Eagle of Seneca

by Corrina Lawson

  Ceti dropped his hand. The onagers let loose with a quiet whoosh. Their flaming projectiles fell right into the middle of the Imperial ranks.

  Chaos quickly broke out among the attackers. Ceti ordered another barrage. Again, the whoosh and the screams as the weapons found their target.

  Ceti faintly heard the decimus maximus of the Legion shout an order to halt the march and regroup down the hill.

  “Archers, fire!” Ceti yelled, hoping he sounded like Tabor.

  The arrows flew over his head, taking out more of the enemy. The rear of the Imperial line began to retreat.

  Now.

  Ceti drew Tabor’s sword. It was not a gladius, it was a longsword that had once belonged to Senan, Gaius’s father. It was as much as symbol of Tabor as the red cloak.

  He raised the sword so it was visible to all.

  “Charge!”

  His order was met with the cries of more than a thousand screaming soldiers behind him.

  Now I know why Tabor loves command.

  He led the men into the fray, Gaius and Mykle at his side, the red cloak billowing like a living thing behind him.

  As he was taught, Ceti kept his sword up, as did Gaius. Mykle jumped ahead of them, swinging the long-axe like the berserker he had become. The imperial soldiers in his way took one look at him and began to scramble to escape.

  Two stood their ground. Or else they were stuck in the mud, Ceti wasn’t certain. Mykle side-stepped the thrust of their javelins, whirled, and cut both their heads off, helmets and all, in one stroke.

  Then the legion at Ceti’s back hit the enemy’s front lines and all was chaos of metal on metal and screams and curses.

  Dimly, as he fought for survival in the mêlée, Ceti remembered the old military quote about battle plans not surviving the first encounter with the enemy.

  Yet his lines held. Behind him, Tribune Breda kept the men as orderly as possible, advancing in unison, attacking the disordered imperial lines, pushing them back, leaving dead men in their wake.

  An arrow whizzed by Ceti’s ear. He saw the next one just in time to cut the shaft in half before it hit his shield.

  The Imperials must have regrouped.

  “Legate Makki is urging his men to hold. They’re reforming on solid ground now, shields up, while their archers slow us down,” Gaius said.

  “We can’t afford stalemate,” Ceti said. “We need to take the rear guard. We need to take Makki.”

  “Yes,” Gaius said.

  “We’ll never have a better chance,” Ceti said. He spat blood out of his mouth. He hadn’t realized he’d split his lip in the fight.

  “Agreed,” Mykle said.

  “All right, sound the horns to charge on Makki’s right flank, from the side,” Ceti said. “We want to push them to the north, not back to the beach and the waiting boats.

  Gaius passed the word down to Breda as another volley of arrows came in a swarm. Ceti heard some men fall behind him with a cry of pain.

  The bugle call to charge drowned out all other noise. The Imperials would know what it was and that an attack was coming. There was no help for it. Manhatos’s defenders had to be organized.

  Ceti screamed a battle cry.

  The entire front rank came with him.

  The hollow sound of swords hitting shields. The screams and curses of men. As trained, his men kept rank, keeping their shields up to cover each other and use the gaps in between to stab.

  Unfortunately, the enemy was doing the same. The first charge had pushed the Imperials closer to the Great Pond, but now they held fast. Ceti’s world narrowed to bashing away the latest thrust of the enemy swords and keeping his shield up.

  Then there was a new sound amidst the carnage. The twang not of Roman arrows but of hunting bows. Ceti saw an enemy fall at his feet with a long arrow decorated with turkey feathers in its shaft.

  The Lenape.

  “Surround the rear! Cut them off from the shore,” Ceti yelled to Breda. “Don’t let them get back on the boats. Keep pushing them to the Great Pond.”

  He hoped the Lenape recognized what he was doing and coordinated their assault with his.

  Then Ceti lost all thought. He operated only on reflex, concentrating on staying alive, on parrying the latest thrust, on holding his own amidst the blood-soaked ground. Vaguely, he was aware that every time the enemy pressed him, more men rushed to his defense. Slowly, they were moving the enemy back against the Great Pond.

