Clash of Eagles (33 page)

Great Sun Man and Sintikala approached, the former bantering with the elders while the latter called out to friends as she passed. Tahtay arrived ten paces ahead of them, as was his custom. He looked quizzically at Kimimela and then came to stand beside her in very obvious moral support.

“See?” Marcellinus murmured. “One big happy family.”

“Huh,” said Nahimana.

Great Sun Man sat down as soon as he arrived, sprawling on the blanket. He was far from drunk—his eyes were as alert as ever, and his speaking was quick and incisive—but he was certainly more relaxed and happy than Marcellinus had ever seen him. An elegant woman, robed and befeathered, separated herself from the gaggle of elders and sat down next to Great Sun Man, and Great Sun Man started talking to her as if they had been separated for mere moments. Sintikala stood on
Great Sun Man’s other side, ignoring Marcellinus and Kimimela, and launched into a fast-paced conversation with a man who had crossed two blankets to speak with her. The man wore a cloak of fur that he casually left open to show the falcon feathers etched on his shoulders and the painted spirals and jagged scarifications across his chest.

“That is who?” Marcellinus said quietly to Kimimela, indicating the woman. “Mother to Great Sun Man?”

She tutted at him, scandalized. “That is Huyana, oldest wife to Great Sun Man.”

Marcellinus studied her with more interest. “Then she is mother to Tahtay?”

“No, no.” Kimi tutted again. “Mother to Tahtay is Nipekala, third wife to Great Sun Man. Nipekala eats with her clan tonight.”

As did Great Sun Man’s second wife, no doubt. Marcellinus wondered why he even bothered to ask about Cahokian family life, since the answers merely confused him. “I have not seen her before. Huyana, I mean.”

“Huyana is very often with spirit men.”

“Ah. Very useful.” Cahokia’s shamans, or priests. Youtin presided over the ceremonies at the cedar circle and apparently had played a role tonight but seemed happy to delegate most of his other spiritual duties to his young acolyte Kiche, especially if those duties would require him to go anywhere near a battle. In addition, Youtin was never present at the sweat lodge. Marcellinus had never known a culture in which the priests were so content to lurk in the background. If Huyana was equally spiritual, perhaps it was no surprise he had never seen her before. Or if Cahokian shamans were anything like the priests of Roma’s great religions, perhaps Great Sun Man had tasked her with keeping them out of his hair.

Rather casually, he asked, “And that warrior who Sintikala talks with?”

“He is Demothi. Hawk clan. Strong warrior, mighty flier.”

“Mighty flier,” Marcellinus muttered, and took a sip of the mash beer after all.

“My mother has many falcon warriors.”

“No doubt.” As Marcellinus eyed the man’s physique again, another warrior took his place, then another after that. Marcellinus told himself that these men were merely coming to pay their respects to their clan chief.

Sintikala still had not acknowledged Kimimela, who was now chatting with Tahtay. As always, they were relaying the words they had learned that day, trying to outdo each other with obscure Latin phrases, and trading insults in odd and pointless ways that reminded Marcellinus how young they were.

Marcellinus tried to relax. He was not about to make headway on the whole mysterious business of Sintikala and Kimimela tonight. Instead, he gave his attention to his conversational Cahokian, which certainly required all the focus he could bring to bear.

Despite being cooked in huge pots by a chaotic squadron of not entirely sober women, by Cahokian standards the food wasn’t terrible. Marcellinus had eaten so much corn and beans and squash over the last months that most meals were a chore. But tonight the inebriated cooking squad had added an array of herbs to the stew and also small pieces of meat.

After the food some of his First Cahokian came by. Akecheta was the first to pay his respects, and then it became a steady stream; Takoda, Napayshni, Yahto. Mahkah jumped at Marcellinus from behind to surprise him, laughing a little drunkenly. Hanska arrived with Mikasi, and Marcellinus greeted them with interest, as he had not previously known the two warriors were lovers, had not, in fact, suspected that Hanska favored men at all. As the others had done, they said some words to him and then bowed and tactically retreated.

“You know many names now,” Nahimana said.

“I do,” he said.

“Your warriors are not just warriors to you.”

He looked askance at her, not sure how to respond, but was saved by the arrival of the younger crowd, a few children from the brickworks and his reading classes. Enopay arrived fortuitously at the same time as
Hurit, meaning that when Tahtay immediately abandoned Kimimela to talk earnestly with the other girl, Kimimela could turn to Enopay for conversation.

