Beneath a Wounded Sky

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  The People’s way of life, their very survival, was pinned on the willingness of their men and women to defend their families, their traditions, and their territory. By stopping today’s conflict, he would only delay what had to happen. Boys left behind today would try to count their first coup tomorrow, kill their first man tomorrow, die tomorrow. They were eager for it, eager to grow up, to be men. Fevered by the immortality of youth and educated by four centuries spent beating back wave after wave of European settlers, how could it be different?

  And what would the Spaniards do if he stopped it all? That was easy to answer. Whatever George was able to thwart today, they too would try again tomorrow. Just like those young boys.

  He sighed as he mounted up onto his walker’s back. He felt her ribs expand and contract with a sigh of her own. She felt his frustration, and that wasn’t a good thing. The walker would amplify anything he felt—a powerful tool in battle, where the symphony of blood and adrenaline, man and walker, created a formidable weapon. He needed to focus his mind in order for her to be an advantage in negotiation.

  It was a difficult spot, but George had to admit his own part in bringing it about. The Spaniards were here because George had asked them to come here. No getting around that fact. But it also seemed that his role only advanced what was surely inevitable. The worlds of the People and of the vé’hó’e had been rushing toward this conflict for centuries. If it did not come today, it would have come soon enough. No adjustment of history, no quirk of the past could have changed the course of this storm that was about to break upon them.

  He wondered, as he toed his walker into a slow trot, how this all reckoned with the vision that Speaks While Leaving had been given. He could not see the method in the madness.

  As he rode off to meet the others, he wondered if there was any method at all.

  Alejandro heard voices raised outside his tent and put down his cup of coffee to listen. Horses whinnied from the corral to the south, then soldiers barked orders to halt and be recognized, in Spanish—moronic fools. How many times had he told them that unlike the tribes of the south, very few of these natives spoke Spanish? The flap to his tent opened and Luis, the lieutenant he’d impressed into service as his aide stepped in, fear on his face. Alejandro lifted a hand for quiet. Then he heard the dull thump of massive footsteps.

  “Don Alejandro,” came a voice from outside his tent. “I need to speak with you. I do not have an appointment.”

  Alejandro smiled despite the situation. Young Custer remembered well his previous life among the elite of Washington. He picked up his cup and saucer, rose, nodded to his aide, and stepped outside.

  A nervous-looking escort squad stood outside. Behind them, One Who Flies sat astride his gargantuan lizard. He was backed by a chevron of native warriors bedecked in skins and feathers, mounted on chameleon-skinned whistlers. They were all armed with clubs and spears, but Alejandro saw carbine sheaths, too. In all, they each looked as fearsome as One Who Flies and his beast.

  The appearance of walkers had always turned Alejandro’s guts to water. Just their size alone was enough to test the mettle of an average man, let alone seeing one in motion, seeing the power, the intelligence, and the—the menace, that imbued them. The man who met those creatures on the battlefield never forgot the experience. It took all Alejandro had to keep hold of his coffee cup and take a calm, measured sip.

  “How can I help you gentlemen?” he asked, all nonchalance.

  “Down, chick,” One Who Flies said coolly, and his walker slowly lowered itself to the ground. As he stepped down, the beast tilted its head back and yawned. A few soldiers actually gasped and one took an instinctive step backward. It didn’t help when the walker began to clean its back teeth with the claws on its short forearm.

  “We have a problem,” One Who Flies said. “Two, actually, and they need your immediate attention.” One of the natives was translating the French they spoke for the others.

  “Of course,” Alejandro said, wanting to get back onto familiar ground. “Shall we step inside?”

  “Thank you,” One Who Flies said, “but no. This not a negotiation.”

  Alejandro kept the smile on his lips but let his eyes grow steely. “I see,” he said. “Then what is it, if I may ask?”

  One Who Flies was still relaxed, his features pleasant, nonchalant. “Your priests; they have been withholding aid from those who refuse to abandon their traditions.”

