by Alan Smale
When Panther went limp, Marcellinus took it for a trick, banging his helmeted head into the man’s forearm to force the dagger away from him. But it was no ruse. Panther was dazed either from lack of air or from loss of blood to the head.
Marcellinus shoved Panther down once more, grabbed a sharpened stick, and drove it into the warrior’s throat.
Panting, he became aware that the skin on his arms was singed and that someone was right behind him.
He roared again and rolled, but Sintikala seized his burning tunic and hauled him up and out of the fire. Without a word, she turned away and launched herself back into the fray.
Marcellinus glanced down again to make sure Panther was dead and then picked up the warrior’s club. It was heavier than it looked, and his arms ached horribly. Could he even wield it?
He would find out soon. A Shappan warrior was lumbering toward him.
Men and women were running back into camp, shouting “Cahokia!” Marcellinus recognized Aelfric’s voice, Hanska’s, Dustu’s; it was strange to hear Aelfric invoking the name of the city where he’d nearly died as a battle cry. They were running in behind the Shappans now to cut off their retreat.
The tide had turned. The spirit was knocked out of the remaining warriors of Shappa Ta’atan. Even as they fought they were backing up, glancing left and right, looking for a way to flee. But the paths back to their canoes were blocked.
Four men turned and ran. “Arrows!” Akecheta called.
Marcellinus was still locked in combat with the bulky Shappan brave. He had dealt the man severe blows in the stomach and leg, but this brave still wouldn’t go down; he was panicking, fighting for his life. Had the warrior thrown his weapon aside and dived flat in surrender, Marcellinus might have spared him.
Hurit trotted calmly up and drove her sword into the man’s kidney. With a gut-wrenching scream he fell thrashing to the ground, and she finished him off with a slash to the head.
Marcellinus swung right and left, looking for another threat. There was none. The warriors of Shappa Ta’atan were all down now. Those who still groaned and rolled on the torn-up and blood-smeared grass were being dispatched by Sintikala, Dustu, Hanska, and the others.
It was over. Marcellinus sucked in a long breath, exhaled. “Stop. Let them live or die in their own time.”
Sintikala did not spare him a glance. “Kill them all,” she said tersely. “We need nothing from them and need not allow news of this to return to Son of the Sun. Let him wonder what happened here.”
Mahkah hesitated. Dustu and Hurit looked at each other. “Kill them all,” Sintikala said again, and slammed her ax into the side of a man’s head as he crawled away from the fire, already gut-struck.
Napayshni and three other men were moving around the outskirts of the battlefield, strangling the surviving Shappans with sinew. On the other side of the fire, Wapi the carpenter was messily carving his first scalp. The dying Shappan warrior’s gray skull glowed eerily in the moonlight for a few moments and then seemed to vanish as a cloud crossed the moon.
Marcellinus squatted on his heels. His rage had drained away as soon as Akecheta’s archers had shot arrows into the backs of the four fleeing Shappans. He had no taste for slaughter after a battle.
Looking around him, he saw Akecheta stretching, working the kinks out of his arms. Aelfric and Isleifur were collecting the Shappan weapons and piling them by the fire. Other Cahokians were turning to scalping now. The stench of blood surrounded them.
Taianita stood off by herself in the clearing, half sobbing and half laughing with relief, blood dripping from her hands. She sounded unhinged. One of the Cahokian artisans knelt and rocked back and forth with his eyes closed. Whether he was praying or trying to hold his sanity together, Marcellinus had no idea.
Marcellinus recalled his first kill as a foot soldier in Galicia-Volhynia, one of the feuding Rus’s principalities. A full Roman charge into a massed mob with pilum and gladius. Hacking. Destroying. He remembered vividly the crash of arms, the smell of death, the open mouth and bulging eyes of the Slav he had spitted on the end of his heavy spear. It seemed a very long time ago.
Marcellinus was tiring of blood.
“Gaius?” Sintikala stared down at him.
“I’m all right.”