“Why only one feast in winter?” Marcellinus waved around him.

“Only one midwinter,” Nahimana pointed out.

“Yes, yes. But. Why not do this once for each moon? Make everyone happy more often.”

Nahimana shrugged. Marcellinus changed the subject. With a captive audience, maybe he could learn something more interesting here. “I have many names,” he said.

“What?”

Marcellinus clapped to draw attention to himself, and the folk around him looked up from their conversation. “Tahtay say ‘Hotah.’ ” He pointed to himself and said it more loudly. “Hotah.” Nahimana smiled, and the others nearby looked mildly impressed and gave the sign for yes.

“Well?” he said. “Hotah means?”

Nahimana pointed to his arm and his leg and then around her. Sintikala’s belt was white, and Nahimana pointed at that as well. White.

“Aha,” Marcellinus said. “All right, then. And Kimimela and Great Sun Man say ‘Wanageeska.’ ” Again, he pointed at himself, and again they clapped; there was more pointing at the white salved areas of Marcellinus’s body, and some additional hand-talk revealed that Wanageeska meant “white spirit.”

Enopay was fidgeting, beginning to look nervous. Marcellinus skewered him with a look. “And Enopay? Enopay say ‘Eyanosa.’ ” He pointed at himself. “Eyanosa?”

At this, all of them within earshot broke down and laughed until they cried. Great Sun Man guffawed, and even his wife cracked a smile. And when Sintikala laughed, it changed the whole shape of her face; for the briefest of moments she was no longer a warrior but a young woman, sparkling and without cares, quite beautiful.

Marcellinus waited for the hubbub to die down, cheered to be the source of such merriment. “And ‘Eyanosa’ means?”

“Big,” said Nahimana.

“Big up, big out,” Kimimela offered.

“Means big in
all directions
!” Enopay clarified valiantly.

Marcellinus nodded and laughed. It was certainly true that he was taller and broader in the shoulder than everyone around him except Great Sun Man, though surely many of his warriors were nimbler and stronger.

“Ah, Enopay!” he said. “Enopay the Bold! Eyanosa will fight Enopay!” And much to the amusement of Great Sun Man and the other elders and the open-mouthed amazement of all present, Marcellinus got up and chased the happily shrieking child around and around the blanket.

Soon after this, the drumming began. As the throbbing beat started up in several areas of the crowded Great Plaza, Great Sun Man received a formal deputation of six well-muscled young men with exquisite body painting that must have taken all day to apply. Behind the men came women bearing their face masks of copper and wood, their feather cloaks and turtle-shell rattles, and all the other paraphernalia of Cahokian ritual.

Marcellinus stood. By day, Cahokians were the calmest and most pragmatic people he had ever lived among. By night they were either asleep or pagans; on special nights the deerskin drums and the flutes of cedar and walnut wood would come out and the sacred dancers would cavort in their masks and bright, extravagant clothing and headdresses, their deer antlers and eagle feathers and birdman outfits, their bodies artfully scarred and extravagantly painted. Sometimes the dances would be so sufficiently complex and well choreographed that they were a joy to watch even if their meaning was obscure. On other occasions the dancing would quickly devolve into chaos and bacchanalia with masked men and women cavorting in increasing abandon and disarray, often joined by the ordinary people of Cahokia. Although Marcellinus saw no overt sexual license at such events—for all their summer disdain of clothing, the Cahokians were straitlaced about public displays of affection—his military training and Stoic nature made
him feel uncomfortable at their lack of self-control. After watching his warriors caper and pretend to be their totemic animals by night, he found it almost impossible to look them in the eye in training the next morning.

Besides, the meanings of Cahokian ceremonies and festivities were lost on him. Cahokia had a pantheon of gods just as bewildering as the Roman collection, which had been assembled painstakingly over the centuries from a wide variety of other cultures. In Cahokia, Marcellinus had heard tell at various times of the Corn Mother; the Evening Star (who may or may not have been the same deity as the Morning Star); Keshari or sometimes Heyoka, the sacred clown; and especially Red Horn, a mighty mythical warrior who wore human heads as earrings. Oddly, it was a representation of Red Horn’s head with his large nose that Great Sun Man wore in his ear spools at various ceremonies. Marcellinus perceived something of an impiety about this, but he knew that in religious matters logic often took a seat at the back of the temple.

