by Alan Smale
He ran his hands down her sides as her strong body pushed up against his. He tried to urge her back; he could see her bed now, thirty feet away on the other side of the big room, but even as he made the attempt, he knew they would not take the time to cross even that short distance.
Her urgency was palpable. With a moan she kissed his chest, his stomach, went lower to his thighs, as far as the knee. He shouted out and pulled at her, almost frantic now in his passion, and she leaped up into his arms.
Marcellinus spun her around and shoved her back against the wall. Again the wood creaked, and a wing spar that had rested against the wall clattered to the floor.
She grabbed his head, forced it down to her chest, and as he kissed and tasted her, his hands roved lower.
“Now,” she said, her voice husky. “Now…”
It was time. They both knew it. She gave a little hop, and he seized her hips, lifted her. As he entered her, she cried out, a low sound of passion, and her hands clawed at him, pulling him in deeper. His tongue slid into her mouth, and he rammed her back against the wall again and again, she moaning, he crying her names and other words, Roman curse words, Cahokian words of love.
He felt the sensations building within him, and then out of his desperate, feral emotions emerged a thought, crystal clear and perfect: this was Sisika, Sintikala, the woman he loved, and had loved and missed and craved and wanted for years upon years, nigh on a decade now, the woman he thought he could never, ever have. And here they were, desperate for each other, both buried deep in the other in their own ways.
Now accustomed to the dim light, his eyes met hers. He looked deep into her and saw in her, too, the raging tension of all those years of love and lust. Those eyes pushed him over the edge now, and a fierce primal joy swept through him and racked him. Her eyes widened, her head went back, and as she came she screamed out her joy, and they were one.
Marcellinus and Sintikala, spent, complete, slumped against the wall. Even as the shock waves rippled away, he clamped her to him in an iron grip, not wanting the moment to end, never wanting to let her go. Her hands were in his hair, her hips against his, and once again she stared into his eyes as if it were her turn to fill him, pouring her love into him, her intensity, her need.
They gasped a while longer, all the breath knocked out of them. Marcellinus stroked her hair, wiped the slick sweat from her cheeks. Sisika did the same to him.
All of a sudden he realized it was very hot. They were bathed in each other’s sweat, but he did not move away, could not. Let their sweat mingle as their blood once had. He would never leave her again.
“I love you,” he said in Cahokian and then in Latin.
“Alive,” she said throatily, and when she smiled, it melted his heart. “Very alive.”
“Yes. Alive again, now that I’m with you.”
She slid off him, still breathing deeply. “I must braid my hair. Now that I no longer mourn.”
He reached up, twisted the long black strands around his fingers, tugged her head back. “Not yet,” he said, and kissed her lips, her cheeks, her neck, her breasts. She grabbed his hair, too, pulled him against her even more firmly. Thrust her hips against him, bit his shoulder, and they lost themselves in each other again.
—
It was much later, having at last made it the several paces across the room to the bed, that they examined each other more thoroughly. Marcellinus lay still, temporarily exhausted, still sweating. Sintikala climbed over him, roving with eyes and fingers and lips in the light from the smoke hole, learning all the muscles and ridges and scars of his body, the areas rough and smooth. She was gentle now but thorough, and by the time she was done, Marcellinus felt that nobody had ever known him so well.
She stepped away then to fetch them water to drink and splash over themselves. Being separated from her for even those moments felt like torture, but gave him the chance to watch her as she walked around her hut lithe and naked. He reveled in every detail of how she moved, confident and sure and proud.
She came back toward him with the bowl of water and paused, aware of his eyes roving over her. She tilted a hip to one side, pretending a coquettishness that was not at all in her nature, and shook her head. He laughed and reached for her.
She was still wet from where she had wiped herself down with water and a cloth. Her skin gleamed in the scattered rays of the sunlight, and somehow from the color of those rays Marcellinus realized it was drawing toward evening. He had to make good use of the light.
