Clash of Eagles (41 page)

Akecheta’s boat erupted in cheers, and Marcellinus breathed again.

“Seneca,” Hurit said. “And maybe some Tuscarora from the east, by their tattoos.”

“They made me bleed,” Yahto said. “But we made them run!”

“Bleed?”

“Women will adore me for my scars and my bravery in battle!” Yahto hooted and waved his arm; it was a mere scratch.

Returning to the canoes, the warriors started plucking Iroqua arrows out of the birch-bark hulls and patching the holes with resin and leaves. Two men he did not know from Wahchintonka’s boat were also bleeding, but everyone but Hurit had been wearing breastplates of Roman steel or Cahokian wood over his chest. Nobody was seriously harmed.

“So we are not safe in our own lands,” Tahtay said quietly.

Marcellinus gestured around him. “We lost no one. We look safe to me.”

“
They
are not safe,” Dustu said. “Seneca and Tuscarora come here, skulk like dogs, and then run? Let
them
fear. Let
them
die.”

“The Iroqua are cowards,” Wahchintonka said from a few yards away. “They can hide in our woods and eat our berries. But once we catch them …” He seized a scalp and raised it high.

“Even so,” said Hurit for Marcellinus’s ears only, “they are still too close, and our people are in danger.”

With nothing particularly reassuring to say, Marcellinus nodded and grimaced.

They paddled down the mighty Mizipi, passing the occasional mound-builder village and hamlet on the shores. This time, having no shamans in their party, they made no obeisance to the petroglyph rock but rode the swift currents through the narrows. That evening they camped on the riverbank, with guards posted to warn of any Iroqua incursion. None came.

On the fourth day they arrived at the hill fort of Ocatan that guarded the junction with the Oyo River, where the war party to Woshakee had turned eastward the previous fall.

The war chief of Ocatan was easy to identify. A broad-shouldered
man who topped even Wahchintonka by an inch, he wore his full ceremonial kilt and headdress and clutched a spiked chert mace with considerably more heft than the one Great Sun Man had held to accept Marcellinus’s surrender almost a year earlier.

Despite the weight of his regalia, the war chief bounded forward to greet Wahchintonka, who wore only a breechcloth, tattoos, and a considerable amount of sweat. “My brother!”

“My brother!” said Wahchintonka. “And all my relatives!” He meant the rest of the Ocatan contingent that had come to welcome them at the riverside.

“And the friend of my brothers.” The war chief assessed Marcellinus carefully.

“It is an honor to meet you,” Marcellinus said in Cahokian, and for novelty value repeated the sentiment in Latin.

“We hear of the Wanageeska,” said the chief. “I am Iniwa. You are hungry?”

Not knowing the protocol, Marcellinus looked around for Wahchintonka, but the leading Wolf Warrior was now talking to the Ocatan elders. Akecheta rescued him. “We thank you, mighty chief, but we are happy to eat when you do, at your time.”

“Our walls,” Iniwa said. “Are they not great?”

“Your walls are strong,” said Marcellinus, and they were. The outer palisade of Ocatan was tall and well tended, with firing platforms every twenty feet. The new defenses Marcellinus was overseeing for Cahokia were not as stout as these. Cahokia, of course, had a much longer and more challenging perimeter. “Strong and new. Last year, when we passed your city on the way to aid Woshakee, your palisade was not so grand.”

“We are strong against the Iroqua,” Iniwa said. “We will not be Woshakee, stolen by the Haudenosaunee.” He held Marcellinus’s gaze. “And we are strong against the silver men of your people.”

Marcellinus blinked. He was encouraged that the chief of Ocatan was taking the idea of a Roman return seriously. But as sturdy as Ocatan’s stockade was, any legion would smash it aside and overwhelm the town within an hour.

“Strong indeed. But I hope that when new Romans come to Ocatan, they will come as friends. As do I.”

Clumsy, but the best Marcellinus could manage. Iniwa put his head on one side as if considering it, then stepped away, spreading his arms wide to address the gathering. “And so, you all are welcome! You will enter?”

Wahchintonka replied, “We will enter freely.” The sprawling group moved toward the open gates.

The leading warriors of Ocatan now came forward to greet the warriors of Cahokia. But the elders had moved on without greeting Marcellinus, and the Ocatani warriors stepped around him with polite deference on their way to clasp arms with their fellow warriors of Cahokia. None met his eye.

