by Alan Smale
No one answered. Sooleawa’s face was set as if in stone.
Marcellinus shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.” He would love to know for sure, but Sooleawa’s face was a mask and Chenoa was scowling, and he knew he was treading on sensitive territory. He tried another angle. “When I fly in the Wakinyan, the air sometimes catches in my clothes and drags the wing back, unbalancing it. This is why you and Kimi wear the tighter tunics when you fly. When sailing ships come into the wind, they are slowed; they can even stop dead in the water and then be blown back. And when Sooleawa turns in the air so fast, it is because she is cupping the air in her clothing. It billows. She is used to that because she is skilled in leaping from high places. She has trained for that, and so she instinctively uses the same technique when she flies.”
Marcellinus threw the rock into the air again, and again it floated back down to the ground. “The rock comes down slowly because of the air that catches in the cotton. It…buoys the cotton, I suppose. And so, Sintikala, if you carry a much larger square of cotton when you fly, if your wing is shot away, you may not die when you fall out of the sky.”
There was a long silence. Nobody looked at him.
“Go now,” Sintikala said eventually. “We will speak of this alone, we women of the land.”
About to protest, Marcellinus saw the warning look in her eye. “All right,” he muttered. He picked up his rock and cotton and walked away, leaving the Hesperians to talk.
Safely away from them, he threw it into the air once again with all the force he could muster. Once again, the air in the cotton slowed the rock in flight and it came drifting down to drop into the sand of the Great Plaza. It was a little jerky. Perhaps, like the Sky Lantern bags, it needed a small hole in the middle.
Marcellinus eyed it thoughtfully. If the buffalo caller needed to preserve the secrets of her hunting ritual, that was fine with him. The pull of the cotton against the air was the important thing. He could work with that.
Then he glanced at the sun. He was due back at his legionary headquarters at sundown to meet with his tribunes and primus pilus about the military maneuvers in the Grass the next day. And the fortress of the Sixth was four miles away, on the other side of the river. “Futete.”
Marcellinus snatched up his toy Falling Leaf and broke into a run. He would certainly get his exercise today.
—
His life with his new legion was far from easy. Marcellinus had changed a great deal over the last ten years in Nova Hesperia. It was not that he had forgotten how to lead Romans; after most of a lifetime spent in military service, the old ways of speaking and acting, even his body language and demeanor, had come right back with little difficulty. But Marcellinus had learned a great deal about family and community during his time in Cahokia, and the martial environment of the Fortress of the Thunderbolt was no longer entirely to his taste.
His men of the Legio VI Ferrata respected and obeyed him. Even before the Mongol attack in the gulf, they had suffered hugely in Nova Hesperia. Half of the Sixth had been on this Hesperian campaign for seven years now, in a blazing hot and dank environment for most of each year. Hostile head-hunting tribes had surrounded them in the long peninsula where they first had landed, and the longboats of the People of the Sun had never been far away. But over and above their difficulties with the climate, tribes, and sheer duration of the campaign, Calidius Verus had been a capricious leader.
Manius Ifer, in contrast, was a skilled engineer and strategist, and although he had received some challenging missions, he had been treated well in camp and his men had been given sufficient time to recover between tours of duty.
Then, of course, had come the shock of the Mongol assault and their long voyage up the Mizipi against its terrible current, all the while knowing that they were cut off from the rest of the Roman presence in Nova Hesperia. The legionaries of the Sixth were exhausted, and grateful to Marcellinus for leading them out of hell.
But things were looking up. Their new Fortress of the Thunderbolt was solid, close to other legions, and close to a sizable city of local allies. The stormiest times in the Roman-Cahokian alliance had taken place long before the arrival of the Sixth. It was notable that the foot soldiers of the Ironclads were already more relaxed around the Cahokians than were the troops of Sabinus’s and Agrippa’s legions. This was, of course, encouraged by Marcellinus and reinforced by the joint exercises between the Sixth Ferrata and the First, Second, and Third Cahokian Cohorts.
