Eagle and Empire E-Book

Alan Smale

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: The Hesperian Trilogy
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 880

Beschreibung

The award-winning author of Clash of Eagles and Eagle in Exile concludes his masterly alternate-history saga of the Roman invasion of North America in this stunning novel. Roman Praetor Gaius Marcellinus came to North America as a conqueror, but after meeting with defeat at the hands of the city-state of Cahokia, he has had to forge a new destiny in this strange land. In the decade since his arrival, he has managed to broker an unstable peace between the invading Romans and a loose affiliation of Native American tribes known as the League. But invaders from the west will shatter that peace and plunge the continent into war: The Mongol Horde has arrived and they are taking no prisoners. As the Mongol cavalry advances across the Great Plains leaving destruction in its path, Marcellinus and his Cahokian friends must summon allies both great and small in preparation for a final showdown. Alliances will shift, foes will rise, and friends will fall as Alan Smale brings us ever closer to the dramatic final battle for the future of the North American continent.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Alan Smale and available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part 1: Cahokia Romanus

Chapter 1: Year Eight, Planting Moon

Chapter 2: Year Eight, Planting Moon

Chapter 3: Year Eight, Heat Moon

Chapter 4: Year Eight, Heat Moon

Chapter 5: Year Eight, Thunder Moon

Chapter 6: Year Eight, Hunting Moon

Chapter 7: Year Eight, Beaver Moon

Part 2: The People of the Hand

Chapter 8: Year Nine, Crow Moon

Chapter 9: Year Nine, Crow Moon

Chapter 10: Year Nine, Crow Moon

Chapter 11: Year Nine, Grass Moon

Chapter 12: Year Nine, Planting Moon

Chapter 13: Year Nine, Thunder Moon

Chapter 14: Year Nine, Thunder Moon

Chapter 15: Year Nine, Hunting Moon

Chapter 16: Year Nine, Hunting Moon

Chapter 17: Year Nine, Falling Leaf Moon

Part 3: The Great Plains

Chapter 18: Year Ten, Crow Moon

Chapter 19: Year Ten, Planting Moon

Chapter 20: Year Ten, Planting Moon

Chapter 21: Year Ten, Planting Moon

Chapter 22: Year Ten, Planting Moon

Chapter 23: Year Ten, Planting Moon

Chapter 24: Year Ten, Flower Moon

Chapter 25: Year Ten, Flower Moon

Chapter 26: Year Ten, Flower Moon

Chapter 27: Year Ten, Flower Moon

Chapter 28: Year Ten, Flower Moon

Part 4: Cahokia

Chapter 29: Year Ten, Flower Moon

Chapter 30: Year Ten, Heat Moon

Chapter 31: Year Ten, Heat Moon

Epilogue: Year Eleven, Dancing Moon

Acknowledgments

Appendixes

Appendix I: Dramatis Personae

Appendix II: The Cahokian Year

Appendix III: Cahokia and the Mississippian Culture

Appendix IV: The Decline and Rise of the Roman Imperium

Appendix V: Travels in Nova Hesperia: Geographic Notes

Appendix VI: Glossary of Military Terms from the Roman Imperium

Appendix VII: Further Reading

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

EAGLEAND EMPIRE

Also by Alan Smale and available from Titan Books

CLASH OF EAGLESEAGLE IN EXILE

EAGLEAND EMPIRE

BOOK III OF THE HESPERIAN TRILOGY

ALAN SMALE

TITANBOOKS

Eagle and EmpirePrint edition ISBN: 9781783294060E-book edition ISBN: 9781783294077

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First Titan edition: May 2017This edition published by arrangement with Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Alan Smale asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2017 Alan Smale.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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FOR FRIENDS OLD AND NEW, WHO HELP ME TO FLY

PART I

CAHOKIA ROMANUS

CHAPTER 1

YEAR EIGHT, PLANTING MOON

AS MARCELLINUS STEPPED OUT of the Southgate of the fortress of the Third Parthica, the elite horsemen of the Chernye Klobuki were wheeling around into a full charge in the torn-up grasslands just beyond. He glanced back at Enopay, but the boy was thanking the bemused sentries in perfect Latin and hadn’t yet seen the exercising Rus cavalry. To distract him, Marcellinus said, “So, your opinion of our meeting with Decinius Sabinus?”

Enopay followed him out and switched back to speaking Cahokian. “It went well. With Roman help it will be much easier to prepare the fields and plant the corn. Being willing to work for what you eat, if even a few of your precious legionaries dirty their hands with Cahokian soil, will earn you huge—oh, merda, here they come again . . .” Abandoning his dignity, Enopay jumped behind Marcellinus. Back at the gate the sentries snorted with laughter.

The Chernye squadron was charging the fortress in a tight formation, a solid line forty horsemen wide. They wore mail shirts that were slit up the sides for easy riding, over tunics of varied color and fit. Most of the soldiers in the first rank carried long spears, some held over their heads ready to strike downward and others couched; successive waves carried bows, curved sabers, or whips. Some of their helmets were tall and fluted and others were bronzed and curved, but those warriors of the most terrifying aspect wore helmets with full steel visors that mimicked human faces.

The first rank swept by Marcellinus and Enopay, wheeling so close that the clods of earth kicked up by their horses’ hooves spattered the wooden stockade. The horses, Marcellinus knew, were a purpose-bred cross between the spirited Arabs of the Near East and the steppe ponies the Mongols rode. Their manes flowed freely, and their nostrils were bloodshot; it was not unknown for Chernye horses to kick and bite the mounts of their enemies.

The second line of horsemen was on them in moments, some playfully waving their sabers. The thunder of their passing was deafening. Marcellinus stood firm, nodding in approval despite the violence of the assault on his senses, but by that point Enopay had retreated completely and was back inside the fortress gate.

The anarchy of the Chernye’s appearance was deceptive. Marcellinus had first encountered them when serving as a centurion in Kievan Rus half a lifetime ago. Turkic steppe peoples by background, mercenaries by trade, they were among the best horsemen in the Roman world. Bringing them as auxiliaries to fight the Mongols was truly fighting fire with fire, and it was a pity they had only a few hundred of the elite warriors. The Romans had brought two wings of cavalry from southern Rus, the Third and Fourth Polovtsians, nomadic horsemen almost as ferocious as the Mongols but without their conquering spirit. The Polovtsians were excellent, but the Chernye were better.

“That is the last of them?” Enopay called anxiously.

The Chernye slowed to a trot, smoothly reorganizing their ranks into a single long, straight line for their next exercise. They made that look easy. Marcellinus knew it wasn’t. “Yes. The coast is clear.”

Enopay stepped out of the fortress again. “It is not that I fear the four-legs, you understand. Merely that if they should happen to make an error . . .”

“Of course,” said Marcellinus, whose own heart was still racing. “A little prudence is quite understandable.”

