Clash of Eagles (21 page)

All the people in Marcellinus’s small clan by adoption—Nahimana, her warrior son Takoda, the children, and now even Wachiwi—knew more Latin than Marcellinus knew Cahokian, to his continuing shame. Only Takoda’s young wife, Kangee, retained any haughtiness toward him. She never spoke in his presence but would make functional hand-talk when it was impossible to avoid communicating.

“So, five tribes,” said Marcellinus. “Tribes with big territories all in a line. And these tribes, all friends, never make war with one another, tribe with tribe?”

“Friends,” said Wachiwi, looking into his eyes. “Make talk, make …”

“Laws,” said Tahtay.

“Treaties,” Marcellinus said, and turned to the children. “Treaty: agreement between nations. Law: agreement or duty inside nation.”

“Treaty,” Wachiwi said. “Tribes Haudenosaunee, treaty.” She pushed the hair back behind her ears and smiled.

Kimimela sighed.

“Rules: duty within family,” Marcellinus concluded, and said more quietly, “And Kimi, here we have rule of no pouting.”

“Tell Wachiwi that. And Kangee,” she muttered. Marcellinus was impressed that she had deduced the two different kinds of pouting—sultry and sulking—without any explanation from him.

“Be nice,” he muttered back. “I need to know these things.” He looked up. “So anyway, ask her: Iroqua tribes never fight, Iroqua with Iroqua?”

Tahtay translated, almost blushing under Wachiwi’s gaze, and then relayed her response: “ ‘They fight all time. But small fights. Not like with us. Haudenosaunee are against all People of the Mound, whether Cahokia people or other cities along big-river Mizipi.’ ”

Oddly, this idea had never occurred to Marcellinus. “There are other mound cities as big as Cahokia?”

“No,” said Wachiwi, and gestured in hand-talk,
Cahokia, big, best.

“Really?” Marcellinus turned to Tahtay. Wachiwi had a tendency to exaggerate.

“Cahokia, uh, ten-and-ten …?” Tahtay said.

“Twenty,” said Nahimana.

“Twenty thousand mans and womans. Other mound-builder cities two thousand, four thousand biggest. And many are just two hundred, four hundred. And farmsteads, villages. Cahokia best city anywhere.”

All right. “And how many Iroqua?”

They did not know that, of course. How could they?

“Very many,” said Wachiwi, and signed
large, many.

“
Too
many,” Tahtay said, proud of knowing how to say that.

“Fewer next year,” Nahimana said, offering more food around the small gathering, “when Wanageeska help us kill them.”

They all looked at him. He kept his expression calm. Really, by now the die was cast. “Yes. I will help Cahokians kill Iroqua.”

“Good,” said Nahimana. “Because that why Great Sun Man say to keep you alive, from the Great Mound. Otherwise, no.”

Tahtay frowned at her reprovingly, and everyone else looked away, embarrassed.

So there it was, a bald confirmation that Marcellinus had been spared from death solely to help Cahokia wage war. He had expected nothing different, but to hear it stated so matter-of-factly was still something of a shock.

Wachiwi held his gaze and leaned forward. “Wanageeska eat more duck. Wanageeska need be strong, kill Iroqua.”

“Uh, thank you.” He felt himself redden. Nahimana cackled to herself, and on the blanket beside him Kimimela sighed again.

Catanwakuwa dipped and swirled above Marcellinus’s head. The Hawk pilots were subjecting his five dozen warriors to aerial bombardment while they trained. It was good practice for his ground troops to maintain discipline with missiles falling out of the air onto them, and good target practice for the falcon warriors. Naturally, though, Marcellinus was a more tempting target for them than the Cahokian braves, and he carried no shield to deflect the missiles. By now he was completely soaked and begrimed with mud.

Had they been strafing Iroqua, the falcon warriors would have hurled pots of liquid flame. As it was, they threw pouches of muddy Mizipi water of around the same size and weight. And had Marcellinus’s men been in real battle, they would have been trying to shoot the birdmen out of the sky; instead, a series of straw targets formed an irregular line a couple of hundred yards in front of them, with additional targets to their left and right, and they fired at those.

