Clash of Eagles (28 page)

More likely, of course, something had definitively changed with the return of Sisika to Cahokia.

They made Marcellinus wait for quite a while, far enough from the plateau’s edge that he could not see down into the Great Plaza. He wondered where Tahtay was and whether the boy knew what was going on. If Tahtay were here in Kimimela’s place, Marcellinus would have asked for his insight. But Kimi stood forlorn and trembling twenty feet away, lost within herself, and Marcellinus did not disturb her.

He heard raised voices from inside the longhouse. A man and a woman were arguing in fast-paced Cahokian. Now Kimimela raised her head to look at Marcellinus, wide-eyed.

Before he could ask her what she had heard, Sisika and Great Sun Man came out to confront him.

Sisika’s presence brought a further chill to the heavy autumn air. By her side even Great Sun Man appeared muted.

Marcellinus stood patiently among his bodyguard of braves. Whatever happened, he would not show fear. The last few weeks rolled back for Marcellinus. He was no longer merely himself; once again, he was the Imperium’s sole representative. If these people were to know only one Roman, let him be a man of dignitas.

Sisika looked leaner and tougher than when he had last seen her. Where had she been all this time?

She spoke. Kimimela’s head snapped up in sudden attention. Marcellinus waited.

Kimimela cleared her throat. “She say: ‘You have healed from your wounds.’ ”

“Yes,” said Marcellinus. “Thanks to Cahokian kindness.”

Poignantly, Kimi did not recognize the Latin word for “kindness.” Marcellinus mimed a painting action to his shoulder and thigh, a hand on his forehead, indicating the medical help he had received. Kimimela nodded, and he caught the name “Chumanee” in the words she said next to Sisika and Great Sun Man.

Sisika spoke again.

Kimi said, “She say: ‘I should kill you. But I will not.’ ”

Sisika’s face was ominous. This was not a joke, then. Marcellinus did
not smile. He had been aware of the ironic similarity between his current situation and that of their first meeting even without that.

“And she say: ‘You carry death Powhatan. Then you carry death Cahokia.’ ”

“Yes,” he said very quietly.

“ ‘Many thousand of Powhatan graves. Families. Many men die. Women.’ ”

“Yes.”

“ ‘Romans kill many of Cahokia.’ ”

“Yes.”

“ ‘Why you live?’ ”

Marcellinus looked at Kimimela, uncertain of her meaning. She was staring at the grass at her feet, translating scrupulously without interjecting any of her own thoughts. He doubted Tahtay would be so single-minded in his duty. Perhaps that was why the boy wasn’t here.

Marcellinus knocked twice with his left fist on his right forearm for clarification.

Kimi bowed and offered hands as if giving a gift. Touched her heart and her head, uttered a Cahokian word, made a symbol in the hand-talk.

The best he could fathom from this was,
By what right do you live?

He almost laughed. They were asking him? It was a question he could not answer. Perhaps it was meant to be rhetorical. He waited.

The litany continued. “ ‘Many Roman die.’ ”

“Yes.”

“ ‘Many Cahokian die.’ ”

“Yes.”

“ ‘Haudenosaunee die.’ ”

He was mute.

Kimi looked up. “Wanageeska kill Haudenosaunee. It is Iroqua name for themself. She mean: ‘Wanageeska kill Iroqua.’ ”

These days Kimimela always called him Gaius. Marcellinus felt unaccountably sad. “Yes, I know. Yes.”

“ ‘You fight Cahokia Roman warrior Iroqua.’ ”

He shook his head, unsure.

Kimimela met his eye and said it more slowly. “You fight.” He nodded. “With Cahokia, you teach, Cahokia, to fight like Roman. Kill Iroqua.” She mimed sword moves, the fifth and sixth positions of the gladius.

Marcellinus turned to Sisika. “Yes. I help Cahokians to fight Iroqua. Yes, I do that.”

Kimi repeated it in Cahokian.

Sisika spoke, looking sour.

Kimimela cleared her throat. “ ‘So, if Gaius is taken by Iroqua, Gaius then fight Cahokia.’ ”

Aha. Now he understood.

“No,” Marcellinus said, stepping forward to address Sisika directly. His warrior guard looked horrified and glanced at Great Sun Man for orders; Great Sun Man held up his hand for calm, allowing it. Marcellinus continued. “I should not have fought Cahokia. I take the blame; I did it, but I did not wish it. I did not welcome the killing here. But the Iroqua … they strike from hiding. Sometimes they use …” He did not know the Cahokian word for poison. “They are wild and have no honor. Wanageeska will always kill Iroqua.”

