ruthless. In that briefing we pulled our punches so as not to terrify your Cahokian friends and rob them of what courage they have. But I have seen the aftermath of Mongol massacres of entire cities, the bones of the dead piled up in greasy mounds. I’ve seen the ragged, half-human remains of their slaves, driven ahead of them into battle as human shields. I would scarcely believe such atrocities if I had not seen them with my own eyes.”