They turned and walked toward the riverbank. To their right the muddy brown ribbon of the Mizipi curved away to the south, half a mile wide. To their left stood the great fortress of the Legio III Parthica. Placed well back from the riverbank just south of the old city of Cahokia-across-the-water, the Roman fortress was enormous: a full quarter mile square with ramparts that loomed twenty feet above them. As always, the castra was a hive of activity. Now that the din of the cavalry had faded, from the other side of the tall wooden stockade they could hear the almost constant sounds of running or marching feet and the barked orders of centurions.

The imago of the Imperator fluttered over the fortress at half staff, as Hadrianus was not currently within. He and his Praetorian Guard were two days’ ride to the west, deep in the prairie on an extended training exercise with the heavy armored Roman cavalry of the Ala I Gallorum et Pannoniorum Cataphractaria. Already a seasoned general when he ascended to the Imperial purple, Hadrianus liked to lead his forces from the front. And after two years in Nova Hesperia he obviously chafed for action; Marcellinus sometimes thought the Imperator might be exultant to see the massed horsemen of the Mongol Horde thundering over the Plains toward him.

As Marcellinus and Enopay approached their birch-bark canoe on the riverbank, the boy turned to him. “When the Romans go on into the west, you will go with them?”

“Perhaps I should,” Marcellinus said. “Someone needs to keep them out of trouble.”

“And I can come with you?”

Marcellinus raised his eyebrows. “You?”

“Yes, of course, me,” Enopay said. “Always you go away, and always you leave me behind. You go to the Iroqua. You go to Shappa Ta’atan. Then you sail all the way to the Market of the Mud in a dragon ship I helped you rebuild, and after that you take it up the Wemissori to the buffalo hunt, and you come back, and then you run off to Ocatan! All that time I sit here counting and writing down numbers in my book. Gaius Marcellinus sees all the land, and Enopay, who was born in it, sees nothing.”

Even now Enopay’s hand rested possessively on the satchel he always carried over his shoulder. Three chiefs of Cahokia had relied on Enopay’s record keeping, and when it came to bushels of corn or war bands of Wolf Warriors, even Decinius Sabinus regularly double-checked his quartermasters’ and adjutants’ figures against Enopay’s. It was part of the reason Enopay and Marcellinus had come to see Sabinus today.

“We were banished,” Marcellinus reminded him drily. “I was hardly voyaging to entertain myself.”

“Nonetheless, I think that next time I will stow away under your decking planks. And . . . Eyanosa?”

Marcellinus sighed inwardly. He knew what was coming next. “Yes, Enopay?”

“I want to know why the Romans of Hadrianus are really here, and what it is that none of you will tell us.” The boy fixed him with a penetrating stare. Marcellinus ignored the question; this was about the twelfth time Enopay had expressed his suspicions, and as there was nothing Marcellinus could say, he preferred to remain silent.

“So alert, the soldiers of Sabinus and Agrippa are,” Enopay said. “So busy training. The Imperator so keen to lead his expeditions into the Grass and keep his troops battle-ready. He sends quinqueremes and longships and canoes to map the Mizipi tributaries out of the west, and places fortresses at the river confluences, and eagerly awaits the accounts of his scouts when they return from their moonslong trips across the Plains. And yet still you will not speak of it to me, which means you cannot. But one day someone will let something slip . . .”

Marcellinus was surprised that it had not happened already. The officers and men of two full legions of Roma knew they had come to Nova Hesperia to fight Chinggis Khan and his Mongol army. Somehow, over the last ten months not a one of them had revealed this to the mound builders. Marcellinus was quite sure that if his own 33rd Hesperian Legion were still in existence and camped here by the Mizipi, they would have leaked the information by suppertime.

From far away they heard the faint throb of a single rhythmic drum. Enopay’s ears perked up immediately. “Ah, good! Let us hurry.”

Grateful for the distraction, Marcellinus followed Enopay along the southern wall of the castra toward the riverbank. The drums grew louder astonishingly quickly, now joined by the chirping of a martial flute.

“From upriver, then!” Enopay grinned and broke into a run. Marcellinus preserved a dignified walk.

Having just met with Decinius Sabinus in his legionary Praetorium, Marcellinus was wearing his full Roman dress uniform, and he needed to preserve dignitas in front of the officers and sentries who patrolled the wooden ramparts above him. Marcellinus possessed no authority over the troops of the Third, but had earned their grudging respect over the last year. He was not about to jeopardize that by scampering to see a ship.

Arriving next to Enopay on the riverbank, Marcellinus looked north up the Mizipi.

The quinquereme was barreling downriver in the center of the current. This was Maius, the Planting Moon, and the river was still in full spate with ice-cold meltwater.

“Now that,” Enopay said with satisfaction, “is a really big canoe.”

The quinquereme was two hundred feet long and twenty feet across at the beam. Its top deck stood fifteen feet clear of the water level, and its golden curving prow reared another twenty feet above that. The warship had its fighting towers erected at both bow and stern, with a dozen marines standing to attention atop each one. Despite the strength of the current, the quinquereme’s oarsmen were getting little relief; the three ranks of oars dipped in perfect time with the sharp notes of the flute, slicing through the eddying water like a single machine. In a concession to the sweating soldiers at the rowing benches, the louvers were open to send a breeze into the enclosed hull.

Thousands of miles from its home harbor the warship somehow still looked brand-new. Its red bulwarks and upper decks gleamed, and the green paint at its waterline was clean and almost aglow. The large eye painted on its bow for good luck glinted with malevolence.

Along its top deck the sailors and marines stood straight-backed, in good order. When unregarded the men might stand easy, but while passing Nova Hesperia’s major city the Legio VI Ferrata spared no effort to put on a good show.

“Don’t do that.”

Enopay was saluting the galley, a full-arm Roman salute, and after a moment of hesitation some of the sailors saluted him back.

“Why not?” Enopay said. “It shows them respect. Massages their pride.”

Marcellinus shook his head. Even after a full year he still felt a chill at the sight of one of Roma’s most powerful warships under weigh. He would never forget how seven of these giant galleys had assaulted Ocatan the previous spring, powering up the mighty river to crash onto its banks, their legionaries and auxiliary cavalry spilling out to storm the Mizipian town and take it with contemptuous ease. Ocatan was rebuilt now, a proud Mizipian city once more, with the Roman presence withdrawn to a fortress and harbor area thirty miles farther up the Oyo, but the dead could never be brought back to life.

The quinquereme was quickly past them. It had two steering oars that were controlled by a single helmsman using a transverse tiller, and that helmsman was having to fight to keep the ship in a steady line and not be pushed out of the current on the shallow bend. The wake from the quinquereme’s passing splashed up against the muddy bank.

Enopay’s eyes gleamed. “Perhaps I will not go west with you after all. Perhaps I will stow away on a quinquereme and go south.”

