by Alan Smale
Marcellinus was still overwhelmed. Perhaps blood was magical, after all. “Sisika. Wait.”
“It is done. We are blood.”
He could find no words.
Sintikala sat up and tenderly disengaged. Their arms slipped apart, and he felt cool air on the wound. Their conjoined blood had already begun to dry.
All business now, she produced a white salve from her deerskin bag and dressed his wound. Then her own.
“All right. Gaius?”
He brushed at his eyes. “Yes?”
“Lie down, Gaius. We sleep now.”
“Yes.”
“And then, maybe tomorrow, we go to die.”
“No,” he said. “We go to live.”
Two days later they arrived at powwow.
Their Iroqua escort had ushered them away from the shore and back into the birchwood forest. They had passed a small field of corn and a pleasant homestead of two longhouses with cheerful families that had, as always, come out to watch the strangers go by. Then they had started climbing a hillside on an almost invisible trail, heading back into the wilderness. The path grew rocky as they gained height.
Appearances were deceptive. All at once they walked out of the forest and into a bustling crowd. Their Caiuga and Seneca escort hastily moved in close around them, for this was no longer a festival crowd. These were not ordinary people of the Iroqua tribes but warriors, their faces painted a fearsome black and red, a few wearing full-face wooden masks of even more terrifying aspect with bulging eyes and tongues, horns, or the features of animals. The men held no weapons, but their martial bearing was clear, as was the way they naturally grouped into sixes and tens, the smallest units of Iroqua war parties.
They knew who Marcellinus was. They jostled the Caiuga on either side of him, knocking them into him. Behind Marcellinus, Sintikala swore as she was bumped and almost tripped.
Most uncanny: her curses and their footfalls were almost the only sound. The mass of Iroqua warriors that surrounded them had fallen eerily silent.
They had come out into a large natural amphitheater. Low mountains surrounded them, with the great lake now forming the far boundary of the bowl down in the valley.
The hillsides were full of people, Iroqua beyond counting.
They marched him downhill. Grudgingly, the crowd parted to let the Iroqua honor guard through. Now Marcellinus saw more regular people: farmers and weavers and others.
“Catanwakuwa,” he said. Above them Iroqua Hawks looped, dived, and soared, men and women launched from the crags that bounded the natural amphitheater.
“Not Catanwakuwa,” said Sintikala. “We do not use the Cahokian name for the Hawks of our enemies.” She said a long word in Iroqua that he didn’t catch.
They walked uphill again, ascending toward a wide wooden stage. From that stage several dozen men in bright ceremonial garb and tall headdresses watched them approach.
The Council of the Haudenosaunee.
To their right, well beyond the edge of the stage, stood two high wooden frames. The bodies of four men hung limp from those frames, their legs twisted and burned, their arms and chests caked with blood, their eyes dark. Marcellinus’s pulse raced. His fists clenched.
“They are not Cahokians,” Sintikala said from behind him. He squinted. She was right; the men wore the tattoos of Mohawk and Onondaga. Local criminals, then, not mound-builder captives.
His breath still caught in his throat. After long weeks of journeying, it was suddenly all happening too fast.
A shaman halted them before the stage. His face was covered with a black mask with obscene red lips, his fringed and beaded tunic draped with amulets and feathers, shiny stones, and jagged shapes in copper and shells. In his right hand he brandished a rattle made from a turtle’s shell. Marcellinus eyed the man warily.
The shaman spoke harsh words in Iroqua far too quickly for Marcellinus to catch them.
The Caiuga leader of the war party that had escorted them for so long turned to Marcellinus and hand-talked, Query, what name, you?
Sintikala stepped forward past him. “I am Sintikala, also called Sisika, chief of the Catanwakuwa clan. We have come to powwow.”
As she spoke, the Iroqua shaman flinched, his movement exaggerated by the heavy mask he wore, and whisked at her with his free hand as if trying to drive her away. Sintikala’s body was taut, and hatred blazed out of her. Marcellinus understood. She was no longer among the ordinary people. These were the shamans and leaders of the Iroqua who had directed the war that had killed her husband, and it looked as if it would take only the slightest provocation for her to lash out and attack, dealing death with her bare hands.
