Clash of Eagles (46 page)

Then Marcellinus dived out of the hut into Cahokian streets already filled with chaos.

A plume of flame reached into the sky from the eastern granary. Aside from that the night was dark, the earlier bonfire and lamps now quenched. Half blind, Marcellinus backed up against the wall of his house and looked away from the flames. Black forms raced between the houses carrying axes and clubs, many of them tall with headdresses. From just thirty feet away came a bellow of agony.

No doubt remained. The streets of the city were swarming with Iroqua.

Marcellinus started forward and tripped over a woman’s body. Her throat cut, she had been thrown aside against the wall of the house.

His nose prickled with the twin stenches of liquid flame and burning flesh. His skin crawled.

Just around the next corner a brave crouched over the groveling form
of a man. His knife glinted red in the reflected flame light. Marcellinus was on the Iroqua in a moment, hamstringing him with a slash of his gladius and plunging the pugio down into his shoulder, inside the collarbone. The dagger was not long enough to reach the man’s heart, but it didn’t matter; a third stroke with the gladius severed the Iroqua’s windpipe, and he was dead.

Marcellinus ran on, leaving the injured Cahokian where he lay. No time to deal with the wounded. Enemies were running wild, bringing death to the streets of his city. His blood boiled. He needed to kill again.

He did not have to wait long.

Even in the darkness it was easy to tell the Iroqua from the Cahokians. The Cahokians were the ones who staggered out of their huts half naked, some with weapons in hand, gaping foolishly at the clamor and carnage. The Iroqua were the ruthless figures who loped through the streets like deer, methodically clubbing men and women to the ground.

Marcellinus killed four more and then got turned around. He had run out into the thoroughfare to face the influx of Iroqua warriors only to find them bearing down on him from behind. His groggy assumption that the Iroqua were running
into
Cahokia almost got him hacked down with an ax where he stood.

In fact, the enemy was now racing
out
of the city, away from the Master Mound. And there were scores of them, far too many to fight and kill.

Hawk wings were aloft now, fireflies that danced in the skies and shot flaming arrows.

Marcellinus spun, slashing at the legs of an Onondaga who swerved to swing a chert-studded club at his head. He ducked in between houses and ran around to throw himself into the fray again, coming at an enemy war party from the side. Five more warriors shouting “Cahokia!” joined him.

With the Iroqua war band down and screaming, Marcellinus left the Cahokians to saw through the Iroqua scalps and jogged on into the plaza. The Great Mound stood silhouetted against the stars, light at its
peak. For a moment he thought the Longhouse of the Wings was aflame, but it was merely lit brightly with torches.

A looming figure ululated and swung at him. Ducking under the ax, Marcellinus slammed his shoulder into the Iroqua’s chest and thrust upward into the man’s abdomen with his sword.

A Catanwakuwa roared low over their heads, and a nearby hut went up in flames. Marcellinus turned his head from the light, saw Onida tattoos on the shoulder of a nearby warrior, and plunged his pugio into him.

A hundred feet away another house erupted, its thatch burning a vivid orange. Cahokian Hawk wings were deliberately setting fire to their own houses. Marcellinus understood. It was imperative to bring light to this confused battle scene as quickly as possible.

Other Catanwakuwa dipped. Arrows flew, Iroqua fell. Marcellinus whirled right and left. Where should he go? Where was the biggest threat? Where was Great Sun Man? Was anyone taking charge of this mess?

Yes. Ranks of Cahokian warriors lined up in front of the gate to the Great Mound, probably under Wahchintonka’s command. They were not fighting but advancing steadily, arrows at the ready in case a greater Iroqua force burst into the plaza. Marcellinus did not expect that to happen—the enemy tide was flowing the other way, and most of the Iroqua were gone from the plaza—but guarding the mound and the longhouses was the right thing to do.

In central Cahokia four of the new brick granaries were aflame, gouts of fire shooting up into the sky from their roofs. To his left he saw a distant plume that could have been the granary that served western Cahokia. But across the plaza and off to the east was a corn house that still looked dark. Safeguarding it seemed imperative; Iroqua warriors could still be sneaking around, and the Cahokian corn reserve was obviously one of their principal targets.

Marcellinus ran, still shouting “Cahokia!” Distinctive though he was, he wanted no one to doubt his allegiance in the flickering light.