“First Cahokian, trade!” Marcellinus bellowed, and another mud bomb slammed into his right shoulder, knocking him forward onto his knees.

Even over the sound of battle, the high-pitched giggling from the
sidelines was easily audible. Marcellinus stifled his urge to turn and throw mud at Kimimela and Enopay. Maybe later.

His first rank of archers had just fired a swath of arrows. Some of them had even struck the human-shaped straw men. His second rank stood, took three steps forward, and became the first rank; arrows already nocked, they prepared to release.

“Centurion, order them to fire!” Marcellinus said.

Half of them released their arrows, as they always did, unable to tell the difference between an actual order to shoot and Marcellinus’s order to his centurion. Irritated, Akecheta berated those who had fired early in abrasive Cahokian.

“Um, Centurion?” Marcellinus called. “Now
nobody
is firing.”

“Fire!” Akecheta shouted, and those in the first rank who had not already loosed an arrow did so, along with those men in the second rank who had just gotten impatient.

Marcellinus sighed. “First Cahokian, trade!”

The second rank marched through and dropped onto one knee, all firing as one despite never having received the order.

“Gods,” said Marcellinus. “The Iroqua are going to eat you all for dinner.”

“Fire!” Akecheta shouted just to drive home the point that no one could, then wagged his finger at them accusingly.

Marcellinus strode forward. “First Cahokian: spears!”

The first rank reached behind them. The men in the third rank leaned forward to hand each of them a Roman pilum. That, at least, worked well enough.

“Set spears!”

The first rank grounded their pila in the dirt at their feet, points up and out, as if a war party of screaming Iroqua were barreling toward them at full speed with axes and chert-studded clubs.

“Second rank: spears!”

The third rank passed pila forward to the second rank, which held them up in the gaps between those of the first rank. The Roman pila were heavy javelins, similar in size to the Cahokian spears but thicker
and sturdier, and the Cahokian battle line was now an impenetrable wall of steel. If only Marcellinus could train them to use shields at the same time, they would be invincible. Unfortunately, bows, pila, gladii, and shields were at least two items too many for his Cahokian troops to wield effectively at this early stage. Besides, to most Cahokians holding a shield was just a waste of an arm and negated their natural fleetness of foot.

Mud rained down on them. There had been a long pause in the bombardment, but the falcon warriors had now flown overhead in formation and let loose a sudden barrage all at once.

Marcellinus wiped gunk from his eyes and spit. He had not taught the falcon warriors that trick. They had apparently learned it from watching the group drills below: a single coordinated surge of missiles was much more effective—and more deadly—than when everyone shot when he felt like it.

The birdmen, at least, learned quickly.

All right. They had been at this for several hours now, and Marcellinus should stop them soon for a break and a drink of water. The weather was much cooler these days, but he still didn’t want anyone passing out from overexertion.

“First Cahokian, prepare to charge!”

The braves liked charging. All soldiers did, at least when there wasn’t a real enemy in front of them. They leaned forward as one. Akecheta bellowed at them, reminding them to keep their heavy pila straight out and pointing at their imaginary foes, not sagging toward the ground.

“Hold!” called Marcellinus. “Hold …”

The First Cahokian seethed, impatient. But if there was one thing Marcellinus had vowed to ensure that his next army was capable of doing, it was waiting.

“Hold,” Marcellinus repeated.

The Hawk wings came around in formation for another strafing run. Marcellinus said nothing. He watched and waited.

Then: “First Cahokian! Charge!”

They were off and running, howling at the tops of their voices, pila
still held out in front of them. Even at a full run they preserved a remarkably straight line. For some reason this had been much easier for them to learn than maintaining discipline while firing arrows. Marcellinus still hoped to get them into a steady progression, move-fire-move-fire-move-fire, with flights of arrows going off more quickly and efficiently than the men could manage firing at random, but at this rate it wouldn’t happen till next summer.

Cahokian warriors charged
fast.
At his age and with the vestigial aches of his many wounds, there was no way Marcellinus could keep up with them.

They hit the straw men head on, still running full tilt. The steel spear points went straight through the straw men and into the ground on the other side. Around half the troops drew gladii and raised them above their heads, some of them hacking at the remains of the straw figures. The other half dropped to one knee and covered them, as they were supposed to. In a real battle they’d be down there taking scalps, anyway. Marcellinus would never be able to train them out of that.