  His men believed he was Tabor. They’d give his life for their commander.

  Gaius stayed at Ceti’s right hand. His sword soon grew slick with blood. Mykle used his axe to devastating effect.

  “You fight like a Viking, Engineer,” Mykle said between breaths.

  Ceti grunted. He wished he had his hammer rather than this long sword.

  Ceti slid to the center, then left of his lines, urging on his men to keep up the attack. He looked for the Lenape commander and hoped that they knew more than Sky had about Roman uniforms. He didn’t need his allies turning on him out of ignorance.

  The Lenape were not coming too close, Ceti noted. They weren’t engaging hand to hand with the armored soldiers but instead fired their arrows and spears. Occasionally, Ceti saw war clubs being swung by warriors rushing from the woods.

  A good strategy for the Lenape. They knew the woods, they knew the terrain, and they were using it.

  Ceti wondered who was directing their assault. They had a good commander.

  Finally, there was a lull. The imperials were surrounded on all sides, backed up in the mud against the Great Pond. Makki and his personal guard were standing in knee-deep water that swirled with blood.

  “Aie!”

  The cry came from one of the soldiers standing knee deep in the water. He thrashed and was pulled under by an unseen force.

  Blood covered the surface. Then another man jerked, screamed at something biting his knees, and fell below the surface. Another blood slick appeared on the water.

  High-pitched cries of victory from the Lenape sounded from the trees.

  “The gods of the pond do not like you, General.” The boy who’d been Ahala’s slave stepped forward from the Lenape. “Surrender now or be destroyed.”

  A third soldier went down thrashing and yelling. The Imperials lost all sense of order and rushed forward to escape the unknown terror. They hit the Roman lines like madmen. Ceti braced himself behind his shield. He felt something pierce his leg, just above his knee and bit his tongue at the pain.

  He stabbed the attacker through the throat. The man fell at his feet.

  The rest of his front rank held steady. Makki’s men were still trapped.

  “Surrender!” Ceti called.

  “You are not Tabor!” Makki called back.

  Ceti suddenly felt lightheaded. Liquid trickled down his leg. He ignored it.

  “No, he’s not Tabor!” Gaius yelled to the men. “He’s Ceti and he has led us to victory! To Ceti!”

  Behind Ceti, his soldiers screamed his name in approval. Ceti grinned. Tabor had been right. Again.

  Yet another man went down in the waters of the Great Pond. The shore was now full of blood. Even Makki scrambled out of the pond in fear.

  The front rank of the Imperials threw down their swords, crying for mercy.

  Ceti raised his sword. “Mercy only if your commander surrenders.”

  He wanted to destroy Makki. But they needed the general alive. Only he could order the end of the bombardment.

  Makki looked down at the blood covering the pond’s surface and then around at his men, who had given up already.

  He sheathed his gladius and took off his helmet. “If you spare my men, I surrender.”

  Ceti nodded. He blinked. His vision was beginning to fade. How odd.

  “No one who throws down their sword will be harmed,” Ceti said. He let his sword go limp. White spots appeared in his eyes. Strange, no one had hit him in the eyes.

  What was wrong with him?
>
  He felt more trickling of something down his leg. He looked down and saw a trail of blood disappearing into his boot.

  He swayed. Mykle wrapped his arms around him and helped lower him to the ground.

  As if from some great distance, Ceti heard Gaius bellow for a medicus. But it was only a stab wound, surely it couldn’t cause so much blood.

  Even more faintly, he heard the soldiers shouting his name again.

  Roman soldiers saluting an engineer. Hah. All he’d done was pretend.

  The voices faded and his last sight was of the blue sky overhead.

  Sky.

  Chapter Thirty

  Carnage lay before them.

  There was a collection of dead Romans stretching from the ruined docks on the east of Manhatos to the Great Pond.

  The battle was over but where were the armies?

  Sky could not tell from this distance if the dead Romans were Imperials or from Manhatos.

  Ceti, where are you?

