by Alan Smale
“And once I took that message, my debt to you was paid. You no longer owned me, Wanageeska. I owed you nothing. Is this not so?”
“It is so.”
Marcellinus turned away, but Pezi stepped forward to stay by his side as he walked across the deck of the Minerva. “Nonetheless, I still give you my thanks and my loyalty. For without you, I would be dead.”
“Think nothing of it,” Marcellinus said shortly.
“Wanageeska…Gaius Marcellinus?”
Pezi’s hand was on his arm. Marcellinus glowered at it icily until the youth removed it. “Gaius Marcellinus. I was Iroqua. And then I was Cahokian. And then Iroqua again, and now I serve Roma. You were Roman, Cahokian, then Roman again. We are not different.”
Marcellinus stared at him in disbelief. “You betrayed Cahokia to the Iroqua. You told them where high-ranking Cahokians lived so that Iroqua assassins could seek them out. We are very different, Pezi.”
Pezi shook his head and grinned. The youth had acquired an astonishingly thick skin, for even in the face of Marcellinus’s anger he continued: “And yet now we want the same thing, which is for Roma to succeed, for the Mongols to be defeated, for the land…” He looked around briefly to ensure they were not overheard. “For the land to be free. Now we are allies. Is that not so?”
Marcellinus was not taking kindly to being lectured by the word slave. “We have a job to do, Pezi. And we will do that job. For now? Leave me alone. This conversation is over.”
Marcellinus certainly needed time to himself. Just as he had two years earlier when, sailing up the Wemissori in search of Tahtay, he could not escape the nagging fear that he was traveling in exactly the wrong direction at exactly the wrong time and leaving his Cahokian friends in the lurch. However, now as then, he had little choice. His mission was critical. It was even closely aligned with his previous desire to make a Hesperian League.
In the meantime he would be leading Roman soldiers again, men whom he didn’t know and who were obviously leery of him, undertaking a long voyage by river and desert to a tribe of reputedly savage warriors whom even the Shappa Ta’atani thought bloodthirsty, while having to rely on Pezi and the Chitimachan.
Perhaps it was a good thing he had brought Taianita along after all. He glanced toward the prow of the galley, but she was not hard to spot. She sat inside a protective ring of people not wearing Roman garb: Mahkah, Hanska and Mikasi, Enopay and Kanuna, and Isleifur Bjarnason.
What had Marcellinus gotten his friends into now? He didn’t know. Shaking his head and resolutely avoiding meeting the eye of Calidius Verus, he threaded his way between the horses of the Second Aravacorum to go sit next to Enopay.
If the Chitimachan and Isleifur Bjarnason had not assured him that a mighty range of mountains lay far ahead to the west, Marcellinus might have thought they were riding off the edge of the world. The relentlessness of the Plains and the almost complete absence of trees dazed his eyes and left his mind wandering. Never had he missed the bustle of Cahokia so painfully. He even missed the martial purposefulness and single-minded industry of the Roman fortresses. He would have given a lot to spend just five minutes a day surrounded by such cheerful turmoil instead of by taciturn cavalrymen and dour Cahokians.
He missed Sintikala and Kimimela, too, with a fierce desperation that he could not dwell on for long without feeling that his heart might break. His thoughts were tormented by those precious intimate moments with Sintikala in the dark. Again and again he returned to the memories of how she felt in his arms, against his lips, how she had stroked his chest and arms and cheek…
He was, he had to admit, a fool in love.
The Roman harbor at the confluence of the Wemissori and the unnamed minor tributary to its west was three weeks behind them now. After disembarking from the Minerva, the cavalry squadron had ridden alongside that river for just two days before branching out across a dry prairie wasteland that to Marcellinus looked trackless and featureless. The Chitimachan had ridden ahead of the company with the utmost confidence, sometimes changing direction subtly in response to cues and landmarks only she could see. Sextus Bassus had pursed his lips and looked ever more dubious, and Enopay had taken to inventorying the number of water skins the expeditionary force carried with an almost religious fervor.
By contrast, Isleifur Bjarnason was unflappable. He and the Chitimachan shared a campfire and sometimes rode together on the trail. They barely conversed at all as far as Marcellinus could see, yet they had established a strange understanding: perhaps the shared responsibility of scouts doomed to suffer the skepticism of others. Marcellinus took strength from Bjarnason’s stoicism.
