Beneath a Wounded Sky

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  Then Storm Arriving looked eastward, across the plain where Iron Shirts were picking up their dead and wounded. There wasn’t a bluecoat on the field; their only casualties had been dealt by the Kit Fox among the artillery. He squinted and shaded his eyes, peering at the trees on the ridgetop.

  Meriwether steadied himself against the aromatic bark of the sassafras tree and studied the group of natives astride their lizard mounts.

  “That has to be him,” he muttered.

  “Sir?” McGettigan said.

  “That Indian, the laughing one on that huge drake.” He handed the binoculars over to his second. “Right side of his head shaved, four black lines beneath his right eye. That’s the one they call Storm Arriving.”

  “The bastard that attacked all those homesteads last year?”

  “I’d swear to it,” Meriwether said.

  “He’s a savage. A vicious monster,” McGettigan said. “What’s he doing here with the Spanish?”

  “Monster?” Meriwether said. “Is that what they think of him out here?”

  McGettigan looked genuinely surprised at his general’s question. “Sir, that....” He took a breath and got his emotions under control. “That brute kills innocent people. Women and children, sir. He torched homesteads in Westgate and destroyed New Republic. He’s a mindless killer who’s responsible for more murders than I can count!”

  Meriwether nodded. “I see,” he said. He patted McGettigan on the shoulder. “Now let me paint you a different picture, and pay attention, because this will be the portrait that will govern our actions in regard to this man.”

  He walked out from beneath the shade of the sassafras and gazed out across the battlefield. He saw the litter bearers running the wounded toward the surgeon’s tent. He saw the command structure still trying to assert control over the frenetic infantry. Horses ran wild, dead lay scattered near and far, and across the entire scene the only circle of calm he could see was centered on the natives and their war chief. There they were, stolid and resolute on their lizard mounts, watching him just as he was watching them.

  “That man,” he said, “is the most brilliant strategist on the prairie.”

  “Sir, I can’t believe—”

  “You will believe,” Meriwether said with the tone of command. “Or you’ll pay the price for it. That man has thwarted our every attempt at controlling this territory, and ruined the careers of several generals in the doing. He is ruthless, to be sure, and yes, he has killed women and children, but if you think that we are innocent of that crime, think again. He uses the best tactics of his culture and everything he has learned from us as well. And just in case my words aren’t enough to convince you, think about this: that man just turned a devastating slaughter by our inferior force into nothing more than a costly mistake. In short, he just saved that Spanish commander’s ass.”

  The smile on Storm Arriving’s face faded as his gaze returned to the small knot of bluecoats that watched from beneath the branches of the green-twig trees at the edge of the battlefield.

  “What do you think?” Grey Bear said, riding close.

  Storm Arriving nodded up toward the stand of trees. “See the man in the center.”

  “The one who remains still while the others move to do his bidding,” Grey Bear said. “What of him?”

  “I know that man,” Storm Arriving said.

  Grey Bear chuckled. “You are an eagle, now, and can see a man’s face at such a distance?”

  Storm Arriving smiled once more. “No,” he said. “But I know him. He is clever. He is patient. He tests the bow before he puts an arrow to the string.”

  A rider sped in from the perimeter, his whistler’s skin rippling with angry bars of white and scarlet.

  “News from the Council,” the rider said breathlessly. “The Iron Shirts want to press the bluecoats in battle, to push them back toward the Big Greasy. The war chiefs agree, and are sending us more soldiers. We are to assist them in this war.”

  Storm Arriving looked back at the bluecoats.

  “Are they at least sending us someone who can speak their gibberish?”

  “Yes,” the rider said. “That, also.”

  Storm Arriving could feel the bluecoat war chief’s gaze on him, could feel the challenge. It took no eagle eye to sense it. Storm Arriving hefted his war club, lifted it, pointed it at the bluecoats, and let his smile widen into a grin.

  “Good,” he said. “This is good.”

  “We go!” he said, and they rode off to meet their incoming reinforcements.

