by Alan Smale
As for Marcellinus, he lived in a permanent daze. Without food and sufficient water he was still short of blood and quickly grew gaunt. His muscles dwindled. His burn wound and the gashes in his leg and shoulder still leaked from time to time, but eventually dried up.
He felt like a husk of a man, and the rest of their company was not much better. He did not know how much longer they could survive this.
—
Since their captors told them nothing, it was the Firebirds that flew overhead that gave the captives notice that at last they were approaching the camp of the Mongol Khan.
They were back on the high plains, traveling north with the tall crags of the Great Mountains to their left. The sun rose over the desert and set in early afternoon behind the massive peaks. It was little wonder this mighty mountain chain had been such an obstacle to the Khan. Yet somewhere still to the north of them there must be a break or at least a high pass negotiable by tens of thousands of warriors and their horses and carts, and the Mongol Khan had obviously found it.
The Firebirds, three of them, were flying up and down the line of the mountains. The wind was from the east, blowing up against the crags, and the three-man Mongol flying craft rode the surges and currents in the air, accustoming themselves to the ridge lift. Their pilots were by no means Cahokian in their skills; their flying was unsteady, their turns clumsy. More than once Marcellinus held his breath in the hope that the pilots would overcorrect and crash into the rocks or stall their craft and drop out of the air to crumple in a bone-smashed mess on the dry plains. It must have happened many times while the Mongols learned their flying skills, but Marcellinus never witnessed such a disaster.
The Firebirds must have relayed word to the Khan of their approach, because soon another jaghun came cantering south to meet them. For the first time Marcellinus saw joy and humanity on Mongol faces as warriors greeted one another and friends joked. Congratulations were obviously being exchanged. Men bragged of their conquests, traded news, shared fresh askutasquash and fruits, and slabs of buffalo meat for roasting over their fires that night. They brought an alcoholic beverage, too, that Pezi learned was called airag. Apparently the Mongols made it by fermenting the milk from their mares. It sounded awful and smelled worse, and drinking it made the Mongols roar with laughter and sing tunelessly for hours around their campfires.
There was no airag for the warriors who guarded the prisoners. Those warriors were resentful of missing the party and took out their frustration by poking the captives with their spears, especially Taianita, Hanska, and the Chitimachan. It was only the prisoners’ calculated lack of reaction—assisted by their starvation diet of the last three weeks—that made the guards desist.
—
“Wanageeska? Tlin-Kit.”
Marcellinus, who had been drowsing, came fully awake. The chief from the northwest, Tlin-Kit, stood before them. He wore a nondescript tunic and a wide-brimmed cedar bark hat in place of his armor and battle mask and was not holding his hooked club. If not for his size and distinctive tattoos, Marcellinus might not have recognized him.
The chief threw down a bag, which turned out to contain greasy strands of dried meat. As their Mongol guards did not object, Marcellinus quickly passed pieces of the jerky along the line of prisoners.
“Good evening, sir, and we thank you,” said Pezi, and repeated the sentiment in Algon-Quian. Tlin-Kit ignored him. He looked at Taianita, who lay curled up asleep, and then said something to the Chitimachan in his bastardized Algon-Quian.
She looked surprised and answered in the same language.
“Be careful,” Pezi said sotto voce.
The Chitimachan did not reply. She was busy holding the chief’s gaze.
Tlin-Kit said something to the Mongol guards. They looked doubtful. Tlin-kit gestured across to a few rocks across the clearing. The guards shook their heads. Tlin-kit held up his arm, and the Chitimachan nodded.
“Chitimachan, what?” Marcellinus said.
One of the Mongol guards shrugged and stood to tie a cord around Tlin-Kit’s wrist. The Chitimachan held up her arm, and they looped the other end of the cord around her wrists.
This did not look good. Marcellinus struggled futilely against his own bonds.
“Be calm,” Pezi said. “He wants to talk only. Learn things from her.”
“A likely story,” Marcellinus said.
“The Mongol Khan will not be pleased if his captive is destroyed. She will be all right.”
The Chitimachan walked off with the chief without speaking. To Marcellinus’s surprise they indeed only went across the clearing to the rocks, where they sat and talked.
