Eagle and Empire

by Alan Smale

  The army of Jebei Noyon was already past that line, of course, but now faced a stiff counterattack. Once again the People of the Hand were fighting their own war within a war, specifically targeting Jebei and his guards to exact revenge for the destruction of Yupkoyvi.

  It appeared that the blood vendettas of Hesperian Mourning Wars could sometimes be useful after all.

  They could not expect this respite to last for long. Jebei’s forces still stood between them and Forward Camp, and the Mongol heavies might soon be back.

  “Juno, Tahtay…”

  The Cahokian war chief staggered toward him, sweaty and bloody. He bore weeping blisters from fire lance burns on both arms and had more bruises on his arms and legs than Marcellinus had ever seen before. He had a deep cut over his right eye, and a flap of skin hung loose on his shoulder.

  Most terrifying of all, a long gash on his leg dripped blood. The new injury was perilously close to the wound Tahtay had suffered in the Battle of Cahokia that had crippled him for so long and risked finishing him as a warrior.

  But Tahtay grinned. It was a ferocious grin, unhinged and unsettling. “I am fine.”

  “You pinned your sash,” Marcellinus said.

  “I did. And I unpinned it once we won.”

  “Tahtay…” Marcellinus gestured to where the Imperator lay surrounded by his Praetorians. “We may not be declaring victory. Not just yet.”

  “Merda.” Tahtay’s jaw dropped.

  “Wanageeska?” It was Takoda. “There is something you need to see. Outside the square. Come quickly.”

  —

  “Hanska.” Marcellinus felt a huge rush of relief as his centurion slid off her horse. She still lived.

  “Not her,” Takoda said.

  Hanska grinned and pointed. Marcellinus followed her finger and once again feared he might be seeing things.

  Sintikala sprinted across the battlefield, running on light feet and keeping her head low, almost as if she were flying very close to the ground but never quite touching it. She wore no helmet or body armor, merely a tight flying tunic and boots, her legs ridiculously bare. Her falcon mask was pushed up on her forehead like a small echo of a Tlingit war mask, and as she constantly glanced up and around her, birdlike, he glimpsed the jagged Hawk paint around her eyes. Her ax was in her hand, but she held it low, close to the ground, to avoid drawing attention to it.

  Yet she was hardly invisible. A Mongol horseman pulled his horse’s head around and galloped forward to ride her down. She darted sideways and looped back to evade him with that same quick alertness she displayed in the air, always with that unerring feel for space and distance and that heart-stopping flair for being on the brink of disaster. She ran on. Another Mongol horseman saw her and then another, and each time she ducked under or away from the saber or spear of the horseman without striking back and kept moving, putting Roman cavalrymen between her and her assailants as soon as she could. She never stumbled or tripped or even seemed aware of the torn-up ground and tussocks of rough grass beneath her.

  It was an uncanny dance, and in those moments Marcellinus loved her with a fierce ardor. It was a good job that he himself was not under attack from an enemy, for he was spellbound at her perilous looping journey across the field of war.

  There was no point sending aid to her. Cavalry would merely alert more Mongol attackers to her presence, and besides, there wasn’t time. She would be upon them in moments.

  As she arrived and launched herself, he caught her and spun her around. Hanska stepped her horse forward to provide cover.

  Sintikala kissed his lips and his cheeks, five hot quick kisses that set his soul on fire. He could hardly believe she was whole and in his embrace.

  Unarmored, she had run to his side through the battlefield. He felt an irrational flash of anger at her for risking herself, then swallowed it. Now of all times, he could not snap at her.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said.

  Sintikala raised her eyebrows at the triteness of the expression and grinned quickly. Then she jumped up off the ground and into his arms again for a rib-cracking hug. It was probably only his breastplate that saved him from serious damage.

  Even as she did it, Marcellinus realized she was looking over his shoulder into the east.

  “Why the hell did you land?” he said.

  “I was tired of being so far above you,” she said. “I wanted to be there. Meaning here. With you.”

  He knew her better than that. “And?”