  Chapter 9

  Plum Moon, Waning

  Four Years after the Cloud Fell

  Along the Red Paint River

  Alliance Territory

  Speaks While Leaving walked quickly away from the twilit camp, frowning, her gaze darting from side to side. She was on an errand for Mouse Road—what was it? A message? A delivery? She could not remember, could not focus her mind. She stepped briskly past an outlying lodge, head down, eyes searching the growing gloom, heading through the trees toward the river. She heard a step behind her and spun.

  No one.

  Again.

  She turned back toward the river and yelped as a man half-emerged from the trunk of a tree. He was misshapen, crudely formed, his skin bark, his hair a snarl of twigs and leaves. His eyes, dark, peered at her. She heard the creak of wood as his lips twisted into a smile.

  She ran.

  She left the trees behind her, felt the forest mulch give way to dry grass beneath her feet. Heart pounding, she wove through scrub-brush, pushing herself to a clearing along the riverbank, then stopped to lean against a lichen-clad boulder and let her breath catch up with her.

  Be calm. It will pass. It has before.

  Truth, but not the whole of it; each episode during the past moon had eventually faded, but each one had grown more intense, as well. From the day she walked out of the Council meeting she had been haunted during the twilight hours by spirits shadowing her throughout the camp. She saw more and more each night, and they stayed longer into the dark, almost until moonrise.

  They did not come with the familiar pressure of an oncoming vision, and her sight was not flooded with the mind-filling light that always accompanied a visit from nevé-stanevóo’o. If anything, as twilight approached her sight dimmed, as if her eyes refused to adjust to the encroaching darkness. But, as she looked back at the camp and saw her neighbors at their lodges, talking with their relatives, visiting around small story fires, she saw each figure glowing with an unearthly light, and as they moved, ghostly streamers trailed after them like moonlit smoke.

  The breeze off the river was cool and moist and smelled of slick river rocks and sun-cooked mud. She closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to block out the other world, the spirit world that was bleeding into this one. The wind rustled the leaves in the trees behind her, and she heard the creaky call of diving lizards in the banks at the river’s edge. She felt the rough hardness of the boulder. Her heart began to slow.

  Then the solid stone shifted beneath her hand and she leapt backward. She did not wait to see what form might emerge from the rock. With earth spirits to one hand and ghost-wrapped people to the other, there was no pleasant choice. At least among her people there was a chance of a friendly face.

  She headed back toward the outlying lodges, nodding to neighbors, trying to keep calm and ignore the glimmering cloaks that covered them all. She saw Blind Eye Woman working a buffalo skin from the recent hunt, and noticed that her ghost seemed to be a half-motion behind her in every movement. Both flesh and spirit form alike nodded in greeting as Speaks While Leaving walked past.

  Farther on, the elderly Two Guards and his wife Black Tree Woman were sitting at their fire. Two Guards was carving a pipe to trade and Black Tree Woman was mixing some dried meat into a thin stew made with suet and pine nuts. Speaks While Leaving saw that both of their ghosts had short-cut hair, like she herself had done as a sign of grieving. And the ghosts were busy
with tasks quite different from their counterparts.

  What are you trying to show me? she asked the spirits.

  The spectral images shimmered as the night began to deepen and Speaks While Leaving found that instead of wanting the night to come, suddenly she wanted the gloaming to linger. She studied everyone intently, determined to discern as much as she could while the ghosts still walked beside her neighbors.

  Close to home she met another elderly pair, Wolf Robe and his wife Sun Walking. They too were without grown children to help them in their advancing years, and depended on charity to make it through the winter months. Here, though, it was the people who had blunt-shorn hair while their ghosts still bore their braids. Wolf Robe and his spirit self sat cross-legged on the ground, one beside the other, but Sun Walking was making fry bread while her spirit shadow seemed to be stripping meat for the drying rack.

  “Greetings,” she said to them as she walked closer. They both nodded and Sun Walking beckoned her closer.

