Eagle in Exile

by Alan Smale

Kimimela laughed at him. “The debt is the other way, idiot. We’re bringing your life back to you.”

  Tahtay shrugged indifferently and glanced at the sky. “I am busy now. You should help if you can; we must cut all the meat so that my Blackfoot and your Hidatsa do not go hungry in the snows. After that, you will come back to my camp for the night.”

  “Your camp?”

  “Ours. The camp of the Siksikauwa, the Blackfoot people.” Tahtay grinned. “I am not being generous. Your Hidatsa will be coming there anyway for two nights while we cut up buffalo, before they return to the Wemissori. So unless you want to stay here for the night and help the men who will guard the carcasses against the wolves…”

  Tahtay turned to Marcellinus. “I am surprised they let you come. You are forbidden to talk? Yes? Well, take off your fine borrowed buffalo skin and pick up a stone blade and get your hands dirty, and then perhaps back at camp they will let you speak again.”

  —

  The Blackfoot camp on the high plains was huge and much grander than the winter village of the Hidatsa. Hundreds of tall tipis formed a circle against the winter’s blast, their buffalo-skin coverings painted with the outlines of many animals: wolf, bear, beaver, antelope, and naturally buffalo. The sacred lodge of the Blackfoot tribe was in the center of the circle. Offset from it was a bonfire twenty feet tall and blazing hot, but it was the press of people that seemed to generate the most warmth: Blackfoot warriors and hunters, women and children, as well as the hundreds of dogs that had hauled the lodges and the firewood so far and that eventually would help haul the thousands of pounds of buffalo meat, skins, horns, hooves, teeth, and tongues back to wherever the Blackfoot would spend the winter.

  The Blackfoot were in a festive mood. The last great hunt of their season was over. Small bands might venture out onto the plains to supplement their food supply with fresh antelope if the weather allowed it or take a few buffalo in their full shaggy winter coats. But by and large their year was done, and now it was time to eat and be merry before settling in to rest with their families through the harshness of the northern winter.

  As dusk crept across the camp, Marcellinus, Sintikala, and the others sat near the bonfire, trying to soak every drop of warmth into their bones that they could. All around them were tall, strong men, their faces painted red in the Blackfoot fashion, skins tattooed or scarified, each wearing a smile quite at odds with his reputation for ferocity and many wearing little more than a tunic and perhaps an animal-skin hat.

  As for Tahtay, the shining hope of Cahokia and the reason they had come all this way, the youth had run on ahead into the Blackfoot camp, and they had not seen him since.

  In the meantime, all the people in the camp were gorging themselves on fresh meat cooked on the giant bonfire or on one of the smaller fires outside the tipis that ringed it. The air was rich with the smells of roasting flesh, tabaco, and sweat.

  “No beer,” Mahkah said. “That is what makes this so different from Cahokia or Shappa.”

  “Huh,” Kimimela said. “Otherwise exactly the same.”

  They had walked over two hours from the jump to get there. Marcellinus was exhausted and had no idea where they were going to sleep that night. The rest of the Hidatsa were somewhere in the camp, that was for sure, but finding them might be difficult. He signed, Where hell is Tahtay?

  “He will not forget us, Wanageeska,” Akecheta said.

  “He’s just making a point,” Kimimela said darkly. “Showing he doesn’t need us. When it suits him, he’ll make his entrance.”

  “Who will?” came a voice behind her. She turned, and of course it was Tahtay.

  Like many of the other Hesperians at the buffalo feast, Tahtay had managed to clean himself up. Not a trace of blood remained on his face and hands. He wore a buckskin shirt and leggings painted and quilled in horizontal bands, with a lighter buffalo-skin robe draped over it.

  On his feet were moccasins so black that they looked charred. Most odd, he wore a sash of a red more vivid than any Marcellinus had seen since he had stood on the Iroqua stage at powwow. In Roma, such a red dye could have been made from vermilion or safflower. In Hesperia, Marcellinus did not know how such a bright color could be achieved.

  “Ah,” said Kimimela. “Can it be Mingan of the Blackfoot?”

  Unexpectedly, Tahtay bowed. “Kimimela of the Hawk clan.”

  Robbed of her sarcasm, Kimimela blinked at him.