Enopay feared horses and would sooner die than fly a Thunderbird. But when it came to warships the boy was in love. Marcellinus lifted one end of their canoe and pushed it toward the water. He held it steady for Enopay to get in, then shoved off and stepped in with a single movement. Grabbing a paddle, he dug in before the Mizipi current could push the canoe too heavily to the south.

“I am sad you do not trust me, Eyanosa,” Enopay said, still following the Roman galley with his eyes as it disappeared into the distance. “I would very much like to think that one day we will be true friends again.”

“Enopay, we will always be friends. Help me paddle.”

All of a sudden Marcellinus wanted to get back into Cahokia and away from this river that was dominated so casually by the Roman warship. Even from here he could see the broad profile of the Great Mound rising above the other mounds of the city, the very tops of the giant poles that made up the Circle of the Cedars, and the smoke rising from thousands of huts spread over the five square miles where the ordinary people of Cahokia went about their daily business of grinding corn, drying meat, making pots, and scraping skins. High above the Great Mound he saw the swoop of tiny specks that could only be Catanwakuwa. To the mound’s left a Sky Lantern hung in the air.

Marcellinus did not hate Roma, far from it, but the Imperium was too harsh, too brutal a thing to share the city with. Like Enopay, Marcellinus wanted the legions to move on into the west.

He doubted it would happen soon.

Enopay was watching him soberly, having picked up on his change of mood. “Hurit?”

“And Anapetu,” Marcellinus said shortly. Despite his bedazzlement the boy did, at least, recall the grim connection between the Roman quinqueremes and the slaughter at Ocatan.

Enopay nodded and pulled hard, helping to straighten their course, and Marcellinus synchronized with him with the ease of long familiarity, and then all hell broke loose with a suddenness that almost made him drop the paddle. “Futete! What on earth?”

Great wafts of black sooty fug were rising from the Mound of the Smoke. God only knew what noxious weeds they had to burn to create such a signal. And now from the Master Mound came the din of rocks beating against tall sheets of copper.

At almost the same moment came the braying of Roman trumpets from far south of the city.

Such alarums could only mean the city was under attack from an enemy without . . . or within.

Marcellinus and Enopay glanced at each other in horror and then, as one, dug their paddles deep into the muddy waters and bent their backs, lifting the nose of the canoe out of the water in their rush.

* * *

Even as they landed on the east bank, Mahkah raced out of the city on a piebald steed, leaning forward into the gallop. He had taken to riding as if he had been doing it all his life. Marcellinus half expected to see Hanska by his side. She was also an instinctive rider, and the two of them drilled other members of the First Cahokian together.

The Mizipi bank was boggy, and Mahkah could not bring his mount all the way to its edge. He slid off the horse and stood beside it, patting its neck to calm it. Marcellinus hurried forward. “What? What is happening?”

“Fight. Big fight.”

“Another?” Enopay looked accusingly at Marcellinus.

“What is it this time?”

“A boy of the Chipmunk clan caught stealing in the barracks of the 27th. They flogged him. Our warriors protested. Their soldiers turned on ours. Then?” Mahkah threw up his hands, and his horse reared. “Battle. Many dead already. You must go, Hotah. Take my steed to the Great Plaza, then another south.”

As the Roman seized the reins, the stallion backed up, eyes wide and rolling. Marcellinus looked dubious. “He won’t throw me?”

Mahkah grinned. “Maybe.”

Marcellinus stepped into the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle. The horse sidestepped but quickly stilled as Marcellinus took control. “Enopay, come on. Mahkah, lift him up behind me.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “Me? No. I will get there when I get there.”

“Maybe you can help.”

“Not if my skull is broken!”

“Go!” Mahkah slapped the horse’s rump, and as he lurched forward, Marcellinus grabbed the reins tightly and leaned in. Mahkah’s legs were longer and the stirrups hung low; this would be a dodgy ride.

As he galloped through western Cahokia dogs barked at him, and more than one Wolf Warrior instinctively grabbed a spear or a club. Even now, mounted Romans in armor were a rare sight in the streets of the Great City. Especially with the alarums still sounding, a Roman at full gallop could only be seen as a threat. But Marcellinus was well known, and Cahokians scattered to let him pass.

Hanska awaited him in the Great Plaza astride her black Barbary, with a second horse beside her, a tan Thracian. Ciqala, the young son of Takoda and Kangee, stood close by, gaping.

Marcellinus slid off Mahkah’s horse, which was already blown and panting, and pulled himself aboard the second mount. “Bad?”

“Fuck the 27th,” Hanska said tersely. Spurring her horse, she took off southward like an arrow.

“Hanska . . .” Marcellinus swore again and looked around him. “You!” he shouted, and Ciqala took a step back, wide-eyed.

“Run to the longhouses. Find Sintikala and Chenoa and say to them: ‘Mud!’ ”

The boy narrowed his eyes. He obviously had inherited his mother’s distrust of the Roman. “Mud?”

“Bring mud! Tell them now!” Marcellinus dug in his heels, and the Thracian leaped forward.

Galloping after Hanska, Marcellinus passed Cahokian warriors running south with weapons in hand. Their destination was obvious. Marcellinus could hear the clang of steel even over the thunder of his horse’s hooves. As he passed the Mound of the Women and the castra of the 27th Augustan hove into view, he saw Cahokians and Romans in bitter armed combat spilling out past its earthen embankment. It was less a battle than a brawl, gladius against ax, pugio against short spear, fists and rocks against similar weapons.

The fortress of the 27th was nowhere near as impressive as that of the Third. Agrippa’s men had commandeered the site of the old Cahokian castra, which had been built soon after the sack of Cahokia, when a Mizipian army was preparing to march on the Haudenosaunee. The Romans had built up the existing earthworks and topped the earthen ramparts with wooden crenellations and walkways. The towers that loomed over the gates and corners of the fortress had none of the stout permanence of those of Sabinus’s legion. It would take an earthquake to dislodge the fortifications of the Third. It might take just this battle to compromise the castra of the 27th Augustan.

Viewing the scene through a soldier’s eyes, Marcellinus had to admit his Cahokians were doing a fine job of bottling up the forces of Roma. Agrippa’s cohorts had obviously tried to pull the gates closed and failed; the gates now lay in the mud, splintered and wrecked. A phalanx of First Cahokian warriors twenty men wide and five deep now blocked the entranceway instead, pushing and shoving against the legionaries within. Their front line was protected by the Roman scuta shields they had acquired long before from the 33rd, and those in the second and fourth ranks of the phalanx were holding more of the broad shields over their heads in an admirable testudo.

In fact, few missiles were being launched down upon them because the wooden battlements were burning, alight with Cahokian liquid flame. Farther along the embankment a few legionary archers leaned over the crenellations to loose arrows obliquely into the Cahokian force, but they themselves were the targets of a group of Cahokian bowmen fifty feet back from the walls.

