From a High Tower

by Mercedes Lackey

  She pulled the bed-curtains aside and hopped down onto the floor of the wagon. Last night she had filled her bucket, kettle and pitcher for the washbasin with the water from the barrel at the tongue of the wagon. Now she put the kettle on the spirit lamp to heat while she considered her clothing. There was her own hunting outfit that she had taken off, brushed out, and set aside last night . . .

  But I am supposed to be one of these people, she thought, picking up the skirt and frowning at it. I should start looking like them.

  So instead, she selected a skirt that appeared to be made of a gold-colored canvas, a lighter-weight fringed shirt to go with it, and leggings to go under that. The skirt was, by her standards, scandalously short, but she supposed the leggings made it more modest, and like the skirt of her hunting suit, it had been split for riding astride. Both the shirt and the skirt were much softer than she had expected canvas to be, and showed signs of having been altered. She poured some of her heated water into the washbasin, added cold, and gave herself a quick scrub, then put on the new clothing. It was . . . well, surprisingly comfortable.

  Dressed, she unbraided her hair, combed it out, and braided it up again. It didn’t seem to be growing as fast. And . . . now that she was here . . . she certainly didn’t feel as tense as she had been since her encounter with the Hauptmann.

  And the moment she remembered that, she had to put one hand on the table and the other on her stomach, feeling a little . . . sick. And guilty again. No matter what Tante Gretchen had said, a man was dead, and she was responsible for him being dead. Nothing was going to change that.

  But nothing is going to bring him back, either, she reminded herself.

  So when the sick feeling passed, she took a deep breath, stood a little straighter and went out to find the mess tent.

  The sun had just barely cleared the horizon, the air was fresh and crisp, and the sounds of people and animals echoed from every part of the camp. The camp was now altogether awake, with people heading in the same direction that she was, men washing, shaving, bustling about half-dressed. There was no sign of the women, but she suspected they were either clearing up their tents or wagons, or dressing in more privacy than the men seemed to need.

  She made a turn that she remembered and found herself not only at the edge of the Indian encampment, but nearly face-to-face with Leading Fox.

  “Rawah, Kiwaku Rahiraskaawarii,” she said without thinking. Then her hand flew to her mouth as she realized that she had greeted him in Pawnee!

  And she also understood in that moment that the real translation of his name was more complicated than “Leading Fox.” “Fox Roaming the World In The Lead” or “As The Leader.” Given how far he was from home . . . well that seemed almost supernaturally apt.

  “Guten Morgen, Fraulein Giselle,” Leading Fox replied, with an almost imperceptible smile and in faultless German. “I told you we would have each others’ tongues in the morning.”

  “But why could you not have done this with Herr Kellerman?” she asked. And then snapped her fingers. “Of course. Because he is not a—” she sought in her new language for the right word for “Elemental Master” “—a Medicine Chief.”

  “Even so.” Leading Fox nodded. “Now that I have mastery of your tongue, however, I shall use a similar, but longer means to give it to the Captain. Even though I trust Herr Kellerman, there should be more than one of our company that speaks both German and English.”

  “And Pawnee?” she asked. Leading Fox smiled a very little.

  “Captain Cody is the genuine article, a working Scout,” Fox replied, this time in English. “He speaks tolerable Pawnee of both dialects, Apache in Chirakawa and Mescalaro, and Lakota Sioux. I believe he has a few words in several other languages.”

  “Enough to get by. Mornin’ Fox, Miz Giselle.” The Captain himself strolled around the side of a tent in the “cowboy” section and tipped his hat to her. “Looks like your witchery worked.”

  “Tolerably, old friend. Tolerably. Shall we escort our new sharpshooter to breakfast before the plague of locusts devours everything in sight?” Leading Fox replied with a faintly raised eyebrow. With a laugh, Cody pulled off his hat and waved them ahead of him.