Kimi translated as best she could. Sisika eyed him impassively.

He tried again. “Now I fight for Cahokia. If Iroqua take me, if Caiuga take me, or Mohawk, or any Haudenosaunee, I will die fighting against them. You understand? Gaius will never fight
with
Iroqua
against
Cahokia. I never fight Cahokia again. This I swear.”

“Uh, Wanageeska,” Kimimela said. Terrified, she knocked twice on her arm, at the same time saying, “Hand-talk?”

Marcellinus smiled at her ruefully. She was right. He could say this with his hands much more easily. He signed,
Gaius kill Iroqua, kill Iroqua, kill Iroqua. Gaius not kill Cahokian. No. Many-winters-and-many-winters. Never kill Cahokian.

Sisika laughed scornfully. The sound cut him to the core. She gave a command, and her two warriors grabbed him and pulled him back away from her. Marcellinus bowed his head and didn’t resist.

One of them punched him in the gut, knocking all the wind out of him; he gagged, dropped onto his knees, and stayed down.

Kimimela screamed and ran to him. He felt her hand on the back of his neck; through the tears that streamed from his eyes, he saw her turning to confront the braves.

“Oh, gods, Kimi,” he gasped. “Just let them do whatever they’re going to do.”

One of the braves leaned down and grabbed Kimimela by the arm. She screamed again.

“No!” Marcellinus shouted. “Leave her alone!”

Great Sun Man barked out a single word in Cahokian. Everyone stopped moving.

Across the plateau three of the Hawk pilots stared, mouths wide.

The brave let Kimimela go and stood back.

The silence lasted for a long time. Still on his knees, Marcellinus sucked air painfully into his lungs. If the brave had punched him in the ribs, he would have been out of action for another month or more. Small mercies. He patted Kimimela on the arm.

Sisika said something, and another brave came forward carrying—of all things—blankets. The brave spread them on the ground.

Kimimela turned to Marcellinus. Sweat dripped off her nose. She raised her eyebrows and then, unseen by everyone except the Roman, winked.

“She say: ‘Wanageeska sit.’ ”

Apparently Marcellinus had just passed some kind of a test. He did not completely understand what had happened. But if he was to live after all, there was something he had to clear up. And perhaps a fresh start might be in order. Pointing to himself, he bowed at the waist as best he could. “Gaius.” Then he made hand-talk signs:
What call, you?

Sisika’s mouth twitched. It was as close as she had yet come to a smile in his presence. “Sintikala.”

“Is name of bird,” Kimimela said, sitting down beside him cross-legged. “Bird who fly very fast.”

“Sintikala,” he repeated. “So, Sisika …?” He hand-talked the sign for
Question.

“Algon-Quian, Sisika. Cahokia, Sintikala.” She waved around at her surroundings. “Cahokia.” Pointed at herself. “Sintikala.”

“Ah.” Marcellinus smacked his palm against his forehead in the universal gesture of stupidity. Of course. She had translated her Cahokian name into Algon-Quian for Fuscus. And perhaps, as a chief of Cahokia far from home, it would have been imprudent to use her real name. Marcellinus felt foolish.

“Sintikala is chief of Catanwakuwa clan,” Kimimela added.

Well, that explained her high status here. Marcellinus bowed to her again. “Sintikala.” Another bow. “Great Sun Man.”

Formal introductions over, Marcellinus thought they might ask him about the plans he had spoken of the previous night in the sweat lodge. Wasn’t that, after all, why they were keeping him alive? Surely they were interested only in what he could provide for Cahokia. Surely that was why they had sent a team of children to learn his language.

Instead, Sisika’s—Sintikala’s—next words, as translated through Kimimela, were, “I travel east, into the sunrise.”

Marcellinus’s interest quickened. “How did she travel?” he asked Kimimela.

“No interrupt,” she whispered.

“Sorry.”

Sintikala spoke again, and Kimi said, “ ‘I cross Appalachia. Many Iroqua. I travel to Chesapica. I see what Romans have done there. Many Powhatan dead. Many-and-many.’ ”

Marcellinus nodded. There was no denying the havoc the Romans had wrought at their eastern landing. But if she had been to Chesapica …

“Roman have big … canoe?” Kimimela looked at him.

“Ship,” he said to her. “Big canoe is ‘ship,’ carry many, thousand-and-a-thousand Romans.”