Marcellinus’s private feelings about the Sixth Ferrata remained mixed. During their perilous trip upriver Marcellinus had believed his time with the Sixth was temporary. He had thus been able to overlook or suppress his dire memories from Ocatan, where the quinqueremes of the Sixth had stormed its gates and laid waste to the city, slaying warriors and innocents alike and mistreating the survivors in the aftermath. Marcellinus would sometimes meet the eyes of a young legionary in the streets of his fortress and wonder how many Ocatani lives that soldier had taken. Might he even be one of the men who had beaten Marcellinus so grievously on the Ocatani Temple Mound?
It should have been no greater than the dissonance he had experienced and ultimately overcome when befriending Cahokians who had defeated and slaughtered his Romans of the 33rd. But his bonds with Hurit and Anapetu had been closer than his attachments to, say, Aelfric or Pollius Scapax, and his pain at their loss had been more visceral.
Truth be told, Marcellinus’s heart now lived with his Hesperian friends rather than his Roman troops. Nonetheless he gave it his best shot, sometimes impassive to a fault and at other times wearing a smile on his lips that was not quite reflected in his eyes.
However, Marcellinus remained steadfast. He did want to lead the Sixth against the Mongols. He did want to wreak havoc among the hordes of the Mongol Khan while minimizing the carnage on the Roman and Cahokian side. War was his profession, and he would conduct it to the best of his ability. His comfort was not the issue. He had a job to do.
And it was quite a job. In addition to restoring confidence to the Legio VI Ferrata, Marcellinus had some new skills to learn. For most of his career he had served in legions composed mostly of infantry. Yet now he was preparing for warfare on the Great Plains of Nova Hesperia against an enemy army of mounted horsemen, as part of a force that included a substantial number of heavy and light cavalry units.
Marcellinus needed to know how to command cavalry, and he spent many evenings talking with Sabinus and Aelfric, with the tribunes who led the alae, and with the decurions of individual turmae. He devoted considerable time in the depths of that winter to soaking up horse lore, studying the history of great cavalry actions, and speaking with Hadrianus, Sabinus, and Agrippa about their prior experiences fighting the Mongol armies. Above all, Marcellinus endured a number of long days in the saddle, exercising with the troopers and learning to think like a leader of cavalry as well as infantry.
Taking into account the complexity of the coalition forces arrayed under the Imperator’s command; the multitude of peoples and approaches, terrains, conditions, and logistic issues; and even the climate of Nova Hesperia, the fast-approaching war against the Mongol Khan without doubt would be the most challenging of Marcellinus’s career.
—
“Are you all right?”
Marcellinus raised his head. Kimimela stood at the foot of the Mound of the Chiefs, looking up at him. “Hello, Kimi. Yes.”
She hesitated. “I was worried. You haven’t even moved for so long. I will leave you to talk.”
Marcellinus was alone on the mound but grateful that he did not need to explain why he was sitting there. “I have said all I needed to say.”
“Did you hear anything in return?”
Kimimela was serious. Cahokians did not joke about communing with the dead, and Marcellinus would not make light of it either. “Great Sun Man has no words for me.”
It was later than he had thought. Time had gotten away from him. He looked north across the Great Pl
aza at the Master Mound on its opposite side, then at the Mound of the Hawks next to him where the Cahokians buried their wise men and inventors. Kimimela was daughter to Sintikala, and Sintikala was daughter to the man who had served Cahokia as war chief before Great Sun Man. That man, too, was buried in the mound beneath him.
Marcellinus was almost literally sitting on Kimimela’s grandfather. It was an odd notion. “Did you want to come up?”
“If you want to be alone a while longer, I will leave you. Will you come to my mother’s house tonight, or do you go to Roma?”
“Roma,” Marcellinus said with regret. “Come up, Kimi. Perhaps I can hear the wisdom of Great Sun Man and the ancients through you.”
“I doubt it. But I will try to help.”
Kimimela knelt and placed her forehead on the ground, paying her respects to the mound and the chiefs buried within, just as Marcellinus had before setting foot on the mound’s sacred slope. She stood and turned away, murmuring some words under her breath, then slowly climbed the cedar steps. “I have not been here for a very long time.”
