by Alan Smale
Of course, to calculate the exact day of midwinter, Youtin the shaman would need to see the sun at sunrise or sunset from the Circle of the Cedars and note where its path intersected the horizon. And nobody had seen the sun for many days.
The land was stark beneath him, the trees bare of leaves. The grasslands across the Mizipi looked more like tundra, flat and desolate. Soft glows of red from scattered fires in the distance were the only traces of color: hearth fires outside the tipis of the braves who lived out on the plains.
To the east was the floodplain with its clusters of houses and the frozen lakes in the borrow pits. Beyond them the river bluffs rose up, with homesteads on their lower slopes. The huts on the crest were far distant specks. Even farther away, Marcellinus saw wisps of smoke from the upland villages.
After their experiences that summer, nobody was about to take chances. An Iroqua raid in the middle of winter would be almost impossible. Ninety-nine guesses out of a hundred had the Five Tribes frozen tight in their lands near the Great Lakes, feasting and gloating in their longhouses and looking forward to springtime. But Great Sun Man would not rule it out, not after Enopay had sketched out a scenario for how it might be done. A series of corn stashes hidden in a line across the land, stealthily prepared; a fair estimate of what each brave could carry in baskets and litters; yes, with determination and ingenuity, it could work. And even a small Haudenosaunee raid in the dead of winter would be yet another terrible blow to Cahokian morale.
So despite the cold, the scouts were out on foot, the Hawks were in the air, and the Sky Lanterns were aloft daily to keep watch. Nobody had seen any sign of Iroqua yet, and Marcellinus saw none today. The land was just as frozen as the river.
Ohanzee perched on the opposite side of the Lantern’s stout wooden frame, muffled in his buckskin and furs. By virtue of hard work and an almost suicidal courage, Ohanzee had become a leading member of the Sky Lantern teams. It was he who had devised the current launching method for the Lanterns, which was much less labor-intensive than the original scheme; it involved three fires in a line, a small bellows, and a steep—and, crucially, portable—wooden ramp to lay the bag on while it was being inflated. It was also Ohanzee who had been the first man to fly untethered. Ohanzee loved heights and had been known to stand up on the narrow frame and walk around on it, adjusting the ropes that held the frame to the bag while the Sky Lantern was careering across the landscape in full flight.
Although Marcellinus respected the broad-shouldered warrior and studied every detail of his operational mastery of the Lanterns, the two men rarely talked. From the very beginning Ohanzee had harbored a deep distrust of Marcellinus, a suspicion that had eased only marginally in the time since. He would never warm to the Roman now, and that was the second reason Marcellinus often chose him as a copilot: Ohanzee was unlikely to start a conversation. Aside from his determination to do his duty by Cahokia and take his turn at the very worst of jobs, Marcellinus went up in the Sky Lanterns for solitude.
The Master Mound looked strangely flat from overhead. The new Longhouse of the Sun had grown even since Marcellinus’s last sentry flight. It was now almost the same area as the Longhouse of the Wings and much shinier. Marcellinus had never been inside, but from Sintikala and the elders he knew it contained many rooms, the cedar walls within lined with galena, hematite, and fine quartzes. In its main hall stood a birdman figure in exotic chert, greater than life size, and around the walls were other figurines, giant stone arrowheads, fire bowls, and ornate structures of shell. Great Sun Man himself was rarely out of his chiefly garb, with a new engraved copper gorget and lengths of mica and mussel-shell beads. Marcellinus shook his head.
No boats decorated the rivers, no dugouts or canoes. Winter was a time for sewing clothes and moccasins and making jewelry of shells, beads, and bone; for sharpening blades and tying arrows; for telling children the sacred stories that could be told only when no animals were around to spy on the humans and hear them. Also, since most people were indoors keeping warm, winter was also the smokiest time of the year. Even up here, Marcellinus could taste its acrid veneer on his tongue.