An hour later Tlin-Kit brought the Chitimachan back. The Mongol guards tied her back into the group of captives.
“Well?” Marcellinus demanded.
“He is lonely,” the Chitimachan said. She leaned forward to take some dried meat from the hide in front of them. Her face wrinkled in disgust as she chewed, but she was right. They all needed strength no matter how distasteful the only food they were offered was. Marcellinus reached out for another morsel himself and then prodded her with his foot. “Come on, Chitimachan. What did he say to you?”
She sighed and stared up at the sky. “Mostly he wanted to boast to someone who will listen. The Mongols are all drunk and crazy, and he does not like their airag. He grew bored. He has not talked to a woman for many weeks.
“He tells me he is a great chief of his people. He comes from very far north, on the coast of the great ocean in the west. Tlin-Kit is the name of his people, not of himself.” Her lips pursed briefly in the closest thing that the Chitimachan got to a smile. “Just as mine is. And it is pronounced more ‘Tlingit,’ the way he says it with his own mouth. There are islands offshore where he lives, and great animals in the sea that his people hunt from mighty canoes and with flying craft that they call Sea Eagles. It is these Sea Eagles that the Mongols have based their flying craft on, although he says they have changed the shape so much that they are now repellent to him. He himself, the Tlingit chief, is a mighty flier and has killed many of these great sea animals from flight, but the Mongols will not let him fly on a Firebird, for he is too important to risk.”
Marcellinus nodded in resignation. Truly, Great Sun Man had been mistaken about the prevalence of flying craft across Nova Hesperia.
“The Tlingit chief was among the first to befriend the Cold Men—his name for the Mongols—when first they arrived along the coast several winters ago. The Cold Men told him they came from mighty lands to the west, yet crossed the great ocean by staying close to the land in the north. The distance is not so great there, perhaps.
“The chief understood their power. He allied his warriors with the Cold Men, and they helped him defeat his people’s ancient inland enemies. He says that for a hundred-hundred winters they had fought a Mourning War against the weak fools from inland, but now those tribes are destroyed, their men, women, and children all dead. And so the chief has won his Mourning War, and his people have pronounced him a god for it.”
Her expression was sour. Marcellinus understood that of all in the Hesperian party, the Chitimachan might have the most to say about who were the true gods and who were not.
“Another strong tribe from the northwest, the Haida, tried to fight the Mongol Khan. They were defeated and now serve the Khan as slaves and dig gold for the Mongols.
“Having defeated their ancient enemies, the Tlingit have now joined with the Cold Men for more plunder. The mighty chief enjoyed helping the Cold Men enslave the soft, babyish tribes to the south of his homeland. He likes war. He likes killing. The Cold Men make him even stronger.”
The Chitimachan stopped talking and regarded them. Kanuna was shaking his head slowly; Enopay was doing the same, apparently unaware that he was unconsciously aping his grandfather.
“How many of the Tlingit have joined with the Cold Men?” Marcellinus asked.
The Chitimachan’s tone took on a tinge of irony. “Mi
ghty warriors without number, of whom he is the mightiest.” She shrugged. “More than ten hundred, I think. Less than a hundred hundred.”
Marcellinus rubbed his eyes. The peoples of Nova Hesperia were aligning themselves with the invading outlanders, either with Roma or with its mortal enemy.
The Chitimachan bit into another piece of dried meat, chewed, swallowed. “One more thing. The Cold Men you see? This is only one-third of them. The Mongol Khan has two other armies. One is farther north at the Braided River, preparing for war, and it is led by the Khan’s son. The other is split into two parts. One part guards the ships and slaves on the western shore of the land; the other part is to the south of us here and headed toward the dawn.”
“Eastward?”
“Yes.” The Chitimachan’s eyes were bleak. “They go to strike the Market of the Mud, my home, and do battle with the Romans of the south. He told me this with great gloating and satisfaction, the Tlingit did, because he wanted to look into my eyes and drink my pain as I suffered. I mocked him and did not give him the pleasure, and I think he liked that, too: my contempt and my strength. But I suffer now.”