Meanwhile, Taianita was driving him to distraction. Intimidated by the clanking, armored mass of Roman cavalry that formed the bulk of their party, she had stuck to Marcellinus’s side like glue when they started the passage across the prairie, constantly pestering him to teach her more and ever more Latin vocabulary. He had welcomed the diversion for the first few days. After that he would cheerfully have drowned her in a river if only they’d had one nearby. Eventually he had snapped at her unforgivably and she had gone to pester Pezi instead, who recovered quickly from his openmouthed shock at his good fortune and willingly helped her with her language studies.
—
“Do we really need all these soldiers?” Enopay asked.
Marcellinus grunted. “I hope not.”
“I suppose we’ll find out when we get there whether we have too many or too few.”
“Yes. I suppose we will.”
Since leaving the Minerva they had seen only a few isolated Hesperian homesteads; they were of the Pawnee tribe according to the Chitimachan, though neither she nor anyone else stopped to talk with them. Generally, the Pawnee did not even snatch up weapons when the Roman squadron came upon them but stood and stared empty-handed in shock. Even after the turmae of the Second Aravacorum were well past, Marcellinus might look back and see the Pawnee still standing there gaping at the soldiers and the four-legs. Obviously, the People of the Grass had seen nothing quite like Roman cavalry before.
He supposed that if some of them looked upon a horse with recognition in their eyes, it would be worth stopping to interrogate them about how and when they had seen one before and what manner of rider had been astride it.
Despite the lack of any tangible threat, Sextus Bassus took no chances. His auxiliaries rode every day in their short-sleeved hauberks of chain mail armor. Each trooper had his helmet ready to hand, hooked onto the saddle in front of him, and either carried his flat oval shield or slung it over his shoulder. Each man was armed with a spatha sword and a hasta, a thrusting spear six feet long made of ash wood and tipped with steel.
A different turma led every day, in strict rotation, and the troopers in the leading turma were required to carry their spears and shields at the ready at all times. Considering that they often could see for ten miles in every direction, that was probably overkill, but Marcellinus could not fault the lead decurion for his caution: it would obviously be inefficient to rearm and then disarm for every blind hill or tree-lined depression they passed.
Besides, the discipline kept the men ready and made a stirring sight for the few native Hesperians they did encounter. The horses were sleek Libyans and Hispanians, light and well kept. The steel phalerae disks that decorated the horses’ harness straps and bridles gleamed. Bassus even demanded that his men shave daily, something Marcellinus had been lax about when his legionaries had been on their long march. The Second Aravacorum was making a powerful statement to the People of the Grass, and Sextus Bassus was making one to his men as well: we represent Roma, and we will be well turned out, we will not be shoddy. Only around the campfire in the evening did Bassus allow them to strip off their mail shirts and loll around in their tunics and cloaks.
Like his Cahokians, Marcellinus eschewed his armor, opting for comfort over preparedness for once. His mule could carry his mail shirt until he needed it. The cavalry helmets were of st
eel with bronzed cheek pieces, and Marcellinus found his uncomfortably warm; he would cram it onto his head at the last minute if a threat presented itself. Bassus never commented on Marcellinus’s informality, and if the cavalrymen looked down on Marcellinus for it, they were wise enough not to let him know it.
Although the troopers were nominally under Marcellinus’s command, he made little attempt to stamp his authority on the squadron; Bassus was a proud man, and he was doing a good job. Marcellinus had not held a Roman command position for more than eight years and was reluctant to do so now.
Alongside the Second Aravacorum rode Marcellinus’s more motley crew: Mahkah, Hanska, Mikasi, Kanuna, and Enopay from Cahokia; Isleifur Bjarnason the Norse scout; and the guides and translators Taianita, the Chitimachan, and Pezi. Everyone in the party rode his or her own horse, though Enopay frequently preferred to share his grandfather’s, holding on to Kanuna’s waist. In addition to the horses they had brought thirty mules that trudged cheerfully after them carrying water, food, the light expedition tents, and extra armor and weapons. Enopay had been amazed and alarmed at how much baggage the Romans had piled onto the smaller four-legs—a burden of up to two hundred pounds per animal—but the mules seemed unfazed at the loads and, if anything, bore the heat of summer better than the horses did.