He eased her down onto the bed. She lay there, breathing easily, sipping again at her cup of water, and he knelt over her and began.
His exploration of her might have been even more complete and obsessive than hers of him. He felt as if he were memorizing her, blazing every detail of her into his memory, packing her even more deeply into his soul, piece by piece, touch and smell and taste. Soon Sisika began to breathe more heavily under the intensity of his touch, but he persisted, if anything becoming even more gentle, drawing it out until she lay almost in a trance, her eyes staring straight up as she reached her crescendo.
Then she pushed herself upright and stared at him with eyes now hooded by the dusk. On hands and knees she crawled toward him, and he lay back and yielded himself up to her slow, gentle fingers and willing lips in return, as night fell over Cahokia.
—
Hand in hand, barefoot and clad only in tunics, they walked out to meet the dawn. The steelworks was quiet, and the view to the east was clear for once. A fine haze shimmered over the bluffs in the distance. Marcellinus saw the glow from a few cooking fires even this early.
They stood and watched the sunrise, saying nothing. Sisika leaned on his shoulder.
“I am tired of being a Roman,” he said.
Her lips made a moue. “And yet you will always be one.”
“Truly. But I am tired of fighting. Responsibility. Frayed nerves. Tired of…” He laughed. “Worrying day by day what soldiers will eat and where they’ll sleep. Worrying about tomorrow.”
“A pity you brought such a terrible war to us, then,” she said lightly.
“The war would have come even had I never lived.”
“I think it may have been a little worse without you,” she said. “Although my legs might not be so sore this morning.”
“Whose fault is that?” He nudged her affectionately.
She grinned and became serious again, all in the same moment. “Gaius, I never want to be apart from you again, but we must be. I never want to be not there for you, and yet…I cannot be everywhere.”
“Then we must fight together,” he said without thinking about it.
Sintikala looked dubious. “You will fly?”
“You above, me below.”
She smiled, her hands wandering over his body again, right there out in the open. “You underneath. Yes.”
“That is not what I meant. But yes, I must be a Roman for a while longer. And you and I must fight the Khan. Together. But…”
He looked at her very seriously now, wondering what that would be like. To fight, with the woman he loved also fighting in the battle close by. Sintikala had been airborne during the Battle for Cahokia, of course, and beside him when they had fought the Panther clan, but his feelings for her had multiplied so many times since and were so much more intense today. Would he even be able to think straight? Would he make good decisions?
Then again, how good were his decisions in the heat of combat at the best of times?
“And after that?” she asked quietly.
“After?” Marcellinus shook his head. The coming war loomed so large in his thoughts that it was almost impossible to consider an “after.”
“We must destroy the Mongols,” Sintikala said. “And then Roma must leave. And we must be just Hesperia, once more.”
It felt like an impossible dream.
Very quietly, almost whispering it on the morning breeze, Sintikala said: “When Hesperia is free, then Gaius is also f
ree.”
“Free.” He tasted the word. “I have never been free, I think. Not ever, in my whole life.”
“But now you have something to be free for.” Her fingers entwined with his.
Marcellinus nodded slowly.
“Think about it,” she said. “Not too much. Not so that it slows your sword arm. But think about it.”
“I will,” he said. He stared out at the Great Mound of Cahokia for a few minutes, seeing nothing, and then shook himself as if awakening from sleep a second time and searched for something more mundane to say. “I half expected to see Kimimela still here, waiting for us on the mound’s edge.”
“Kimimela is flying.” She smiled at him sideways, sensing his change of mood. “We, too, were flying.”
He grinned back at her. “Yes, indeed we were.”
“She will come to us soon.” Sintikala nodded upward.
Sure enough, to the southwest three Catanwakuwa and two Eagles were floating lazily about two thousand feet in the air. “Don’t you ever let your clan sleep?”
“No. Whenever I am awake, they must be wakeful too.”
“Then they must be really tired this morning.”
“You are tired? You must be getting old.”
“Which is odd,” Marcellinus said, “because I feel a great deal younger than I did yesterday.”