  As soon as she entered the mess tent, Giselle realized that Leading Fox’s wry comment about “the plague of locusts” was not altogether out of line. Unlike last night, when people had been eating methodically, but not ravenously, the members of the show seemed to be frantically gulping down food as fast as they could. Bracketed between Fox and Cody, she was at least able to get her tin dish full of fried eggs, bread, and bacon without being trampled, although she was unable to reach the pancakes being served, and there were already piles of tin mugs and pots of coffee waiting at the table where Cody guided her. She took her place at the end, next to a dark-complexioned woman with a great mass of blue-black hair who greeted her with a cheerful “Buenos dias, senorita,” and went back to eating eggs with some sort of flat, thin, pancake-like bread.

  “Right, now that we can palaver, I can tell you where you’ll be fittin’ inter the show,” Cody said, after pouring his cup, Fox’s, and hers full of black, steaming coffee. “Sugar?”

  “Please—” she said, and dumped two lumps into the ebony liquid.

  “You’ll come in with the Grand Parade, of course. We’ll gussy up your mare to look like ours. Then there’s the cattle drive, the campfire and songs, then the Injuns attack and stampede the cattle. You’ll come on after that for some straight-up target-shootin’. Then we’ll have the Injun war dance. You’ll be a squaw—we got black wigs you can wear, if you can stuff your hair under one. We ain’t got any real Injun gals—” here he glanced over at Fox, who nodded.

  “Only our men were willing to travel so far from home,” Leading Fox said, quietly. “There are few enough Pawnee as it is. The Mexican ladies have been standing in for Pawnee women.”

  “I figgered since you kin speak Pawnee now, you wouldn’t mind bein’ a Injun in the show,” Cody added. “Anyway, after the war dance, the camp packs up an’ the settler wagon comes on, an’ the Injuns attack the settlers. The cowpokes drive ’em off, everybody leaves th’ arena, an’ then you do a trick-shot turn, finishin’ up with the mirror shot. Then we got the bandits attackin’ the stage, then the cowpokes an’ Injuns do trick-ridin’, then the Mexicans do the Grand Quadrille on horseback, an’ you’re part of that.”

  “But . . .” she began to object. “My horse doesn’t—”

  “Don’ worry yer head ’bout that,” Cody said, breezily. “You’ll use the Quadrille hoss. The hoss already knows the routine, the old cayuse could do it in his sleep. All you need t’do is sit on him an’ look purdy. You’ll be takin’ the place of young Ned, an’ I reckon he’ll be right grateful that he ain’t got to wear a dress no more.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh at that, because she could well imagine the sort of mockery this Ned fellow must be getting from his fellow “cowpokes.”

  “Then I’ll do trick-shootin’, we get trick-ropin’ from Texas Tom, we have us a little rodeo with the cowpokes, the broncs, and the bulls, then you come do mounted trick-shots against me, an’ we finish up with another Grand Parade. Two shows, one afternoon, and one evenin’.”

  That was going to be a lot of work . . . but they were paying her a lot of money. “When do I actually join the show?” she asked.

  “Soon’s you catch on. You’ll be in the Grand Parades, the Quadrille an’ the war dance at least today, but the rest’ll be whenever yer up to it. We have a run-through in the morning right after breakfast, then lunch, then open up soon as lunch’s done.” Cody eyed her outfit. “That’ll do fer rehearsal, but you’ll need costume changes inter fancier duds fer each turn.”

  “Turn?” she said blankly.

  “A ‘turn’ is when you come into the arena,” Fox explained, before Cody could. “That is why you have all of thos
e costumes. The women will fashion you more, as needed. Two sharpshooter costumes, one of the buckskin or cloth dresses when you are a Pawnee, and the dress for the Grand Quadrille should serve you well enough for now.”

  Cody finished all but inhaling his breakfast, and stood up from the table. “We’ll start the run-through in a half hour or so,” he said. “Foller me, I’ll show you where we stable the hosses, your gal’ll be there.”

  Well, she knew from Karl May’s books that Americans were brisk, but she’d had no notion what that meant until now! She left her breakfast dishes in the washtub and hurried after Cody. Sure enough, Lebkuchen was snugly stabled up with the other show horses in a spacious tent and seemed quite content with her lot in life. Following Cody’s example, she got Lebkuchen saddled and bridled, but led, rather than rode, her to the big show tent.

