Clash of Eagles (17 page)

Dividing again into their squads of a half dozen men, the Iroqua glided along the tree line so effortlessly that Marcellinus many times lost sight of one or other of the parties. He did not have time to stop and seek them out when this happened; the warriors were moving so quickly that they would outpace him if he delayed. By taking the sensible line instead of the most direct, the Iroqua would make it to the outskirts of the Great City in less than half the time it had taken Marcellinus to walk away from it.

And as that fact sank in, he registered another: one of the bands of Iroqua was now only four braves strong.

Marcellinus took a step back toward the trees, but it was too late. They were running at him from his right quarter, two dark ghosts flowing through the cornfield at astonishing speed. They had been galloping bent forward, almost in a squatting position, but once it was obvious he’d seen them, they stood up straight and ran at him even faster, still utterly silent and almost too tall to be human.

Marcellinus swung away and ran into the forest. Once they left the cornfield and hit the leaves and twigs of the forest floor, he could hear their footfalls right behind him. He reached into his tunic for his pugio, swerved as if to avoid a tall oak that loomed up out of the night, and then swerved back toward it at the last instant.

He jumped, turning in the air, and his back slammed into the tree trunk with spine-cracking force. He blew out air as he hit it, controlling the shock to his breathing. His knife arm was already up, extended back the way he had come.

The first Iroqua ran onto the pugio blade while Marcellinus’s gasp of pain was still spilling from his mouth. The blade penetrated the man’s
gut with such force that the Roman’s hand followed it beneath the flesh into the Iroqua’s stomach. The man crashed into him, flattening him into the oak, and Marcellinus felt an intense flare of agony as one of his ribs snapped.

The Iroqua howled. Marcellinus wrenched at the pugio’s hilt, but it was slick now and jammed solidly in the brave. He let go and grabbed at the man’s head, trying to smack it into the tree, but his hand came free: the Iroqua’s feather headdress that had made him appear so preternaturally tall in the night had come off in Marcellinus’s hand.

The Iroqua was winded, too, and slid down Marcellinus’s body. Marcellinus grabbed at the spear in the brave’s right hand, but the Iroqua maintained a tight hold on it and it slipped from the Praetor’s grasp. All Marcellinus could do was jab at the man’s eyes with his stiffened fingers as he toppled.

The second Iroqua’s full-speed momentum had taken him past the tree. Marcellinus shoved the first warrior away to his right, hoping to impede the second one’s approach, but that was not the way the second brave came on his return; he looped around the tree and appeared to Marcellinus’s left. Hot flame scored Marcellinus’s stomach, but it was the broad slash of a blade, not a killing stroke. The Iroqua whirled the ax around his head as Marcellinus threw himself to the right; the warrior’s ax blade cut deeply into the tree. Wood chips flew.

The first Iroqua seized his right ankle. Unbalanced, Marcellinus fell forward onto the forest floor, and as he did so, the Iroqua sank his teeth into his calf. Marcellinus lashed out with his left foot and caught the man under the chin. Momentarily the pain in his leg multiplied fivefold, but the Iroqua’s head slammed back into the tree trunk as Marcellinus heard the man’s skull crack with gruesome finality.

Marcellinus rolled and came up holding the first raider’s spear. The remaining Iroqua left his ax embedded in the tree and reached behind him for the chert-studded club that hung from his shoulder on a leather strap. But at last the fight had become equal. Marcellinus leaned back to open up space and jabbed at the man’s left flank with the spear’s tip. The Iroqua tried to knock the spearhead aside with his club and step past it,
but in committing to the move he opened up his right side; Marcellinus whipped the spear around and plunged it deep into the brave’s chest. The second Iroqua stumbled back over the unconscious body of the first. Marcellinus shoved hard and, releasing the spear, jumped forward.

Still impaled on the spear, the Iroqua hit the tree. With a head butt Marcellinus broke the man’s nose, then punched him in the throat. As the man gagged and struggled, the Roman yanked his ax out of the tree and swung it, splitting the Iroqua’s skull from forehead to cheek.

Marcellinus folded into a crouch. Adrenaline and battle fever had pushed the pain away but now it flooded him: broken rib, bleeding stomach, bitten leg, bruised spine. His ears still rang.