“Panther was too confident. He expected us drunk and unready, easy deaths.” She looked solemn. “We lost Yahto and two other warriors. And the Rope Twins and six other artisans not used to fighting. Napayshni limps. Many other men are wounded, another woodturner out cold from a blow. But…we live.”
Yahto dead. Marcellinus’s heart was heavy. He had liked the boastful young brave, always keen to prove himself. And Mahkah would miss Yahto, too; the two men often had sparred and joked together.
Perhaps he should instead try to be grateful that almost all of them had survived.
“We’ll bury them tomorrow before we sail. We’ll do it properly.” Marcellinus stood. “For now I’ll check the river in case there’s a second attack coming.”
It seemed unlikely. But Marcellinus needed to be alone for a while.
They smelled the Market of the Mud long before they saw it. First came the aromas of smoke and roasting meat, then the sharp scents of freshly cut wood. And after that the deeper, darker smells on the air: the sour odor of the corn soak used by the tanners of deer and buffalo hides, the reek of warm people in large numbers, and finally the wafting bass notes of a fetid river used as a lavatory by thousands of men and women.
It was not the smell of Roma or even of Cahokia, which had shocked Marcellinus with its filth when he first had arrived but now seemed positively fastidious by comparison with the odors of the Market of the Mud. It was certainly the smell of a large and sprawling city.
By now it was all that Marcellinus and Sintikala, Akecheta and Hanska, could do to keep the crew together. The warriors’ early elation had worn off, and Sintikala’s depression had deepened. Despite their losses, the dragon ship that had seemed so huge when they’d left Cahokia now felt so cramped that it was only a matter of time before someone in the crew turned around and knifed his neighbor.
By now they were far beyond the reach of Cahokian influence and rarely visited the villages at the river’s edge. The towns and villages here were still built around mounds, but their inhabitants spoke no language that anyone aboard the Concordia could understand. And the Mizipi itself had changed. It still wound interminably back and forth as if conspiring to hold them back, but now it ran shallow and broad and its waters were a sickly green, its shores sprinkled with ferns and lilies. Few now were the oaks that had been their constant companions for the last thousand miles. The forests onshore were filled with magnolia trees covered in sickly white blooms and cypress trees a hundred feet tall with trunks ten feet across, their high branches draped with carpets of moss that hung down like beards, standing guard over silent, stagnant lagoons.
As they moved into the Mizipi Delta, the river got ever broader, ever muddier, the flies thicker. Yet the water levels had sunk to their fall lows, and Akecheta and Isleifur had to navigate the Concordia with some care between mud flats and sandbars that constantly threatened to ground the longship and hold it firm.
After many months of being largely alone on the river with only floating branches and sometimes whole trees for company, they saw canoes and dugouts passing them frequently. Some swerved around the longship to hurry south; others paddled north through the shallows to avoid the worst of the current. These were traders, men whose boats were loaded with furs and baskets and jars, men who did not travel armed as warriors and therefore felt they had nothing to fear. Many took the presence of the longship oddly in stride, while others gaped at its size. One even ran aground on a sandbar in his surprise and had to start digging himself a new canal to extricate himself as the Concordia sailed serenely by.
As for Marcellinus, he was trying to live from day to day as Aelfric had advised. It was not easy. In Cahokia he had built a life again against
all odds. The peace he had forged with the Haudenosaunee had at last given him a glimmer of hope for the future, the chance that he might atone for some of his errors and failures before he died. Now that peace was at the mercy of Cahokian shamans and an aggressive new war chief, and Marcellinus was a nomad exiled on a longship a thousand miles away from the Great City, drifting through unknown territory, struggling to preserve a fragile accord with the few dozen men and women with whom he shared the voyage.
They were outcasts, broken and lost and quite literally approaching the end of their road. What would come after that?
Well, first they had to overwinter. Travel, or even survival, would be impossible higher up the Mizipi in the winter months. The previous winter the river had frozen with ice two feet thick to well south of Ocatan. Best to stay here in the warmer south, rest up, kill animals and dry their meat, mend the longship, and make more weapons.
And make friends. Ally with local tribes. Warn them of Roma even if the armies would probably pass far north of them.