“I’m sorry,” Marcellinus said.
She looked puzzled. Marcellinus clarified. “Sorry that savage men from faraway lands have come into your land to kill and destroy.”
“It is only now that you are sorry, Roman? Now that you are at their mercy?” She shook her head.
Marcellinus fell silent. He had other questions, but the Chitimachan’s face had closed against him, and he felt that he must ask no more.
She sat stiff and upright. Her face was a wall. Whatever suffering the Chitimachan was feeling was buried deep within her, yet somehow Marcellinus felt that inside she was screaming.
—
Further indignities awaited. The next morning the prisoners were kicked awake by their captors, and pilloried.
Marcellinus was first. As he knelt in the dust, his hands tied behind his back, Jebei Noyon himself strode over, carrying a thick wooden board four feet across with a hole in the center and a rough iron hinge. Opening it, he slipped it around Marcellinus’s neck, locked it closed, and released it.
Helpless under its weight, Marcellinus tumbled forward. The board’s edge hit the ground, wrenching his neck, and with his hands tied behind him there was nothing he could do about it. The pillory must have weighed fifteen pounds. Tears sprung to his eyes, water he did not even know was left in his body.
Jebei Noyon nodded, stood, and gestured: Up.
Marcellinus tried. The effort of rising to his feet with the pressure of that thing on his neck, and without his hands to help, was beyond him. Gritting his teeth, he tried again and then blinked up at Jebei Noyon. “I can’t.”
The Tayichiud general turned away and signaled. His men brought forward other identical mobile pillories, one each for Bassus, Hanska, Mikasi, Pezi, Cha’akmogwi, and Chochokpi, and fastened them on.
Marcellinus was completely powerless. He was immobilized, forced to hold his body up to reduce the pain in his neck, unable to move except in a way that would cause him even greater suffering. Even if his hands were free, he would not be able to feed himself or give himself water for as long as he was locked in this thing.
Enopay, Taianita, and the Chitimachan were spared from the pillories but not from the hobbles. Those came next, the same hobbles that the Mongols used to prevent their horses from straying too far at night. Once hobbled, the captives were roped together at the waist to form a line. Then the Mongols came and cut the bonds around their wrists.
Now able to support the weight of the board with his hands, Marcellinus rocked himself upright and stood. He could not see his body or the ground beneath him. The others stood, too, and as best they were able, they began to walk. The hobbles allowed them just a few inches’ freedom of movement. It was enough to shuffle forward well enough, but Marcellinus could already tell that today’s march would be slow, painful, and humiliating.
Yet he saw no mockery or sadistic joy in the eyes of Jebei Noyon or the other Mongols and Jin who surrounded them, merely satisfaction in a job well done.
The Mongols sent them out ahead on the trail. They pointed, and one of them gestured Walk, and the prisoners began to get the measure of their restraints.
The Tlingit chief from the northwest walked up to them just before they left the camp and said something to Pezi in quick Algon-Quian, then strode off again without waiting to see if he was understood. “Bastard,” Pezi said in Latin.
“Well, Pezi? What?”
“It was a warning. We must walk fast and not stop. If we sit or lie down, they will shoot arrows into us.”
“Merda,” Taianita muttered.
They walked out of the Mongol night camp as best they could, in a straight line into the desert. Marcellinus was in the lead position of the group. Pezi was behind him, then came Hanska, with the others strung out behind her. Bassus, the most injured and least able to make a walk like this, brought up the rear, with Taianita just in front of him.
Marcellinus heard whimpering. He would rather not know who it was. He half turned, which was the best he could do, and peered back. Despite the Tlingit chieftain’s warning, nobody appeared to be aiming a bow at them. “Listen up, everyone, just for a moment. This will be hell, but Jove only knows what they’ll do to us if we don’t keep going. Everyone keep a tight hold of the rope in front of you, and behind as well, if you can. If someone stumbles, try to hold them so they don’t fall too heavily. Pezi, watch the ground in front of me and warn me if I’m about to trip or step in a hole or tread on a rattling snake. Everyone else, do the same for the person in front of you. Look ahead, warn them of obstacles or dangers. Bassus, shout out if you need to pause, and we’ll do our best. Taianita, watch Bassus; tell me immediately if he looks woozy.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Bassus muttered. “I won’t slow you down.”
