by Alan Smale
She did not need to say any more. There were no personal effects or cooking tins, and the place was clean. No sign of a slaughter and every indication of a recent evacuation.
“They withdrew,” Marcellinus said. “Probably recalled. Which must mean that the Mongol assault on Roma has begun.”
“On Roma?” Hanska swung her ax into the wall nearest her. Splinters flew.
He stepped back and corrected himself quickly. “On Hesperia. On all of us.”
She pulled the ax out, shook her head at him, and climbed the ladder onto the platform. When Marcellinus joined her, she was poking the ashes of the signal fire with an unburned stick. “A week? Maybe more.”
Marcellinus scanned the horizon. The post was well sited. The sentries on watch would have seen any Mongol incursion from the west a good fifteen miles away. He could not see the next signal stations in the line to the north or the south, but the view was clear to the horizon, and any fire would have been easily visible.
He looked down the line of the river, feeling bleak. Abandoned a week or more ago? If he’d believed in gods, he’d have sworn they were all against him.
Hanska prowled the top of the tower, glancing back at the raft that awaited them on the riverbank. She looked at her feet and then turned to face him. “I’m sorry, Gaius.”
Marcellinus nodded. He could see her eyes, and so he did not need to ask. Hanska told him anyway. “For…leaving you for a while. Falling into my own head. Not helping. Being useless. And acting like a verpa.”
“No apology needed.”
“For all of it.” She raised her eyes to gaze into the blue of the sky. “I let you down.”
“No. Never. Hanska, I’m sorry about—”
She raised her hand in a sudden motion and cut him off.
Marcellinus wanted to tell her that he understood. He wanted to say If I ever lost Sintikala… But that was a thought too large for his mind to encompass, and perhaps Hanska already knew. He leaned on the parapet, looking out over the endless grasslands.
What was happening in Cahokia? He had no idea. They had been away almost a full year. Once again he felt almost unspeakably apprehensive about what might have happened there in the meantime.
Eventually, he turned.
She had fallen still, staring at the ashes of the signal fire. Marcellinus stepped forward, worried that she might have relapsed back into a fugue state. “Hanska?”
She drew herself up. “What do you need, sir?”
“Help me get everyone to safety. Pole the raft. Be strong. Guard us.” He paused. “And let me not be the only person telling people what to do next.”
Hanska nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And then…help me kill Mongols.”
She studied his determined expression and almost grinned. “Wanageeska kill Mongols? Then I’m right beside you, sir.”
“Another year, another enemy,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
—
Two days later they came across the next riverine signal station. It was identical to the first except for a pervasive sour smell of burned wood and ash that wafted over the river. This time Marcellinus, Hanska, and Taianita stealthily approached the signal tower, creeping through the underbrush that surrounded it with axes and spears at the ready. But the sentry post was undamaged, the small living quarters again abandoned quickly but with no signs of trouble.
The smell of old fire came from the tower. The signal fire had been lit and had burned for some time before being quenched.
Digging his fingers into the ashes, Marcellinus found them still damp below the surface. From this and from the prints of the Roman caligae sandals in the dust outside the outpost, Hanska estimated this station had been abandoned by its Roman contubernium just two or three days before.
—
The Kicka River wound on. Now the river valley threaded between high, flat ridges and isolated monadnocks topped with trees. By now they had thrown caution to the winds. Gone were the long nights ashore, resting up behind field fortifications against the Caddo threat. Gone was their fear of the wandering Caddo warrior bands along the riverbanks. They traveled as fast as they were able, poling the raft all day and as far into the night as they could manage and dozing fitfully when they could. Rain and wind no longer kept them ashore. They fished from the craft when they could and went ashore for meat or berries only when their hunger and weakness drove them to it.
The river had grown in width, depth, and reliability. Marcellinus, Taianita, and Enopay had lashed fallen tree trunks to the edges of the raft to serve as outriggers and keep it more stable. Time was critical now. They passed three more Roman signal stations, all deserted, and did not go ashore to investigate them.