After winter was over? Although Marcellinus had spoken of it to no one yet, he was considering a run up the east coast of Nova Hesperia. If they could pilot the dragon ship by sea, they could attempt to ally with the various Algon-Quian tribes, perhaps even the Iroqua-speaking Tuscarora and the peoples of the more southerly coasts of the Atlanticus. Those might be the first towns and villages to suffer a new Roman incursion. Any Hesperian League would have to include them.
They would need to improve their sailing, particularly their tacking against the wind, before they faced the open ocean. And of course the Algon-Quian had no reason to love Marcellinus since his own legion had enslaved so many of them. But he had to try.
Better not to air that possibility yet, though. Let his fractured crew rest up from the ardors of the Mizipi before he raised anything new with them.
—
Dustu feinted and threw his weight to the left. Marcellinus stepped back to parry the new strike, but Dustu’s gladius clashed with his, knocking it from his hands. At the same time Hurit ran in low and hard from Marcellinus’s other side and slammed into him, bowling him over. He tried to roll back up onto his feet again, but Hurit and Dustu were quicker. When Aelfric stepped into the clearing, he found his erstwhile Praetor disarmed and flat on his back, with his two young opponents holding their blades to his neck and Hanska laughing from the sidelines.
“Are you allowed to be that cheerful?” Aelfric asked.
“Do not tell the others,” said Hurit, “but some of us refuse to live the rest of our lives with long faces.”
Marcellinus gently pushed the gladius points away and sat up, still breathing hard. “Your turn next?”
Aelfric looked at Dustu and Hurit and mock shuddered. “Not likely. Oh, and the scouts are back.”
At the riverbank Marcellinus discovered that Aelfric had exaggerated; Mahkah and Isleifur Bjarnason were in sight but still paddling Isleifur’s canoe back toward the bank where the Concordia was moored. Most of the crew was sprawled on the ground resting. Some were doing maintenance on moccasins, tunics, bows. Chumanee was frowning at her supply of herbs and looking blankly at a piece of bark covered with charcoal scrawl; apparently Aelfric had been helping her make a shopping list, which she couldn’t read. Sintikala, hard at work whittling a replacement wooden rod for her Hawk wing, did not even look up.
“How is the market?” Marcellinus asked once they arrived.
“Large.” Isleifur wiped away sweat. “Bright. Busy.”
By his side Mahkah blew out a long breath, still winded from paddling. “People from far. A big crowd. Some of them…odd. Even some People of the Sun.”
“Is it safe?”
Isleifur grunted. “Is anywhere? They want it to be. Guards on the high mounds, alert for trouble. The Chitimachans want to keep the trade flowing.”
“Chitimachans?”
“Local tribe who run the place.”
Marcellinus nodded. “And does the market have what we need?”
The Norseman glanced at Sintikala, who at last looked up from her work. “They throw wings in the air from the mounds, aye, and in the market there are men who make and sell them. And weapons, baskets and pots, herbalists. Food. Beer. Furs and skins. Merchants everywhere, though to my eye it’s really more of a fair than a market.”
“All right.” The sun was getting low. “We’ll go in at dawn and take a look.”
“And no, I didn’t see any gold. Or silver. A few freshwater pearls, nothing of real value.”
Aelfric scratched. The mosquitoes were intolerable today, and they found the Briton particularly appetizing. “We go in how? Sail the ship right in or moor and walk?”
Isleifur laughed. “Good luck trying it on foot. It’s on a series of broad islands in the middle of a cypress swamp. Market…of the Mud? Yes?”
“Yes, all right; no need to be a smart-arse,” said Aelfric.
“And no point trying to hide the Concordia now. Their chiefs are already paying attention. We got a few questions.”
Marcellinus didn’t like the sound of that, but he supposed it was difficult to remain incognito in a hundred-foot warship.
“Besides,” Mahkah said, “we might not have the biggest boat there.”
—
Marcellinus strolled through the Market of the Mud, trying to look everywhere at once while maintaining a calm smile. His demeanor was relaxed, but his hand rested on the hilt of his pugio, and he wished with all his heart that it was a gladius.