  She closed her hands around the bandages covering the burns on her palms and fingers. “Gerhard, who won?” she asked.

  “We did.”

  The Viking chief lowered his far viewer. Gerhard, Sky, and Lake Wolf were standing on a small clearing on the top of a hill on the north side of Manhatos.

  No smile or sign of celebration accompanied Gerhard’s terse words. He must be as worried for his wife and cousin Mykle as Sky was for Ceti.

  “There is no sign of our war party,” Lake Wolf said. Her voice was still weak, her arm was bandaged and in a sling, but she’d insisted on coming.

  “Your war party would be inside the walls, for safety, in case the Imperials don’t hold a truce.” Gerhard said. “Stay close to me. The sentry is likely to be nervous.”

  Gerhard led them down a nearly indiscernible path that drew closer to the wall.

  “Mother, let me support you,” Sky said.

  Lake Wolf shook her head and waved away Sky’s hand.

  Sky sighed. She had told her mother of Nighthawk’s betrayal and death on board the long boat. Her mother had said nothing. She had walked to the stern of the vessel and stared out across the water for a long time. She’d been silent even when the Viking healer had sewn up her wound.

  When the boat landed on the west side of the island, Lake Wolf had insisted on coming with her daughter and Gerhard to find out what happened.

  The crews had stayed with the boats in case people needed to be evacuated from the city. And because, Sky suspected, Gerhard did not want to risk his warriors unless necessary, especially after their narrow escape from the fleet.

  But Gerhard would risk himself to find out what happened to his loved ones.

  Sky understood that.

  The sun was beginning to set when Gerhard walked up in sight of a small gate. It was metal, but a wooden barrier had been placed just behind the metal to completely seal it shut under the arch.

  Gerhard took a small ship’s whistle from a pouch at his waist and blew on the instrument.

  Sky winced at the high pitch.

  A small section of the wall to the left side of the gate began to open. Sky blinked in astonishment, wondering if she was imagining things.

  A dark-haired woman rushed out of the small door and hugged Gerhard. Dinah. Of course. Neither one of the reunited couple said a word, they simply held each other tightly for a time.

  “Sky.” Dinah nodded at her. “You are well come after your flight. Is this your mother?”

  Sky wanted to yell “Where is Ceti?” at the woman, but ingrained courtesy forced her to introduce Lake Wolf to Dinah.

  “I’ll take you to your warriors.” Dinah gestured to the small door. “We brought them inside the walls, in case the Imperials decide to violate the truce. It was too confused to formalize the surrender.”

  Dinah ushered them through the hidden door.

  “Where is Ceti?” Sky asked as soon as the door was shut.

  Dinah cleared her throat. “Ceti is badly injured.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “The medicus is trying to get him to calm down in order to rest, but he keeps calling for you.”

  ****

  Ceti vaguely felt something warm on his left side and something resting on his shoulder. He blinked, but his vision was blurry. He took a deep breath and his face was tickled by soft hair.

  He lifted his right hand, surprised at how difficult the movement was.

  The weight on his left side shifted.

  “Ceti, you must be still.”

  He blinked again. “Sky?”

  Even to his ears, her name sounded like a croak more than a word. A cup was placed to his lips. “Drink, love,” she said.

  His head was already propped up by a pillow, so he drained the cup as ordered.

  His sight gained focus as he finished. She put the cup to a table on the side of the bed and ran her fingertips along his lips.

  “You survived,” he whispered. “But what have you done to your hands?”

  “They’re healing,” she said. “I survived more intact than you did. I think perhaps flying is less dangerous than leading an army into battle.”

  He tried to sit up. She pushed down on his shoulders and he gave up the effort.

  “Your medicus says it is important that you not move,” she explained. “He said the stab wound in your leg damaged a...” She frowned. “I don’t remember the Roman word. But he said it carried much of the blood in your body and it would not heal if you moved.” She smiled. “So I stayed with you, in case you woke and tried to get out of bed again. Apparently, you were not a good patient before I arrived.”