  There was an entirely separate entrance, concealed from the public, as she had expected. Things were nothing like as regimented and organized as they had been for the show. Only about half the band was in the stands, and instead of being closed, the “stage curtains” at the entrance to the arena were pulled wide open and tied in place. Without an audience in it, the tent seemed bigger and emptier than she had remembered it being.

  “Since you’re our other big attraction, you’ll start off the Grand Parade right after the color-guard,” Cody said, as the other show folk arrived and arranged themselves outside the tent for the run-through. On first glance it looked utterly chaotic, but as she watched, the chaos sorted itself out and no one seemed to get in anyone else’s way. “We’ll do the same plain target-shootin’ that ya did when you showed us what you could do, an’ end with fillin’ the bull’s-eye of the last target. That’ll be your first solo turn. Then the trick-shot turn’ll be clay targets, shootin’ the center out of a coin, an’ finish with the mirror shot. Anythin’ else you kin think of, talk ter Ned. Yer other shootin’ turn’ll be on yer mare. We’ll have knockdown targets set up at the band-end of the arena. You kin shoot a pistol, right?”

  “I don’t have as much exper—” she began, but Cody waved that away breezily.

  “’Tween yer Elementals an’ yer own good aim, shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll make three passes each. You ain’t a trick-rider, so we’ll settle fer goin’ at the gallop. Later on I’ll teach you some trick-ridin’ an’ that’ll make it more innerestin’.” She must have looked alarmed at that, because he laughed. “Don’ worry. It’s mostly a matter’f not fallin’ off.”

  And with that not-very-comforting “encouragement,” the run-through began.

  It was nothing like the show. People were half-costumed, sometimes even half-clothed, and they laughed and talked, and even ate and drank while they waited for their turn to perform. Only one buffalo and one longhorn cow stood in for the entire herds. No one galloped, or even trotted. Only when actual tricks were rehearsed did anyone seem serious about what they were doing. Fox led her out for the “Indian war dance,” positioned her at a drum, and told her to follow the other drummers. Dutifully, she did, discovering that the other two “squaws” were both of the Mexican ladies who had altered her costumes for her. All the real Pawnee but one danced, plus four Mexican men; the drummers were all whites or Mexicans.

  It is a good thing my hair is not anything like as long as it was before I set off on this journey, she thought, contemplating the impossibility of cramming four braids, each as long as she was tall, under a wig. I shall have to procure a pair of scissors and keep it trimmed every night!

  It turned out not to be at all hard to follow the somewhat monotonous drumming of the only Pawnee who did not dance. The singing was something else entirely, and although the Mexican women sang along with the drummer and dancers, she kept her mouth shut and just listened.

  The first thing she knew at once—because she understood Pawnee—was that this was no war song. The words were simple, interspersed with sounds that she understood served the same purpose of carrying the song as the meaningless melodic syllables of European songs. The words were very simple, repeated several times, interspersed with the “hey-yo” sounds that comprised most of the tune. “Father is good. He gave me a pipe. He is good.” The giving of a pipe, she knew from Karl May, and also from those dream fragments, was a matter of great honor and occasion, so this was something of an important song. Of course, she wondered why the Indians were dancing to this, and not to a real war song, but she resolved to ask this of Leading Fox when they were somewhere more private. It was astonishing how so few voices managed to fill the entire empty show tent with their haunting cries.

  The “squaws packed up the camp”—which consisted of a couple of props and the drums—and the Indians took their horses and rode around the arena three times, making no attempt at the bloodcurdling war cries they had done for the show. Then they exited, and the settlers and the stagecoach entered to circle the arena, camp, be attacked by the Indians and be rescued.

  And now it was time for her first trick-shot performance.

