by Alan Smale
For Marcellinus had grown weary of subterfuge. He no longer concealed his Cahokian relationships from Roma. Nor would he hide his growing camaraderie with his tribunes and men of the Sixth Ferrata from his Cahokian friends. Let everyone, Cahokian or Roman, judge him for who he was and what he did. And in that, it surely helped that Sintikala, Kimimela, and the other Hawk and Thunderbird pilots were themselves held in deep respect by the Romans for their almost supernatural abilities in the air.
Sintikala never came to the Fortress of the Thunderbolt, as the Cahokians called the castra of the Sixth because of the massive lightning insignia in gold and red over its eastern gate that was visible even on the far bank of the river. Tahtay visited occasionally. Enopay, of course, as Marcellinus’s adjutant and connoisseur of all things Roman, was there constantly and perhaps spent even more time in the fortress than Marcellinus did. The boy now spoke Latin like a Roman and was on first-name terms with the quartermaster and chief medicus, the ship’s masters of the quinqueremes, the weapons men and blacksmiths and sutlers. And when Enopay was not with the Sixth, he was likely to be visiting the Fortress of the Bull of the Legio III Parthica. More than once Marcellinus had walked into the Praetorium of Decinius Sabinus only to find Enopay in earnest discussion with the Praetor, his satchel open and his birch-bark notes spread across the table. It was quite possible that the boy was greasing the wheels of Roman-Cahokian cooperation more effectively than anybody else.
Enopay was now maybe fourteen winters and at last was beginning to resemble a young man rather than an unsettlingly precocious boy. Kimimela was seventeen winters, smart and energetic. And Tahtay was twenty winters and was growing into the strong and capable war chief Cahokia needed.
As for Marcellinus, at the last Midwinter Feast he had turned fifty years old. His three “children” viewed this milestone with awe, as if he were suddenly an elder or perhaps merely a fragile thing that needed to be tended with care. Marcellinus took it in good humor. He was fit and determined, hearty and strong, and exactly where he needed to be.
And so Marcellinus went from Sintikala’s bed to training Romans and Hesperians, often in the bitter cold and wind; to walking the fortress of the Sixth Ironclads; to working in Cahokia’s foundries and new factories; to talking with Tahtay, Kimimela, and Enopay; to dining with the Imperator and the other Praetors. One day he might exercise with the Cahokian cohorts, the next with the cohorts of the Sixth Legion, and on yet other days with parts of both together.
Marcellinus was almost desperately happy. That desperation led to him living each day as if it were his last, attempting to cram as much toil and usefulness and self-awareness and passion into it as he possibly could. Marcellinus and Sintikala could not make up for lost time, and even now could scarcely make up for the time he spent with his legion or she with her clan. But they gave it their very best efforts.
Certainly they were under no illusions. Terrible times were ahead. The odds of their both surviving the coming months were slender indeed. That just made it all the more important to wring as much joy out of each day and night as was humanly possible.
—
Snow drifted across the East Plaza in the freshening breeze. Enopay was the last to arrive, and he was grumpy. “Everyone else hides inside. What is so important that we cannot do the same?”
“It’s hard to get you all together at once.”
With Marcellinus already were Aelfric, Tahtay, and Kimimela. “All?” said Aelfric.
“Well, at a time when I am not busy, too,” Marcellinus amended. “Anyway. Do you remember this?”
“This” was the elastic material from the south. The Iroqua had used it at Woshakee long before, the Shappa Ta’atani had used it to propel their winged priestesses into the air from the Temple Mound, and Sintikala had acquired a roll of it at the Market of the Mud. At that time they had thought to use it to launch their Hawks, but the experiments they had conducted with Kimimela on the Wemissori had been disheartening. None of them had paid attention to the material for a long while.
Marcellinus turned to Aelfric. “Do you remember what you said about it at the time?”
“Make a belt?”
“And whip it off, snap a rock into someone’s eye with it.”
“And how well does that work? Come on, man. If you didn’t already know, we wouldn’t be freezing our feet off having this conversation.”
“You’re the best among us with a sling,” Marcellinus said to Tahtay. “Wouldn’t you say so?”