Tahtay had run on ahead with Dustu and Hurit. Stepping to Mahkah’s side, Marcellinus murmured, “Stay with me, if you would.”

Ocatan was a well-kept town, larger than Woshakee but nowhere near the scale of Cahokia. Marcellinus reckoned the population at no more than four thousand, and that included the smaller and equally fortified outpost on the far bank of the Oyo. Most of Ocatan’s houses were the same rectangular wattle-and-daub structures as Cahokian homes, but a significant number were of the simpler pole-and-thatch style.

Its mounds were small but immaculately maintained. And unlike the case in Cahokia, Iniwa lived in a palatial longhouse on the highest mound, the Temple Mound, with ramparts lining its roof. Two wooden rails graced the back of the mound to launch the Catanwakuwa, but the Ocatani Longhouse of the Hawks had been relegated to the mound’s base.

Also relegated to the mound’s base was Marcellinus.

Above them on the high mound, Iniwa and Wahchintonka were talking, feasting, and exchanging gifts. Akecheta was up there with them. Marcellinus had pointedly been left out and was trying not to feel aggrieved about it.

Worse, most of his other Cahokian warriors had gone to drink beer
with old Ocatani friends. Many Cahokians had relatives here; others, like Hanska and Mikasi, had fought alongside the Ocatani in the past. Marcellinus’s dinner companions tonight were Tahtay and Hurit, Dustu, and Mahkah. He was, he thought uncharitably, relegated to eating with the children.

Mahkah looked around him. “Ocatan is small, and they do not smile much here.”

“Perhaps having Cahokia so close makes them frown,” said Marcellinus. For all its strategic importance, Ocatan was merely Cahokia’s satellite city, and they must know it.

“I think that perhaps having Iroqua so close is worse,” Dustu said.

“The Seneca party on the river?”

“And others like them.”

A pair of Ocatani warriors walking past their fire in the dusk eyed Marcellinus and muttered something he didn’t catch. Tahtay glared at them and snapped, “You say so?” and Hurit put her hand on his arm. The warriors glanced down at them in derision and walked on.

Marcellinus grunted. “It’s all right, Tahtay. No need to go into battle on my account. Perhaps I can win them over tomorrow.”

“You will not drill them,” Mahkah said unexpectedly. “Iniwa has told Wahchintonka that his warriors will not be taught by you. That will be for Wahchintonka and Akecheta.”

“Not drill them? Then why did I come?”

Mahkah raised his eyebrows. “Because you asked? You wanted to see?”

“Many warriors of Ocatan came upriver to help Cahokia in its battle with your people,” Dustu said. “And of those, many died. You did not know this?”

“No.” Marcellinus was stunned. It had never occurred to him. Why had no one mentioned this before they arrived? Or Great Sun Man before they left?

They were equally startled that he did not know. “Of course. As you marched with your army, we had much time to prepare, and so we called for our brothers to stand with us against you.”

“Yes, but—”

A female voice interrupted them. “I would speak with Gaius Wanageeska.”

Marcellinus turned. Behind him stood a striking middle-aged woman with a large nose and a scar on her cheek. She wore bird tattoos on her arms and a cloak of black feathers over her shoulders. She seemed familiar, but Marcellinus could not place her.

Without a word, his three young male companions scrambled to their feet and were gone. Hurit had also jumped up, but she nodded formally to the woman and remained standing. Confused, Marcellinus put aside his bowl and stood as well. The woman waved him down. “Sit, Gaius Wanageeska.”

“Either of those names will do. Hello.”

“I am Anapetu. I am the leader of the Raven clan.”

“Yes?”

“In Cahokia, Gaius Wanageeska. Cahokia’s Raven clan.”

“Ah! Of course!” Now he knew where he had seen her before: standing with the other clan chiefs at the ceremonies. “How are you here? You did not come to Ocatan in our canoes.”

“I have been here in Ocatan for half a moon for the birth of my daughter’s daughter.” Anapetu sat and rearranged her cloak neatly, and at that Hurit sat, too. “I hear that you are a good man and a fine warrior.”

He doubted she had heard it from the Ocatani. “Thank you.”

“Yet still you are a man without a clan.”

“I am,” he said.

“And that is why we must talk.”

“Ah.” Not for the first time, Marcellinus could have used some assistance in social matters. He glanced at Hurit, but she sat in polite deference and said nothing. Tahtay, Dustu, and Mahkah had vanished completely.

Anapetu leaned forward. “Gaius Wanageeska.”

At her commanding tone, his gaze swiveled back.