  Directed by Cody, she rode Lebkuchen into the center of the ring where someone had set up a portable gun stand with three identical rifles on it. Above her was the great expanse of the tent roof. The arena was empty except for herself, her helper, her horse, the gun stand and the targets at the band-end of the tent. To her great pleasure, the rifles were all the same as that carbine she had used to prove herself. There was a man in an outfit of fringed buckskin and an animal-skin hat waiting beside the stand. He took Lebkuchen’s reins once she had dismounted and handed her the first rifle.

  “Mornin’ missy,” he said, with a grin that showed he was lacking a tooth in front. “I’m Ned Toller. I’m more or less the stage manager. These here are Winchester repeating rifles. They hold fifteen shots each. Now what yer gonna do here, is take a shot at each one of those five targets. Then we’ll move back, you’ll take another five shots, and move back a third time, and you’ll take another five. Each time, we’ll take off the targets and five folks’ll ride around the ring displayin’ ’em. Then we’ll pull the rabbit across the end an’ yer gonna shoot it fifteen times. We’ll just call out how many times ya hit it. Then we’ll move all the way back, and yer gonna shoot one target fifteen times, an’ we’ll ride it around so people kin see how ya did.”

  Now by this point, the entire company had gathered at the target end of the arena—at a more-than-safe distance from the targets themselves, in her estimation, but certainly near enough to see whether or not she hit. She suppressed a smile. None of them, other than Kellermann, Fox and Cody, had any idea of how good she was. And Kellermann had told her that she was much better than her predecessor. She knew she was about to impress them, thanks to the sylphs. As she waited for Kellermann to finish introducing her, a thought occurred to her. It would be a very good thing if she could firm her own concentration over the forces of the Air enough that she could do without the sylphs—just in case.

  By this time, the upper reaches of the tent were full of sylphs, drawn by all the excitement. She sent a brief thought toward them—If you please, your assistance in this matter?—and the white-winged one she recognized from yesterday gathered up three of her sisters and wafted down to the firing line.

  Then she settled the lovely rifle to her shoulder, sighted in on the target, and went to work. Five shots—and five bull’s-eyes—later, she and her helper moved back about ten paces. By the time she had emptied the first rifle, there were cheers and great excitement after every shot. By the time she finished perforating the poor paperboard rabbit, her audience could scarcely contain itself. And when she finished by rapidly filling the bull’s-eye of the last target with lead, there were hats in the air, and the company was racing across the flattened, dusty grass to congratulate her. This time, of course—as she resolved to do at every actual show—she had taken no chances. She was not altogether certain how much the sylphs had assisted her, but until she could figure out how to do what they did, she had n
o intention of doing without their help.

  And while she had shot, she had been thinking of trick-shots she could make for her second “turn.”

  She had more time to think about that while the other acts ran through their paces; she watched from the vantage point of the parted tent flaps until it was time for her horseback “dance.” The horse was gentle and regarded her placidly as she mounted, and took its place in the line of the rest to parade in without any prompting on her part. And as Cody had promised, she had to do exactly nothing for the Grand Quadrille except not fall off the horse. In fact, the one time she had actually moved the reins a little the horse had turned his head to look at her with such an outraged expression that she and the others had all laughed.

  So when everyone took a break for drinks of water, and Ned Toller turned up to ask her just what tricks she was doing besides shooting tossed clay targets and the mirror trick, she had an answer for him.

  The bandsmen had come down out of the bandstand, and she was standing beside Lebkuchen, watching as Texas Tom worked with his rope until he was satisfied with it. Ned strolled across the arena from where he had been consulting with someone and pulled the brim of his hat at her.

  “Figgered what yer trick-shots are gonna be?” he asked. “Clay bustin’, and finish with the mirror, but what’s in between?”

  “I would like to shoot the pips out of a playing card,” she said. “If someone will hold a cigarette, I shall shoot it in half. I shall also shoot a coin, although I cannot guarantee to make a hole in it every time, I can certainly hit it.”

  “Kin ya light a match?” Ned asked. She thought about it, and nodded.

  “Kin ya split a bullet on a axe blade?” His eyes glittered. She wondered if he was trying to trick her.