Four ragged breaths and he was up again, pulling one of the sweaty Iroqua headdresses over his head so the feathers stuck up toward the sky. He grabbed the spear and the ax, but the ax was heavy and clumsy, and even lifting it put an unbearable stress on his chest and gut.

Swearing, he dropped the ax and dived his hand into the first corpse, up to his wrist. It took two tries, but he managed to pull out the pugio. He wiped it on the ground and got to his feet once more.

Still in shock, Marcellinus started running in the wrong direction but by the tenth step realized his mistake. He turned and ran back out of the tree cover and into the open.

Throwing all pretense at stealth to the winds, he ran as quickly as he was able. The jabbing pain from his broken rib mingled with the chronic fire from his stomach, but the rib was not near his lung and the stomach cut was painful rather than dangerous. He tried to lope like a Hesperian, spear held horizontally, in the hopes of fooling any Iroqua who might glance back at him, but the hissing of his breath through his teeth was so loud that he doubted anyone would really take him for a native.

Moreover, he could not see them. In the time it had taken him to slay his Iroqua welcoming committee, the rest of the war party had disappeared. He kept running through the next stand of trees and into the next clearing.

They were just emerging from the little four-hut farmstead. One troop of six already was jogging on in the direction of Cahokia; the
second and third were exiting the huts and forming up into lines. Marcellinus ducked quickly to his left, putting one of the huts between himself and them.

He had to slow down. If they sent a second pair of warriors to deal with him, it would be all over; he was too exhausted to fight them. Marcellinus panted, his mouth open wide to reduce the sound, and slowed to a walk as he came into the settlement from the rear.

At first, he thought only the dead were there to greet him. Six Cahokian men lay torn and strewn on the ground, their throats cut or their necks broken, the hair hacked from their heads in a bloody swath. A seventh dead man knelt against the small ceremonial mound that centered their farmstead, naked and scalped, with his intestines sprawled on the ground in front of him. The Iroqua had been brutally efficient.

Then he heard the sounds of muffled sobbing and found the women. Four of them were trussed at wrist and ankle with the same type of heavy sinew that had bound Marcellinus on his first night in the city. Marcellinus’s pugio made short work of it, though he left smears of Iroqua guts on their skin. With shrieks and wails, the women ran to the bodies of their men.

Marcellinus left them to their sorrow and trotted on. Again he had lost sight of the Iroqua. His wounds flared once more as he pounded through field and forest, and the night eroded into a battle with himself as his senses reeled and unconsciousness threatened to claim him.

He tripped on a root and a moment later heard himself scream aloud at the jolt of pain it sent through his body. Appalled, he clamped his mouth closed and raised an arm to clout himself on the side of the head. Was he sliding into some kind of waking nightmare? The noise continued.

Two of the women from the farmstead were running up behind him, sprinting on fleet legs and fast overhauling him. Each had one arm longer than the other; clubs, they carried clubs. They did not scream from anguish. They were raising the alarm. He could recognize only one of the words they shouted, but that word was “Iroqua.”

Marcellinus wondered if they would kill him when they caught up to
him, if they could really tell him from an Iroqua in the darkness of the night, especially wearing his stolen Iroqua headdress. But one thing he knew: he would not defend himself against them, not if it meant any harm to them.

He ran slightly to one side and slowed to a jog. The women sprinted past him.

Ahead, Marcellinus saw the silhouettes of six men in tall headdresses, turning. Beyond them the Great Mound of Cahokia loomed.

Howling their battle cries, the women crashed into one of the Iroqua war bands. From the left another group of Iroqua appeared, the group of four, dashing back from the environs of the city. Marcellinus knew they had seen him and stopped running. He gulped air deep into his tortured lungs and lifted the spear, bracing himself and trying to summon back the blood fever he had felt earlier. He had almost nothing left. But he had gotten lucky before. Perhaps he could be lucky again and drag one of the Iroqua down into death before the rest of them chopped him into pieces and took his scalp.

As they ran toward him and his breathing calmed, Marcellinus heard shouting from the city. Dogs barked, and the next moment brought the clangor of stone being beaten against metal. Cahokia was rousing to face the Iroqua; the enemy war party’s nighttime killing spree was over. But any Cahokian aid would arrive much too late for Marcellinus. Wounded, without armor, armed only with a spear and a dagger, he now faced four Iroqua warriors.