The five Cahokian aerial craft were doing an odd dance in the sky. “Mock attacks?”
“Mahkah and the scouts told us of the Mongol flying craft. And so we must practice to bring them down. That and some other new things.”
The five wings were coming nearer and lower, and now they split apart in different directions as if their exercise was over. Marcellinus watched the Catanwakuwa soaring, banking, and flying but could not tell which was Kimimela. “Her flying has improved.”
“She is my daughter.”
“One day she may be better than you.” He glanced left, wondering how she would take that.
“Of course,” Sintikala said readily.
Marcellinus had ignored the two Eagle craft, looking past them at the Hawks, but now one of them swooped down to race between Sintikala’s mound and the Great Mound just a hundred feet away. It banked to come back around. “Ah, this.” Sintikala’s eyes twinkled.
“What?”
“Wait and see.” She patted his chest. “Try not to let your heart stop.”
The Eagle approached, but it was surely flying too fast to land. Marcellinus watched it agreeably enough…and then, as it buzzed the flat top of Sintikala’s mound at a height of eight feet or so, one of the pilots fell off. “Futete!”
Kimimela landed lightly on the ground, rolled on her shoulder and back, and came up again. Still moving too quickly to stop herself, she did something in between a cartwheel and a forward somersault, jumped up a second time, and skidded to a halt.
Freed of Kimimela’s weight, the Eagle craft lurched upward, almost stalling. The two remaining pilots heaved mightily at their control bars, and the Eagle dipped below the mound top and came up again, gliding more slowly now. It coasted over the palisade wall to land at the base of the Great Mound.
Still fifteen feet away, Kimimela pirouetted and then did a formal Roman bow, chuckling. Sintikala released Marcellinus briefly and clapped her hands.
“Holy Jove,” Marcellinus said, his heart still in his mouth.
Kimimela ran over and threw her arms around them both. “Gooood morning, lovers!”
“I never want to see you do that again,” Marcellinus said. “Seriously, Kimi. Never. You hear?”
“Wait till you see what else—”
“No, no, no,” said Marcellinus. “Just no—”
Sintikala tripped him, kicking his right ankle from under him and shoving, and the three of them collapsed onto the grassy mound top in a pile in something between a hug and a wrestling match.
Eventually they rolled apart. “Family breakfast?” Kimimela inquired archly. “I’m sure you two are really hungry…”
Marcellinus poked her ribs before she could get out of range, and she squealed and kicked out at him. He parried with his forearm and rolled forward to grab her nose. Sintikala chopped at him to break his grasp. She flipped him over and knelt on his shoulders to pin him to the ground, and Kimimela shoved grass into his mouth.
Marcellinus laughed, half choking, and spit. He had never been as happy in his entire life as he was in that moment.
“And so Lucius Agrippa was wrong and Decinius Sabinus was right. You are apparently worth keeping alive after all. Despite the chaos that inevitably follows in your wake.”
At a loss to know how to respond, Marcellinus settled for: “Thank you, Caesar.”
The Imperator Hadrianus looked at him sideways. “There were, I am sure, several in the city who were similarly gratified to learn of your survival.”
Marcellinus nodded noncommittally. “Perhaps, Caesar.”
Hadrianus studied him. Marcellinus was in full-dress Roman uniform for the first time in many months, but perhaps his formal clothing could not disguise his greatly changed mood. Even a meeting with the Imperator of the known world could not dampen Marcellinus’s immense feeling of relaxed satisfaction after his night with Sintikala.
Having seen the imago flying at the finial once again, Marcellinus had crossed the river to the fortress of the Third Parthica by midmorning, but the Imperator had kept him waiting for several more hours. Maybe turnabout was fair play, or maybe Hadrianus really had more pressing business than dealing with his rogue Praetor. It was now a little after midday, and Marcellinus was alone with the Imperator in the Principia building. Sabinus was drilling his men in the grasslands beyond.