Marcellinus was wearing six pairs of Roman leggings, heavy fur-lined boots, and as many tunics and leathers and furs as he could put on himself and still be able to move his arms and legs. His face was covered aside from a narrow strip for the eyes. If he reached out a hand, he could feel the heat from the deep fire jar that kept the Lantern aloft, but the basket and rigging were designed to keep the heat flowing into the tall cotton bag that kept them aloft. Warming the crew was not a priority.
On the ground below, a few insects walked out to the creek for water. A few more clustered around the Big Warm Houses, waiting for their turn in the heat. Across the floodplain a plume of black smoke indicated that the metalsmiths were hard at work. It was not difficult to keep the steelworks staffed on a chilly winter’s day like this.
And south of Cahokia, another dark square shape was marked out on the land. It was not a plaza, though it was as big as one. Even today in the harsh cold, braves walked its straight avenues, halting to bend and check, then walking again, as they made their systematic patrol. It was a sight Marcellinus had never before seen from above or had ever expected to see again from ground level until a Roman army returned to Nova Hesperia.
It was half formed and a little primitive, nowhere near as disciplined in its construction as Marcellinus would have liked, and currently almost unpopulated. But it was still very recognizable, as it would have been to any other Roman soldier if there had been one nearby to see it.
—
“Hello, young Enopay,” Nahimana had said as the boy stepped down into the hut a few weeks earlier.
Enopay had almost jumped out of his skin. His mouth dropped open, and for a moment his blank expression resembled Nahimana’s ancient face more than a little. “You speak?”
“I talk. I walk.” Nahimana hobbled over and stoked the fire. “Again, I do all the work around here.”
“She means that she complains and once more makes our lives a daily misery,” said Takoda from the corner of the hut, where he was sewing extra flaps of hide onto a moccasin for warmth.
Nahimana lobbed a small piece of firewood at him, and he grinned. One side of her face remained slack and probably always would, but with the onset of the cooler weather and the patient help of Takoda, Kangee, Hanska, and Marcellinus, she had regained almost all her coordination. To everyone’s surprise she had begun speaking again shortly after the first frost, and Marcellinus was gratified to see the same surprise mirrored on the boy’s face now.
“That is good,” said Enopay, still startled. “I had not thought.”
“That I would get better? Ha.”
“She will never die,” Takoda said cheerfully.
“Tea?” Nahimana offered, and Marcellinus stood to pull the metal fire stand over the flame, for the old woman was still not strong enough to do that unaided.
Enopay looked sideways at Marcellinus.
“It’s sassafras tea,” he said quietly to the boy in Latin. “Nowhere near as awful as the clover slop she made before.”
“Phew,” Enopay said gratefully, and plopped himself down beside the fire.
“We have not seen you for a long time,” Nahimana said.
“I have been busy,” said Enopay, “for Cahokia.”
“How is Great Sun Man’s high temple to himself coming along?” said Marcellinus, which earned him a look of reproach. “Sorry, Enopay. He is just so different now.”
“To plan a war is not an easy thing.” Enopay leaned forward to help Nahimana scoop the dried flowers into the pot for the tea.
“So I am told,” Marcellinus said wryly.
“There are things Great Sun Man wants to know.” Enopay cocked his head at Marcellinus. “The Eyanosa is very ancient, but he may still be useful to Cahokia.”
“ ‘Eyanosa,’ ” Nahimana said, and cackled. “Big in all directions.” It was a joke that never w
ore thin.
Marcellinus stared into the flames of the fire pit. “Great Sun Man told me I was no longer to lead the First Cahokian. Great Sun Man was angry with me for many things. And now he wants something from me?”
“You still eat Cahokian corn. He has not driven you from the city. And so you must work, too.”
Enopay’s face was kind, and he grinned in apology. He was only relaying the message he had been told to bring. Still, Marcellinus was irritated. “Every day I work for Cahokia. I help to make bricks and throwing engines. I train individually the few warriors who will still speak to me. I carry water and wood to families who need it. I do sentry duty by night and keep watch from the Sky Lantern by day. All of which Great Sun Man would know if he did not live always in his copper house at the top of his very large pile of earth.”
“He does know this because I tell him so, and so does Sintikala and every other chief and elder. But he has indeed grown different, Eyanosa. Perhaps we all have.”