Once away from the Wemissori the expeditionary force had quickly fallen into a daily routine. Rising before dawn every morning and packing up camp with what seemed to the Hesperians to be almost indecent haste, they set off for three hours at a slow trot and then unloaded the four-legs and put them out for two hours to graze. Another three-hour drive was followed by a three-hour halt at noon and then a couple more hours of progress. By that time Romans and Hesperians alike had generally had enough of being on horseback and walked alongside their mounts for the few extra miles before finding a campsite and setting camp at dusk. It was a steady but efficient schedule that allowed them to cover twenty-five or even thirty miles a day without putting undue stress on the horses. Marcellinus found it less grueling than a forced infantry march, but his blisters were worse.
At last, after perhaps two hundred miles spent riding across dry prairie and nursing their dwindling water supply, they came across a thin muddy ribbon of water snaking its way through the grass. Greeted only by a contented grunt from the Chitimachan, they turned to follow it.
As if the river were a signal, the lands around them grew rockier and more arid, and the weather even hotter.
“Into Hades we go,” said Marcellinus.
Isleifur grunted. “The Norse Hel is cold. This? This is balmy.”
—
They had crossed the Grass to the Kicka River and would now follow that river upstream to the Great Mountains. They never could have made it so far by boat: barely thirty feet wide and often less than waist deep, the Kicka was not navigable for any vessel larger than a canoe or dugout. It contained no fish that Marcellinus could see, and he was at a loss to know how the locals they encountered survived. Unlike the brash Pawnee, these new people hid in their tipis as the Romans passed, terrified of the horses. The only person who spoke their language was the Chitimachan, and, ever severe, she did not deign to talk to them.
Marcellinus was forcibly reminded of his long-ago trek from the Mare Chesapica to Cahokia with the 33rd Hesperian, when the small Iroqua villages would be deserted at their passing. It made him sad that once more he was leading a squadron of soldiers who terrified the people who lived here, whose land this had been from time immemorial. Bassus and the other Romans, of course, took it as their due.
By now they were a long way from anywhere. Once again Marcellinus felt isolated, an alien being in this landscape.
—
Hanska and Mikasi were sparring with spatha and shield, trying to grow more familiar with the cavalry weapons, having originally learned with the much shorter gladius. For some reason the legionaries were endlessly entertained by watching Hanska fight, though very few of them would risk sparring against her themselves.
Of course, Hanska was one of only three women in the party. The Chitimachan was arguably the most attractive, but she kept to herself, kept her back straight and her expression sullen, and rejected every overture of friendship except those from Pezi and Isleifur Bjarnason. Taianita at last had gotten over her nervousness at being surrounded by Roman cavalrymen. Now confident that she was safe among them, she became talkative and helpful, and even Marcellinus had to admit that her presence in the squadron had become an asset.
Mahkah chose not to assist the other members of the First Cahokian in providing a public spectacle. Mahkah was as cautious around Romans as he was with Iroqua; he thoroughly enjoyed riding his Roman horse but showed little inclination to fraternize with the men of the Second Aravacorum.
As for Pezi, he talked to the Romans at every opportunity, genuinely enthusiastic about soaking in as much Latin as possible.
Kanuna was permanently jittery. This night Marcellinus sought him out to find out why. Among all the elders of Cahokia, Kanuna and Ojinjintka were the two who had ranged farthest afield from the Great City in their younger days. Marcellinus had thought he might have been more at ease on the expedition.
“Then, I was not responsible for my grandson,” Kanuna said soberly. “Back then I had few enough family at home to miss, and none were at risk from an enemy who makes a long camp in my own city and will not leave. And…”
Marcellinus raised an eyebrow. “There’s more?”
“And at any moment an even worse enemy could rise up out of the Grass and charge down upon us.”
Marcellinus smiled.
“You do not fear the Mongols?”
“By all accounts, Chinggis Khan faces a wall of mountains a thousand miles long. The likelihood of his breaching it and then arriving at the exact same patch of land we’re camping on seems remote.”