  “Akecheta, centurion. Mahkah, mighty fighter. Sintikala, Hawk chief. And the Wanageeska, Gaius Marcellinus. You are welcome.”

  For some reason everyone looked at Marcellinus, who was the only person who could not reply.

  “You may now speak, Hotah.” Tahtay grinned mischievously. “In fact, you could have spoken as soon as the hunt was over. It just amused me to make you wait.”

  Marcellinus swallowed. “Thank you.” His voice sounded strange to his own ears, and his throat felt as if it had a coating of buffalo hair on it. “You are looking very well, Tahtay. I am glad you live.”

  “I live. I thrive. I run like the wind.”

  “Do you?” Kimimela said.

  Tahtay looked down at her coolly. “You doubt it?”

  “No…I am glad.”

  He continued to stare at her. “You do not look glad.”

  In Latin, Kimimela said, “That’s because you’re scaring me. Tahtay? Are we still friends? Do you hate me?”

  Tahtay glanced at Marcellinus, the only other person present who could easily understand what she had said, but Marcellinus did not react.

  “Of course not,” Tahtay said.

  Kimimela shook her head. “Which question are you answering?”

  But Tahtay had already turned to Sintikala. Reverting to Cahokian, he said: “Hawk chief, daughter of chieftain and friend of my father. Why are you here?”

  “We have come for you, Tahtay. To take you home.”

  Tahtay said nothing, merely gestured around himself at the Blackfoot camp. His meaning was clear.

  Sintikala met his gaze without blinking. “To take you to Cahokia, then.”

  “You take me to die?”

  “No. We take you to lead. In your father’s place.”

  Tahtay grinned, and all of a sudden—and briefly—he was once again the boy they all knew. “Then the cold has driven you mad. You are welcome here tonight and tomorrow night, and then the Blackfoot will go west and you will go north to the Wemissori and then east to Cahokia. Say hello to my Cahokian friends.”

  “Your father is dead,” Sintikala said bluntly. “Come and help us avenge him.”

  “My father died without honor. I think instead I will stay and kill Shoshoni, and hunt buffalo, and look after my mother.”

  Sintikala’s tone became brittle. “If you say that Great Sun Man died with no honor, then you are a fool.”

  “In your eyes. But in my eyes or the eyes of my people?”

  “The Blackfoot aren’t your people,” Kimimela said.

  “You say so?” Tahtay turned to Marcellinus. “You brought the Concordia? Who is with you?”

  “All the crew from the trip downriver. The same.”

  Tahtay looked sad. “Not Enopay, then?”

  “No. Enopay is still in Cahokia, building support for you.”

  “A pity. I would like to see Enopay again.”

  “Dustu is at the ship,” Kimimela said. “And Hurit.”

  He shrugged. “When I was injured, you stayed with me. And the Wanageeska stayed with me. Hurit did not. I have nothing to say to Hurit.”

  “She…” Kimimela stopped.

  “She could not bear to see you hurt,” Sintikala said unexpectedly.

  “I do not think that was the reason.” Suddenly Tahtay took a step back and clasped his hands in front of him in greeting. “Sooleawa.”

  The buffalo caller strolled up to them almost jauntily, with none of the air of severity she had owned before the hunt. She now wore a tunic of buffalo calfskin and leggings like those the men
wore, and her hair was loose. Unlike Tahtay, whose speech was guarded and painfully formal, Sooleawa looked calm and relaxed and happy, and younger than she had seemed at the village. Her big ordeal was over. Walking beside her and to the right was a Blackfoot girl younger than Kimimela. Sooleawa looked at Marcellinus and said something in Hidatsa.

  The Blackfoot girl cleared her throat and spoke in Algon-Quian, which Sintikala translated into Cahokian. “Sooleawa says, ‘So they let you live.’ ”

  “Yes. Please tell her I am sorry.”

  “What did you do?” Tahtay asked him.

  “I…started to run out to try to save her when I realized she was about to throw herself off the cliff.”

  Tahtay put his hand up to his head in disbelief. “You are mad.”