  “As we agreed,” Alejandro said, “the priests are here to bring the souls of these people closer to God.”

  “As we agreed,” One Who Flies parroted, “they may convert whom they can, ‘through peaceful and non-coercive means,’” he finished, quoting from the charter written back in Madrid.

  Alejandro laughed. “A gift is not coercion,” he said.

  “A bribe is not coercion, I’ll grant you. But extortion is. Aid all, or aid none. Your choice. Item two...”

  This was not the way Alejandro wanted things to go. “One Who Flies,” he said, in English.

  “In français, s'il vous plaît, Excellence.” One Who Flies raised an eyebrow and his walker snorted, head up, eyes suddenly alert.

  Alejandro took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I will pass your instructions to Father Velasquez,” he said, in French once more.

  “Item two. Our scouts have sighted some vé’hó’e up in the Sacred Hills. This area was specifically forbidden to you and your soldiers, even for hunting. We have only one question. Are they your men?”

  Skillfully played, Alejandro said to himself. Any answer—yes, no, or even an I don’t know—would back him into a corner. Say “Yes,” and he would admit he knew that Vincent sent men up there. “No,” and he might as well go up into the hills and kill those men himself. Say “I don’t know,” and he would admit the possibility that they were there and the fact that he didn’t have control over his own forces. It was well-played, all right, but Alejandro had been a diplomat for twenty years, had negotiated with royalty and with reprobates—sometimes with both in the same person—and in that time he had learned that sometimes it was best not to answer, but to obfuscate.

  “Your reports are incorrect, One Who Flies. There are no white men up in those hills.”

  One Who Flies blinked, confused by the unexpected answer. “What do you mean?”

  “Surely your patrols would have seen any group from this camp sneaking across the river and up into the hills. Surely your people are watching us that well, at least. And how could they be from anywhere else? How could a group of white men infiltrate so far into Cheyenne-controlled territory? And for what reason?” He shook his head. “No, your scouts are mistaken. There are no white men in your sacred hills.”

  The French he spoke was translated to the rest of the whistler riders, but their faces did not show any of the uncertainty he had hoped to sow there. So, the men up there were dead men and Alejandro’s only solace was that he could deny all responsibility of them with total confidence.

  Provided, he said to himself, that D’Avignon has done as I—

  “Where is Vincent?” One Who Flies asked, as if reading his mind.

  “What?”

  “Where is Vincent D’Avignon?”

  “I—I do not know,” he said, and cursed himself for answering without forethought.

  One Who Flies nodded to the other riders. In two leaping strides he was up on the back of his rising walker. The walker coughed out a short, harsh, grating note and then left with a spray of torn earth.

  Alejandro watched them speed across the prairie, impossibly fast, heading toward the dark mass of the Sacred Hills.

  “Luis,” he said to his aide. “Where is D’Avignon?”

  “I’m sorry, Excellency. I do not know.”

  “Find him,” Alejandro said. “Find him at once.”

  Chapter 10

  Plum Moon, Waning

  Four Years after the Cloud Fell

  In the Sacred Mountains

  Alli
ance Territory

  The whistlers swept up the slope, weaving in amongst the rough, black trunks of pine trees. The walker took a more direct route, pushing upward along a deer track, shouldering aside birch and linden saplings on her way through the brush. George lay low along her spine, wincing as low branches scraped across his back.

  He had been able to convince the soldiers to leave their sons at home. If these were rogue independents from the Spanish, this would be quite different from a whistler raid filled with more fun than risk. If his suspicions were correct, these would be well-armed soldiers, prepared for an attack. It was a situation that called for experience, not bravado.

  They reached the place the boys had spoken of, a tumble of rotten stone near Green Dragonfly Creek, and dismounted. They needed to clamber up a steep hillside and circle around the rim of the camp, in order to scout and attack from above. Whistlers and walkers would only announce their presence to the trespassers.