“Gently, Sisika,” he said.
Above them, at center stage, a tall Onondaga moved forward.
“Tadodaho,” said the Caiuga, and fell on his knees, his forehead almost touching the earth.
Marcellinus half bowed, lowering his eyes for the first time that day, and then raised them to stare boldly at the leading sachem of the Haudenosaunee. He saw a broad-chested man, surprisingly young, easily the equal of Great Sun Man in strength and charisma.
“You are from Cahokia,” said the Tadodaho of the Haudenosaunee in Cahokian.
“Yes,” said Sintikala.
“No,” Marcellinus said loudly.
All eyes swiveled to look at him.
“Sintikala is chieftain, daughter of chieftain, and mighty in the ranks of Cahokia. I am Gaius Publius Marcellinus of Roma, formerly Praetor of the 33rd Legion, now disbanded. I am the legate of Hadrianus III, Imperator of Roma.”
Almost none of this was comprehensible to the Haudenosaunee. The Onondaga chief blinked. Sintikala eyed him coldly.
“But you speak for Cahokia?” the Onondaga prompted.
“Sintikala speaks for Cahokia. I speak for Roma.”
The chief shook his head. “Roma?”
“It will not help us,” Sintikala said sotto voce, “if they decide that you are mad.”
“Roma is a great nation,” said Marcellinus, and pointed eastward. “Far away, over the great sea. I came here first with my army. We marched through your lands. You know of this and of the harm that we caused to your people. Now I live in Cahokia, but I am still a Roman. I will live and die a Roman.”
Sintikala shot him a worried look and raised her chin to speak again. “We come to powwow to speak to your great council. We hope to end the long Mourning War between our peoples.”
The Tadodaho shook his head. Her words were apparently beyond the Onondaga chief’s grasp of Cahokian. She began again in halting Iroqua, but his warriors were already converging on Marcellinus and Sintikala, hustling them away.
“Wait,” Marcellinus said. “We must speak with you. Tadodaho?”
It was no use. Warriors clutched his forearms, shoved at his shoulders. A broad doorskin was pulled aside in front of him, and he was ushered through it, underneath the stage.
“No!” came the voice of Sintikala. “Stop! I go with him! Take me with him!”
Warriors hustled her past. The curtain fell behind Marcellinus.
They were separated.
—
From above and all around came a din of chanting and stamping. Marcellinus heard one voice and then thousands, and heard them again: a call and response between a man on the stage above his head and the mass of Iroqua assembled in the valley.
Marcellinus sat. Few useful thoughts crossed his mind. But he was still alive, had not been taken away any farther than the stage. Perhaps in the evening, once the day’s ceremonies were done, he would get the chance to speak to one of the sachems, maybe even plead his case for being allowed to speak to the Tadodaho and others of the council.
Or perhaps tonight he would run the gauntlet, and when the next dawn came he would be suspended high on one of the Iroqua torture frames, trying to remember his war song. Trying to die with honor.
A high scream pierced the air, and he knew it for Sintikala’s. Marcellinus was up on his f
eet in an instant, bulling his way to the doorskin, but his Iroqua guards swarmed him and knocked him to the well-trodden soil, yanking his arms behind his back. Marcellinus struggled and roared, but it was no use.
They dragged him backward and bound him to one of the posts that supported the stage.
Marcellinus stopped resisting. He was listening. More screams came, but this time they were male voices raised in pain. Two, perhaps three different men were suffering the agonies of Iroqua torture just a few yards away from him.
After what seemed like an hour, the screams weakened and bubbled and a merciful silence descended.
The stomping began again, and he heard flutes and a thousand voices raised in a coarse, high song.
“What’s happening?” he said to his guards, but they either did not understand him or pretended not to, and with his hands bound behind him he could not make hand-talk.