Marcellinus and the Cahokians were not the only visitors suffering culture shock. Half the men and women walking the market seemed quite at home, but the other half looked anything from mystified to terrified.
Bjarnason’s calling the market busy was an understatement. It was frenetic. Despite the heat, Chitimachan boys and girls scampered back and forth, shouting at the tops of their voices. Men babbled, and women laughed. Everyone was shouting. The atmosphere was a cross between the Forum in Roma and one of the markets in Sindh, though a lot more spread out and chaotic than either and with a bewildering assortment of tipis, wigwams, wattle-and-daub huts, and simple merchants’ blankets in place of marble buildings and wooden stalls. Marcellinus could have bought just about anything from the vendors around him if he could only figure out how.
The Market of the Mud made the Cahokian seasonal markets look hopelessly provincial.
Nova Hesperia had no currency, and so all markets ran on barter, but instead of the straight two- or three-way exchanges Marcellinus was familiar with, here at the market there appeared to be an extended barter network run by a gaggle of youths and urchins who ran around the tents and blankets at full tilt. Those sharp-eyed boys and girls served as middlemen, helping to cut deals on behalf of anyone and everyone, and were tipped for their efforts with anything from scraps of food, to feathers, to shell beads, coils of sinew, and old moccasins.
“We need Enopay,” Kimimela said. “He would understand.”
“Maybe,” said Marcellinus, and did another slow scan around to see where everyone else had gotten to.
Just under half the crew had accompanied Marcellinus on this first foray, and to his surprise, he had found no shortage of volunteers to stay aboard the longship. Just sailing the Concordia up to the rough wooden wharf where the canoes and other boats moored had been daunting enough what with the size of the crowds that thronged the planked causeway over the mud to the market area and the size of some of the traders’ dugouts, constructed from the great cypress trees. And that was before they saw the alligators swimming in the bayous and heard the din of the morning drums that announced the market was open for business. Also, it was hot, humid, and almost unbearably sweaty even an hour after dawn.
“Watch her,” Sintikala had said. “All the time. Kimimela has never been to a place like this.”
“Have you?” Marcellinus asked.
“There is a market upriver from Cahokia where the Hurons and Ojibwa, the People of the Grass, and the m
ound builders all meet and trade.”
“Like this?”
“No. Not really.”
They spoke quietly at the prow of the Concordia while the men stowed the oars under the decking and Hanska and Bjarnason tied up the boat. Kimimela and Hurit were already ashore, trying to look casually brave but not straying far from where Akecheta and Mahkah stood and leaned on their spears.
“We all stay together,” said Marcellinus.
“Yes. But if anything happens and you have to decide quickly, stay by her, leave me. And even if nothing goes wrong, do not let her be stupid.”
“All right.” Marcellinus looked at Sintikala’s taut features and would have said, We’ll be all right, it’ll be fine, if he hadn’t been afraid of getting his head bitten off, and if he’d been absolutely sure of that.
Mahkah and Isleifur would take them into the market. Akecheta would stay and captain the Concordia, with Hanska to keep him vigilant. A dozen of the First Cahokian would come with Marcellinus; the rest would happily remain aboard the longship.
Sintikala glanced into the boat. “Aelfric stays?”
“Yes. He guards Chumanee. It might be as well for our healer to not go ashore in the first group. They can go for herbs once we know it’s safe.”
“Pity,” she said. “Now I have to watch your back as well as my own.”
“I thought I was watching yours,” Marcellinus said straight-faced.
Sintikala did not smile. She picked up a second pugio and slid it into her belt. “Huh. Well, then. Let us buy a wing.”
—
New Hawk wings were the most important things they needed to acquire at the Market of the Mud. In Cahokia the Hawks were stored in the Longhouse of the Wings atop the Great Mound, and even so they needed regular repair to keep them safe and flyable. On the river Sintikala was fighting a constant rearguard action against the elements: the rain, heat, and humidity wrought havoc on the deerskin material of her wing, and the wooden struts and sinew were aging and becoming fragile.