  “Come,” she said with a smile. “Sit.” She skewered a triangle of fry-bread and lifted it out of the sizzling suet. She let it cool in the twilight breeze a moment, its aroma a mixture of sweet and savory, and then offered it to Speaks While Leaving. “Have a piece. We have plenty.”

  Fry-bread was a treat reserved for special feasts and dances, as milled grain was hard to come by. For Sun Walking to be making it at all was unusual, but in a time of grief?

  Speaks While Leaving took the offered piece. It was warm, and had a light crust that promised a moist, flavorful interior. “My thanks,” she said. “I see you are mourning someone. I apologize for not coming to see you sooner, but I had not heard of recent deaths.”

  “Ah, this?” Sun Walking touched her short, grey hair and gave a low, cunning laugh. Her ghost flickered, put more meat on the drying rack, and dimmed beneath the deep of night.

  “Do not apologize. No one has died. It was the Iron Shirts.”

  Speaks While Leaving’s expression told all.

  “I did not believe it either,” Wolf Robe said, looking up from the fire. “The Iron Shirts! When have they ever been a friend to the People?”

  “It was the Ravens,” Sun Walking said, referring to the black-frocked priests that came with Alejandro and the others. “They offered us sacks of food, and all we had to do was cut our hair.”

  “They wanted us to give up our clothes, too, for those vé’hó’e swaddlings they wear,” Wolf Robe added.

  “And promise to worship their man-ghost-on-the-cross,” Sun Walking said.

  “And you did?” Speaks While Leaving asked, unable to hide the shock she felt.

  “Well,” Sun Walking said, plucking at her deerskin tunic. “We drew the line at wearing clothes of Trader’s cloth.”

  “But you promised? You promised to worship the ghost god of theirs?”

  Sun Walking chuckled again. “You know that vé’hó’e promises only last as long as it takes to say the words. Why should ours be any different?”

  “But your braids!”

  Sun Walking picked another piece of fry-bread out of the fat and handed it to her husband. Wolf Robe juggled it until it cooled and then bit into it with relish. “Hair grows until we die, dear one,” he said. “If two cut braids help us through this winter, I’ll give them one every year.”

  The humor on Sun Walking’s face faded. “But some are not as sensible as we are,” she said, inclining her head back toward the lodge of Two Guards and Black Tree Woman. “I worry about them. This has been a difficult year for many, with bands leaving early for the winter camps, and there has been little trade with the other peoples. Some will not be with us in the spring.”

  “The Ravens will not help them?”

  “Not until they promise, as we have.”

  Speaks While Leaving shook her head. “That is not right,” she said, standing. “It is not what we agreed.”

  “They promised you, did they?” Wolf Robe said around a mouthful of bread, and laughed.

  “Take a piece to little Mouse Road,” Sun Walking said, handing her another piece of fry-bread. Then she laughed, too.

  “I thank you,” Speaks While Leaving said. She took the steaming fry-bread and headed for home.

  The last of the twilight had faded, and all the ghosts were gone from the camp, but the paired stories of real and spirit lingered. Some pairs were similar, some different, but everyone had more than one story to tell. The earth spirits were speaking to her through them, she was sure, though as usual their language was difficult to decipher. As she walked the winding paths between the glowing lodgefires, the answer began to form in her mind. It stayed elusive, though, furtive, like coyotes beyond the firelight, nothing but glowing eyes and the sound of padded feet. It had something to do with the vision the spirits had given her, but she could not force the knowledge of what it all meant.

  And right now, there were more pressing matters.

  She found Mouse Road at home.

  “Here,” she said, giving the fry-bread to Mouse Road.

  Mouse Road stared at the still-warm treat and grew puzzled. “But who is having a feast? Who is having a celebration?”

  “Wolf Robe and Sun Walking,” she said, letting the information sink in.

  “But what do they have to celebrate?”

  “Nothing.” Speaks While Leaving felt her belated anger arrive. “Nothing at all.”

  “Then why...”

