by Alan Smale
Marcellinus shook his head; he could not see the boy. They had just completed a large meandering loop to the left and were heading into another rightward curve. After a while the endless slow looping back and forth became monotonous, and he found himself staring ahead of the boat, hardly blinking.
Today the Concordia was under sail, more for practice than anything else, as the longship was in the center of the channel and the current was pulling them along briskly enough without it. If they had been heading upstream, they would have had to stay in the shallows to keep out of such a current, perhaps even haul the drekar upriver from the bank like a barge. Marcellinus was not looking forward to that.
The shoreline was marshy on both sides. On the outside of the bend the current had eroded away the bank, which had partially collapsed into the water, trees lying horizontally, branches jutting into the air. On the inside curve where Isleifur was pointing, the silt had piled up in the shallows.
Kimimela arrived at his side. “Yes, I see him.”
Marcellinus took their word for it. “Can we even get the ship in there?”
The Norseman wrinkled his nose. “In, maybe. But if we stick hard in that mud, it’ll take us all day to get free.”
“Ah.” Now Marcellinus could see Tahtay, standing still in the shadow of a tree, well back from the bank’s edge. The Norseman had good eyes.
“Decide quickly,” Isleifur said, “or we’ll be past and have to beach downstream and send a party back.”
“That won’t be easy either,” Aelfric said, and he was right. The shores were overgrown here, and such a trek would be a long chore.
“I will fetch the idiot,” Kimimela said. She picked up one end of Isleifur’s canoe, which lay in the stern of the Concordia. “Aelfric, help me with this.”
Aelfric stood and looked at Marcellinus, who nodded. “I’ll come with you.”
Hurit was already strapping a gladius to her belt and hurrying back to them. She bent to lift the other end of the canoe. “Let’s go.”
“Not without me.” Dustu leaped up from where he’d been pulling on an oar.
“You two will stay aboard.” Sintikala strode back along the spine of the dragon ship. “We are far from the last mound village. There may be hidden hunters here who might not be friendly. Hanska, Mikasi, Mahkah: come here and launch the canoe. Take Gaius and Kimimela. Aelfric, too, if you want him. Take swords and bows and be watchful. Get Tahtay and come after us. We will slow down to keep you in sight. Isleifur, get us out of this current.”
Hurit set her chin. “Sintikala, let me—”
Sintikala clapped her hands impatiently. “I have spoken. Go!”
The canoe pitched and swung in the turbulence of the drekar’s wake, and it took several minutes of intense effort to steer out of the deep main channel and head in toward the bank. By then they had passed Tahtay and had to push back against the current and pick their way between the shallow mud banks and barely submerged tree trunks to the shore.
By the time the canoe kissed the bank and Mahkah stepped out holding the rope, Tahtay had backed away toward the thicket. Hanska, silent for once, nocked an arrow onto her bowstring and stood on the bank, scanning the underbrush.
After they had spent most of the day aboard ship, the ground felt as if it were still moving beneath Marcellinus’s feet as he and Kimimela walked toward Tahtay. “Where the hell did you go? It’s been three days now.”
“To be alone.” Tahtay shook his head. “I came here to watch you sail by one last time. You have nothing for me anymore. None of you.”
Kimimela frowned, hands on her hips. “You’re leaving? Sintikala stood by you, and this is how you repay her?”
“Me? She stood with him.” Tahtay looked at Marcellinus. “But it is good that you came ashore. I have one last thing to say.”
The Concordia was already half a mile downriver. Akecheta and Dustu had lowered the sail, but Isleifur had steered back into the channel again, perhaps to avoid snags or grounding on the treacherous mud on the sides of the river. “Say it while we paddle, Tahtay.”
Tahtay shook his head. “Do you not hear me, Hotah? I am not coming.”
“Of course you are.”
“Huh.” Tahtay took a single step forward, his hand on the haft of the ax that swung from a strap over his shoulder. “Always you know best. You are right to teach the weapons and the Roman way of fighting even if people die. You are right to make peace with the Iroqua even if it means shame and destruction for Cahokia. Nothing you say is wrong. You break everything, but still they all do as you say. And now my father is dead.”