“Enopay says the Khan’s army must be huge,” Kanuna said. “With so many horses to browse the grass they will travel spread out over an immense area. And they, too, will not stray far from water. The Khan will travel along rivers where he can, just as we do. And the Kicka, for all its weakness, is one of the bigger rivers in the Grass.”
Marcellinus shrugged. “I have been a soldier since I was younger than Tahtay. If I worried all the time about what might be over the next ridge, fretting over enemies I could not see, I’d have worried myself to death long ago. Besides, the Mongols send scouts ahead, just as the Romans do. We are unlikely to meet the entire Horde before we see outriders.”
“We are not sending scouts now,” Kanuna pointed out.
“That is because we are the scouts.” Marcellinus grinned. “You have been comfortable in Cahokia far too long, my friend.”
“Nonetheless, I would feel safer if we had Sintikala in the air above us, looking farther ahead than we can see from down here in the dirt.”
Marcellinus felt a brief tug at his heart. “So would I.”
Perhaps some of his yearning had leaked into his voice, because Kanuna cocked an eye at him and changed the subject. “Even without the Mongols, I fear for Enopay. I did not think—and I mean no disrespect to you, my friend…” Kanuna looked mournful.
“What? You can speak plainly.”
“I did not think to watch my grandson become Roman.”
Marcellinus leaned back so that he could look past Kanuna into the main body of the camp. Enopay was wandering from fire to fire among the cavalrymen of the Fourth Turma, chatting to the men, asking questions, smiling. “You believe that is what Enopay is doing?”
Certainly Enopay was dazzled by the things of Roma, and certainly he was well accepted by the men of the Second Aravacorum. Enopay was good-natured and approachable, spoke excellent Latin, and had become something of a mascot for the soldiers. From the beginning they had made it their goal to make him comfortable on a horse. They made a fuss of him whenever they could, and Enopay knew enough Latin to insult them cheerfully for it. He was shrewd enough not to be bambooz
led and mocked and sharp enough for them to admire him.
“Enopay adapts,” Marcellinus said. “He survives. Look how he handled Avenaka.”
Kanuna was still brooding. “And so he loses what makes him Cahokian.”
“I do not think so. And if Cahokia and Roma are to continue to avoid war, maybe we need as many Enopays as we can find.”
“Huh,” said Kanuna. “For that, we would need more Wanageeskas.”
“Perhaps Enopay will make them,” Marcellinus said. “It certainly worked the first time. Him. Tahtay. Kimimela. Without their influence on me…”
But Kanuna’s low mood was beginning to infect Marcellinus, too. Despite his confident words, every day Marcellinus worried about what might be happening back in Cahokia, what tricks Lucius Agrippa might be trying to dislodge the fragile peace. He worried that the Imperator might learn of his association with Kimimela and Sintikala. He worried that he should not have agreed to bring Kanuna, Enopay, and Taianita on such a grueling journey with such unknown dangers ahead.
And to be sure, when he had time to spare, he worried about the Mongol army.
But above all, he missed Sintikala with a deep and full heart.
—
In the coming weeks, as they followed the Kicka River upstream, the humidity, flat terrain, and long grasses of the prairies gave way to high plains with short grass and sagebrush and occasional high buttes. The river also changed, its wide, shallow banks becoming rocky, the waters flowing narrower and faster.
Mahkah saw the Great Mountain chain a full two days before Marcellinus did. For Marcellinus the hazy outline stayed tantalizingly out of reach even after most people claimed to see it clearly. Then he awoke one morning and was sure of it in the cool clear air of morning: a thin meandering line, scarcely above the horizon, not cloud, after all, but sharp peaks.
Two days after that they could see the mountains clearly, a sheer wall rising out of the Plains. Here was the formidable barrier, this the deadly palisade of rock that held back the Mongol tide. Isleifur and the Chitimachan insisted that even now the mountains were still a hundred miles away. Marcellinus balked at this estimate for a while—he had been nowhere else in the world except the Himalaya where mountains could be seen at such a distance, and the giants of the Himalaya were so tall that they were wreathed in cloud most seasons of the year—but the hard-nosed logic of his comrades persuaded him. And they were right. It took another five days of hard travel over increasingly arid terrain to get them closer to the gargantuan range.