Clash of Eagles (42 page)

She looked with some interest at the pugio and wood in his hands. “What are you doing?”

He put down the pugio and picked up the cloth by his side. “Hurit, this is cotton. It is like the wool I wear, but it grows on trees.” He considered. “Bushes, perhaps. I found this piece in the market today. I have not been able to ask her yet, but I think it is what Anapetu’s tunic is made of.”

“Yes, yes,” she said. “And?”

“We have this in Cahokia? I have never seen it.”

“Because you have no time for our dancers and stories and celebrations,” said Hurit. “Our Red Horn dancers, our eagle and falcon dancers? They wear it so that it will flap and fly around them as they dance. The shamans wear it, too. Ordinary people, we do not need it.”

“But cotton can’t grow around here. The frost and the cold would wipe it out. It grows farther south, then?”

“Down the Mizipi it grows much. In the lands of the People of the Hand it grows even more.” She shook her head. “What?”

“Hurit, I have never owned a single piece of cotton clothing. Where I come from, it costs far too much for a soldier.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You want some to wear?”

Marcellinus shook his head. If the common people did not wear it, neither would he. Little point in irritating the shamans or, worse, his clan chief by affecting their style of dress.

Out in the plaza the Cahokians bowled over the ranked Ocatani, and hoots of laughter filled the air. Nonetheless, the Ocatani were learning from the Cahokians much more quickly than the Cahokians had learned from him.

“Gaius.” Hurit pointed at the frame. “You still have not told me.”

“Once we’re away from Ocatan, I’ll show you.” She looked dubious. “Let me finish it first. And we can get more of this cotton somehow if I decide I need it? Lots more? In trade?”

“Of course. If you have enough swords, or shields, or adzes, or furs, you can get anything.”

“Gaius Wanageeska?”

“I …” Marcellinus stumbled to his feet, his face red. “I am sorry.”

Three days later they had set camp on the muddy bank of the Mizipi, heading home, and Anapetu and Hurit had arrived to find him swearing like a longshoreman in several languages.

Anapetu looked coolly at the small wooden frame Marcellinus held. “Explain this thing. Is what?”

“Sorry. When I cannot do something, it makes me angry.” He raised the frame. “The cotton, covering this; it has to be very light, lighter almost than the air. And it must not flap. See? It cannot be loose. I need to sew it to the wood and make it absolutely tight.”

Hurit squinted at it. Dusk was coming earlier as they progressed into the last days of the Hunting Moon. “It must be tight as a wing? As a drum?”

“Exactly.”

“And this is a lantern?”

“… Not exactly.” Indeed, it did not resemble a Cahokian lantern at all.

The girl raised her eyebrows, a slightly supercilious expression Marcellinus was beginning to find irritating. “What, then?”

“Help me, Hurit? Help me to not pull off my own fingers in frustration, and then I will show you what it does.”

Hurit looked alarmed. “Give it to me,” said Anapetu.

Marcellinus gave it to her, or rather, Anapetu confiscated it with wry impatience. “We will do this. And you? Go away and do something useful.”

“Useful?”

Anapetu had already produced a bone needle and was frowning at the not-exactly-a-lantern. “Not much sun left before dark.”

Well, that was true enough. Still embarrassed, Marcellinus left them to it and went to help Mahkah collect firewood.

“We have finished your lantern.”

It was much later. The sky was clear, but the iridescent blue of afternoon had faded to gray. Low on the eastern horizon Marcellinus saw two planets, wanderers of the skies. True stars would appear later, once the night was darker.

Tahtay and Dustu sat with Anapetu and Hurit now. Mahkah was arranging firewood into a tent shape, his flint by his side. Soon they would have a fire against the evening cool. Behind and all around them, other warriors were building fires; beyond them, men stood guard, staring into the trees.

Marcellinus examined the lantern. Anapetu and Hurit had done an excellent job. Neat, tight stitches lined the frame, holding the cotton taut.