  There were sixteen in the war party—a symbolic number—but this was the first time that George had found himself as part of the count. In the past, it had always been “four men for each of the winds, and One Who Flies,” or “a man for each of the six directions, and One Who Flies.” For years, he had been the appendix to any force, tacked on like an afterthought, but for some unknown reason today he was no appendage, no addendum to their counting. Today, when Two Roads set the number and the names, it was “four fours,” plain and simple. Red Arrow had been picked to lead. Whistling Elk had been chosen sixth, Limps had been tenth. George had been eleventh; not even the last named. He did not know why his position in the People’s society had changed, but he noted the shift and felt his heart respond to the honor.

  They scooted toward the cliffside, backs bent to stay low behind the brush. Red Arrow pointed at the creek as they passed. The water was cloudy, filled with disturbed silt, not clear and unsullied as it should have been this deep into the hills.

  Upstream, near the source, men were digging.

  In late summer, the forest floor was usually dry and littered with wind-blown duff. Every stride had a twig to step on and, if that wasn’t enough, a man’s progress could be tracked from half a mile just by watching the hip-high cloud of dust and desiccated pollen that dogged him through the scrub. But today they found an ally in the recent rains that had dampened the carpet of tinder-dry needles. The squad kept to the woods, using the evergreen branches as both cover and a barrier to the little sound they made in their passage between the silent boles. Within a hand’s time, they were above the vé’hó’e camp.

  The damage to the creekbed was obvious, even from this distance. From the spring that bubbled out of the ground, a bowshot up the hillside, down to the first small pond it formed along its downward run, trees had been felled and the earth had been scooped aside.

  George recognized the setup at once. A rough sluice made from split pinewood brought water from the pond around to a wash-pit where it could flow over screens and pans, rinse away the silt and leave just stones, gravel, and—the workers hoped—gold.

  Vincent had described the technique at length, back when he was teaching the People how to pan and mine gold, back when he was working with them; but never had George imagined it would be so...rapacious. The reality, even on this small a scale, surprised him.

  “I do not see them,” Red Arrow said.

  “Gone?” Limps asked.

  George scanned the encampment that lay between them and the sluice-work. Equipment—barrows, spades, and picks—stood in orderly stacks, but nowhere did he see a pot, a pan, or a bag of beans.

  “Hard to say,” he said. “They may have left last night, or just a moment ago.”

  “No way to tell from here,” Whistling Elk said.

  They crept down the slope, spread out in an irregular line. There was no movement from anywhere within the camp or along the creekbank. With signs, Red Arrow called a halt a stone’s throw from the clearing. George studied the area but could not see any sign of recent occupation. Chickadees and siskins flitted across the clearing without concern. A fox squirrel bounced through the sunlit clearing, stopping to sniff at a pile of refuse in his quest for food.

  From his place behind the thick spruce trunk, Red Arrow rose and signed Hold. Slowly, he stepped out into the clearing.

  Nothing.

  He dashed over to the firepit. Cold, he signed, and looked around, listening. The rest of the squad emerged from the treeline.

  Gunfire broke the stillness, a volley of rifle fire from the high ground opposite. George heard the thump of bullets hitting soil, hitting wood, hitting flesh. They dashed for cover as more shots were fired, one on the next in quick, rapid rhythm: tut-tut-tut-tut, then another burst in a ragged volley. George and Whistling Elk grabbed a fallen comrade and headed to the trees.

  “There are so many!” Red Arrow said.

  “No,” George said. “It is a small group plus one man using a machine rifle. One man can fire as twenty. But where is he?” He searched the slope beyond the camp but could see nothing. “There should be smoke. Lots of smoke.”

  Gunfire came again, peppering the trees. Bark flew and ricocheted bullets sang past. Some smoke drifted out of the far trees, but not enough to give away their opponents’ emplacement. Smokeless powder, George realized. He looked at the men around him. Crooked Creek’s leg was badly wounded, and Limps was wrapping a graze to the meat of his upper arm. Red Arrow had blood on his face from a cut to his scalp.