“Tahtay…”
“You stole my father’s glory. His chance to be the greatest war chief Cahokia has ever known. Instead he will be remembered as the coward who hung back when he should have run forward to fight. Who took gifts from our enemies instead of taking their scalps. Who listened to a stranger not of our land and threw away Cahokia.”
Despite the warmth of the day, Marcellinus felt chilled. “Tahtay, Great Sun Man will be remembered as the man who brought peace—”
Tahtay spit. “Better to die than that.”
“You are wrong, Tahtay,” Kimimela said softly.
“You say so?” Tahtay eyed her. “I am a man without a father. And if you call this man your father, then you are not my friend.”
Kimimela’s hand went to her pugio.
“Stop, stop.” Marcellinus glanced back at the riverbank, where his Cahokian warriors stood vigilant. “Tahtay—”
Tahtay shook his head. “Say nothing more. Leave me. We are all-done.”
“Yes.” Kimimela surged forward. “Stay out of this, Gaius. Go back to the others.”
Tahtay watched her warily. “I have nothing more to say to you, Kimi.”
“You think so?” Kimimela said. “Come with me.” She grabbed him, shoved him back, walked on. Tahtay raised his hand to hit her, then dropped it by his side and strode after her.
Now Aelfric’s hand was on Marcellinus’s arm. “Come away, man. Let them talk.”
“Talk?” Marcellinus said, for Kimimela had turned to remonstrate with Tahtay, arms waving, her face inches from his, so close that she must have been spitting on him. Tahtay glared down at her.
“This is crazy,” said Marcellinus.
“So is being this far away from the Concordia.”
The longship was curving around the next bend, almost out of sight. For a moment Marcellinus had the mad thought that Sintikala and Akecheta had taken this opportunity to be rid of them all, that he would never see them again. The humidity closed in around him, and flies buzzed. “Shit.”
The sound of a slap echoed back to them, and they turned. Kimimela and Tahtay were fighting now, throwing punches, trading blow for blow. Kimimela landed a punch on Tahtay’s nose. He grabbed her arms, and they went down, rolling over and over in the mud.
Marcellinus surged forward, but Aelfric was holding him firmly, calling for Hanska.
Tahtay and Kimimela were on their feet again. Kimimela aimed a kick at Tahtay’s groin, but Tahtay punched downward, knocking her calf away with his fist. She stumbled and fell again.
Tahtay looked at Marcellinus. Their eyes met for the briefest of instants, and then the boy turned and sprinted into the underbrush.
When they reached Kimimela, she was squatting in pain, panting and wiping blood from her lip. “Let the verpa go. We will not see him again.”
Marcellinus turned to Hanska. “Go after him. Please, get him back.”
“Run after a boy who wishes to leave?” said Hanska. “And what then? Tie him up?”
“You tied me up,” Aelfric said.
“You deserved it.”
“Tahtay will not be caught.” Kimimela was already limping toward the canoe, rubbing her shoulder, her eyes clouded. “He has made his choice. He is gone. And we do not need him anyway.”
“Kimimela…”
“Do not talk to me.”
Hanska and Mikasi hurried af
ter her. Marcellinus still had not moved. “Futete.”
“He’ll be fine,” Aelfric said.
“Fine? Tahtay’s not a woodsman. He grew up in the Great City!”
Aelfric shook his head. “Tahtay looks like he knows the woods well enough. He’s good with a sling, and he makes fire well. He won’t starve.”
“All alone out there?” Marcellinus walked to the bank’s edge and watched the greasy water lapping at his feet, his thoughts an unhappy blur.
“Come,” said Mahkah. “Hotah? Come to the canoe. We have a longship to chase.”
The others were already aboard. Only Mahkah stood on the shore, waiting. Kimimela sat in the prow, staring downriver, still holding her shoulder. The Concordia was out of sight.
Marcellinus looked once more into the deep undergrowth and went to board the canoe.
“Catanwakuwa,” Yahto said from the bow.
“Shappa Ta’atan,” said Sintikala.
After the grace of Sintikala and the other pilots of the Hawk clan, the wing that buzzed them now seemed clumsily flown. Wobbling, it quickly lost height and came to ground on the west bank a few hundred yards away. Its pilot shucked the wing, waved cheerfully at the Cahokian longship, and shot an arrow into the air. To Marcellinus’s surprise, the arrow exploded with a sharp bang on achieving the highest point in its arc. Glowing debris shards cascaded down, and wisps of purple-black smoke drifted higher into the sky.