They had invested a lot of effort in getting it right. It was a shame Marcellinus was about to either throw it away or destroy it.

Perhaps he should have explained.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

At the bottom of the lantern was a thin wooden cross-brace so delicate that Marcellinus could easily have snapped it between finger and thumb. He pulled a small candle from his pack and mounted it with care into the center of the brace.

“You want the flint for a spark?” Hurit asked, reaching into her pouch.

“We’ll light the fire first and light the candle from that.” He looked at Anapetu. “Do you know what this is?”

“No.”

“So you don’t see where I’m going with it?”

“Going? No. But I hope it was worth our time.”

So did Marcellinus.

Mahkah lit the fire. It grew fully dark. Eventually Marcellinus took up a twig and held the end of it in the fire until it smoldered.

“Here we go.”

With the utmost care, Marcellinus lit the candle wick from the twig.

The candle flared. The flame leaped into the lantern, throwing their shadows back against the trees. Marcellinus held the lantern steady and talked to it as if it were human. “Please don’t burn. Please don’t catch on fire.” It didn’t.

Already the lantern tugged at him. His hands were on either side of the cotton, and warmth flooded his palms. Marcellinus waited till he was sure, until he knew the light was well aflame and the first breeze would not puff it out. He moved his hands apart and let it go.

The lantern drifted upward. It seemed to pause above their heads, to sway and gather itself, then rose again, faster. In moments it was thirty feet up, then fifty, above the trees and still going, a beacon in the night.

The conversations from the campfires around them stilled. Anapetu watched it escape into the sky with the same calm, frowning care she devoted to everything. “Hmmm.”

Marcellinus smiled. “Sky Lantern! Flying machine!”

“It goes up fast,” Mahkah said.

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“The air trapped inside it is hot. Hot air rises. Catanwakuwa ride that rising air, and birds, too. But when you capture it and hold it close inside a lantern like that … Up it goes.”

Hurit watched its tiny flame still burning, high in the sky. “Perhaps doing it tonight was not clever. It brings Iroqua?”

“We have guards. And if Iroqua are anywhere near, they already know we’re here.”

The Sky Lantern soared until it was just a speck, hardly brighter than a star.

“So, Anapetu? What if that lantern was bigger? Much bigger?”

“More bright?”

“Yes. And could lift more than a little lamp. More than a pot. More than, uh, a spear.”

He looked into her face, waiting for her to understand.

“More than a canoe. More than—”

Anapetu’s eyes widened.

“Yes? See?”

Hurit objected. “But to carry a person …”

“Yes, it would have to be very big.”

Anapetu peered up into the sky. “Very.”

Marcellinus had lost sight of it, too. Dustu had to point it out to them, and even then Marcellinus could glimpse it only by shifting his gaze slightly away from it. The wind at those exalted heights had pulled the lantern westward, and it had moved farther than he thought.

They watched it fly. Soon it was gone, and they sat down by the fire.

Ever practical, Anapetu said, “The very-big one. How do you get it down again?”

Marcellinus hadn’t thought about that. “Snuff the flame.”

Hurit slapped the ground, making leaves and twigs jump. “Bang?”

She was right. Without its source of heat, it might return to earth alarmingly fast. “Then make the flame smaller? There must be a way. I’ll make it work.”

“No,” Anapetu said.

His heart sank. “What?”

She gazed at him. “Give this to us, Gaius. You have your cohort and your iron and your bricks. Give this to the Raven clan, this thing … what, again?”

“Sky Lantern.”

“This Sky Lantern. To make the very-big Sky Lantern is the cotton and the wood and the plants and the flowers. You are not good with these things.”

Marcellinus had not really thought of a giant man-carrying Sky Lantern
as a project of plants and flowers. But Anapetu was probably smart enough to excel at anything she turned her hand to, and Marcellinus was spread too thinly already.

“Also,” Hurit added, “you cannot sew without swearing.”