“Thank you,” he said to Nahimana as the dancers donned their finery.

“What?” she mouthed. Even before the dancing had begun, the drumming had built to fever pitch. Perhaps it was a good way to keep warm.

He hand-talked
Thank you,
and she replied,
Why? For talk me,
he gestured.
For us company, here.

The dancers started to caper, snorting. They rocked back and forth to the drumbeat, bending so low that their heads almost touched the ground. Around him Cahokians were singing. He understood none of the words, could not tell what animals the dancers were supposed to be, if they were even mimicking animals.

Great Sun Man and Sintikala were on their feet, swaying in time to the drums. Tahtay and Hurit, with breathless youthful daring, were holding hands. Enopay was nowhere to be seen, and Kimimela was gone, too.

Marcellinus looked around, seeking her, but she had vanished into the Cahokian night.

Her mother danced, and Marcellinus could watch no more. He stalked from the plaza and went to bed.

Marcellinus slipped twice on the steps of the mound. The sun was still low on the horizon and had done little to warm the ground or disturb the layer of ice above it. To either side of him the grass was frozen and brittle. Off to his right, within the palisade, he could see the foundations for the new brick armory they were building to store all the Roman weapons.

Nobody stopped him from climbing the mound, and he saw no one on the plateau at the top. He walked to the door of the Longhouse of the Wings. “Sintikala!”

No reply. He was reluctant to enter unbidden. Instead, he walked around the outside of the building and peered down toward the Longhouse of the Thunderbirds. “Sintikala!”

As he did so, she walked out of the back door of the Longhouse of the Wings. “I hear you,” she said. “Up here, no shout. What you want?”

“I look for Kimimela.”

Sintikala looked surprised. “Kimimela not here.”

“I know. I just left her with Nahimana.”

She shook her head. “I not understand.”

“Sintikala, why is your daughter not with you? Why is your daughter
never
with you?”

Turning on her heel, she walked back into the Longhouse of the Wings. Marcellinus followed. “Sintikala!”

The giant forms of the Hawk wings swayed above them. Sintikala hissed: “Shut up! No shout here! I have spoken this to you already two times.”

“You did not speak me why your daughter is not with you.”

“That is not for you to know.”

None of Marcellinus’s business? Well, that might be so, and it might not be.

“Sintikala, if you do not want Kimimela as your daughter, then I will take care of her as my own.”

Her mouth dropped open. She gaped as if he had lost his mind.

But these were not words spoken impetuously. Marcellinus had thought about this long and hard. Kimimela had been Marcellinus’s guide for many months; she had a lively mind and a strong heart, and the thought of her being shunned by her own mother and orphaned in her own city was unbearable to him. He could not stand idle while Kimi was neglected in the same way he once had neglected a daughter of his own.

But now Sintikala strode toward him, fury rippling across her face, fists raised.

He stood his ground. “Sinti—”

His back slammed into the floor. Almost quicker than a thought, she had hooked her bare foot behind his ankle and shoved, felling him instantly. It was quite a trick for someone barely two-thirds his size, but before Marcellinus could react she was on top of him, punching the air from his lungs. Pain flared in his chest; she had not rebroken his snapped rib, but she had come close.

She knelt with all her weight on him, and her hand slipped into his shirt like an eel. Snatching his pugio out of his tunic, she held it to his throat. The cutting edge pressed against the main artery of his neck rather than the windpipe. Sintikala knew how to kill quickly. Marcellinus froze, very aware of the blade’s sharpness.

“Oh, you do not fight now?” she said.

“I do not fight Cahokians. I told you.”

“You come just to shout?”

“I came to talk.”

“No. You come to take my daughter. You come to insult me.”

She jerked the pugio away from his throat and pressed it against his hairline. Once again Marcellinus was in danger of being scalped with his own weapon.

“You say you have a daughter?” he said. “Really? Then why—”

The blade was back at his throat, biting into the flesh. “No speak.”

Marcellinus said nothing. She leaned closer and looked into his face, studying his eyes, his nose, his lips. Over her shoulder the brooding
Hawk wings rocked in the air, wide and alien. She was breathing heavily, and her breath warmed his cheek.