  “We need that machine rifle,” George said.

  Red Arrow grinned. “No one will say that my son put up a better fight than I did,” he said.

  The others grinned in agreement.

  They bound Crooked Creek’s wounds and retreated to the safety of the deep wood. Then they split into two groups and headed out to either flank; George went with the first group, creeping low through the brush and downed branches along the far side of the creek, while the others moved high along the ridge. It did not take long to reach their positions, and when George heard the probing gunfire from the high ground, the vé’hó’e became an easy target as they struggled to turn the machine rifle in the rugged terrain.

  “Mine,” Limps said, running up the hillside. He used the point on the base of his war club to spit the first man, pulled it free, and swung the head to crush the ear of the gunner. Then the woods erupted with men and soldiers, vé’hó’e and Cheyenne, slicing, stabbing, shouting. Red Arrow hooked a knife behind an Iron Shirt’s knee and Whistling Elk shot the man through the heart, while Limps and his fellows brought their fell handiwork down upon the others.

  One of the men shouted to his fellows and raised his weapon—a revolver. George grinned. Once an officer, always an officer.

  “Mine!” he cried, raised his rifle to high bayonet position, and charged. The revolver found its aim. George ducked low and lunged. The pistol’s report was loud above his head, but off its mark. George’s shoulder hit the man in the hip, sending him sprawling. Whirling on his knees, he smacked the man’s gun with his rifle butt, breaking fingers and grip in one move. He stopped, barrel aimed at the man’s head. Quickly, all was still.

  George surveyed the ruin around him. Red Arrow’s brother grimaced, a hand covering a wound in his side. Limps winced and squinted, the only admission of pain he ever showed. Others bore scrapes and cuts and far more blood than any one of them owned. The Iron Shirts—for that was what they surely were—lay dead except for the officer at the end of George’s rifle sight.

  But something was missing. He checked the faces of the dead, and did not find what he sought.

  “Where is D’Avignon?” he asked the man at his feet.

  The man cradled his crushed hand. “No habla,” he mumbled.

  “Vincent D’Avignon,” he said, digging deep for the word he wanted. “¿Dónde? ¿Dónde está Vincent D’Avignon?”

  “No sé,” the man said, shaking his head. “No sé.”

  “¿No sé?” he said. He kicked the man in th
e ribs and pushed the barrel of his rifle up under his chin. “¿No sé?”

  “What are you doing?” Whistling Elk asked, coming up behind George.

  “He says he doesn’t know where Long Teeth is. He doesn’t say ‘Who?’ Not ‘What do you mean?’ No. He says ‘I don’t know where he is.” Whistling Elk’s face was impassive. “Don’t you see?” George asked. “Long Teeth is behind this.”

  “We know.”

  George felt a surmounting anger build within him. “No, you don’t understand. It’s more than just this. More than just these men, this operation, that machine rifle. He’s behind all of this.”

  “And beating this man? What will that do?”

  George looked at Whistling Elk, then noticed that all the others were looking at him as well, their faces hard, eyes steady, observing him.

  “Nothing,” George said. “Beating this man does nothing.”

  Red Arrow stepped forward. “Then kill this trespasser and be done with him.”

  George looked at the Spanish officer, led here by the machinations of Vincent D’Avignon, convinced by promises of gold to risk his life in forbidden territory. The officer’s eyes pleaded, but George had no pity.

  “Judge, jury, executioner,” he said.

  The rifle kicked.

  Alejandro was staring through cigar smoke at D’Avignon when he heard the walker’s roar. He stood from his seat at the field table to look out across the prairie. The sunset lit the rolling grassland with bloody light and the shell of night had begun to darken in the east, but the approaching walker with its phalanx of whistlers was impossible to miss. A cloud of dust followed them, as if they were dragging a set of harrows to plow under the golden grass.

  “Explain,” he ordered D’Avignon. “They’ll be here in two minutes and I want to know what you’ve gotten us into.”