  Sintikala and the Blackfoot girl translated for Sooleawa. Now she laughed and spoke again at some length. Looking vaguely disapproving, the girl spoke in Algon-Quian, but this time nobody translated for Marcellinus. He looked at Kimimela, who shrugged: she could not follow Hidatsa or Algon-Quian any more than he could.

  Now Sintikala looked at Sooleawa and grinned. In Cahokian and then Algon-Quian she said, “You fly well.”

  The girl translated. Sooleawa smiled, unabashedly joyful, and mimed wiping sweat from her face.

  “Tell her that if she ever tires of charming buffalo, she may come to Cahokia to soar with the birds.”

  The Blackfoot girl did so. Sooleawa grinned again in wide amusement and stepped forward to clasp hands with the Hawk chief. Then, with nods to the others, she stepped away, almost skipping, to continue her rounds at the feast.

  “What did she say?”

  Sintikala followed the woman with her eyes as she walked away. “The sacred buffalo caller says you probably did save her life. She had not run fast enough and so displeased the buffalo, and had they followed her off the cliff so closely, they would have landed on her head and crushed her. As it was, the Wanageeska displeased the sacred buffalo more, and the moments you brought her allowed her to run clear.”

  “Oh,” said Marcellinus.

  “Also, she said that if the sacred buffalo had not given their lives by running over the cliff anyway, and if the sacred buffalo did not kill you, then the Blackfoot would have kept you alive for three moons.”

  If Marcellinus had ruined the hunt, he would have earned a long, excruciating death at the hands of a people even more bloodthirsty than the Iroqua.

  All he could think of to say to that was, again, “Oh.”

  “I am glad I did not have to watch you die,” Tahtay said politely. “And now I must find my mother. Perhaps I will bring her to talk to you if she wishes.”

  “Ask her about Cahokia,” Sintikala said. “She may seek revenge more than you do.”

  “She may,” said Tahtay, “but perhaps not enough to lose her son.” He nodded to them and walked away into the night.

  “Wow,” Kimimela said.

  After a brief pause Marcellinus said, “The red band Tahtay wears. What is it?”

  Akecheta and Sintikala looked away, but Mahkah chimed in. “It is of the Fire Hearts. He will never run.”

  “I don’t understand. He said he could run like the wind.”

  “I meant, never run away. When a Fire Heart faces an enemy, he stakes the long end of the sash into the ground. Then he will die before he will retreat.”

  “Juno,” Marcellinus said, appalled. A year had been a long time in the life of his young friend.

  “Many warrior societies do such. It is not just the Blackfoot.”

  Marcellinus looked at Kimimela, but her face was perfectly composed, as if she had heard nothing to surprise her.

  A Blackfoot warrior stepped forward to throw more firewood and buffalo chips onto the blaze. The hunters and families nearby hooted as the flames shot up into the sky. Somewhere over on the other side of the camp the drumming started, but tonight of all nights, Marcellinus thought maybe he could sleep even through that.

  “More buffalo?” Mahkah asked.

  —

  The next day was filled with work from dawn till dusk. The six from the Concordia could not rest easy while all the people around them were cutting buffalo meat, cleaning and scraping hides for the journey, collecting horns and hooves, and so on. The area under the cliff had become an abattoir, yet one that needed to be cleaned afterward. If the site smelled too strongly of death, the buffalo would not agree to return the next year.

  The Blackfoot and Hidatsa preferred to dress the sacred meat themselves, and mostly the Concordia crew members were relegated to carrying and cleaning. Unusually, the sun shone and the wind had dropped, which only conspired to make the stink even worse. It was rough, greasy work, and Kimimela and Akecheta regularly turned a little green and had to walk away for a while.

  Helping to carry bloody meat reminded Marcellinus of his first days in Cahokia, carrying dead Romans and Cahokians to their charnel pits. So although for the Blackfoot and Hidatsa this was a time of joy and fellowship, for Marcellinus it was yet another day for somber reflection on what he had lost.

  And also for hopelessness. For he was convinced now that they had lost Tahtay. The youth had not returned to the fire with Nipekala later in the evening, and they did not see him all day. That evening Marcellinus walked all around the camp without finding him. He saw Blackfoot wearing the characteristic red sash of the Fire Hearts, but none were Tahtay.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever eat buffalo again,” Kimimela said as he returned to the small campfire outside the borrowed tipi they shared with the other Cahokians. Akecheta and Mahkah were lying flat on their backs, exhausted from hauling meat all day. Nearby the Hidatsa sat around their own campfires, talking and laughing.