“Nor have I.” The last time Marcellinus had set foot on this mound was to slay an Iroqua captive for Great Sun Man in Tahtay’s place. He had come to the mound’s base since then to pay his respects to Great Sun Man in death, but this was the first time he had felt moved to sit on its slopes.
Kimimela sat down by his side. “Tomorrow you leave for Forward Camp.”
Marcellinus nodded.
“Again you leave Cahokia.”
“Yes. It is spring, and time for war.”
“Always, now, it is time for war.”
That was irrefutable, and Marcellinus made no comment.
“We will come along, too, in just a few more days.”
She and Sintikala and the rest of the Hawks. Marcellinus would march with his Sixth Ferrata along the banks of the Wemissori to the confluence where the Braided River joined it. His cohorts would be guarding a wagon train of fifty of the new Cahokian wagons. The four-wheeled wagons were each capable of carrying 3,500 pounds of supplies, and the new Roman road they would follow along the bank was even and mostly level. The wagons were covered with tall canvas hoods, pulled by mules, and steered by Cahokian and Iroqua drivers. At Forward Camp they would arrive at a castra twice the area of the fortresses by the Mizipi’s banks but much more rudimentary, surrounded by a Hesperian camp within an earthen rampart and ditch. Pulled up to the banks alongside Forward Camp would be longships and quinqueremes. And reaching off to the south and north would be the string of fortlets that made up the Line of Hadrianus. Forward Camp was around four hundred miles from Cahokia, and the march there would take the Sixth a little over two weeks.
Most of the Hawk clan would follow aboard the quinqueremes Minerva and Fides, its pilots helping to row, taking shifts with the Roman oarsmen. The upper decks of both ships would be covered with Hawk and Thunderbird wings and the disassembled launch towers. On the banks alongside would come another line of Cahokian covered wagons, carrying other equipment.
The plan had always been to face the Mongols far from Cahokia, on terrain of the Romans’ choosing. Fighting with the Mizipi at their backs would be a significant tactical disadvantage, in addition to exposing the Great City and the Roman bases there to unacceptable risk. Much better to march forward and meet the Mongol Horde out in the Grass from a well-supplied advance position.
Kimimela appraised him. “Are you strong?”
“Certainly.” Marcellinus trained regularly with his daughter. She would know already that he was muscled, healthy, still lightning quick with a sword.
“Yet you are worried.”
He did not answer.
“I love you,” Kimimela said unexpectedly. “And not just because you taught me and not just because you are husband to my mother. I love you for you. Sternly. Fiercely.”
Marcellinus felt inadequate to respond. He put his right arm around her and pressed his left hand into the dirt of the mound by his side to grasp the grass, his knuckles white. She was so precious to him. He was risking so much. They all were.
“Thank you,” he said.
She leaned into him. “I wish that we were not going to war.”
He nodded. “I, too.”
“I fear that perhaps you are thinking you are broken. That you cannot do this. But I think you can. With our help.”
He was mute.
“Enopay told me a funny story,” she said. “Enopay, who is in love-and-love with everything Roman, and who I sometimes think is even more Roman than you are.”
Now Marcellinus grinned. “I’ve thought that, too. Ships, soldiers, aqueducts, basilicas. Enopay wants all the things he has not seen. One day he—”
Kimimela elbowed him gently to cut him off. “Enopay told me that when a Roman Imperator or one of his Praetors is awarded a great military triumph in Urbs Roma, as he leads his procession through the streets lined with marble, a word slave stands behind him in his cart and keeps telling him he is no god but a man, that he is weak and puny and will one day die like every other man.”
“He does not lead the procession…” Marcellinus stopped. The details were not important. “So you have come to stand behind me as you used to stand behind Tahtay? To tell me to breathe and stop being an idiot or you’ll smack my head?”
“Something like that.” Kimimela hesitated. “You will laugh at this, Gaius. But sometimes I worry that you are not yet a man.”
He looked sideways at her.