Marcellinus laughed. “All right. Wonderful. But Anapetu, everyone, let’s all keep quiet about this for now. Because if it works, it might be very important for Cahokia. Perhaps the most important thing since the Catanwakuwa.”

The thought was dizzying. After several seasons of merely re-creating things that already existed across the Atlanticus, he finally had invented something new.

Who knew? Perhaps they would bury Marcellinus in the Mound of the Hawks, after all.

I
f Marcellinus had harbored any doubts about Anapetu’s ability to do the task she had claimed for herself—which he did not—they would have been quickly dispelled, for it took her less than two moons.

Marcellinus was out in the Cahokian farmlands with half a dozen throwing machines—three onagers and three ballistas—hurling giant rock balls and thick bolts of iron-tipped wood what seemed even to him to be impossible distances. In his absence his engineers had lengthened the onagers’ throwing arms and increased the weight of their oak frames. In only one case had they been too ambitious and snapped the throwing arm clean off. The new machines were harder to aim, it was true; at these tensions the twisted ropes behaved unpredictably, and the bucking of the onagers at the moment of launch sometimes threw the rocks erratically to one side or the other. There was really no question of throwing a human being until they had worked out the kinks. But in terms of sheer power, the machines exceeded Marcellinus’s wildest expectations. It was incredible to see a massive ball being laboriously rolled and lifted onto the cup of a siege engine and then watch it soar away into the middle distance. As for the ballistas, a wheeled crossbow of wood and metal thirty feet wide was a little frightening, with the loud snap of the wires and the huge darts speeding away so rapidly that they almost appeared to vanish.

By the knowing looks his launch crew was giving him, Marcellinus could tell who was approaching without needing to turn and check.

“Huh,” Anapetu said. “Impressive. Tomorrow you throw a house.”

Marcellinus considered. The balls they were launching were far heavier than a Cahokian house. The trick would be preventing the house from splintering into a thousand pieces at launch.

“Stop thinking about it,” she said. “I was not serious. But I need a heavy ball of rock, and I need you to see what we do with it.”

“Already? So soon?” he said. “You’re kidding.”

“What?”

“Teasing. Joking with me.”

Anapetu shook her head. “Pick up a ball, follow me.”

In fact it took a reinforced wheelbarrow and four men to transport one of the massive two-hundred-pound balls. Marcellinus gave the order, and his men loaded one up and gamely staggered off in Anapetu’s wake.

Anapetu had not, of course, done all the development by herself. With Marcellinus’s approval she had brought in her sisters Leotie and Dowanhowee, her daughter Nashota, and a squad of other trusted friends to help her with the sewing and Hurit, Dustu, and Tahtay and a half dozen of their young brickworks gang to fetch and carry. All had been sworn to secrecy, and besides, key aspects of how the cotton had been treated and the ensuing construction were known only to Anapetu and her sisters.

Today any last vestiges of secrecy would be scattered to the winds, for Anapetu was leading Marcellinus and his crew toward the Big Warm House and a giant expanse of cloth stretched out on the ground next to it.

The part Marcellinus had expected to be the hardest—getting so much cotton of the quality required—actually had turned out to be the easiest. The traders from south of Ocatan were very familiar with cotton and could acquire it in whatever bulk was necessary in exchange for furs and pelts from the Mizipian cities to the north. Anapetu and other Raven elders had masterminded a complicated three-way deal in which Roman
bricks and iron went north and canoes’ worth of luxurious furs came south in their place, to then be exchanged for cotton from the southwest, and the haggling and dealing all got done in less than a moon.

When there was something Cahokia really needed, problems melted away. It boded well for Marcellinus’s dreams of future Roman commerce. And he liked the exotic look of the furs he had seen. Romans might pay well for those.

Still, Marcellinus had seen few of the Raven clan’s preparations firsthand, and this was his first sight of a fully constructed Sky Lantern bag. Even though he had helped with the arithmetic and the details of the design were familiar to him, the sheer size of what they had created was daunting.