  Sintikala caught sight of whatever she was looking for in the skies. She nodded in satisfaction. “And the Mongol Khan is less than half a mile from where we stand. We have only minutes to get there before the skies explode around him.”

  Once again, Roma sounded no trumpet blasts and gave no warnings. Merely a sudden break on the western side of the big military square, an inexplicable parting in an area where the square was not currently facing Mongol attack. Legionary infantry rolled away from the gap to widen it. And then, with a sound like thunder, the Chernye Klobuki roared out of that gap in a tight column eight horsemen wide, with Hanska’s Third Cahokian riding as hard as they could among them. Their prize: the Mongol Khan.

  Sabinus was dead. The Imperator was wounded, perhaps seriously. Agrippa was way across the battlefield, the legions split and scattered, their cohorts fighting a dozen different battles across this enormous killing field. And now that the Khan had moved forward, sensing victory, Marcellinus had only Sintikala, Aelfric, Hanska’s Third…and the elite Chernye Klobuki. Excellent riders and fighters, perilously few of them, but they were all he had to support the plan that Sintikala had already put into action, a last-ditch plan to grab victory from defeat by means of one sharp, killing thrust into the Mongol forces.

  They could win this, but only with speed and surprise. With recklessness and immediate action.

  The Mongol horsemen in their path scattered. In some cases their horses made the decision for them, scurrying out of the way. The small, fierce horses the Chernye rode were not so different from those of the Mongols. Like recognized like, and chose not to impede them.

  Half a minute later six Thunderbirds raced over their heads, three on each side of them, at a height of about eight hundred feet. They continued on in a straight line, with perhaps two dozen Eagles and Hawks above, beside, and behind them.

  This was the formation that Chenoa had called “two horns” in a discussion during the rains. It had been just one of a dozen possibilities for large-scale aerial maneuvers that she, Marcellinus, and Sintikala had discussed, and they had never expected to perform it from a launch so far away.

  The nearby launch towers were all crumpled and burning. These Thunderbirds, launched from Forward Camp, were already close to the absolute limit of their range.

  By this time the Mongols must have realized that the Cahokians were cautious in their use of Wakinyan. They did not like to place the sacred birds at risk. And so there was no way they could have anticipated that Cahokia would dispatch six Thunderbirds from so far away on a one-way mission over the remaining Mongol army. Chinggis had felt safe to come forward because he no longer feared an aerial assault.

  As the Thunderbirds passed the vanguard of the galloping Chernye Klobuki, they began to release Cahokian liquid flame in two broad swaths over the enemy cavalry to either side of them. Mongol horsemen scattered or burned. Once again the shrieks of tormented men and horses and the smell of burning flesh wafted across the prairie.

  The Wakinyan flew on, three on each side of the Chernye’s headlong path, hazy but substantial shadows in the smoke. The great birds now banked slightly left; from their altitude their pilots could see the Keshiks surrounding the Mongol Khan and adjusted course to scorch the earth to either side of them.

  The Mongols were reacting now. Drums were sounding, and mingghan units scurried to form up. But these Mongols were on tired horses, and the Chernye’s were fresh.

  From behind the Chernye, too, signals were sounding.
The other cavalry alae could not know about the proximity of the Mongol Khan, but they saw Roma’s elite horsemen spearheading what looked like a suicidal charge into the core of the Mongol army along a path carved for them by a small fleet of Cahokian aerial craft. Turmae of the Ala II Hispanorum Aravacorum, the legions’ Cohortes Equitatae, and even some among the weary Polovtsians raced to follow the Chernye Klobuki into the attack.

  In the middle of the Chernye pack, Marcellinus thought his body might get torn apart. It had taken him entirely too long to get his balance and relax into the forward seat required for a strong gallop, and the small of his back felt like it might crack and splinter. His legs burned. He was not the horseman that the Chernye were, and he had fallen back fifty yards into the throng of galloping horses. Sintikala still rode by his side, but she looked more scared than he had ever seen her. Sintikala ruled the air but was not a strong rider of horses and probably would have fallen even farther back if she had been left to her own skills. Her mount, however, had caught the thrill of the chase and was pounding along hell for leather. Where Aelfric was, Marcellinus hadn’t the slightest idea. He had lost sight of the Briton almost immediately after they had broken out of the infantry square.