In between the archers and the castra walls a melee raged. A few hundred legionaries of the 27th Augustan fought in untidy hand-to-hand combat with a roughly equivalent number of Cahokians. Some Romans were in full armor, but others fought in their simple off-duty tunics. Similarly, the locals were a mix of Wolf Warriors, First Cahokian, and ordinary townsfolk. Some had Cahokian wooden or mat armor covering their chests and backs, others wore Roman helmets or breastplates, and still more had no armor at all, but they all howled with anger and fought like demons. It was sheer bloody mayhem, and the fact that scores of men were not already lying dead on the ground was a comment on both the evenness of the battle and its disorganization.

Marcellinus saw many warriors he recognized, but few of his lieutenants. Akecheta was away on the Wemissori River, captaining the Concordia on a trip to the Blackfoot territory, and Mahkah was somewhere behind him, presumably still running in from the Great City. Hanska had arrived ahead of Marcellinus and was off her horse and shoving herself into the roughest part of the scrap. Whether she was trying to break up the fight or crack some Roman heads together was not immediately apparent. Marcellinus did not see Tahtay or any of the elders of Cahokia, and for that matter he saw no Roman tribunes.

Marcellinus swore in several languages. This had gone to Hades in a handbasket much too quickly. He could not allow this battle to rage on. It must be quenched by whatever means necessary.

Gritting his teeth, Marcellinus slid off his horse and strode into the mess of soldiers and warriors. He seized two men wrestling over a gladius, shoved one back, and kicked the other, hardly caring which was which. “Stop!” Walking between them, he came upon two more men trading blows with sword and ax. “Break it up!”

Ah, there was Wahchintonka, similarly marching into the fray as though he were made of steel. Although his voice was lost in the furor, the seasoned war lieutenant was clearly bellowing, commanding Cahokians back, dragging combatants apart wherever he could. A few Roman centurions were doing likewise, yelling orders and trying to pull men back from the brawl. Again came the bray of trumpets as the cornicens signaled the legionaries to disengage. The men took little notice.

Marcellinus exhaled long and hard and strode deeper into the chaos, grabbing, pushing, shoving. Echoes of running the Iroqua gauntlet came suddenly back into his mind: the deafening hubbub, the whirl of limbs around him, the spitting.

Now as then, he held his head high and pushed on. Around him were braves he knew, or at least recognized, from the plazas and markets and fields. He could well die today at the hands of a man or woman he had known for half a dozen years.

In between Roman helmets Marcellinus caught a glimpse of Matoshka, of all people, also shouting and trying to order Cahokians back. The half-crippled elder was not so foolish as to place himself within reach of a Roman gladius, but when this hoary old bear shouted at a Cahokian, that brave took heed.

Matoshka and Wahchintonka were trying to stop Cahokians fighting with Romans, while Marcellinus’s First Cahokian assaulted the enemy’s gate. The irony was acute.

A dozen Cahokians had backed an equal number of Roman soldiers up against the wall of their own fortress. Marcellinus knew he could never get there in time, and he did not. Cahokian blades slid up under Roman steel, dug deep into Roman bodies. The legionaries crashed onto their knees. Cahokian pugios sawed away at Roman scalps.

Guided by a sixth sense, Marcellinus glanced up at the skies.

Two Thunderbirds roared low over his head, the new lighter seven-person birds developed over the winter by Chenoa of the Wakinyan clan. The Thunderbirds disgorged their loads at the same time. Two wet black streams cascaded down over the mob. Mud; the Thunderbirds were strafing the combatants with the thick Mizipi mud they used for training. Ciqala must have taken Marcellinus’s message after all. Chenoa herself piloted the lead Wakinyan, her body stocky and strong, her movements decisive.

The mud had spared Marcellinus but doused the combatants at the center of the fighting, Romans and Hesperians alike. Men slipped and went down. Some took advantage of the distraction to cut throats and slide spears into other men’s guts, but the ferocious energy of the battle was wavering.

“Centurion! And Wahchintonka! To me!”

The Roman of the 27th thus hailed glowered at Marcellinus, gladius in one hand and vine stick of office in the other, held up before him like a shield. Marcellinus reached out his weaponless right hand and in Latin said, “We must join to stop the fighting. Come.”

Wahchintonka was still a dozen feet away, out of earshot and only half looking at him, wary of the muddy legionaries to his right and left. To him Marcellinus waved three broad gestures in the Hesperian hand-talk: Warrior! Halt! Come!

If they didn’t get it yet, they weren’t going to. Marcellinus shoulder-barged a Cahokian, knocking him down, and shoved the man’s Roman assailant back, jabbing his finger at the man’s face in stern command. Nonetheless, the legionary raised his club.

“Stand down, soldier,” snapped the centurion to his right, and Wahchintonka grabbed another Cahokian’s belt to yank him away from the legionary. “Back off!” Marcellinus shouted in two languages. “Fall back! Fall back!”

He hurried on. In front of him two more men traded blows, but the Cahokian was quicker, and the Roman’s feet appeared to give way beneath him. Another slash from the Cahokian and the Roman private was down and drowning in his own blood. Marcellinus’s head threatened to start aching again, as it often did in times of bloodshed and stress. He clouted the Cahokian over the head, empty-handed. “Get away! Away!”

It was Dustu, whom Marcellinus had known since he was a boy, now as much a man as Tahtay was; indeed, he was one of Tahtay’s most trusted lieutenants. Roman blood glistened on his gladius and was spattered along his forearm. His eyes were bright with battle fury as he raised his sword.

Marcellinus stood firm. “Fall back, Dustu. I have spoken.”

At last the young man’s mouth dropped open in recognition. He took an involuntary step back. Marcellinus nodded as if Dustu were in full retreat and moved on to the next man.

With dazzling speed Sintikala zoomed low over them, a long white streamer fluttering behind her Hawk. Behind her flew her daughter, Kimimela, and the Hawk clan deputy, Demothi, both of them also trailing flags of parley. Shocked, startled, soldiers on both sides threw themselves back away from the craft. But just ten feet away three Cahokians died almost at once, a woman and two men clad in only the shirts they had been wearing to sow crops in the fields, hacked down by two legionaries, their armor parade-ground bright.

Marcellinus’s head pounded, and at the same time an ax blade clanged off his chest plate from a random, flailing backswing. Marcellinus slapped the Cahokian down, an openhanded blow. The brave’s opponent, a Roman in the chain mail hauberk of a cavalryman, leaped forward to take advantage of the situation, and Marcellinus lunged and kicked him. Cahokian and cavalryman both snarled, and for a moment Marcellinus thought they might team up against him in their fury.