The Kicka might be larger and wider than the Stream of Piss, but its current was just as wan and provided as little help to them. For all their efforts at poling and paddling, it might have been faster to travel by land, but Bassus was still not strong enough to walk for any length of time. The Chitimachan suggested splitting the party, sending the fittest of them to run ahead. Marcellinus would not hear of it. They were a small enough group as it was, and few of them able-bodied enough to fight should the Caddo attack. Hesperian tribes raided one another all the time to appropriate women of childbearing age. Taianita, the Chitimachan, and even Hanska were still of such an age, and dividing the party would leave them even more at risk. Their little group certainly had nothing else of value.
They had to make haste. Marcellinus’s fear that they would be cut off from the Romans by the advancing Mongol army was foremost in all their minds. It could easily happen. Perhaps it already had: the evidence of the deserted signal towers was confirmation that the armies of Chinggis Khan were moving much faster than they were.
—
“Boat,” the Chitimachan said suddenly in Cahokian and then again in Latin. “Cymba, navis…merda.”
Hanska grabbed her ax. Bassus, dozing, came awake all at once and grabbed a spear. Marcellinus, who was poling the raft, snatched the pole up out of the river and held it quarterstaff-style, river water dripping down his arms. He glanced quickly at both banks and then behind him. He feared a Caddo dugout, always feared an assault, but saw nothing.
“Far ahead…Gone. Around the next bend.”
Bassus peered up at her. “Good God, woman, what type of boat?”
She eyed him balefully. “The type with a sail.”
“Holy fucking Jove…” Marcellinus jammed the pole into the mud at the river bottom so hard that it stuck, jolting the raft. He pulled it free and pushed back at more of an angle.
Enopay picked up a paddle. “Taianita, match me.”
On the other side of the raft Taianita dug in, and after a few moments Hanska and the Chitimachan joined them from opposite sides of the raft, scooping with their bare hands.
Despite their best efforts, the bend in front of them opened up agonizingly slowly.
Bassus sat up, wincing, and peered downriver. “Knarr.”
“Shit, Eyanosa,” said Enopay. “Be careful.”
The raft was rocking dangerously. Marcellinus eased up and squinted. “A knarr? You’re sure? Juno…”
Bassus’s face cleared, and for a moment he looked five years younger. The Chitimachan bowed her head, not exactly smiling but at least presenting a look of some relief. Enopay beamed from ear to ear. Marcellinus blew out a long breath. Relief surged through him. Despite the ache in his muscles and the other, different, ache in his belly he felt strong again. Strong.
“Odd,” Hanska said.
“What? What?”
“That we are now all so happy to see Romans.”
—
The wide-beamed Norse cargo ship held the contubernia of Roman legionaries of the 27th Augustan from the signal stations they had already passed and a crew of fifteen Roman sailors, their Caddo and Cherokee guides, and a few heavily armed marines of the Legio VI Ferrata. They were a little startled to be hailed in Latin from astern by Marcellinus’s decidedly
grubby and unkempt crew, and Marcellinus was equally startled when the centurion in command of the boat walked to its stern and pulled off his helmet. “Manius Ifer?”
Ifer met Marcellinus’s eye, then glanced quickly at the other men and women on the raft. His gaze stopped on Hanska, the only other person he could have recognized, then swiveled back to Marcellinus.
The flinty look in Ifer’s eye showed that he remembered their last encounter all too well.
“Manius Ifer is who?” Enopay asked quietly.
“He tried to steal your longship when we were at the Market of the Mud. Many of his century died in the ensuing battle. I barely stopped Sintikala from killing him.”
Enopay raised his eyebrows. “You may regret that.”
“Let me, then.” Bassus sat up and raised his voice. “Decurion Sextus Bassus of the Legio III Parthian. Survivors here of a Roman expedition to the People of the Hand. Permission to come aboard?”
The knarr was fifty feet long and fifteen feet wide. It was capable of carrying over twenty tons of cargo, and its hull seemed cavernous to Marcellinus. After piling into it, they left the dilapidated and much-repaired raft that had been their home for the last months floating at the water’s edge. None of them looked back as the knarr sailed on.