  All of a sudden, Eagles were diving over his head and beginning to loose arrows and fling pots of liquid flame. Stray splashes of the incendiary skittered up Marcellinus’s arm, lacerating his skin and raising large weals, but despite the searing pain, he did not release his grip on the reins.

  The Chernye were spreading their formation outward as they galloped, and now the reason became obvious: they were storming into the Mongol Khan’s Keshik bodyguard. Mongols in black tunics and red-trimmed armor were all around them, horses rearing, riders grabbing their reins, swinging spears and sabers. On seeing the Wakinyan overhead the Mongols had spread out to reduce the damage their liquid flame could cause, and the Chernye were now galloping through them. The smoke was still thick, the visibility no more than a couple hundred feet in any direction, and this had shielded their lightning approach.

  Ahead of them the two lines of Thunderbirds were converging. The rightmost group of three Wakinyan was turning inward. The line of charging Chernye kinked to the left as well, guided to their target by the Thunderbirds’ trajectories.

  The great craft could not stay aloft much longer; they were only a few hundred feet from the ground, riding the last hints of the wind and the hot, fiery updrafts they were creating with their liquid flame. Marcellinus was galloping too hard to be able to focus on the pilots who hung beneath the great craft, but he was sure Chenoa would be leading them, shouting her orders from on high as they glided above the core of the Mongol army.

  Without doubt the small, ungainly horses of the Asian steppe the Chernye rode had greater stamina than the Thessalians, Barbs, and Libyans of Marcellinus’s experience. This was the same type of horse that had allowed the Mongols to pillage Asia and western Hesperia, a crucial element in their success. But after galloping two miles, even they were wearing out.

  The Chernye column was slowing to a canter, the horses panting. Some were blown and had peeled off. Marcellinus’s mount was foaming at the mouth in an alarming way, but its legs still seemed strong and it tossed its head, excited from the charge. Sintikala was lagging behind him, holding her reins in one hand and reaching back for a lance with the other.

  The Keshiks had recovered from their surprise and were whipping their horses forward to match the speed of the Chernye. Still spurring his mount on, Marcellinus drew his spatha, mentally thanking Aelfric for reminding him just before they had set out that to fight effectively from horseback he would need the longer sword. His gladius would do him little good in the fight ahead, although it still hung at his waist. He was not as adept with the spatha and had to remember that it was primarily a slashing rather than a thrusting weapon. But since most of the Keshiks would be armed with lances and sabers anyway—

  One came at him from the left, and Marcellinus swung at him. The Keshik swayed away from the blow and slashed with his saber. The blade clanged off Marcellinus’s shoulder greaves, and then Sintikala’s lance caught the Keshik under the arm and knocked him forward. Marcellinus brought down his sword, but the Keshik had somehow disappeared from beneath it. He had jerked his horse’s head to the left, and the two combatants had separated with startling speed.

  Marcellinus had never fought in a running cavalry battle before. His instincts and reactions were going to be all wrong. Perhaps Sintikala had the right idea with her lance after all.

  But warriors on horseback were rushing up behind them, and he had no time to change weapons. Worse, his horse chose that moment to startle and buck, pitching Marcellinus painfully up out of the saddle. He fought to regain control, but the warriors were right on top of them. Twisting in his saddle, he raised his blade.

  “Polovtsians!” Sintikala shouted, and with a blast of relief Marcellinus saw that it was true. The warriors of the Ala III Polovtsia had caught up to them and were threading between the tired horses of the Chernye, hacking and slashing at the Keshiks as they passed.

  Marcellinus dragged the breath back into his body and tugged at his horse’s head to trot alongside the Polovtsians. He noted another line of Roman cavalry dashing forward to his left, cutting another path through the left-hand side of the Keshiks. Beyond them was a terrifying wasteland of burning prairie, with men and fallen horses writhing on the ground.