“Step back, soldier! Break it up, now.” Mollifying words in both Latin and Cahokian, conciliatory in tone but shouted at full volume. “We’re all-done here. This helps nobody. Stop!”

Chenoa’s Thunderbird came around again. Another torrent of mud rained down upon them.

Gradually, they made headway and the brawl subsided. Men disengaged, stepped back. Few Romans would assault one of their own, and Marcellinus now cut through the crowd like a blade. Most Cahokians now retreated rather than cross him, and once their own battle had paused, they moved to hold back the others.

A third Wakinyan, one of the original monsters with a full twelve-man crew, lumbered through the air toward the castra from the northwest. In the melee zone the Cahokians were beating a hasty retreat while their Roman opponents regrouped by the walls, at last forming an impromptu squad line.

Now Marcellinus was only thirty feet from the gateway of the Augustan castra, where the Cahokian squad still wrestled with the Romans within. “First Cahokian! To me! Retreat in good order!”

Some already were reversing carefully, and Marcellinus saw Hanska at the far end of their line berating the men, ordering them back, while still holding out her gladius toward the mass of armored Romans that threatened them from the gateway. Marcellinus took the near end of the line, and between them they got the First Cahokian backed up en masse, one pace, two, then more, while still holding the line, awkwardly retreating as a unit without letting their guard down.

The risk now came from the Romans; the enraged legionaries bottled up within the camp might swarm out and fall upon the withdrawing Cahokians. Marcellinus caught sight of the cornicen on the battlements, watching the events outside the walls of the fortress with troubled eyes. “Trumpeter! Signal the retreat again! Do it now!”

The cornicen eyed Marcellinus but did nothing. Then the centurion to Marcellinus’s right barked out in a strong bellow that would have done credit to Pollius Scapax: “Damn you, trumpeter, sound the stand-down or you’ll have my boot up your ass!” and the soldier raised the cornu to his lips immediately.

The group of muddy Romans was retreating along the outside wall toward the gate. On the battlements the flames from the Cahokian liquid fire were burning out. Wahchintonka had arrived back by Marcellinus’s side, looking around warily. The First Cahokian had retreated twenty feet from the gate, still in close order.

“Hold.” Marcellinus stepped forward, Romans on his right and Cahokians on his left, and called to the guards: “Stand down. Stay inside. Throw away no more lives today.”

The guards’ leader was a tribune, Marcellinus suddenly realized: an older man, wiry and tight-eyed. He looked at Marcellinus with incomprehension and made a hand signal Marcellinus didn’t understand. The legionaries began to surge forward.

“Heed him.” The centurion to Marcellinus’s right stepped up shoulder to shoulder with him. A second centurion joined them, and Marcellinus recognized him as the primus pilus of the 27th. Just last year, far to the east of here during a Wakinyan bombing assault, Marcellinus had come to warn this man about the dangers of the Cahokian liquid flame.

Marcellinus now stood with several bloody and mud-stained centurions of the 27th who saw no reason to add to the death toll of the day. Wahchintonka and Hanska stood to his left, and Matoshka beyond them. All knew that the rule of law had to be reestablished. All stared at the soldiers of Roma arrayed in the gateway and behind them in the Cardo.

Marcellinus raised his chin and addressed the tribune. “Where the hell is Praetor Agrippa? Have him brought here at once.”

The tribune scowled but evidently decided not to take the responsibility for a massacre. “Stand down!” he called. “To barracks, the Fourth Cohort! Sentries, barrier the gate. And someone send for the chief medicus and the other bone boys.”

The giant Wakinyan banked above them. Men cringed, but the great bird released no flame or even mud, merely swung around in the air and made its way north again.

Once again the cornicen sounded the stand-down, and then the call to barracks. The Roman centurions and the remaining legionaries stepped past them and into the camp. The First Cahokian broke ranks and stalked away. Their eyes still brimmed with hatred and bloodlust, but Marcellinus, Wahchintonka, Hanska, and the Roman officers were now in control. The battle was over.

CHAPTER 2

YEAR EIGHT, PLANTING MOON

BAREHEADED, HIS HELMET THRUST under his arm, Marcellinus strode through Cahokia. Some stared as he passed. Others ignored him as if he were beneath contempt or frowned as if they could not decide what to think.

Perhaps they couldn’t. In Cahokia, Marcellinus’s position was as ambiguous as it had ever been. Over the last seven years his actions had led to the deaths of hundreds of Cahokians, perhaps even thousands, but had also saved countless others. Enopay had said it best: “They love you for steel or the Big Warm House, or they hate you for bringing change and confusion. They hate you for bringing war with the Iroqua or love you for bringing peace with them. Blame you for the murder of Great Sun Man or worship you for bringing Tahtay to rule in his place. Fear you anew for being Roman. Cling to you as the only reason Roma has not already razed our city to the ground.” The boy had shrugged. “Everyone has an opinion about you. You are a hard man to ignore.”

These days it seemed that Marcellinus was in an uneasy truce with everybody, fully trusted by no one. But in front of him now was one woman with whom he had never made peace. As he approached Nahimana’s hut, Kangee stood in its doorway, staring at him with a mixture of astonishment and loathing.

Kangee had spit on him once, on one of his earliest nights in Cahokia. Instructed by Nahimana to bring Marcellinus a blanket, she had shown her disdain by spitting on Cahokia’s enemy as he lay defeated at the foot of a cedar pole.

Now he stopped a few feet away from her. “Takoda is safe?”

“Gaius.” The warrior Takoda stepped up out of his hut, easing past his wife. Nahimana hobbled out close behind him.

“I feared perhaps you were in the fight.”

Takoda eyed him calmly. “Do I appear such a fool as that?”

“Well . . .” Nahimana cackled.

Takoda gave her a brief look of irritation. “If we are to fight the Romans, we will choose the time. Today?” He shook his head. “Today was a poor time.”

“I agree,” Marcellinus said.

“Then we will have to pick a very good time.” Nahimana was serious now, her eyes narrowed. “Those are hard men, bad men, in the Roman Twenty-Seven. They are not Gaius’s Romans, who we could burn and bury with little loss to ourselves.”

Now it was Marcellinus’s turn to glare. “Never say that to my face!” Nahimana shrank back from him, perhaps the first time she had ever done so, and instantly he felt ashamed.

Takoda spoke again. “As for me, I mourn for our dead. And I rage that Roma treats us thus.”

For Takoda to stand so calmly while speaking of rage sent a shiver down Marcellinus’s spine. He inclined his head, his own flash of temper calming. “I understand, Takoda. I will speak to the Imperator on his return.”

“He will speak to the Imperator.” Kangee’s voice was icy, laden with the scorn that rimmed her eyes.

For a moment Marcellinus thought she would spit again. He was still staring at her in frustration when a voice behind him broke the brittle silence. “Hotah. Come.”