He was not the first to think of the granary. A squad of fifteen braves
from the First Cahokian stood outside it, shoulder to shoulder, pila at the ready. But by the time he saw them Marcellinus was already distracted.

On top of its platform mound, Sintikala’s house was ablaze.

It was the heavy conflagration of liquid flame, not the ordinary oil flames with which other houses of the town had been ignited by the Cahokians themselves. Marcellinus’s heart turned over. He hurled himself forward.

It all made terrifying sense. A night attack. A stealthy assault on the Master Mound, though repulsed by the bands of warriors Marcellinus and Great Sun Man had ensured would guard it night and day. The granaries also targets, some now alight. Had the Iroqua also marked out certain houses of key clan chiefs and elders for attack? Or was it coincidence?

He pounded up the mound, but intense heat drove him back. The blazing walls of Sintikala’s house collapsed inward, and Marcellinus skidded on the slope and fell forward onto his hands. His gladius slid on the grass, and he snatched it up again and spun as if he expected to find an Iroqua at his back.

No one was there. But if Sintikala had been in that house when the liquid flame had hit it, she was already dead.

And earlier that evening Kimimela had been with her mother. Panic bubbled up into his throat.

Two Iroqua, Onida by their markings, ran toward him. Berserker fury seized Marcellinus. Howling “Roma!” he stormed down the slope and met them head on, slicing the men into bloody wreckage. He stood over their bodies, panting.

A Catanwakuwa looped past him, a hundred feet up. “Gaius! Go to the steelworks!”

It was a woman’s voice. Marcellinus saw the flutter of ribbons as Sintikala’s Hawk wing continued on, lurching upward into the sky as it passed over her burning house.

“Kimimela!” he screamed up at her. “Where’s Kimi?”

“Longhouse! Safe!” Sintikala’s voice drifted back to him.

On the mound, then. Indeed, the safest place in Cahokia.

“Gods!” he shouted, and viciously slashed at the already dead Onida corpses at his feet. Adrenaline still overwhelmed him.

“The steelworks,” he said, turning.

If he’d thought of it at all, Marcellinus had assumed that the broad glow to the east was the coming of the dawn.

Apparently not.

It would be a long run to the steelworks, out in the darkness away from the city, and perhaps foolhardy to attempt it alone. Marcellinus took a few steps toward the eerie glow, considering it, then saw another house aflame close by him.

It was a simple house no different from those around it except that it was burning and the adjacent houses were not. And it was the house of the chief of the Deer clan, whereas the others were houses of ordinary Deer clan families, brothers and wives and daughters and uncles: good people, mostly pot makers.

“Anapetu,” he said, and turned and ran in the other direction.

Not coincidence, then. Sintikala’s house was on a platform mound, which indicated rank. But if Iroqua had also burned the house of the Deer clan chief, they definitely knew which houses belonged to leading Cahokians.

A club flew out of the darkness and smacked squarely into his right shoulder. He stumbled and fell, but even as he hit the ground and rolled, the Caiuga who had cast it leaped upon him and kicked him in the head. Marcellinus’s sword flipped up into the air, and he let go of it, continuing to roll.

The Caiuga slipped and turned it into a jump. He kicked at Marcellinus’s chest just as Marcellinus switched hands with the pugio and drove it upward. Its blade sliced skin, but the gash was only superficial. The warrior leaped past and, regaining his footing, spun to face Marcellinus again.

A stout Cahokian barreled around the corner, spear in hand. Seeing the Caiuga with ax raised, the man bellowed and swung a wild blow at the enemy brave.

The Cahokian was no fighter; a spear was a thrusting weapon, and a fumbled quarterstaff strike could hardly be effective against an Iroqua warrior, but the distraction gave Marcellinus the moments he needed. Gasping, he seized the Iroqua club that lay beside him. Club met ax, and Marcellinus and the Cahokian forced the Caiuga back against the wall of a house. Seconds later the enemy was on his knees with a shattered skull and a deep pugio gash in his gut, and the Cahokian was sawing at the Caiuga’s scalp with an unholy glee.

Marcellinus snatched up his gladius and ran on, leaving the man to his spoils.

By the time the sun rose two hours later, a purposeful, bloody-minded calm had descended over the mounds and houses of Cahokia.