“Perhaps. Better than you, surely.”
“I protected you with a sling well enough when Ifer’s men tried to steal the Concordia at the market,” said Kimimela, aggrieved.
Marcellinus had forgotten that. “Yes, of course. Sorry. So in that case, I challenge you both.”
Tahtay and Kimimela looked at each other and then at him. “We accept,” Kimimela said.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say,” he protested.
“We don’t need to ask,” Tahtay said. “You’re going to use that toy elastic stuff against Kimimela and me.”
“Well, not against. Sharpshooting.” They looked unsure. He simplified. “Target practice.”
Tahtay, as it happened, had his sling in his pouch, although it was unlikely that he ever saw a rabbit in the streets of Cahokia. Marcellinus had brought several slings, some of which had traveled all the way down and back up the Mizipi with him, and Kimimela chose one. Meanwhile, Enopay ran off and came back with six pots from his great-aunt’s fireplace. Marcellinus decided not to inquire whether he had asked permission to take them.
They lined the pots up on the grass about fifty feet away, and then Marcellinus produced his slingshot: a Y-shaped piece of steel, hastily made, with a length of the southern elastic material attached to the top spokes of the Y.
“What?” They studied the device suspiciously.
“The advantage is that you don’t need to whirl it around your head like a sling. It’s quicker. You draw it back, place the stone in it.” He did it once and shot a pebble into the air. “Oops.” They lost sight of it immediately in the swirling snowflakes, had no idea where it might have ended up. He ought to be more careful. “Anyway…”
They each took two of the small iron pellets he gave them. With his sling, Tahtay hit his pot the first time, sending it bouncing across the gravel of the Great Plaza. Kimimela missed, but not by much. Marcellinus drew back the elastic of his slingshot, aimed carefully…and also missed. “Getting the range,” he said apologetically.
Tahtay laughed and slung his second missile. It smacked into his original pot, breaking it into two pieces. This time Kimimela also hit her target fair and square, sending it skidding.
Marcellinus’s second lead pellet slammed into the pot he was aiming for and shattered it into fragments.
“Huh,” Tahtay said. Kimimela looked at Marcellinus in astonishment. Enopay tried unsuccessfully to cover a grin.
They walked over and stared at the scattered wreckage of the pot. “And you’ll remember that I’m a terrible shot with a sling,” Marcellinus said, just to rub it in a little harder. “This is easier to aim. And did I mention that you don’t have to whirl it around your head?”
Tahtay cleared his throat. “I can…borrow this for a day?”
“Oh, I have four more,” Marcellinus said. “One for each of you.”
—
Marcellinus had learned long before how the Cahokians had launched their Wakinyan from the ground during their attacks on the Roman fortresses of the Third Parthica and 27th Augustan on the banks of the Oyo. Tahtay and Kimimela had devised a winch with a large drum that was based on the original wood-and-steel wheels and gears that Marcellinus and his Ocatani artisans had created, along with a low wheeled cart capable of taking the weight of a fully crewed and loaded Thunderbird craft. This method had been tested on the Great Plaza of Cahokia, which was about as flat and level as any forum or marketplace in the Imperium, and implemented in action on caref
ully selected, almost manicured stretches of land to the north, east, and south of the Roman fortresses. Yet Tahtay and his launch teams had wrecked one of the Thunderbirds that night when its launch cart hit a rock, shattering a wheel just before the Wakinyan left the ground. The accident had killed two pilots outright and injured four more.
In the coming war, the allies could not rely on finding runways out in the Grass with the length and evenness necessary to launch the great birds. A more reliable method was required. Initially Marcellinus and Chenoa experimented with the idea of launching Wakinyan by using teams of horses the way the Mongols had launched their Firebirds at Yupkoyvi, but their results were nowhere near as gratifying.