Only Tahtay and Mahkah called him Hotah. Marcellinus turned, and both of them stood there, with Chenoa by their side. The three of them stared at him with a seriousness almost as acidic as Kangee’s.

“Come,” Tahtay repeated.

“Where to?”

Tahtay eyed him coldly. “You will not question me, Hotah. When I tell you to come, you will come.”

Marcellinus bit off a retort. His nerves were frayed, but this was hardly the time to get into an argument with Cahokia’s war chief. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

Marcellinus had rarely been invited into the fortress of Legio XXVII Augusta Martia Victrix, and he wasn’t invited today. He bulled his way in past soldiers leery of disobeying a man who once had worn the white crest of a Praetor, even one with no legion to command.

He and Chenoa strode up the Cardo in Tahtay’s wake in the late afternoon, the streets around them uncannily clear. The cohorts of the 27th Augustan were confined to barracks while tempers cooled, wounds were patched up, and centurions reimposed discipline on their men. For once there were no sounds of marching feet in the streets of the fort, no shouted orders or babble of camaraderie. They heard only the hammering of the Roman carpenters as they repaired the broken gates.

Marcellinus wished Kimimela were with them. Tahtay was in a fury, and at such times only Kimimela could make him breathe and think clearly.

He glanced at the warrior woman at his side. When the ancient Ojinjintka had passed away in her sleep the previous winter, the chiefdom of the Thunderbird clan had passed smoothly to her sister’s daughter, Chenoa, who had been doing most of the work of organizing the clan anyway during her aunt’s infirmity. Chenoa was a strong no-nonsense woman as robust as Ojinjintka had been frail, and she had stamped her authority on her clan immediately. She and Sintikala had put their heads together and then come to Marcellinus, and by springtime the Great Mound had two new launching rails, one dedicated to Wakinyan and the other to the smaller Catanwakuwa and Eagle craft, in addition to the original dual-use steel launching rail that Marcellinus had engineered for them five years earlier. Now all of Cahokia’s different types of aerial craft could be hurled into the air at once and almost continuously.

After a brief commotion at the Praetorium door, Tahtay and Chenoa swept inside. Passing through to the inner sanctum, flanked by guards, Tahtay came to a halt practically nose to nose with Agrippa. “How dare you! You and your vile men! We should slay every one of you!”

Marcellinus took a step closer, fearing that Tahtay might physically attack the Praetor. Agrippa stood his ground and gazed calmly at the war chief. “Good afternoon, Tahtay of Cahokia. How might I be of assistance?”

“How? You can keep your filthy Roman hands off my people!”

“Believe me, I try my hardest never to touch even one of you. I do, however, express my apologies for today’s escalation.”

“What?” Exasperated, Tahtay spun on his heel and snapped at Marcellinus. “Hotah, what?”

“Escalation: increasing use of force.” Marcellinus looked balefully at Agrippa. “Matters getting out of hand.”

“Thank you.” Tahtay turned back to Agrippa. “Well, if this happens again, the next escalation will be your castra burning down around your ears from our liquid fire. Where is the Imperator?”

“Out in the Grass,” said Agrippa. “Which is where we’ll drive your redskins after we destroy your stinking town if you don’t keep your young thieves out of our barracks.”

Tahtay threw up his hands. “Now I am responsible for every boy in Cahokia?”

Chenoa stepped forward. “Lucius Agrippa, Gaius Wanageeska, Tahtay, sirs. I beg, sit and talk. We can send for pipe. Must be calm here between us.”

Marcellinus raised his eyebrows. Chenoa’s Latin was improving rapidly.

Agrippa grunted. “At least one of you savages talks sense.”

“Huh,” Tahtay said. “I will not smoke a pipe with this man.”

Tahtay barely smoked tabaco at all, even in the sweat lodge. He claimed it hurt his chest and made him too short of breath to run well. But that was beside the point.

Agrippa considered for a moment and then raised his hands for calm. “Come now, war chief. You are responsible for every Cahokian, just as I am responsible for each soldier under my command. And I lost men today, just as you did, over a stupid incident that should never have occurred. I take the breakdown of discipline in my legion very seriously, and I assure you the contubernium ultimately responsible will be punished.”

“Punished how?” Tahtay demanded. “Made to clean latrines? Slapped on the backs of their delicate hands?”

“You do not choose how my men are punished,” Agrippa said. “Any more than my legionaries should have chosen how your thieving boy was punished. I am surprised we do not agree on this.”

Tahtay opened his mouth and closed it again.

“So let us sit down with wine and water like grown-ups and discuss how we may avoid such events in the future.”

“Just like we did last time?” Tahtay jeered.

Agrippa’s eyes narrowed; he was clearly losing patience. Marcellinus stepped in and rapped his knuckles on the table. “War chief, heed Chenoa. Sit. Let us talk.”

Tahtay hardly spared him a glance. “Eighty-five Cahokians dead and many more with broken heads and arms? I shall not sit. I shall not drink. I shall speak to Hadrianus of this. Send for me immediately when he returns.”

“Certainly, Your Excellency,” Agrippa said sardonically.

Tahtay blinked, unfamiliar with the word but recognizing the mockery in Agrippa’s tone. He leaned closer to the Praetor, once again almost nose to nose with the man. “And Lucius Agrippa? This castra must be gone by the next full moon, and your men with it, moved across the Great River to its western shore as you swore. Until then, if any man of the 27th enters Cahokia or lays a hand on one of my Cahokians, we will tie him to a frame and cut into his skin and keep him alive for a very long time. I have spoken.”

Tahtay turned and stamped out of the room. Looking worried, Chenoa bowed and hurried after him.

“Well,” Agrippa said lightly. “Your young Fire Heart put me in my place and no mistake. Some wine, Gaius Marcellinus?”

Marcellinus stared him down. “Perhaps later. For now, speaking of fire, I must go and ensure the flames of Cahokian rebellion are out.”

Agrippa nodded. “Make sure you do. Keep your redskins in check. Make no mistake; your precious barbarian tribe is scarcely a hairbreadth away from wholesale slaughter. And I am not the only man who thinks so.”

Marcellinus steamed internally at the Praetor’s language but managed to nod curtly.

“Oh, and Gaius Marcellinus? I was told you attempted to give orders to my men today. Centurions? Cornicens? Rankers? A tribune, even? My men.”

“To restore the peace and save lives, Roman as well as Cahokian, I may have made some suggestions. I saw no one else in authority.”

Agrippa shook his head. “Every centurion in my legion outranks you, Gaius Marcellinus. You’re barely a step above the natives, and some of us think even that is debatable.”

Marcellinus did not blink. “A good job, then, that I was in the middle of a riot and not an authorized military action. If you had ordered such a thing, I would naturally never have attempted to contain it.”

“Of course I did not order it. Do you think me mad?”

“Not for a moment.”

