Clash of Eagles (32 page)

“No, no. Roman people have just been around longer. Roma, very old. Romans use many ideas from other peoples: Greeks, Moors, Parthians. Other very large nations. And we have more metal.” He pursed his lips. It still sounded patronizing.

“All those nations. All like Roma?” Tahtay asked.

No, he wanted to say; Roma is bigger and better than any of them. But he had already stepped over the line into hubris, as the Cahokians themselves sometimes did. “Not like Roma.”

“But Romans do not have wings,” said Sintikala.

“No, Romans do not have wings.”

“And Romans do not win battle here.”

“Sintikala,” Great Sun Man said reproachfully, as if she had called Marcellinus’s mother a bad name.

“Roma has many wonders,” Marcellinus said. “Big buildings of stone, roads, bridges that carry water.” He stopped. The Cahokians had no frame of reference for things like aqueducts, bridges, amphitheaters, forums. “Many things. But no, Roma does not have wings.”

Marcellinus hardly wanted to end up sounding like Great Sun Man: “Roma biggest and best!” Embarrassed, he turned and found himself standing nose to beak with a Thunderbird.

He had seen them flying in battle, in training, in salute. He had never before approached one on the ground, up close like this.

It was colossal. Well over a hundred feet from wingtip to wingtip, it sat resting on two splayed wooden trestles that looked uncannily like claws. Its wings were swept back to help it cut through the air, and their natural upcurve made the bird appear predatory even in repose. Its frame was wooden, with thicker struts than those of the Catanwakuwa. Skins garbed the wings, probably deerskin, but scraped and treated so carefully that they were all but unrecognizable and so seamless that they appeared as a single fine sheet spanning the entire machine.

From beneath the Thunderbird hung the twelve bars that the warriors who flew it would hold on to, shoving left and right to steer it.
Above each bar was the harness that held the pilot’s body in the prone position, facedown to the ground he soared over. Nearby were the empty sacklike shapes where they carried the incendiary bombs that could destroy hundreds of men in an instant.

A third of the way out from the spine and a quarter of the way back from the nose, Marcellinus saw two large clips that attached the Thunderbird to the rail for launch. For the first time, he realized that during this launch the pilots’ bodies—and their faces, and the deadly liquid flame!—must be suspended mere feet above the surface of the mound. Until the mound fell away, leaving only empty space beneath them and warriors dangling hundreds of feet above the trees.

Marcellinus had known that the Thunderbirds were large, but seeing them from afar, launched from the Master Mound and wheeling in the sky, had disguised their true immensity. And although huge and substantial, they also seemed perilously frail for the task of carrying human beings into the sky.

He must have turned pale, for Great Sun Man said, joking, “So, Gaius fly on this?”

Marcellinus shuddered. Very gently, he caressed the wood frame of the Wakinyan. “No.”

“You afraid?” Tahtay asked.

“
You
dangle up in the air under the damned thing, then,” Marcellinus said rather more forcefully than he intended.

“All together,” said Sintikala. “All go: boy, man, and war chief.” She laughed, the first Marcellinus had heard from her, a surprisingly free and joyful sound for one so daunting otherwise, and added something Tahtay did not translate.

“What?” Marcellinus asked.

“She say you do not have, um.” He gestured rather lewdly and said a Cahokian word that Marcellinus had heard previously only from Wachiwi.

Balls. Sintikala was saying Marcellinus lacked manliness, did not have the courage.

Marcellinus flushed red and turned on her. “Yes? You say so?”

“Wanageeska not have to go,” Great Sun Man said quickly.

“But I will. If you offer, certainly I will. To help you, I must understand it all.”

Sintikala held his gaze, still grinning. “Tonight is Midwinter Feast. You fly, Spring Planting Festival. I have spoken.”

“Of course.”

Marcellinus swallowed. To cover his unease he walked away from her, between the Thunderbirds. The immense low building contained four of the giant frames, all fully constructed and apparently airworthy, and several additional wings and struts and sets of frames and harnesses that either were spare parts or could be assembled to make even more of the things.