The Eagles were easier. With the Roman skill at constructing outsized siege engines, it was straightforward for the legion’s engineers to build an onager capable of throwing an Eagle into the air. And having achieved that, Roma flexed its engineering muscle even further. It was Marcellinus and Manius Ifer between them who came up with the winning suggestion for how to reliably launch a Wakinyan in war: a freestanding wooden tower 150 feet tall supported by wooden buttresses and steel and hemp cables, that could be carried to the battlefield in sections and assembled swiftly by dedicated and trained crews; a steel launch rail, also transported in sections, that could be fastened into place at the required angle, its top jutting out past the tower’s crest with its base at ground level; and a combination of a torsion mechanism and a heavy counterweight that dropped inside the tower to throw the Wakinyan aloft.
The results were spectacular enough to be dangerous. The first Wakinyan launched from such a tower—fortunately uncrewed, with bags and weights in the place of pilots—ripped apart under the strain and plummeted to earth in several pieces, its wings stripped off by the ruthless acceleration.
Chenoa, Sintikala, Marcellinus, and Ifer had to tune the mechanism, lighten the counterweight, and devise a system for unfurling and locking the outermost third of each Wakinyan wing once the bird was aloft to make the launch tower safe for human Thunderbird pilots. But once the design kinks were worked out, Marcellinus’s legionaries of the Sixth Ferrata built five more Wakinyan launch towers within two weeks. And after that it was simplicity itself to construct scaled-down versions of the tower and rail to launch Hawk and Eagle craft with greater force and stability than the onager-powered launches. For the first time, Cahokia’s aerial craft were truly transportable, at least with smart and well-trained centuries of soldiers to carry and construct the launch mechanisms.
Marcellinus was buoyed by the successes, his spirits soaring almost as high as the Thunderbirds. When you combined the ingenuity, industry, and inventive powers of Roma and Nova Hesperia, who could stand against them?
—
High above the Great Mound, Kimimela sparred in the air with Sooleawa, their two Hawks looping around each other so closely that they looked almost connected. Marcellinus, standing atop one of the new Wakinyan launch towers, was struck with a rare case of vertigo; he could look neither down through the wooden struts to the East Plaza far below him nor up into the sky where his daughter appeared to be flirting with death. These days he rarely feared for Sintikala. Her skill in the air was so assured, so uncanny, that it seemed impossible she could ever falter. His daughter was less experienced and more rash. On the ground Kimimela was infinitely distractible, often trying to do several things at once and doing none of them properly, and it was hard for Marcellinus to imagine that she would not have similar moments in the air, where a moment’s inattention could prove fatal.
The Hidatsa headman and Blackfoot elders had left for home after two months in Cahokia, but the younger Blackfoot warriors had stayed at Tahtay’s invitation, and the Hidatsa buffalo caller at Sintikala’s. Sooleawa had taken to the air like a duck to water, achieving proficiency in just a few months in a way that gave the lie to Sintikala’s recent insistence that it would take Taianita two years to achieve the aerial competency required for war. Unlike Kimimela, Sooleawa was as totally focused in flight as she was in every other activity she pursued.
One of the smaller Wakinyan, with Taianita and Luyu among its seven-person crew, had just taken off from the tower on which Marcellinus was standing As it had streaked past him, just a couple of feet above his head, he had been watching the top of the rail. For some reason, in the final instants of contact the launching Thunderbirds were snagging and being jerked to the right, and Marcellinus could see no particular reason for that. Except, of course, that the whole tower swayed and almost seemed to crack like a whip as the weight of the Thunderbird went by, a disconcerting sensation when you were perched so high above the plaza. Marcellinus shook his head.
Unexpectedly, Sintikala flew close by him on his right side. Startled, he grabbed the railing even though he was standing securely on the small platform. Sintikala’s laughter trailed behind her as she looped upward to chase after Taianita’s Wakinyan and pass it on the right.
Sooleawa and Kimimela now parted company, soaring out and away from each other. Their Hawk wings were yellow-green in color with similar feathers on the wing edges and the physical builds of the two young women were comparable, but it was still easy to tell them apart in the air. Sooleawa flew her wing in a distinctive style, altering direction more quickly but much less smoothly than Kimimela and the others. Marcellinus imagined such agility and unpredictability would be an asset in battle, especially if the Mongols fired arrows or trebuchet bolts in an attempt to knock the Hesperian Hawks out of the skies.