“Not for a moment, sir.” Agrippa studied him. “We clapped you in irons once before, Gaius Marcellinus. We could certainly put you in them again.”

Marcellinus inclined his head a fraction of an inch. “You could try. Sir.”

Agrippa shook his head again. He poured himself some wine and regarded Marcellinus contemplatively. “You’re an odd bird, Gaius. The spare Praetor, the man nobody wants. Barking his orders to men he does not command.”

“Serving Roma and the Imperator,” Marcellinus said doggedly. “Preventing a massacre. Because Roma is not at war with Cahokia. Roma has a bigger enemy.”

“Do not lecture me, Gaius Marcellinus.”

“No, sir. May I withdraw?”

“Please do. And Gaius Marcellinus? Don’t think you can run off now and recruit Decinius Sabinus to gang up on me. That trick has run its course.”

“I understand, sir,” said Marcellinus, thin-lipped, and left.

* * *

“Aha,” said Aelfric, arriving alongside Marcellinus as he walked into Cahokia that evening. “I’m quite sure I know where you’re going.” To add insult to injury, the Briton winked at him.

“I’m quite sure you don’t.” He looked his erstwhile tribune up and down. “And you? Cahokian dress? Decinius Sabinus knows you fraternize with barbarians?”

“Information gathering,” Aelfric said. “Soothing the population with my relaxing presence. You think I’d do something this dodgy without my commanding officer’s nod?”

Marcellinus snorted.

“Makes for good relations with the nefarious natives,” Aelfric said. “At least one of Hadrianus’s Praetors has a keen head on his shoulders.” He looked sideways at Marcellinus. “I told him about me and Chumanee straight away, the first meeting we had.”

Marcellinus nodded. “Sabinus wants to wield our influence. Use our connections. You with Chumanee and the Wolf Warriors. Me with Tahtay, Sintikala, and the Ravens.”

“I see you’ve had that conversation, too.”

The sun was setting behind the trees. “Does Tahtay know? By the treaty you’re supposed to be out of town by nightfall.”

“By the treaty, five thousand Romans aren’t supposed to be parked a short walk from the Great Mound.”

Marcellinus refused to be sidetracked. “Does Tahtay know or doesn’t he?”

“I don’t have your access to Tahtay. But Taianita knows.”

“Well, that will help.” Marcellinus glanced around them.

Aelfric was studying him in some amusement. “You don’t know, do you?”

Marcellinus sighed and stopped walking. “All right. What don’t I know this time?”

“Of course, you being a big pal of Tahtay’s, I assumed you’d have picked up that he and Taianita . . . ?”

“You’re kidding.” Marcellinus stared at him. “Lovers?”

“Couldn’t speak to that, but certainly close companions. Jesus, where have you been this winter? Hibernating?”

“Building throwing engines. Designing grain mills. Making launching rails. Teaching the First Cahokian to ride horses.” Marcellinus looked around again, but nobody who spoke Latin was anywhere near. “Stopping the Sixth Ferrata and the Ocatani from killing one another while we rebuilt Ocatan. Stopping the 27th Augustan and the Cahokians from killing one another here. Usually, anyway. Eating interminable dinners with the Imperator and his Praetors. Spending interminable nights in the sweat lodge smoking with the elders. Exhorting Matoshka and the Wolf Warriors not to slit Roman throats in the night.”

“Well, yes, of course. But apart from that.”

“Apart from that?” Marcellinus warmed to his theme. “Bickering with the quartermasters and Enopay about grain shares. Coaxing Roman blacksmiths and Cahokian steelworkers to work together. Bribing legion engineers to build irrigation canals so we can grow even more corn to feed everyone. Negotiating with the Raven clan about Roman use of Sky Lanterns. Helping Chenoa with wire and other bits and pieces for the new Wakinyan Sevens.” He grimaced. “Persuading Sintikala and the Hawks to scout far and wide without telling them why. Stopping Enopay from stowing away on a quinquereme and disappearing altogether. Trying to persuade my daughter to talk to me. Teaching Cahokians Latin—”

“Still no luck there?”

“Kimimela? None whatsoever.”

The Briton looked at his face. “So you’re not going to them now, Kimimela and . . . ?”

“No,” Marcellinus said dolefully. “Off to dinner with Pahin and the Ravens.”

After he had returned from the rebuilding of Ocatan, Marcellinus had slept in the fortress of Legio III Parthica for most of the winter, trying to build trust with Hadrianus and Decinius Sabinus. After the Midwinter Feast, once everyone was another year older and both leaders were in a good mood, he had negotiated with Hadrianus and Tahtay to spend three nights a week in Cahokia.

As was her right, Chenoa had claimed the large house on the mound adjacent to Sintikala’s that once had belonged to Howahkan and then to Marcellinus. When in Cahokia, Marcellinus now stayed in a brand-new hut southeast of the Great Plaza built for him by his new Raven clan chief, Pahin, on a low mound near hers. To his embarrassment he had been welcomed into the new Raven chief’s family and was expected to eat with them most of the nights he spent in Cahokia.

Pahin was an earnest but rather bland woman who had inherited the chiefdom of one of Cahokia’s principal clans against anyone’s expectations, her own included. Everyone had assumed that the chiefdom would ultimately pass to Anapetu’s daughter, Nashota, and not for many more years, since Anapetu had been in the prime of her middle age when she had died at Ocatan. But Nashota had also died on that terrible day, along with Anapetu’s sisters, leaving her second cousin Pahin as the closest relative capable of assuming the chiefdom.

Pahin was pleasant enough, but she was not really Marcellinus’s kind of person. And dining with Pahin’s family just made him miss Anapetu all the more.

Sintikala he saw often enough, but mostly on business connected with the Hawk clan or in meetings with Tahtay. To Marcellinus’s great sorrow, Kimimela’s continuing animosity toward him was sufficient to keep him from eating dinner with them or relaxing with them in any social setting.

“Sorry.” The Briton clapped him on the arm. “Well, I go this way, I’m afraid.”

Forcing a grin, Marcellinus said, “Give my love to Chumanee.”

“That, I will certainly do.” Aelfric turned and walked into the neighborhood of the stone knappers. Marcellinus watched him on his way for a few moments, but the men and women Aelfric passed looked up and nodded at him companionably. He even stopped to exchange a few words here and there, or clasp arms in the Roman style with some of the men.

Aside from the First Cahokian, there were few in the Great City who would greet Marcellinus with such familiarity. He continued on his way, glancing up at the Mound of the Sun as he passed.

Tahtay and Taianita? Marcellinus was glad enough that Tahtay had company, having taken the death of Hurit so badly the previous year, but there were a hundred girls he might have chosen rather than the translator from Shappa Ta’atan.

Ah, well. The young made their own choices. As for Marcellinus, he was doomed to another evening of politeness with Pahin, diplomacy with the Sky Lantern crews, and the grudging respect of their leader, Chogan.