“A signal?” Marcellinus asked, leaning into the rudder to correct their course. The warriors had shipped their oars to pull on their tunics, and the longship was slewing with the current.
“Shappa Ta’atan takes care,” was Akecheta’s reply, but the skin around his eyes grew tight.
“I did not hear that their walls were so large,” said Sintikala.
Marcellinus looked at Akecheta. “Centurion? Speak.”
“Shappa Ta’atan is used to war.”
“War with Iroqua?”
“Yes, there are Iroqua-friendly tribes to the east. But also war with other peoples.” Akecheta gestured vaguely toward the southwest.
“Other peoples?”
“Far peoples. The People of the Hand. And, long ago, many winters, two lives ago, they were at war with us.”
Marcellinus looked at Sintikala. “Perhaps someone should have mentioned this before we got here.”
She shook her head. Clearly, she had not known.
“The People of the Hand do not come here now anyway,” Mahkah added, though Marcellinus did not know how he could be so sure.
—
A contingent from Shappa Ta’atan met them at the riverside, smiling and gracious and, despite the heat and humidity, well dressed. Marcellinus was disoriented by the extensiveness of their tattoos; he was familiar enough with Cahokian clan and battle tattoos, but those of other cities were crafted differently. Here many of the warriors had faces completely covered in tattoos and scarifications, a far cry from the more subtle adornment of most of the Cahokians. The unfamiliar whorls, figures, and jagged crosses on the locals’ skin added to his anxiety.
At the front of the reception committee stood the war chief of Shappa Ta’atan. He was heavyset but muscular, and wore the impressive woven and dyed kilt, copper gorget, and headdress of a Mizipian chieftain. With the images of Great Sun Man’s death at Avenaka’s hand so vivid in Marcellinus’s memory, the spiked chert mace the chieftain held seemed threatening rather than reassuring. Nonetheless, the war chief stepped forward with a friendly smile to clutch Marcellinus’s forearm in the Roman style. Clearly he had been better briefed than the other chiefs Marcellinus had met along the river.
The war chief spoke incomprehensibly. Marcellinus couldn’t follow the man’s words, and didn’t want to break eye contact to see if anyone else in his party could. “It is an honor to meet you,” he replied in Cahokian, and when the chief released his arm, he repeated the sentiment in hand-talk.
Sintikala began to speak, but the war chief cut her off. “Ah!” he said, and hand-talked back to Marcellinus. We hear of the Wanageeska. Welcome. Query, food?
Marcellinus nodded politely and said, “I am Gaius. Here is Sintikala, Hawk clan chief from Cahokia. Here is Akecheta, mighty fighter.” He hand-talked as he spoke, but the chief was watching his face, and Marcellinus was sure the man understood him. “And I thank you, but we are happy to eat when you do, at your time.”
Our walls, signed the chief. Query, they are strong, no?
It was almost the same question Iniwa had asked when greeting Marcellinus on his first trip to Ocatan. Clearly, Cahokia’s allies all took pride in their towns’ defenses.
And indeed, the palisade of Shappa Ta’atan was solid enough to give any attacker pause, tall and robust, with raised and covered platforms for archers every thirty feet and a complicated structure around the main gate. Marcellinus could not see over the palisade to count the mounds, but it was clear that Shappa Ta’atan was bigger than any other city they had visited along the Mizipi.
Marcellinus made a show of admiring the bastions of wood and hardened clay, but his unease was growing. Normally, when they arrived at a new village or town, Sintikala took care of the formalities. And as a rule the formalities were not quite this formal. No other chief had greeted him in ceremonial garb or ignored his fellow travelers so completely. He glanced over at Sintikala, but her face was impassive.
You will enter? signed the chief.
Sintikala stepped forward again. “We come from Cahokia, but we do not speak for it. We have left the Great City. I must tell you now that Great Sun Man is dead, struck down. His wife’s brother, Avenaka, now rules as paramount chief, and we are no friends to Avenaka.”