“Not me,” Nahimana said.
“No, because you are a nut that cannot possibly shrivel any more,” Takoda said.
“Hush.” The water in the pot was boiling, and the strong scent of the sassafras helped combat the reek of smoke in the small hut. “Enopay, I am happy to serve Cahokia. What does Great Sun Man ask of me?”
“With your Romans you made a strong camp every night. A camp like a plaza surrounded by a palisade of earth that you and your men could defend against attack. We want that.”
“Castra,” Marcellinus said. He remembered a conversation in the sweat lodge nearly two years earlier during which he had confidently believed that the Cahokians would never build such a thing in his lifetime. Times certainly had changed. “A castra is not such a simple thing to build. It requires—”
“Later.” Enopay sipped his tea. “Tell Great Sun Man and the warriors who will build it. We will try it and see if Cahokians can use a Roman camp to march on the Iroqua.”
Marcellinus thought about that.
“Do not make such a face,” Enopay said. “We have all winter to practice and prepare.”
“The Roman tents are probably full of mold and holes,” Marcellinus said, but the boy was shaking his head and smiling.
“I had the tents unloaded from your Roman wagons long ago. We have hung many from the rafters in the Longhouse of the Thunderbirds and smoked them. Our castra will be smaller, and we need only half your tents to be usable. It will work.”
Marcellinus should have known that Enopay would not have come to him until he had an opportunity to be smug about his own cleverness. “Even so—”
“If we can make mounds and throwing engines and wheelbarrows and palisades and steel and Sky Lanterns, we can make castra,” said the boy reasonably enough. “Can I have more tea?”
—
Marcellinus had not thought to look upon a castra again until the Romans returned. Then again, he had not thought to see another longship until the Vikings came back, either.
For now, the earthen ramparts were marked out rather than being as deeply dug as they would have been by legionaries. The winter ground was much too hard for the sustained digging of trenches. However, the perimeter of the camp was the least of their worries. No one doubted that Cahokians could build long piles of earth.
The castra was complete now, the tents being aired out and treated against the damp, new tent poles being hewn where needed. They were leaving it up so that the Wolf Warriors could get familiar with it; the regimented lines and relative confinement were not initially comfortable for them. But to maintain the safety and ease of so many warriors behind so small and defensible a perimeter, a castra it would have to be.
Bathhouse, castra, siege engines. Roman army formations. Marcellinus had hoped this would begin to feel comfortable to him, too, one day. It did not. With every day that went by, he felt a larger mass of foreboding at the changes he had wrought here.
And when his headaches began to return, Marcellinus knew for a fact that this was not how things should be in Nova Hesperia.
He could think of only one solution, and it was still as half baked an idea as it had been when he’d first thought of it.
—
The line of the tether binding them to the earth had begun to bend into a deeper arc, showing that the Sky Lantern was gradually losing height. Ohanzee threw more wood and charcoal into the fire jar. As the new fuel caught, both men felt the tug as the Lantern drifted higher into the winter skies.
Marcellinus surveyed the horizon. He was up there to watch for enemy incursions, not to sightsee and think his gloomy thoughts. He was too far along his path to deviate now. He could not turn back the calendar. He had been trained in Stoicism. Right now, a little more of it might serve him well.
No invaders would come. Ice would keep the armies of the Haudenosaunee at bay and the warriors of Cahokia at home. His new people would have the winter to themselves to lick their wounds and heal as best they could.
This winter was only half done, by definition, but for the first time Marcellinus did not look forward to spring.
—
Tahtay walked across the Great Plaza, alone as always. He carried no stick and was not exactly limping, but the steps he took on his right leg were visibly shorter than the strides on his left. Nonetheless, Marcellinus had not thought that the boy—a young man, really, in terms of age—could have come even that far.
Off to the left a group of Turtle clan warriors were playing chunkey, rolling a carved stone disk across the ground and flinging spears after it. Their cheerful shouts and banter touched Tahtay not at all. He did not look at the warriors or even glance to either side as he walked.
Marcellinus had seen that hopeless look on many men’s faces. He had felt it on his own.