  He felt a light blow on his back and jerked up his spatha but quickly lowered it again. Instinctively he had pulled his horse’s head to the right to steer away from the killing field, and in doing so he had careered into a turma of Polovtsians. One of them had knocked him on the back as a warning as he surged by. Marcellinus grinned—under the circumstances probably more of a grimace of embarrassment—and rode on.

  As his horse picked up speed again, Marcellinus tried to visualize how all this would look from above them. Chenoa’s Thunderbirds had carved two wide swaths of devastation with the Cahokian liquid flame and had taken out hundreds of Mongols in the process, many of them Keshik warriors. Marcellinus and the cavalry of the western Asian steppe were riding through the unburned strip of prairie in between, close to its leftmost edge. In the smoke and confusion he could not clearly see how wide this unburned section was, but based on the separation of the Wakinyan as they had flown over, it could be only a couple of hundred yards.

  Perhaps less. Marcellinus had penetrated beyond the point where the Thunderbirds had begun to converge.

  They must have ridden well past the Mongol camp now. That would be perhaps a mile behind them and to their left. Ahead would be open prairie. Perhaps the Wakinyan of Chenoa would even now be landing in that prairie. Marcellinus hoped they had passed far enough ahead of the Mongol army that they would not be caught and slaughtered. Or had they retained enough height to reach the Wemissori, as he and Chenoa had originally envisioned?

  The column of Chernye and Polovtsian horsemen was now curving to the right, so—

  Marcellinus no longer needed to guess. His cavalry was slowing, assailed by a Mongol charge from the rear right. Seeing Marcellinus and Sintikala, six riders of the Chernye Klobuki coalesced around them to protect them.

  Aelfric arrived alongside him, panting so hard that he could not speak and giving Marcellinus a wild-eyed look. Marcellinus was amazed the Briton had found them amid this pandemonium. Glancing back, he saw Hanska and the Third closing in, too.

  The reek of burning was strong around them. They were approaching the point where the Thunderbirds had converged. Many of the Mongol horses had balked at riding across the burning, smoldering grass, and Mongol warriors were running across it on foot to protect their Khan. Some carried fire lances, others sabers. All looked desperate.

  But the Roman cavalry had spent long hours in their exercises to the west of the Mizipi accustoming their horses to the reek of the Cahokian liquid flame and the burning grass it created. They had the edge, and quickly moved in to contain t
he fire lancers before they could light their deadly weapons.

  “Looking up. Guard me.” Sintikala was staring into the sky, searching out her fellow Hawks and studying their flight patterns. Marcellinus and Aelfric fell in on either side to safeguard her.

  “All right?” Marcellinus asked Hanska.

  Hanska just shook her head and blew out a long breath. “Shit.”

  Sintikala pointed. “That way.” She spurred her horse forward, and Marcellinus, Aelfric, and Hanska followed her into the mass of Roman and Mongol cavalrymen, carving their way into the middle of the battle.

  Even to Marcellinus it was clear where the Mongol Khan must be. Eagles and Hawks whirled and dipped and soared, firing arrows, throwing pots of liquid flame. They would surely be centering their attacks on the Khan and his closest guards.

  And high above them all a single Hawk circled, a white ribbon fluttering behind its wing. It was Kimimela of the Hawk clan, marking out the position of the Mongol Khan.

  Almost a decade earlier her mother had marked Marcellinus’s position on a Cahokian battlefield in exactly the same way. How far Marcellinus had come since then. How he yearned to have the two of them safe with him, far away from this terrible conflict…

  Then Kimimela came under attack, a Mongol Firebird arcing up toward her.

  Damn it. Marcellinus couldn’t watch. Instead, he dragged his eyes down to the desperate fight before him.

  He was staring into a mass of dueling cavalrymen. Mongols and Tlingit fought Romans, Polovtsians, and Cahokians, with heavy and light cavalry all mixed together. Men were locked in battle with sword and lance, ax and club, landing blows while their horses moved beneath them. In some cases the horses themselves were fighting, maddened by the fury and flame, snapping and kicking at one another.