  An artery. That was the word Sky hadn’t known. That last sword thrust had nearly killed him. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “For a while.” She sat up. “Dinah said you would be full of questions when you woke. So here are the answers. She said Makki has ordered the fleet to anchor near your ruined docks. He has surrendered his legions. Tabor has Makki in custody at his villa. He said to tell you that you were magnificent.”

  “What of your mother and the others? And Ahala? Is he still at large?”

  “Ahala is dead and the others are rescued,” she said. “My mother has been much in conversation lately with Tabor, Gerhard, Dinah and Licinius’s mother, Sif.”

  Sky kissed him gently on the lips. “All is well. Tabor says you did not lose many in the battle.”

  His eyes fluttered.

  “You’re becoming tired.” She curled up next to him again. “Go back to sleep, love. I’ll be here when you wake up again.”

  He cleared his throat. “Sky, what did it feel like to fly?”

  “It felt like the most wonderful thing in the world,” she whispered into his ear. “And I want to do it again as soon as you are well enough to build another.”

  ****

  Ceti’s recovery was much slower than he wanted. Even when he could sit up, the medicus would not let him even try to get out of bed for several weeks. There was worry the wound would re-open. Ceti admitted to himself that he didn’t have much energy to move around, but he resented being immobile, especially when his bodily functions had to be taken care of with a bed pan and the help of another.

  So he ordered a sketch pad and started designing something to get him out of this cursed sick bed. He showed Sky the design of a chair with wheels. She grinned in delight and, on the next day, arrived with the chair.

  Gaius and one of the medicus’s assistants helped him into it.

  “This was done just in time,” Sky said. “We are going to a storytelling.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is a surprise.” She smiled.

  Gaius grinned too and began pushing the chair. It worked much as Ceti designed, though he thought Gaius was laboring up the hill to Tabor’s villa. As he traveled the streets of Manhatos, many called out to him with congratulations and thanks.

  “You are their hero,” Gaius said.

  “You know that was mostly Tabor’s plan an
d Tabor’s reputation that gave us the victory,” Ceti said.

  “Ceti, that’s the first time I’ve been in battle,” Gaius said. “I was terrified. I lost track of everything but staying alive and in rank. You noticed it all and made sure we cut off their retreat and kept them going to the Great Pond. And you made sure Makki lived to surrender.”

  Ceti shrugged.

  “Well, if that is how you feel, you might not like this surprise, then.” Sky grinned.

  She had rarely left his side as he recovered. Last night was the first night she had not slept in the bed with him. When he asked her about it this morning, she simply said there had been things to settle with her mother and the elders.

  Ceti thought they were going inside Tabor’s villa, but Gaius pushed his chair into a path to the center of the gardens.

  He heard the murmur of voices as they made the last turn to the clearing in the center.

  On the lawn was the largest gathering of Lenape that he had ever seen. They were formed in a great half-circle and at the front stood Lake Wolf, Deep Water, Licinius, a warrior with turkey feathers in his hair, and another who stepped forward. Ceti thought he should know this one but...

  “This is Ghost Wolf,” Sky said. “You rescued him from slavery and knew him as Laughing Dog.”

  Ghost Wolf bowed to Ceti. The young man had cleaned up very well and put on weight, Ceti judged. But his cheeks were still hollow.

  “Ghost Wolf is the new tribal storyteller.” Deep Water stepped forward and faced her tribe. “So it is decided. What was taken away must be replaced and the skill is there. Do you assent?”

  It seemed to Ceti that all of the Lenape nodded as one.

  So the former slave took the place of the man he’d killed. There was certain symmetry there.

  Ceti heard movement behind him and turned his head. Dinah, Gerhard, Mykle, Godwin, and Tabor had come to stand with him.

  Tabor leaned on Mykle. The commander had not regained his full strength yet.

  Deep Water turned to Ceti. “Now, we have a full collection of elders. As is also required, representatives from the new Eagle clan are here as well.”

  “The new—”

  “My people were still stuck on how to deal with the Romans,” Sky said. “I said to take a lesson from their history and make you and yours a clan. Now, we are truly bound together.”