By now the Iroqua were gone except for those killed in battle. Bodies littered the streets, both Iroqua and Cahokian, but moving them to charnel pits would have to wait.

It turned out that the Haudenosaunee attack on the steelworks had been rushed or halfhearted; their liquid flame had scorched the outer brick, but the building still stood. The brickworks, however, was a steaming ruin. The entire place would have to be razed and rebuilt.

The Big Warm Houses were intact. The Iroqua had known they were not a strategic target.

On the first plateau of the Great Mound, Marcellinus met with Great Sun Man and the other surviving chiefs and elders in a council of war. Below them whole neighborhoods still smoldered, leaking smoke into the sky. Sintikala was aloft with others of the Hawk clan watching for further attacks, and from a distance Marcellinus had glimpsed the lithe figure of Chumanee hurrying through the plaza with her fellow healers to patch up the Cahokian wounded.

The mood was urgent, and conversation flowed quickly; today there was none of the leisurely discussion of the sweat lodge. The pace was so fast that Marcellinus was glad that Tahtay and Enopay were there to help him understand what was being said.

Three chiefs were dead, those of the Beaver, Wolf, and Deer clans,
their houses ignited almost simultaneously with liquid flame. Anapetu had been saved from her own burning house by her son long before Marcellinus had arrived. And Sintikala’s house also had been torched, of course, though she had not been in it at the time. Marcellinus shied away from guessing where she might have been. That was not his concern. He was just happy that she and Kimimela were still alive.

“So the Iroqua knew where they all lived,” he said.

He had interrupted Great Sun Man. Everyone glared except the war chief himself, who nodded darkly.

“Which means they had spies in the city.”

Even now he had to rely on Tahtay to translate the idea of spies, but once the rest of the chiefs understood, they looked angry and frightened, and Marcellinus didn’t have the heart to say
I told you so.

“We invited farmers,” Enopay said. “People from far. All were welcome if they brought food.”

Enopay’s hand rested on top of his head as if he were trying to stop himself from exploding. From the haunted look in his eyes, Marcellinus knew the boy blamed himself.

A ribboned Hawk flew low over the mound top, banked steeply, and swooped down to a running landing beside the group. Sintikala shucked her wings and strode into their midst, her expression bleak. “More Iroqua warriors come.”

“What? Where?” Great Sun Man looked out across the plaza, east toward the bluffs, west to the dull gray shadow of the Mizipi.

Sintikala pointed twice, jabbing her finger toward the southeast and southwest. “Armies from there and there. I have signaled the Wakinyan to make ready.”

“
Two
Iroqua armies?”

Marcellinus frowned. “Nothing from the north? How do they come from the southwest? Along the river?”

“The creek and the palisade are to the north,” Matoshka said impatiently. “Hard to cross and overlooked from this mound. And beyond the creek is the Crescent Lake and the scar.”

Great Sun Man moved closer to Sintikala. The two of them had a hurried interchange, their muttered words whipped away by the breeze. Marcellinus glanced around impatiently. Tahtay fidgeted by his side, exuding waves of restless energy. Anapetu raised her hand and patted the air, mutely urging them to be calm.

Great Sun Man turned. “Wanageeska, hear me. The First Cahokian marches south to the edge of the city. You will hold the line there, defend the city, kill Iroqua. Take your war cart in case we need you back quickly. Wahchintonka, hear me. You will defend the Great Mound with the warriors who defended it last night and a hundred more. The Iroqua must not take the Great Mound. You will die before you allow it. Ojinjintka, make the Wakinyan ready to fly. The rest of you, hear me. Gather all the warriors and the strong men and women who can fight and take them to western Cahokia. Many Wolf Warriors are already there. Guard the plazas, guard the mounds, and look to the riverbank, for it is by water that the Iroqua come. We must go.”

Marcellinus raised his hand. This was not much of a military briefing, and he needed to say so. “The First Cahokian is but a small number of warriors. How many Iroqua come from the southeast? What if the Iroqua send war parties to flank us?”

Great Sun Man shrugged. “Do not let them.”

“The other Iroqua force comes by river? In canoes?”

“Canoes on water and more warriors on land.”

“Gaius Wanageeska,” Anapetu said.

He ignored her. “How long till the Iroqua armies arrive?”