Sisika. The shaman had whisked her away with that dismissive shooing motion, and the Tadodaho had not heeded her. And then a single scream and nothing more?
Night fell more slowly than on any other night of his life. Many hours after dark, the throbbing dance of powwow at last fell silent. No longer did the stage creak above him. His captors took turns sleeping, the wakeful ones surrounding him, two of them always sitting behind him where they could see the bonds that tied him to the pole by the light of the lanterns that the women had brought in.
Marcellinus was bound so tightly that he verged on losing all feeling in his hands. Desperation knitted his brow so that his face felt almost as tight as the cords on his wrists. He wandered in and out of a heavy sleep and eventually awoke to find gray dawn light spilling in past the doorskin and through the cracks in the wooden stage covering. In front of him, a face stared intently.
Marcellinus’s throat was dried to a husk, and when he spoke, it was almost a croak.
“Pezi.”
—
“And so I owe you my life,” Pezi said ironically. “You say so?”
He spoke without blinking, no smile on his face.
“Yes,” said Marcellinus. “Bring me water and have them free my wrists.”
Now Pezi smiled.
“What will happen, Pezi? Will the chiefs hear me?”
“Does the council confide in me?” Pezi said. “No, they do not.”
“But you told them I was coming.”
“Of course I did.”
Memory was rekindled as Marcellinus came fully awake. “Sintikala! Where is she? Did they harm her?”
Pezi studied his face. “You think I am Cahokian? That I care what happens to either of you?”
“No,” said Marcellinus. “But I think you do not like war.”
Pezi shrugged. “I do not like to fight. But war?”
“You have someone’s ear. You are here instead of…” He had intended to say running away. “Instead of watching from a distance. So why are you here?”
“I am a speaker of words. I am here to speak yours.”
“To the Tadodaho and the sachems of the Haudenosaunee? My words and Sintikala’s?”
Pezi grinned. “You think to trick me to telling you what will happen next and also whether the angry Hawk chief still lives. You forget that I hate you.”
“This must be a happy day for you, then,” Marcellinus said.
“I was sent here to ask you questions. How far is the giant Cahokian war party? When will they arrive? How fast can they travel?”
Marcellinus stared him down. “What war party?”
“We know that they have left Cahokia. We do not know the way they will come. By river? No, they are not on the river. By the main trail? No, they are not on the main trail. So they must be coming by a clever path, up and then across from the north, perhaps, or directly through the forests, or eastward and then north. We have not yet found them. Soon we must, for a war party of that size that makes a Roman camp every night cannot stay hidden for long.”
Once again Pezi leaned in close. “They cannot come by the Oyo. We control the upper river now with our giant longships. We have scouts out looking for them. But you can tell us, and that will be quicker.”
“I—” Marcellinus was about to say I don’t know. He had no idea when the Cahokians had left or which way they would take. Truly it had been easy to avoid learning details of the Cahokian war plan, because he had not been in the councils of the chiefs and elders.
But it would be poor strategy to emphasize his uselessness.
“How many of them? And how many warriors remain in Cahokia? Is the palisade completed? Are there traps inside? So many questions the sachems have for you.”
“Then let them ask me.”
“Perhaps the Haudenosaunee will string you up on their frames of death. Then you will speak.”
Marcellinus grinned without mirth. “You say so?”
Pezi’s fingertips touched his chest. Marcellinus tried not to recoil. The boy studied him, reached around his arm, and prodded the white salve that protected the cut where he had become blood kin to a Cahokian clan chief.
“You should tell me. It would spare Sintikala much suffering.”
Marcellinus shook his head. “Take me to the council, Pezi.”
Pezi’s thumbnail bit into the scab over the wound the obsidian blade had inscribed in Marcellinus’s flesh. Marcellinus tried to pull away, but he could move only an inch.
“They will not speak to you,” Pezi said. “By the end of powwow you will be a dead man. Today Sintikala is already half dead. She will tell the council what they need to know of the Cahokian war party if you will not. And then many more things will happen to her before she completes her journey into death.”