Ifer scrutinized him. “Gaius Marcellinus. Perhaps I should tie you up. For old time’s sake.”
“Or perhaps you should help me get back to Cahokia so that I can tell our Imperator what I know of the Mongol Khan and his plan of attack.”
The other Romans on the knarr looked at one another and shook their heads. Ifer looked somber. “Trust me, we’re fully aware of the Khan’s intentions.”
“What has happened?”
“Defeat,” Ifer said tersely. “Mongol ships, scores of them in the dawn, out of nowhere. An entire fleet of Mongol and Jin battle junks. Some longboats of the People of the Sun assisting, and other big painted Hesperian canoes as well, provided by their allies the Tlingit, made of solid wood, much stouter than the usual birch-bark crap. They launched a surprise assault on the fortress of the Sixth in the great gulf. Blasted the fortress walls with bombs of Jin salt and sank two quinqueremes. The rest fled.”
“Fled? Our warships?”
Ifer nodded, his eyes guarded. “Afraid so. Verus’s orders. Save the fleet. So the Mongols sailed on, laid waste to the Market of the Mud, and kept going. The bastards are somewhere ahead of us now.”
“Ahead?” Enopay said. “Upriver of us on the Mizipi already? Futete…” Ifer looked at him with the usual surprise Romans showed at finding a Hesperian speaking such fluent Latin.
“We know how the Mongols managed that,” Marcellinus said. “Portage. Down in the land of the Yokot’an Maya, Nova Hesperia narrows to an isthmus fifty miles across. There, the slaves of the People of the Sun hauled the Mongol battle junks across deerskins coated with oil.”
“We suspected something of the kind.”
“You were there when the Mongol fleet attacked?”
“My century was off on operations, west of the Market of the Mud. The Sixth picked us up when they came through.” Ifer shook his head grimly. “The Cherokee scouted ahead while we gathered everyone in, evacuating the troops from the signal stations. The river is blockaded north of us, at…Shappa Ta’atan? You know of it? I have not been so far north.”
The Khan had split the Roman forces in two. “Of course. We’re cut off from Cahokia?”
“Aye, until we run the blockade. Smash through, reunite with the Third and 27th.”
“If you do,” Enopay said.
Ifer frowned at the boy. “What did you say?”
“Does the Imperator know?”
The centurion shook his head with frustration. “Of course he doesn’t know, boy. How could he? The Mongols are ahead of us, between us and Cahokia. Weren’t you listening?”
“You should send runners.” Enopay turned to Marcellinus. “Divide and divide and conquer and conquer. The Khan hopes to put wedges between the Roman forces in the south and in the north. If the Mongols destroy the rest of our fleet, they can not only split the Sixth from the other two legions but strand the Third and most of the 27th on the wrong side of the Mizipi. Cut them off from the Chesapica completely. We need to warn Hadrianus.”
“Shit,” Marcellinus said.
“Our fleet?” Ifer said.
Enopay met his gaze. “Are we not allies?”
Ifer shrugged. “Anyway, we’ll get through, and we’ll get to Cahokia long before runners.”
Ifer’s helmsman broke into the conversation. “Next fort.”
Sure enough, the next Roman signal station had just come into view around the bend ahead of them. A contubernium of legionaries stood on its top platform. One of them waved.
Ifer nodded at Marcellinus and Bassus and stood to go to the prow of the knarr. Bassus grunted. “This boat is going to get crowded.”
Marcellinus noted that the legionaries of the Sixth were staring openly at Taianita and the Chitimachan, perhaps the first comely women they had seen for months. Taianita was staring steadfastly ahead, ignoring them all, but the Chitimachan looked as though she was very close to punching someone.
That might at least provide some light relief. The rest of the news was unspeakably grim.
Having the Roman forces divided was obviously intolerable. But to lose control of the Mizipi so quickly and completely? He had not fully considered the implications of that.
Evidently his feelings of relief had come too soon.
Much too soon.
Three days later the Kicka River spit the knarr out into the Mizipi and into the middle of a Roman flotilla.