Marcellinus ducked down into his hut to prepare for dinner with his clan chief, but its stark emptiness drove him out in moments.

* * *

The heavy cavalry of the Ala I Gallorum et Pannoniorum Cataphractaria walked back out of the west in a long winding column, eight horses abreast and a hundred horsemen deep. The troopers and their horses all looked exhausted, and well they might. All the men wore their heavy scale armor and carried their long two-handed contus lances, and the horses were no less encumbered: leather chamfrons studded with steel protected their heads, and barding with metal scales shielded their necks and flanks. This was not easy equipment to wear at the height of a Hesperian summer.

Hadrianus, riding out in the lead with his master of horse and his adjutant on either side, also wore armor of stout plate but appeared as energetic and cheerful as if he’d mounted his horse just moments before. That good cheer faltered when he caught sight of his reception committee of Tahtay, Chenoa, Wahchintonka, Marcellinus, and Decinius Sabinus.

The First Gallorum Cataphractaria broke into double file and casual order as they threaded through the Westgate into the fortress of the Third Parthica. Many of the tired horsemen did at least manage to raise their heads or arms in brief salute to the crest of the blue bull that hung over the gate. Marcellinus had no doubt that most of them would be asleep in their barracks as soon as they’d unsaddled and brushed down their horses.

Tahtay watched the spectacle of the cataphracts with dour interest and waited for the Imperator to be ready.

Dismounting, Hadrianus took the initiative right away. “I am profoundly sorry, Tahtay. Agrippa has identified the contubernium that began this. They were too violent with the Cahokian boy, and we will make an example of them. But you know, your people overreacted, too.”

Tahtay nodded, not surprised. They all knew that the Imperator kept in close touch with Cahokia when he was away, using both mounted dispatch riders and Hawk messengers. “I heard it was your tame Cherokee who first objected to the mistreatment of the boy. Your own scouts, Hesperians from the eastern shores. My Cahokians jumped in to protect them.”

“I heard it differently.” The Imperator patted his horse and allowed it to be led away by his adjutant. Behind them, the imago was being raised slowly to its full height.

Tahtay frowned. “Nonetheless, the 27th is too close. Its castra has been far too close all winter. Cahokia still hates Roma for what it did to Ocatan and for being here at all. And in their turn, the troops of the 27th hate Cahokia for slaying the Wanageeska’s legion. I have told you this many times, and still Agrippa’s legion occupies a castra a mile south of my Great Plaza.”

“Yes, yes,” Hadrianus said impatiently.

Decinius Sabinus cleared his throat. “We have discussed this before, Tahtay. Roma must control both sides of the river. We must have easy access to our supply train and good communications with our garrison at Mare Chesapica. We must be able to address threats from the east and south should any emerge.”

“Threats?” Tahtay shook his head.

Hadrianus stretched his legs and back. “Marcellinus?”

Reluctantly, Marcellinus nodded. “Roma must patrol. We must be able to send parties to Ocatan and beyond without having to continuously ferry cohorts back and forth across the Mizipi.”

“Roma cannot have just a depot on one side of the river and ten thousand men on the other,” Sabinus added. “It is a matter of simple logistics.”

“Then have them make camp farther away,” Tahtay said.

“A day’s march south,” Chenoa added. “Not a step closer.”

Hadrianus glanced at Sabinus and Marcellinus. “We will discuss it again. But . . .” He shrugged.

“And the four-legs?” Chenoa prompted.

Tahtay nodded. “She speaks of your stinking mules. Your horses I can tolerate, but the mules?” He made a sour face.

“They are fewer now,” the Imperator pointed out. “We moved the bulk of the mules down to our fortress on the Oyo, near Ocatan. You requested this of me, Tahtay, and I did as you asked. And the more corn we receive from you and the more buffalo we can hunt, the smaller our supply train needs to be.”

Sabinus nodded. “As trust grows between our peoples, perhaps we will be willing to consider further concessions.”

Tahtay’s eyebrows were already raised. “You speak of growing trust in a week when our peoples have been spear to spear in open war?”

“A brawl is not a war,” Marcellinus said.

There was a long silence. Tahtay still stared at Hadrianus. “I believe you have heard me, Caesar.”

“I have heard you, Tahtay of Cahokia. And I believe we should talk more, you and I, when we have buried our dead and the air between us is cooler. I mean this. I would welcome a closer understanding between us.”

Tahtay nodded brusquely and turned away, with the other Cahokians at his heels. Sabinus tutted at the informality of the Cahokian contingent. Tahtay’s behavior bordered on criminal disrespect when viewed from a Roman perspective, but Hadrianus no longer seemed to notice.

“May we talk with you more?” Sabinus inquired.

The Imperator either raised his eyes to heaven or checked the position of the sun. It was not clear which. “If you will allow me a few moments to find myself a tunic that does not reek, and some meat . . .”

* * *

“Tahtay is right, of course, Caesar,” said Marcellinus, and Sabinus shot him a reproachful look.

Hadrianus, now freshly bathed, wearing a tunic and cloak, and lying on a couch in his Praetorium, put his hand over his eyes to mimic fatigue. “If you say so, Gaius Marcellinus. But it’s really all moot, is it not? The dead are still dead.”

Sabinus cleared his throat again, an irritating habit that served as a prelude to whatever he was about to say. “If you will permit . . . ? We should like to broach an issue connected to our . . . more distant enemies.”

The Imperator inclined his head.

“We have a proposal, Gaius Marcellinus and myself.”

“Gaius Marcellinus,” Hadrianus said sardonically. “Why do I feel no surprise? Very well, Decinius Sabinus. Speak your mind.”

“Our experiences in Asia have made us well aware of the pace at which the Mongols can advance. Their lightning raids into our territories, their sudden appearance outside the walls of cities from Hangzhou to Samarkand and beyond.”

The Imperator waved his hand to speed Sabinus along. Of the three of them, Hadrianus was surely the most keenly aware of the threat posed by the Mongol Khan. Sabinus nodded. “Here above all, we cannot afford surprises. Once over the western mountains, a Mongol strike force might then cross the Plains and be at our doorsteps in as little as twenty days.”

“That would be a considerable feat,” the Imperator objected. “We cannot think that they would know the terrain between the mountains and the Mizipi with sufficient accuracy to aim an arrow at our hearts in such a way.”

“With local help they may,” Marcellinus said. “Hesperian trails are too faint for Roman eyes to easily see but are well traveled by their traders. And despite our growing Roman presence on the Plains, a small Mongol force might slip between our troops and evade detection until dangerously close.”

The Imperator stood and padded across the room on bare feet to pour himself more wine and water, though more water than wine, as was his custom. Marcellinus could almost see his sharp mind working, the wheels turning like linked cogs in a grain mill.