“To Roma, you are. But here in Hesperia, perhaps you are not yet a man in your soul.”
Marcellinus wondered if he should tell her. She looked up into his eyes. “Oh, I know my mother’s blood flows within you. And that your blood beats in her heart, too. She told me. And I love it.”
He should have guessed that she would know. “For me, that was the moment when I became a little less Roman.”
“You seem no less Roman to the rest of us. Now more than ever. And my mother’s blood is strong, but perhaps for this coming war you will need more than that.”
Marcellinus knew about the rites of passage for young Cahokian males. He did not intend to go through such a thing himself. “You bled when you became a woman. I think I have done enough bleeding since I arrived in Cahokia for any man.”
“I must tell you of the day I thought you had died,” Kimimela said very seriously. “The day Mahkah rode back into Cahokia almost dead himself on a horse that could barely walk, and told us that your expedition had been wiped out by Mongols who appeared suddenly in a place you could not possibly have expected them.” She looked at him. “I will not tell you how my mother took the news. That is for her to tell if she has not already. But part of her died inside on that day, and I thought she might never speak again, to me or to anyone else. And so I put on my Hawk wing and told Demothi to shoot me up into the air at dusk. He understood, and did not try to stop me.”
“You don’t need to tell me this,” he said, suddenly afraid.
“Yes, I do. When Demothi cast me up over the Great Mound, I almost did not spread my wings.”
Marcellinus could not help but picture it: a ball of deerskin and frail wooden spars arcing over Cahokia, with Kimimela curled up inside it. Curving down toward the ground. He shivered. “But you did.”
“I feared for the people beneath me if I came crashing down on them, and I decided to feel the air upon my skin one more time. I opened up the wing and saw the fires of the city far below me. I started to fly with the wind, toward the sunset. Toward the southwest where I knew you were. But now I flew blindly. I saw nothing. A long time seemed to pass.”
The chill spread across Marcellinus’s neck, temples, and forehead. Flying blind, until she crashed and died. He reached out, took her hand.
“I thought that if you were dead and Roma was here, then I would go to be with you in death. I was lost in the dark of the air, and then I opened my eyes one last time. I was still much higher than I had thought I would be, and alongs
ide me an owl was flying. A real bird. I knew the owl was there for me, watching over me as we flew. And so I landed safely and began to walk home. I slept, woke, slept again, and then came back to Cahokia the next noon. I had flown far, and in the flying I had learned that I was a true Hawk after all and that it was time to live.”
Kimimela had been on her spirit journey, just as Tahtay had. In her own mind, it had made her fully an adult. She turned to him. “To you, my mother is Sintikala and also Sisika. To me, you are also many men in one man. You are the Wanageeska. Gaius. A Roman Praetor. And also my father.”
“And yet one of those men is not a man in his soul?” Marcellinus said, still mildly rankled.
“I am Kimimela. I am a butterfly who flies like a hawk, whose spirit is the owl. Tahtay is of the Fox clan, and his spirit is the wolf, and he is also Mingan of the Blackfoot and a Fire Heart, and one day if he lives he will take the name of his father and become Great Sun Man of Cahokia. As for Enopay, he was born a man. He popped out of his mother’s womb already an adult in a baby’s body. That is why his birth was her death. Enopay does not need to find his path, because he knows it already. Perhaps he needs no spirit animal.”
“A duck, perhaps, or a fish,” Marcellinus said. “I have never known a boy who loves the water and ships as Enopay does.”
Kimimela frowned. Perhaps this was a blasphemous or disrespectful thing for Marcellinus to suggest. He did not know. She was a shock to him, this earnest and thoughtful young woman. He was at the same time touched by her seriousness and emotion and disconcerted by her story and her sudden mysticism. Now Kimimela looked up into his eyes. “You are not just who you were born, Gaius. None of us is. You are who you become. You should know this, you above anyone, Praetor Wanageeska Gaius Hotah Marcellinus Eyanosa of the Raven clan and the Sixth.”
“And so?” Marcellinus asked. Did he need yet another name? Another brush with death, this time with a meaningful animal nearby?