An arrow sped past his shoulder and embedded itself in the ground just a few feet away. Marcellinus actually heard its whooshing sound as it cut the air. More arrows came, and the Iroqua scattered, ducking and weaving but still running toward him.

Marcellinus hurled his spear. Pain affected his cast, and the spear wobbled in the air. It was neither as heavy nor as sharp as a Roman pilum; it struck the chest of the nearest Iroqua and knocked him to his knees, but the man wrenched it away and pushed himself upright again.

The next warrior barged Marcellinus’s shoulder and sent him sprawling. An ax blade swished by dangerously close to his head. Marcellinus
tried to grab the arm that held it but missed. His pugio had been knocked from his hand, and he was disarmed, too winded to fight.

His only hope was that the Iroqua brave would cut his losses and flee from the Cahokians. That hope was dashed when he felt the Iroqua’s knee pressing into his chest, holding him down. The native headdress he still wore was ripped away, and a rough hand yanked at his hair. Marcellinus was about to be scalped, still alive.

Marcellinus punched at the man, a glancing blow that was largely ineffectual. Dizziness claimed him. Perhaps twenty feet away he heard another man’s bellow of pain, a woman’s scream of rage and triumph.

All at once the night was full of sparks.

A burning arrow exploded into the ground to his right, setting the grass afire. Marcellinus felt the thud through their joined bodies as a second arrow buried itself deep in the Iroqua’s back. His face contorting with surprise and pain, the Iroqua tumbled onto him, sending another flare of agony through his rib cage.

The hawklike shape of a Catanwakuwa flew over them, its baleful eye glowing. No, not an eye but a lantern, and as Marcellinus tilted his head to watch, its pilot dipped an arrowhead into the light and sent another flaming arrow earthward.

Two more Cahokian wings swooped by. Their lanterns enabled them to see each other, removing the threat of a midair collision as well as providing flame for the arrows. Fire-lit arrows helped them establish range and correct their aim.

Marcellinus lay still, panting, as those fireflies danced. The body of the Iroqua rested on top of him, quivering as his life drained away into the dirt. Marcellinus savored the man’s death. His part in this battle was done, and if he shoved the body away and tried to stand, he risked getting a flaming arrow in his own back for his pains.

At least one of the Cahokian women had survived the fight. Marcellinus could still hear her voice, calling up to the falcon warriors who circled overhead.

Hawks landed, their pilots running in midair before their feet hit the ground. Bows up, the tattooed Cahokian warriors surveyed the scene.
One of them nocked an arrow and took careful aim. His shot clearly flew true, for he did not need to shoot again. Turning, he saw Marcellinus.

The falcon warrior approached him. The wide wing structure still rested on his back, blocking out the sky.

Rather feebly, Marcellinus waved.

“Gaius fight,” Marcellinus said. “Iroqua-Iroqua, trees, dead Iroqua. Gaius run. Man, seven …” Damn. He did not know his numbers in Cahokian, so he held up fingers, then gestured a throat cutting.
Woman-and-woman
 … He mimed being bound at the wrist and pointed at the woman from the homestead who was thirty feet away, weeping, babbling her own story through her tears.

He sat on the southern edge of the Great Plaza. The Cahokians had dragged him there with scant ceremony, along with the corpses of the Iroqua. Marcellinus wanted to see how many Iroqua dead there were to make sure they were all accounted for, but his Cahokian captors shoved him back onto the ground when he tried to stand. The hubbub in the plaza was considerable, confusion still reigned, and the four grim-faced Cahokian warriors who stood over him had their weapons at the ready.

Marcellinus tried again, doing the hand-talk as he spoke. Most of his speech lapsed into Latin, for he remembered few of the Cahokian words the children had taught him. His gestures should have conveyed his meaning, but he knew he was only partially understood.

Around him Cahokia was alive with lanterns. Dozens of wings still soared overhead, scouring the outskirts of the city for other enemies. In the relative cool of the night the Catanwakuwa had little opportunity to gain height, and many falcon warriors walked their wings back to the mound to be launched again.

A tall, well-muscled brave appeared and said something to Marcellinus’s guards. At his arrival the men stopped hurling questions at the Roman and handed him a pot of water instead. Marcellinus drank deeply and on lifting his eyes again saw Tahtay running toward them as fast as his legs could bring him.