Below the convergence of the Kicka and the Mizipi was a quinquereme that was being led by a Norse drekar. Just passing out of sight around the bend upriver of them was a second quinquereme. In between were a trireme and another Norse dragon ship.
The knarr’s rejoining the convoy was announced by a deafening blast of Roman horns. The warships ahead and behind acknowledged the signal with brief cornu blasts of their own.
The wind was westerly, and the knarr had lost weigh in turning north. It swung in behind one of the drekars, which threw it a line. Marcellinus and the Hesperians boarded the drekar while Ifer took Bassus to the nearest quinquereme—the Clementia—to see a naval medicus.
The quinquereme ahead of them was the Fortuna, which hung back and waited for them to catch up. The Fortuna was the newest and best maintained of the great Roman galleys of the Sixth Ferrata, and served as the flagship.
And there on the poop deck, highly visible in his white Praetor’s crest, was Calidius Verus. “Large as life and twice as fat,” the Chitimachan muttered. Marcellinus grimaced but could not find it in himself to scold her for her disrespect.
As the drekar approached, one of the sailors threw a rope ladder over the side. “Just you,” said the ship’s master from the deck, easily recognizable by his fringed cloak and mushroom-tipped staff. “The rest of ’em can stay where they are. We don’t wish bad luck on the Praetor’s flagship by bringing redskin women and children aboard. We’ll find ’em berths on another ship later.”
Marcellinus looked at the faces of his remaining crew: Enopay, Hanska, Taianita, and the Chitimachan. Even after getting on one another’s nerves for months mostly spent on a painfully small raft, it was surprisingly difficult to be parted from them. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back soon.”
Hand over hand, he climbed the rope ladder. The top deck was disconcertingly high, but as soon as his head came level with the bulwark, two Roman sailors grabbed his arms to haul him aboard.
Verus looked him over. “Well, well. Gaius Publius Marcellinus. You appear to have fallen upon hard times.”
Marcellinus was surely a dirty and disreputable sight. He saluted. “Indeed, sir.”
“And what of the four turmae of the Second Aravacorum, in whose company I last saw you?”
“Lost outside Yupkoyvi, central city of the People of the Hand,
” Marcellinus said. “Defeated in battle by an expeditionary force of the Mongol Khan under the leadership of his general Jebei Noyon.”
Verus looked startled. “They sought you out directly?”
“In a way. They were evidently making their return from the southern isthmus of Nova Hesperia after portaging their fleet when they got wind of us.”
Marcellinus stared into the eyes of his fellow Praetor, his expression cold, quite ready to turn and climb back down the ladder to his friends rather than face criticism from this man. But Verus stepped forward and clapped him on the arm, ushering him away from the listening ears of the crew. “Regrettable, sir, quite regrettable. But believe me, I am suddenly well acquainted with military disaster. We do what we can for our men, sir, we do indeed, but no good commander should berate himself for defeat provided that he has done his best.”
Marcellinus, whose feelings on such matters were rather different, maintained a studied silence. Unseen on the decks below them, the oarsmen dug deep and the Fortuna surged forward up the Mizipi. Marcellinus did not glance back at the drekar for fear of seeing Enopay’s face, which was undoubtedly forlorn at being abandoned.
Calidius Verus was still speaking. “These Mongol bastards are unbelievably thorough. Coldhearted butchers. Maniacs. Believe me, we only survived by abandoning the fortress and retreating out into the Mare Solis.”
Marcellinus nodded and made no comment.
“It was not the time or the place to engage,” Verus continued. “This is a brown-water navy with largely riverine expertise. The Rhine, the Euphrates; hardly at their best on the high seas, with the tides and tows and all. We had not trained for such an action, had never expected one.”
“Just so,” Marcellinus said.
Verus looked grim. “The Mongols aim to kill the legions one by one. Yes? Bottle up the Legio VI Ferrata, keep us separate from the main force, and then split the men on the Line of Hadrianus off from Cahokia and the Chesapica. That will not hold. This time we engage; this time we go through. The Hesperian Nile is Roman now, and we will control it. Not the redskins and definitely not the slant-eyes.”