Marcellinus held his breath. In most of the villages along the Mizipi they had been accepted as travelers and only rarely had been asked for their bona fides. Here, in what might be the second largest city on the whole river, its ruler naturally would assume they came as envoys. Here they could not dissemble, could not evade the topic.
However, Marcellinus had planned to take a much softer approach to relaying this news.
The chieftain was pondering it. Now he turned and raised his arm in a complicated hand-talk symbol that might have meant Word speak.
A lithe girl Hurit’s age ran forward from the rear of the Shappan contingent. The chieftain addressed her imperiously, and she turned to Marcellinus. “ ‘Our great chief, Son of the Sun, asks you: You prefer your own company to Avenaka’s?’ ”
Obviously the conversation had become too delicate for hand-talk and pidgin Cahokian. “We do,” said Marcellinus.
The translator cocked her head on one side and studied him. “ ‘You are banished? And is there now peace in the city of Cahokia?’ ”
“We are not there, and so we do not know. We hope so.” This was true enough. For the sake of Enopay and Kanuna, Nahimana and Takoda, Anapetu and his many other friends who had remained behind, Marcellinus fervently hoped the city was at peace.
Son of the Sun spoke. His word slave translated. “ ‘I have not met Avenaka. But if he rules in Cahokia, then he should be my brother. You ask my help against him? For my warriors to make war parties against him?’ ”
“We do not,” Sintikala said, and looked at Marcellinus.
Marcellinus said: “That is not why we are here. We seek no help, make no case. We ask for nothing except hospitality and understanding. And perhaps there are ways we can serve you, knowledge that we can bring, to repay you for such hospitality.”
“ ‘Offering you hospitality might make my new brother unhappy.’ ”
To Marcellinus’s surprise, Sintikala shrugged and smiled. “All families argue. We are still Cahokians. We hope that one day we will be welcome there again. Until then, we travel.”
“And there are other matters we would discuss with you,” Marcellinus said. “Matters of even greater importance to the land than who sits upon the Great Mound in Cahokia.”
Son of the Sun looked intrigued, t
hen nodded and gestured. Welcome, travelers. Enter, peace.
“ ‘You are welcome here,’ ” said the word slave. “ ‘Enter the great walls of Shappa Ta’atan in peace.’ ”
Sintikala smiled again. “We enter as your guests, under your hospitality. We are under your protection, great chief.”
Marcellinus almost expected the chief to ask them to relinquish their weapons, but he did not. And to his relief, now that the party was on the move into Shappa Ta’atan, some of the pomp dissipated. The elders and leading warriors of Shappa Ta’atan came forward with smiles to greet the warriors of Cahokia, and two older women whom Marcellinus took for clan chiefs hurried to greet and honor Sintikala.
The entryway to the city was an L-shaped alley guarded by high firing platforms on either side. Marcellinus strode forward, concentrating on his conversation with his host, but as they walked into the city, he heard Sintikala laugh behind him at something one of the women said.
It was a higher-pitched laugh than her usual quiet alto chuckle. Sintikala felt no calmer than Marcellinus about passing through the robust defenses of Shappa Ta’atan.
Aelfric and Isleifur had stayed back while the formalities were observed, but now Aelfric appeared at Marcellinus’s shoulder. “Well, this is quite a place.”
“It is.”
“If Cahokia had looked like this, we might’ve hung back a bit.”
“We might.”
Aelfric grunted. “And we know what we’re doing, do we, going in?”
“Of course.”
For once, Marcellinus would not leave the sarcasm to his former tribune.
They walked through the gates and into the walled city.
—
In Cahokia the plazas and the tallest mounds were carefully arranged and oriented, but that was the extent of the city planning. Not so here; Shappa Ta’atan was laid out on a grid pattern almost as organized as the newer suburbs of Roma. Where Cahokia was a relaxed sprawl, Shappa Ta’atan was regimented; where Cahokia was informal, with the location of the winding major thoroughfares mostly a matter of evolution and group consensus, Shappa Ta’atan possessed a rigidity that gave Marcellinus pause. Every red cedar pole looked new. The mounds were more scrupulously landscaped, their clay sides freshly shaped and tended. Most were platform mounds, presumably bearing the homes of ranking Shappa Ta’atani, with few of the more ceremonial conical mounds or sprawling decorative ovals seen upriver.