  “The Ravens from the Iron Shirts. They are handing out food to the needy, but only if they cut their hair and promise to act like vé’hó’e.”

  “But that wasn’t—”

  “No,” Speaks While Leaving said. “It wasn’t.”

  They heard a step outside the doorflap, and One Who Flies came in. He looked at them both with a frowning face.

  “What?” he asked as he sat down at the fire.

  Speaks While Leaving told him.

  He shook his head, and took out his knife and a whetstone. He spat on the stone and began to hone the blade. “More to bring to Alejandro’s tent in the morning.”

  “Why?” Speaks While Leaving asked. “What else is there?”

  He did not look up from his work, but slowly drew the blade across the flat stone in long, grating arcs. “A group of boys were hunting deer up in the Sacred Hills. They saw some vé’hó’e. Arrows were loosed. Shots were fired in return.”

  Mouse Road sat down beside him. “Were they hurt?” she asked.

  “No, the boys are fine. They came back to get their fathers’ rifles so they could go back up there. They nearly did, too, but Crazy Whistler’s son made a mess of it and nearly shot his own foot off.” He laughed, but there was more bitterness than humor in the sound. “It took all I had to convince the fathers to wait until dawn. We’ll go to Alejandro first, but I doubt we’ll be satisfied by what he has to say.”

  Speaks While Leaving was still standing, her brain a-whirl. She thought of her father, of Storm Arriving, of Alejandro, and felt them pulling each in their own direction, each determined to follow their own path. Images sped past her mind’s eye—ravens flying up from barren trees, blood spattered on golden grass, the sounds of heat and battle, the chanting of vé’hó’e prayers. She saw pathways in her mind, choices, and then she understood.

  It was coming. Her vision was coming. For good or ill, it was coming.

  George headed out early to find his walker, taking ropes and saddle before the sun was up and while his breath still smoked in the air. He wanted her with him today both to bolster his confidence and to put the fear of God into the men he was to meet. She was out with the other walkers, nested down in the tall grass to the south of the encampment.

  He wound his way through the field of monsters, feeling each presence more than seeing the beasts themselves. They lay in sleeping trenches clawed into the soft earth, the hump of each spine rising above the seed-heavy heads of waist-high grass like a living barrow mound. He walked for a bit, then listened with his heart to the so
mnolent creatures. Never fully asleep, they were all aware of him, but recognized him as a rider and so did not bother to wake fully.

  Pity the poor fool who rides into this field unaware, he thought, and not for the first time.

  He felt a shift in his heart and heard a deep snuffle from his right. He turned and saw his walker, her head just cresting the level of the grass for a better look. She saw him, and he heard her groan.

  “Sorry, sweet one,” he said as he came close. He scritched her brow and sleeked back the gossamer hairs that covered her neck. Dew had collected on the feathery filaments and as she rose, she shook her head and shivered the skin across her torso and down to her tail to rid herself of the chill drops. The sun crested the horizon as she stood, limning her in an aura of pale fire.

  He patted her flank and bade her prepare, then picked up the harness and tack that would keep him from sliding off her bony spine. As he assembled the rope-and-wicker saddle, she breathed gouts of air across him, warming him, mingling their scents, strengthening their bond. She would die for him, he knew, either to protect him or to avenge him, without fear or concern for her own well-being. Some days—like this morning—he took little comfort from that knowledge. Today, even a twenty-foot long monster at his side would make little difference.

  He did not expect anything from Alejandro, at least nothing satisfactory. Given that expectation then, it was a fair bet that a war party would soon head up into the Sacred Hills, and with them would be the young boys who encountered the vé’hó’e—untried youths eager for their first blood. George might be able to steer them clear of the worst, to persuade the soldiers to send a smaller, more seasoned force that could strike the intruders hard and with sharp precision. He might even avoid the situation entirely by convincing Alejandro—through plain talk and some walker-assisted intimidation—that it was in his group’s interest to keep his people out of the Sacred Hills. But in the end, what would it buy?