Marcellinus nodded, bumping his chin on rough wood. “I’ll try to keep the pace steady. All right? On.”
They went on. Many of them stumbled, Marcellinus most of all, but amazingly, nobody fell. Minutes stretched into hours. The pain in Marcellinus’s neck and calf muscles became almost unbearable, but he had little choice but to keep moving.
He touched his tongue to his parched lips. He could not help thinking that if the Mongols left them out here like this, they would die of thirst within the day.
That gruesome thought, he kept to himself.
—
The first of the Mongol jaghuns overtook them at noon, bearing down on them at an alarming canter. Most of the warriors rode past, including Jebei Noyon and the Tlingit. Twenty warriors, two arbans’ worth, stopped and dismounted with bad grace to give the captives water and a little food. Marcellinus and the others were allowed to sit and rest for two hours while the Mongols’ horses grazed.
Exhausted, they spoke little. Marcellinus could feel blood trickling down his chest and saw that every neck was chafed and bleeding among those wearing the heavy pillories. No one wasted any breath complaining.
Then the second jaghun trotted up, and Marcellinus and his small group of unfortunates were helped to their feet to continue their terrible walk.
In the afternoon Bassus fell five times, pulling Taianita and Mikasi down with him. Each time Marcellinus stopped the group until one of the implacable Mongol warriors arrived to gesture them to rise again. Taianita helped Bassus as best she could, ducking under the board around his neck to put her arm around his waist and support him, and they all walked on as slowly as they dared.
Fortunately, they did not have much farther to go. Escorted by the final jaghun, the prisoners arrived at the Khan’s camp around midafternoon.
After the rigors, indignities, and starvation of the journey north, Marcellinus was almost relieved.
—
The camp of the Mongol Khan was amazingly colorful. This was no makeshift overnight halt like the camps of Jebei Noyon’s scouting party. This was a small town.
The camp was circular and composed largely of a haphazard array of thousands of the one-man goatskin tents the Mongols had used on the trail. However, distributed among them was a series of surprisingly substantial structures twenty feet across and circular with a conical roof, midway between tents and buildings. Some were plain and utilitarian, covered in felt and skins or rough brown linen, but toward the center there were several much larger versions.
From behind them Bassus grunted, speaking for the first time in hours. “Yurts. They’re all over the Asian steppes.”
“They have Hesperian slaves,” Pezi said flatly, and so they did: men and women wearing the tattoos and tunics of the land who moved around on their knees or hobbled, cooking, carrying, and doing the other work of the camp while the Mongol warriors talked and drank and sharpened their sabers.
As the line of Cahokian, Roman, and Yupkoyvi prisoners shuffled into the camp, few gave them any more than a cursory glance. Just another bunch of captives at the mercy of the Horde.
Farther into the camp the yurts were decorated in yellow, red, and green, boldly repeating patterns in diamond and lozenge shapes. Nor were the camp’s inhabitants restricted in their clothing to the mostly functional browns and other drab colors of their war armor; many wore shirts and trousers in bright colors and patterns. Among them walked men and women—apparently the only women here who were not slaves—wearing robes of a startling light blue who, from their stately demeanor and the variety of amulets and other decorations on their clothing, Marcellinus took to be shamans. Everywhere he heard rough laughter, saw eating and drinking and merriment, saw discipline put aside at the end of a long day’s work. All in all, the camp had a carnival atmosphere quite at odds with the grim nature of the Khan’s ruthless subjugation of western Nova Hesperia.
Even amid the desperation of their predicament and the harshness of the journey, Marcellinus hit a new low point. Hesperia did not deserve this. It deserved neither the Imperator Hadrianus and his steel legions storming in from across the Mare Atlanticus to trample villages and smash down cities, murdering its men and using its women, nor the Mongol Khan and his mounted Horde assaulting the land from the opposite ocean to murder, destroy, despoil, enslave. What was happening on the Hesperian continent was a tragedy of the highest order.