Some of his troops were more coordinated with the steel blades than others. Eventually Marcellinus would arm all the men and women in his century with a gladius, but many of them needed more individual sparring practice before he could risk it. Right now, the chances of them disemboweling one another by accident in their excitement were too great.

Even with the swords only in experienced hands, the hacking was getting overenthusiastic.

“First Cahokian! Retreat!” Nothing happened. “First Cahokian, to me!”

Marcellinus ran forward. “Centurion! Akecheta! Order the retreat!”

Akecheta spun around, looking confused, and one of his own men nearly stabbed him in the thigh with Roman steel.

“Gods preserve us,” said Marcellinus.

A falcon warrior swooped over the front rank and shouted down at the warriors. They stood as one, turned, and began to jog back toward Marcellinus.

Akecheta arrived first, panting, and Marcellinus gave him a companionable punch on the shoulder. “Lunkhead! Not supposed to retreat when
enemy
tells you to!”

Akecheta grinned, unabashed. The “enemy” Catanwakuwa banked low over them and dumped a torrent of water and mud down Marcellinus’s neck.

By the time he released them for the afternoon, Marcellinus looked as if he had been thrown into a bog. Small children scattered at his approach, screaming in delighted mock terror.

He could tell already that discipline would be a persistent issue with his new army. He was smiling nonetheless.

By Marcellinus’s best guess, he had two years. But he might have only one.

If all had gone as planned and Marcellinus had taken Cahokia, he would have sent dispatch riders back to the Roman beachhead garrison at Chesapica well before the end of the campaign season, and a small longship would have been sent back to Roma to tell Hadrianus the news. It was now October, and Marcellinus had no way of sending news of his defeat to the Chesapica. But the Imperator and the Senate well understood the immensity of the Atlanticus and the difficulties his legion would face in a new continent. If a longship did not come to Roma or arrived with no real news of the 33rd, they would wait till the next spring. It might take until after the Ides of Maius—the Planting Moon, by the Cahokian calendar—before serious doubts began to register, and that would already be very late to summon, prepare, and dispatch another legion to Nova Hesperia the same year. In those circumstances it probably would be the following spring—nearly two years hence—before the Romans returned.

But if Roman survivors made it to the Chesapica, if his errant but skillful scout Isleifur Bjarnason learned of the destruction and made haste to the east, or if the garrison somehow learned of the loss of the 33rd Legion from the Powhatani or the Iroqua, Hadrianus might still receive the news this coming winter.

What happened then would depend entirely on how the war with the Mongol Khan was going and whether the Imperator himself was campaigning with the Roman army on the front line—adding to the length of time it would take to get dispatches to and from him—or had returned to Roma. It also depended on whether a legion could be spared and where that legion currently was.

In all likelihood, then, two years. Perhaps even more. But if all the pieces fell into place, if Hadrianus learned the news of the massive defeat quickly and acted swiftly to avenge it, if a new legion was sent and came thundering west along the very trails and bridges that the 33rd had blazed through the land … Marcellinus might have as little as six or eight months.

He would need every day.

The two lines of braves crashed into each other. Half of the first line fell over. “Halt!” cried Akecheta with the absence of timeliness for which he was now renowned.

Marcellinus groaned. This afternoon, no one in the First Cahokian was concentrating at all. He had no idea why.

His troops helped one another to their feet, having the decency to look a little embarrassed.

“All right,” Marcellinus said. “Now let’s—”

“Present arms!”

Akecheta’s suddenly barked command in Latin cut off his thought in midstream. There could be only one reason for the interruption: Marcellinus was outranked. He turned.

“Leave tomorrow,” said Great Sun Man, striding up to him. He wore what Marcellinus thought of as his kilt of office, with the blocks of geometric patterns carefully dyed into it. Serious business was afoot, then.

“Where you go?” Marcellinus asked, wiping his face with a blanket. It was the nearest these people got to a good honest towel. Then he saw the expression on Great Sun Man’s face. “What, me? I must leave Cahokia? Why?”

“You. Me. Many warriors. Kill Iroqua.”