Kimi’s eyes widened. “Sintikala say: ‘Big ship is broken, down under the water; other ships, not so big, have gone away. Maybe gone back where they came.’ ”

“So no Romans still there?” Marcellinus asked.

“Only dead Romans. Iroqua kill.”

Marcellinus nodded grimly. It was not hard to imagine. After the 33rd Legion had passed through Appalachia, the Iroqua must have followed their road back east to the Chesapica and cut off their retreat, sinking at least one of the Roman troop transports. The small Roman garrison he had left behind would have sustained heavy casualties; either they had been slaughtered to a man or some of them had managed to escape in the Norse longships. Marcellinus might never learn the whole truth of it.

He had often thought of that garrison on the east coast. Their destruction was one of the possibilities that had kept him awake early in his stay in Cahokia. But he had possessed no way to communicate with them, so their fate had been in their own hands.

He shrugged, upset but also impatient. Nothing had changed. Either some men would have found their way back across the Atlanticus to Roma or they would not. Either way the end result was likely to be the same: the Imperator would know for a fact that his legion had perished or make that assumption.

Marcellinus tried to explain all this to Sintikala and Great Sun Man as completely and as honestly as he could. It was quite a challenge, and he had to teach Kimimela many new words and ideas to get through it all. During his long exposition, four Cahokian women brought a dish of food for Sintikala, corn and beans and fish, which she gobbled down quickly. She obviously had used up a lot of energy out on the trail.

Nobody brought food for Marcellinus, and the Cahokians were silent. So he kept talking, telling them what he planned to do next.

In the cold light of day, some of his ideas seemed a little wild. Marcellinus was only one man, and there were limits to how quickly he could do what needed to be done and teach the Cahokians all the things he wanted them to know.

As Marcellinus gestured, supplementing his words with hand-talk, he felt the pugio shifting inside his tunic, where he always carried it. He’d had it with him all along. Fortunately, it had not occurred to him to draw it earlier in that brief confrontation when it had looked as if his
life was in danger. He drew it now, slowly and carefully, warning them first that he was about to do so and using only his finger and thumb. Even so, the warrior guards looked nervous.

He laid it on the blanket before the chiefs. “This is ‘pugio.’ Made of? We call ‘steel.’ Hard.” He rapped on it with his fingernails. “Almost unbreakable. Many things Cahokia can make with steel. Weapons for war. Tools for peace. Right now, you have much Roman steel in the weapons you took from us. I may be able to make even more for you. But to try it, I will need iron and fire. Iron is … like this, metal, but heavy. Fire like … kiln? A kiln is where you bake pots. But much more: hotter-and-hotter than kiln. And also, we will need charcoal.”

He went through it all again, everything he’d said to the elders in the sweat lodge the previous night: how to make steel and what steel could do for them.

Great Sun Man looked at Sintikala hopefully. She appeared skeptical.

Now that he had apparently won over Great Sun Man, at least for the time being, it was Sintikala’s good opinion that Marcellinus wanted to earn. It seemed unlikely he ever would. For it was also only Sintikala who had seen him in his full glory as Praetor, surrounded by the trappings of Roman power, only Sintikala whom he had bullied and threatened and taunted and then almost contemptuously released. Only Sintikala who had seen firsthand the devastation the Legion had brought to the Chesapica.

Marcellinus vowed silently that one day he would impress her. He would toil night and day, and he would see her eyes widen in approval or die in the attempt.

He went on to describe his next idea, but there Sintikala raised a stern hand to stop him and steered the conversation right back onto the territory that was most uncomfortable for him.

Kimimela looked worried. “Sintikala say: ‘I ask you again.’ ”

Marcellinus took a deep breath. “All right.”

“ ‘Why Wanageeska not hate Cahokia? We killed a thousand-and-thousand of your warriors.’ ”

“That was war,” Marcellinus said tightly.

“ ‘You kill much Powhatan. Not in war.’ ”

He bit back his first bitter response and said instead, “That was expediency.”

Trying to mime “expediency” defeated him. He just shook his head.

He sensed that they didn’t really care about the Powhatani. They were just trying to understand him. But how to explain Roman culture to Hesperians? Their world was completely different.

Sintikala waved away the impasse and asked a different question. “The battle we fight, Romans-Cahokia. What if Cahokia lose and Roman win? What happen next, to Cahokia?”

Marcellinus sat back on his heels. This was a question he had not seen coming. He was a pragmatic man. He rarely wasted time mulling over the road not taken, the choices not made. Or maybe in this case he had shied away from the thought.