In all likelihood these were the very same Thunderbirds that had destroyed the Fighting 33rd Legion, yet Marcellinus felt no antipathy toward the machines now. Only awe, and the creeping terror of being thrown high into the air aboard one.

As if he weren’t awake enough at nights with regrets and guilt and plans cascading around his mind; fear of flying was all he needed.

“Thanks a lot, Sintikala,” he muttered.

N
o alcohol had passed Marcellinus’s lips since the day he had walked out into the wilderness for his fateful encounter with the Iroqua war party. Nor had he missed it; he had never much favored even the finer Falernian wines, let alone the cheap, sour stuff they had hauled across Nova Hesperia. But legionaries liked their wine and many of them shunned simple water as a debilitating beverage, and Marcellinus had to admit that wine dulled the senses most usefully when one was out on the march.

That evening, standing by a roaring fire outside Nahimana’s hut, he was introduced to the second drug of choice he had encountered in Cahokia, after the rather obnoxious tabaco weed that they smoked in their flint-clay pipes in the sweat lodges. Tonight’s was a kind of corn mash beer.

At his first taste, he nearly spit it over Nahimana. Swallowing it was one of his most heroic acts of the winter. He immediately felt the alcohol hit his system.

“What?” he demanded of the people around him. “This is corn, yes, and also what?”

Nahimana and Takoda were laughing openly. Even Kangee, the woman who hated him, smiled a little vindictively as she rocked her baby boy, Ciqala, in his basket cradle by the fire pit.

“Tree,” Kimimela said importantly. “Juice of tree.”

His eyes narrowed. “
Which
tree?”

“Any tree. All tree.” Nahimana mimed something he didn’t follow, and he shook his head.

“Here, here,” said Kimimela to make him look at her as she mimed. “Here is tree trunk. Here is ax. Here is pot. Water from tree, juice of tree.”

“Sap, that,” Marcellinus said, and took another cautious swallow of the evil beverage.

“We put sap in big pot,” Nahimana began.

“Jar,” Kimimela interjected.

“And wait.”

“Oh,
Juno,
” he said. “Fermented tree sap? If I only knew how to brew real beer, I’d teach you.”

“Want more?” Kimi asked mischievously.

“Gods, no,” he said. “And don’t you drink it either.”

Dusk had soaked the Cahokian Great Plaza in a gray half-light; the sky was too cloudy for shadows. Yet despite the lateness of the hour and the chill in the air, no one was thinking of sleep. The streets around them thronged with passersby, and the plaza was a hubbub of activity. Rows and rows of blankets defined lanes around the edge, leaving the central area empty. Lanterns were being lit, along with the occasional flaming, oil-soaked brand. In the distance, outside the palisade of the Master Mound, food was being cooked in big pots—jars—over giant fires. Even this far away, the aromas of forest herbs and burned corn wafted on the breeze. Tonight was midwinter; it would be Marcellinus’s first Cahokian feast.

“Tea,” said Nahimana, handing him a cup, which he accepted gratefully. It smelled much more fragrant than the mash beer and almost took the taste out of his mouth.

“We should go,” he said.

Marcellinus had been summoned to dine with Great Sun Man and the clan chiefs and elders once night fell. He supposed it was a compliment. At least by now he was confident they weren’t going to slice him
open and roast his internal organs as a delicacy before his eyes. Despite her taunts and frostiness toward him earlier that day, he was excited to see Sintikala again. It would be the first time he had eaten a meal with her.

“I just hope the drinks are better at the top table,” Marcellinus said for his own amusement rather than with any hope that the joke would translate. “Up, Kimimela. Let’s go.”

“No,” she said, her face suddenly somber. “I not called for.”

Marcellinus shook his head. “Your mother is your mother. She doesn’t need to call for you. Come. Tahtay is already there.”

“Gaius.” Nahimana stepped forward. “Don’t be, um.” She said something to Kimi.