Although that possibility was something that he tried hard not to dwell on.
Sooleawa lost height rapidly, spiraling down around the launch tower in broad loops and then using the speed she had gained to streak out in a straight line over the grass toward the exercising First Gallorum Cataphractaria. Watching, Marcellinus thought she would probably make it all the way over the heavy horsemen, though barely above helmet height, before she landed on the far side of them.
She did not. Kicking her legs free, swinging vertically, she shoved the nose of her craft up in a stall even more dramatic than Sintikala would attempt, then somehow curled the nose of her Hawk around, spilled air and twisted, and landed on her feet.
She turned, walking quickly away from the cavalry with her wing still on her shoulders so that she would not interrupt their exercises. She was not wearing a flying tunic like the others; in fact, it looked like the same shapeless elk-skin dress she had been wearing at the Hidatsa camp when Marcellinus had first met her.
Suddenly careless of the height, Marcellinus grabbed at the railing and leaned out to study the buffalo caller more closely. At that moment Sooleawa broke into a run, lifting her legs from the ground and coasting a few feet under the wing, then dropped and ran a little more, her dress flapping around her knees.
“I know how she does it,” Marcellinus said aloud, and looked into the skies for the Wakinyan of Chenoa and Taianita, the Catanwakuwa of Sintikala. “Holy Juno…”
As fast as he dared, he clambered down the ladder to the ground. He had an experiment he needed to try.
—
Marcellinus caught up to them later, as the sun was lowering toward the horizon and sending gold and silver through the snow-streaked grass. Sintikala and Chenoa stared intently at each other and talked of craft and pilots while Demothi, Taianita, Sooleawa, Kimimela, Luyu, and four or five other Hawk and Thunderbird clan members strolled behind, gossiping in a much more relaxed way. He hurried to Sintikala’s side. “I know how she did it.”
Chenoa looked at him blankly, irritated at the interruption. Sintikala raised an eyebrow. “How who did what?”
“Sooleawa, at the buffalo jump. I know how she threw herself off the cliff and lived.”
She grinned. “So long, it has taken you? Why do you think I was so eager to make a Hawk of her?”
“But it’s more important than that. We can use it.” Marcellinus pulled a square of cotton from his pocket. “What happens if your Hawk wing breaks?”
“I mend it.”
“Breaks in the air, I mean. Up high.”
Chenoa looked impatient. “It does not happen, Gaius Wanageeska. We build our wings well. We test them close to the ground and fly them with care.”
“But in war you will be under fire from the Mongols.” Marcellinus unwrapped the cotton. He had attached sinew to each corner and connected the threads to a small piece of wood. To the wood he had fastened a little stone, as the wood itself was not heavy enough. “How do leaves hit the ground? Hard, like ballista balls?”
Sintikala shook her head, bemused. “Gaius, Chenoa and I have important matters to discuss. Tomorrow your Praetors want us to take—”
Marcellinus scrunched up the cotton and threw the rock as hard as he could. It arced up, and then the cotton opened behind it, slowing it. Arrested in its trajectory through the air, the rock swung beneath the fabric and drifted down toward the grass.
“Sky Lantern, plus Hawk wing, makes falling leaf,” he said. He couldn’t think of a better way of explaining it.
Both women stopped. Chenoa blinked and frowned. Sintikala watched as the rock came to earth and the cotton square crumpled down onto it. “Hmm.”
“Falling leaf,” he said again. “Perhaps with you as the rock.”
Sintikala turned. “Sooleawa? Come here, please. Now.”
—
“It is sacred,” Sooleawa said obstinately. “Sacred to the hunt. Sacred to the people. It is between me and the buffalo, and I shall not speak of it.”
“All right.” Marcellinus addressed Sintikala instead. “But that is how I think such a thing might be done. At the buffalo jump Sooleawa’s clothing was not a wing and she did not fly, but its billowing helped keep her straight and arrest her fall just enough that she did not smash herself on the rocks below. Like one of the flying squirrels we see in the forests. And perhaps long enough for Blackfoot men beneath to hold out what, a big blanket?”