  “Where is Sintikala?”

  “Where do you think?”

  Marcellinus nodded. The Hawk chief was also out looking for Tahtay. He picked up a piece of cooked buffalo meat, stared at it, and put it down again. “And Isleifur?”

  Kimimela pointed to where the Norseman was squatting by another campfire talking to a trio of elderly Blackfoot women. “Isleifur likes his girls wrinkly.”

  Marcellinus grinned. “When Isleifur is looking for information, he knows who to ask.”

  Kimimela did not smile back. “He won’t come.”

  “Tahtay? Was he here?”

  “No. And if he hasn’t come yet, he won’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  She fed the fire with buffalo chips, and it glowed warmer, smelling faintly of flowers. “The merda of buffalo is the most pleasant thing about them.”

  Marcellinus picked up the meat again and took a bite. He would need strength for the long walk.

  “Gaius, you’ve seen the Fire Hearts. Big haughty men, each acting like a chief, striding around, doing less work. They have pledged to give their lives to protect their brothers and families and to never retreat, and for that they are honored. Why would Tahtay throw that away to come to Cahokia?”

  “If he can rise to become a Fire Heart in a single year…”

  Kimimela shook her head. “I asked the woman I scraped skins with today. It is more about being strong and willing. Any strong man can be a Fire Heart if he can fight and will swear to die for his brothers.”

  Akecheta stirred. “Tahtay fights differently from the other Blackfoot, because we trained him. And he is the son of a chieftain of the Mizipi as well as of a woman of the Blackfoot. If he impressed them and was willing to pledge—”

  “Here comes Isleifur.”

  The Norseman returned to their fire and sat. “They think it will not snow again for a week or two and that the river will not freeze for at least another moon. With the strength of the Wemissori current, we can be in Cahokia by then.”

  “What about Tahtay?”

  Isleifur snorted. “Mingan of the Blackfoot is not in the camp. He is not standing guard at the cliff. Nipekala’s friends have not seen her. And none of us have seen either of them today. We’ve wasted our time
.” He took off his moccasins and rubbed buffalo fat onto the blisters on his feet while Kimimela looked on in horror. “What? The women say it works.”

  Appearing between Isleifur and Kimimela with an abruptness that made them jump, Sintikala held her hands out to the fire. “We should sleep.”

  “So, nothing?” Marcellinus asked.

  “We will just have to do this without him,” she said bleakly.

  “Can we?” Kimimela asked.

  Sintikala blinked into the fire and did not answer.

  —

  The return trip took eight days, burdened as the Hidatsa party was with hundreds of pounds of meat, rolls of hides, and sacks of horns. The dogs groaned under the weight of the travois, and dogs and humans alike were so weary by midafternoon that they set up camp early.

  On the last day the wind was from the north; it carried a bite, but they could smell the river and knew they were close.

  “Warriors come, from behind us.”

  It was Mahkah who sounded the alarm. Everyone else was plodding along staring at the ground. Marcellinus turned, momentarily grateful not to be facing into the wind, as Sooleawa strode back through the party to squint back. She looked at the sky and gave some orders to the Hidatsa.

  “She doesn’t seem worried.”

  Marcellinus was. It would surely be easier for a rogue Blackfoot band to ambush them and take their meat than it would be to hunt for it in the first place.

  He had no gladius or shield. Only a spear and a bow and arrows not his own.

  “Only twelve men?” said Kimimela, who had keener eyes. “Running.”

  “Even so.” Marcellinus had no doubt about the ability of twelve top-notch warriors to devastate this band of a few dozen Hidatsa hunters at the end of their strength.

  Sintikala hurried to Sooleawa to confer, and the two hand-talked more quickly than he could follow.

  Then Sintikala smiled.

  —

  An hour later the eleven warriors of the Fire Hearts and the woman who accompanied them caught up to the Hidatsa band. None were even out of breath, though presumably they had been running all day. Admittedly, they carried nothing more than their spears, a small blanket, and a rawhide provisions bag each.