Apparently Hadrianus was not dismayed by what he saw. “Bassus says that it was well done. That no man could have done more to try to save Roman lives at Yupkoyvi than you did.”
“I only wish I had succeeded.”
The Imperator raised his eyebrows and continued to pace. “Yet you worked your utmost to save them, careless of your own life.”
“I believed we were all dead anyway, so why not sell our lives as dearly as possible?”
“Quite, quite. And in addition, Bassus claims that you are the only reason that any of you survived your meeting with the Khan. You seem to have the man quite besotted.”
Now Marcellinus shook his head. “Decurion Sextus Bassus showed great courage in the face of a gruesome injury and a ruthless enemy. Pezi was invaluable and remained calm when another word slave might have frozen or fled. I feel his loss keenly. Hanska’s valor impressed the Mongol Khan at a crucial moment, even if her husband had to die to make it so.” He thought about it. “In fact, we few are alive because we all stood together. Roman, Cahokian, Iroqua, Chitimachan…I believe it serves as a good object lesson.”
“And I need such a lesson?”
“I spoke generally, Caesar. A lesson for Lucius Agrippa, perhaps.”
Hadrianus looked amused. “Remarkably candid, Gaius Marcellinus. And then the victory on the river, smashing the Mongol blockade and bloodying Badahur’s nose, preserving the bulk of the Sixth Ferrata. The credit for that goes to Taianita, perhaps? Or Enopay?”
In fact, both had provided significant help in their way, but even in Marcellinus’s mild euphoria he was still wise enough to know he was testing his Imperator’s patience. He dipped his head deferentially.
“The officers of the Sixth are calling it your victory. Marcellinus’s Victory on the Mizipi. I’m encouraged to learn that presiding over crushing defeat is not all you’re capable of.”
“I suppose that all depends on how you define defeat,” Marcellinus said.
“Insolence, Gaius Marcellinus?”
Marcellinus just shook his head and smiled. He was weary of minding his language around the Imperator, and after all this he hardly believed Hadrianus was looking for an excuse to execute him.
“I would perhaps think better of such a victory,” Hadrianus said carefully, “if you had not taken
the opportunity to award yourself a field promotion all the way back up to your former rank.”
“Not so. I requested no promotion and was granted none by the officers of the Sixth Ferrata. Where possible, I took my direction from Calidius Verus or, once he fell, from First Tribune Aurelius Dizala.” He paused. “However, when orders were unavailable, I acted on my own initiative.”
“Any centurion could have given you orders, Gaius Marcellinus.”
“Perhaps. But I saw a job that needed doing, and I did it.”
“And you did it.” Hadrianus nodded. “Well, then. Given Calidius Verus’s ineptitude, perhaps it is just as well that you were there.”
“Verus was not inept,” Marcellinus said somberly. “He had…May I be candid and…?”
The Imperator nodded, gestured. Marcellinus poured himself a splash of the Imperator’s wine, diluted it with three times as much water, and examined it carefully. “Verus was not my kind of general. He was too prone to hasty decisions. Too far removed from his men.” He looked at Hadrianus. “Too damned patrician.”
The Imperator looked at him wide-eyed, pretending to be scandalized. “Can such a thing be possible?”
“It can.” Marcellinus sipped the wine. “In the pinch, Verus made errors, and one of them killed him. But his plan to break through the blockade was sound. He led the charge. He died well, doing his duty to Roma and to his men.” Marcellinus had not forgotten Verus’s words about saving his choice Falernian wines from his fortress in the gulf, or that last bottle he had sent his adjutant, Furnius, down to fetch from the hold of the stricken Fortuna that had almost resulted in the man’s death. But there was scant reason now to recount such sins. Quite deliberately, Marcellinus raised his beaker in a silent toast to the man, took another tiny sip, then put it down. “Calidius Verus died bravely, and we should remember him well. And now I should like to return to Cahokia.”
The Imperator shook his head. “I believe you have had too much desert sun, Gaius Marcellinus, and have forgotten who gives the orders here.”