“Embarrass,” said Kimimela. “She say not embarrass me.”

“Gaius, don’t be embarrass,” Nahimana said.

Marcellinus shook his head. Obviously two gulps of that awful so-called beer was two too many. “Look, I don’t understand. Why can’t Kimi come?”

“I not called for,” Kimimela said stubbornly. “I eat with Enopay’s people, like always.”

“Like always?” Marcellinus had assumed that when Kimimela wasn’t with him, she was with her mother or other family members. Every Cahokian he had asked seemed to have an extended family too complicated to describe. “Kimimela?”

Nahimana grabbed his arm and marched him away from the girl. “Stop it,” she muttered to him. “You say wrong words.”

“I’ll damned well decide what’s wrong about this,” Marcellinus said, but allowed himself to be guided away and across the Great Plaza.

Their progress was slow, as Nahimana rolled as she walked. Nowadays Marcellinus could even decode most of the curses she addressed to her sore hip under her breath. As they neared the mound, Marcellinus could just pick out Great Sun Man’s voice from the general hubbub. The war chief was speaking on the mound top, which was lit by an extravagantly flaring torch; Marcellinus could see the same ceremonial feather headdress and the kiltlike garment around his legs that Great
Sun Man had worn when the Roman had first seen him after the battle. Amazingly, the war chief was bare-chested despite the many degrees of frost. Beside him stood the slighter figure of Sintikala, bundled up more sensibly against the midwinter weather. On Great Sun Man’s other side huddled the gaggle of elders and clan chiefs. It was to them that Great Sun Man was speaking, not the people of Cahokia, who were largely going about their business and ignoring whatever ritual was taking place above them. Clearly it was not a night to make the city stand and listen to a speech.

“We must be early,” said Marcellinus.

“Nearly over,” Nahimana said. “Too cold to flap mouths for long.”

On the mound, Youtin, the shaman, spoke next. His voice did not carry down into the plaza, but it was clear that he was the focus from the way he lifted his hands and from the direction in which the chiefs and elders were looking. By his side stood Kiche, who one day would take his place as head shaman.

The other elders raised their arms, perhaps in response to something Youtin had said, and a chant began. Around them in the plaza the babble of voices stilled, and the people paused to face the mound.

Great Sun Man picked up the flaming brand, and for an instant the firelight glinted off the Aquila of the 33rd Hesperian. Then the war chief and Sintikala walked forward, and a roar arose from every Cahokian throat, wordless, almost deafening. Glancing at the women by his side, Marcellinus could see that their mouths, too, were open in acclamation, but the din battered so hard at his ears that he could not hear their voices.

The two chiefs began the long walk down the stairs, the elders following behind more gingerly, and the roar faded.

Tahtay stood at the palisade gate waiting for his father. Seeing Marcellinus’s approach, he bounced on his heels, looking first up the mound and then across the plaza, trying to keep warm but obviously relishing the thought of the evening ahead. But Marcellinus still had a bitter taste in his mouth, and it wasn’t just the crappy beer.

A small figure walked up behind him. “Gaius?”

He turned. “Kimi?”

Nahimana looked back and frowned.

“He wants me here,” Kimimela said, pointing at Marcellinus. “He has spoken. And so I am here.”

Marcellinus reached for her hand and squeezed it.

“Kimimela has balls,” he said to Nahimana in Cahokian, very quietly.

“Well,” Nahimana said. “This will be fun.”

Great Sun Man’s speech on the mound to his elders and clan chiefs was the sum total of the ceremony. By the time he and Sintikala and the others reached the base of the mound, they were once again talking and laughing among themselves. Families were taking their places on the blankets, friends were calling to one another, and mock fights were breaking out, with braves rolling on the ground and laughing while their families scolded them. The odor of the awful mash beer was already quite marked. A man walked by holding five pots of the stuff between his arm and his body; seeing Marcellinus without one, he thrust a pot into his hand and laughed cheerfully. Marcellinus took the pot with a gracious smile and touched it to his lips with his breath held.