“Great Sun Man has spoken with me, and he and I have agreed. All
in Cahokia must belong to a clan. I am to bid you join the Raven clan if you are willing.”

“Join?”

Wachiwi, Hurit, even Pezi had been adopted into clans. But Marcellinus was not of the land …

The breeze moved Anapetu’s feather cloak. “You understand?”

This had to be a direct result of his conversation with Great Sun Man at midnight a month before. The war chief sought to weld him closer to Cahokia.

It was, nonetheless, a great honor.

“Yes, yes. I am sorry, Anapetu. I am still not as familiar with Cahokian customs as I would like. I am … I would be happy to be associated with the Raven clan.”

“But?” She skewered him with a glare that was, he had to admit, uncomfortably birdlike. “Yes?”

“I am still …” Roman? “I have not abandoned my own customs. You understand this? And Great Sun Man?”

Anapetu blinked. Hurit spoke for the first time. “You are still who you were. But now you are also of the Raven clan.”

“Then I am honored. What must I do?”

Marcellinus suddenly recalled the rites of passage that Cahokian youths went through to become men. He hoped joining the Raven clan would not involve anything so painful.

His concern must have shown on his face. “Do not fear, Gaius Wanageeska.” Smiling graciously, Anapetu placed her hand on Marcellinus’s arm. “Come and visit me at my house once we are back in Cahokia. We will drink tea, and we will talk.”

“I will look forward to it.”

Marcellinus had acquired a new chief. He examined her with increased interest and decided that he had inadvertently done well. Anapetu seemed a force to be reckoned with. The chiefs of the Cahokian Bear and Turtle clans, whom he had met through Nahimana and her son Takoda, were women of much less substance.

Anapetu gestured around them. “Ocatan. You like it little?”

He grinned ruefully. “It is not Cahokia.”

“No, it is not.”

“And I had hoped to be useful here, but it seems I may not be.”

“Useful?”

“With the troops, preparing them to defend against the Iroqua with Roman spears and tactics. And by bringing skills with steel and brick, as I did in Cahokia.”

“Hurit, Tahtay, and Dustu are to talk tomorrow with the elders and children of the Fox and Beaver clans here about bricks. That is why they came. Ocatan would have a Big Warm House for its older folk, too.”

They had not told him that either. Marcellinus glanced accusingly at the unfortunate Hurit, then looked away.

Anapetu stared at him for so long that he became uncomfortable. “I am known here,” she said eventually. “I will speak with Iniwa. Maybe something can be done. I think not, but maybe.”

Embarrassed, Marcellinus began, “I would not wish … You should not go to trouble on my behalf.”

“Trouble?” Anapetu stood, her tunic and feather cloak billowing around her. She looked more like a shaman or a dancer than a clan chief with the feathers and her loose, light clothing. “Nothing is trouble for one of our clan.”

The First Cahokian and the First Ocatani were doing mass charge-and-retreat exercises in the plaza. Marcellinus watched from the slopes of the Mound of the Cedars, trying to distract himself from striding into the fray and barking orders. Despite Anapetu’s attempts nothing had changed, and a week of inactivity was driving Marcellinus crazy.

Mahkah had been right: Marcellinus had no opportunity to teach the townspeople anything. Akecheta and his Cahokian troops were having the time of their lives drilling the warriors of Ocatan in how to fight with steel and organize attacks in the Roman style. Tahtay, Hurit, and Dustu talked to them of bricks, and within days they had a small kiln up and running on the riverbank. The gifts of Cahokian iron and Roman steel were accepted gladly, but the townsfolk did not jump at the chance to learn how to smelt and forge such items themselves.

“Cahokia always provides,” Tahtay said privately. “We give Ocatan hoes and adzes to keep them friends of Cahokia. Now we bring them more shields and spears. Why learn to make something that will come to you anyway if you wait?”

Marcellinus had been frozen out. He had almost forgotten his ostracism by the Cahokians the year before; now in Ocatan he was back to being an unknown quantity, a social pariah.

“Still useless, then?” Hurit plopped herself gracefully down by his side, gulping water from a deep wooden cup. The sun was malevolent today, and it was hotter than Hades.

He scowled at her. “Yes. Anapetu appears incapable of producing miracles.”

“Miracles?”

“Never mind.” With effort, Marcellinus forced a smile. This wasn’t Hurit’s fault. “And so we’re clan kin, you and I. Fellow Ravens. Birds of a feather.”