Marcellinus had heard only one scream from Sintikala’s lips, and surely the torture of a high-ranking Cahokian would be an extended event. Hope surged within him. “You lie, Pezi. You always lie.”
“Do I?” Pezi scratched himself contemplatively. “You, of all men, should be used to the sound of women screaming. But the Hawk chief, screaming? I think I will enjoy watching your face as she suffers.”
Marcellinus closed his eyes and then opened them again. He would not allow Pezi to see him in pain. If anything could make him sing his war song into death and beyond, it would be to frustrate this evil boy and rob him of his pleasure.
And after all, it was true. “Yes, Pezi, I am used to the sound of screams. I’m glad you’re here. I will enjoy listening to yours.”
“You had better get used to the sound of your own,” Pezi said. “No words for me? Well. It is early yet. I must get something to eat.” Grinning, he left.
—
They fed Marcellinus from a bowl of a simple mash of corn and beans, put a chamber pot under him, and wiped him coarsely when they removed it. Otherwise Marcellinus was left to hang in his bonds, well guarded but otherwise ignored. As morning turned to afternoon, the speeches began above him, the debates, the call and response.
As dusk fell on the second day, Marcellinus again heard a single scream that could only have come from the throat of Sintikala. His guards watched him carefully, but this time Marcellinus did not move, did not visibly react at all.
Tonight there was no torture of other men. The music began and the dancing. Above him, many feet stamped in time. He was living inside a drum. His head ached remorselessly. He missed Sintikala every moment of every hour of the day. And Pezi had not returned, nor anyone else to question him. All thoughts of strategy left his mind. From now on, he must merely concentrate on survival.
On the third morning they unbound his hands, took him outside to a spot far to the left of the great stage, and allowed him to wash as best he could using a small bowl of cold water. They fed him corn. They returned to him his greaves and breastplate and even his helmet. He did not see Sintikala or Pezi or anyone he recognized, only the ever-present warriors.
Even as Marcellinus grimly strapped his Roman armor to his body, he could see the gauntlet of Iroqua warriors forming in two long lines betwee
n him and the stage.
—
Mud smeared the steel of his breastplate, and Marcellinus cleaned it with his hand and the sleeve of his tunic. No one hurried him. They merely watched in fascination as he prepared himself for his last battle.
He had no weapons, of course. Perhaps he could take the metal strips of the apron that hung to guard his groin and wrap them around his fist as a primitive knuckle-duster. If he used his helmet as a club, a blow struck with its sharp crown might have some effect. But it seemed too late for such measures.
Marcellinus was not a young man anymore. He had lived much longer than he had expected. He had fought and flown; he had loved and seen many wonders. Sometimes he had even been happy. He would not cling to life when all hope was gone.
He had come to speak to the Haudenosaunee, but they did not want to speak to him. Perhaps they had already located the Cahokian army. Perhaps Sintikala had broken and told them everything they needed to know. Either way, Marcellinus was obviously of no further use to them except as a public spectacle.
The platform was loaded with several dozen warriors in full regalia. The Council of the Haudenosaunee had assembled to watch this. Standing in front of the Seneca chiefs was Pezi, dressed in a plain tunic.
Marcellinus stood. The sun of midmorning sparkled from the steel that garbed him. He placed the helmet on his head and strapped it tight beneath his chin.
Taking a deep breath, he walked forward to the mouth of the gauntlet. The two lines stood a scant eight feet apart.
This was powwow, so the weapons of the warriors were simple. Marcellinus saw no bows, spears, or tomahawks, not even a blade. Each man carried a straightforward wooden club, a large rock, or a pot. But these were still fearsome warriors, the cream of the Iroqua crop. Their cheeks were daubed heavily in red and black, their chests and faces scarified and tattooed with clan battle markings. Men like these could kill him with their bare hands and feet before he had passed a dozen of them, and hundreds stood between him and the stage at the other end. Most grinned unpleasantly, shifting their weapons from hand to hand.