He thought of Hanska, Mikasi, Wachiwi, himself. Tahtay had been born to a great family but had now become an outsider, partly by fate but also partly by choice.
It would not do.
Marcellinus ducked into his hut and came out again carrying two swords. Striding into the plaza, he threw one of them at Tahtay’s feet.
“What is this?” Tahtay asked. His voice had deepened and he had grown taller over the last couple of moons. Or perhaps he just no longer stooped as he had after the battle.
“You see what it is. Pick it up.”
Tahtay looked at him warily. “Why?”
“We are going to fight.”
“Fight?”
Marcellinus grinned. “Not to the death, Tahtay. I am not as foolish as that. But it is time for you to start your warrior training again.”
“You say so?” Tahtay looked around him for the first time. Nobody was paying them any heed, for which Marcellinus was grateful. He had no wish to humiliate the boy. But neither had he any intention of letting Tahtay leave the plaza without picking up the gladius.
“Yes. Today we will work on the positions of the sword. Tomorrow we will bring in Mahkah and Hanska and practice with sword against spear, one man against two or three. Gladius, spear, pugio, shield. Fists, too. Because you have a lot to learn, and you are not learning it now, hobbling around the city pretending to be dead.”
Tahtay regarded him sadly. “I know what you try to do, Wanageeska.”
“Pick up the sword.”
“You try to make yourself feel better about—” He gestured down at his leg. “About bringing this to me. Not getting to me in time. You do not need to. It was war.”
“Cahokia needs warriors. I want you to fight at my side.”
“They say you will not fight again,” said Tahtay. “They say you are broken.”
“They are saying you are broken, too,” Marcellinus said brutally. “Who is right? Are the cowards right who talk behind their hands about us? Or do you and I decide whether we are broken men?”
“I am not a man.”
“No,” Marcellinus said. “And if you walk away from that gladius, you never will be. And you and I will be all-done.”
Ta
htay paused. “Good. Perhaps it is past time.”
“Pick up the sword or limp away. Fight or hide. Choose.”
The moments stretched out. The wind picked up, and Tahtay shivered. A Hawk flew up from the top of the Master Mound and looped around quickly to land again on its first terrace. After a round of arguing that came perilously close to a brawl, the chunkey game began again. Spears glided through the air not far away. Still Tahtay stood, and Marcellinus waited.
Tahtay nudged the gladius with his moccasin. “It is not because we are friends. It is because you owe me. You do. Not for the battle but for all the time I wasted guiding you around Cahokia and learning your useless Roman-talk.”
“I never asked you to.”
Tahtay bent and picked up the sword.
Marcellinus swung at him immediately, but Tahtay expected that. Their blades met, then Tahtay dipped his shoulder as he came out of the parry and swung at Marcellinus’s unprotected thigh. The Roman jumped back, but the move had unbalanced the boy and he dropped forward onto his good knee with a grunt.
Marcellinus did not help him up. He raised his sword high and whipped it down, pulling the strike at the last second. But Tahtay’s gladius was up to parry anyway, in the fifth position of the sword. Once again the plaza echoed with the ring of steel.
Marcellinus stepped back. The young Turtle warriors had stopped their game and stood watching them, open-mouthed.
“You are too slow,” said Tahtay. “Weak. Out of practice.”
“You say so? Stand up.”
And for the first time in months, Tahtay smiled.
Cahokia was whole again. No scars from the burning and pillage remained. At least none that were visible to the eye.
Great Sun Man came down from his high mound. He seemed as bluff and good-natured as ever, but the new lines by his eyes betrayed him. He and Enopay strode the streets and neighborhoods of Cahokia, the boy sometimes adding a skip to his step to keep up with his chief. Wherever Enopay went, his bag went with him, and in the bag were strips of deerskin parchment and slabs of bark, neatly indexed on their edges with shells and beads in a code that only Enopay understood. If Great Sun Man needed a fact or a figure, Enopay could produce it. He would have looked for all the world like a shorter version of a Greek adjutant who had served Marcellinus in his campaign against the Khwarezmian Sultanate if the Greek had worn braids.
