Monsters of Our Own Making

by L. E. Erickson

  Down the hill, Governor Harrison herded his three visiting dignitaries toward the walnut grove. The two Army officers, one short and one tall, remained pretty much where they’d been, between the Crowmakers line and the blood-soaked ground where the Shawnee had been massacred. They stood with elbows bent and hands half-lifted, as if they prepared to do something about the murder raining from the sky but then froze in indecision about what exactly that something should be.

  Tucker Ellis back-pedaled up the hill, following the same path Bradley had taken, closing in on the line of Crowmakers. As if there was something he could do that the rest of them weren’t already trying.

  Over the Army camp, Ackermann’s Crow arced over its pursuers and fell into another downward sweep.

  A sick feeling closed around Ger’s throat. “Cover!” He shouted toward the men at the bottom of the hill, at the same time reaching for the link in the back of his mind.

  It won’t matter. Another Crow up there, trying to herd Ackermann’s rogue, it won’t make a bit of difference.

  Ger reached anyhow. He let go of Colley’s reins, and the freed horse took off the same direction Rawle’s had gone, into the trees and away from the madness.

  Can’t blame it. Ger’s whole body itched with wanting to be somewhere else.

  Keeping his vision in his own head, Ger launched his Crow from the back of his saddle.

  Ackermann’s Crow out-flew its pursuit and reached the nadir of its dive, right over the row of benches and chairs where Harrison and his complement had been sitting.

  Its ammo has to run out soon. Dear Lord, please let its ammo run out.

  The Crow opened fire.

  12

  Harrison and his three silver-haired dignitaries sprinted for the cover of the forest surrounding the estate. The tails of their expensive waistcoats flapped behind them.

  They got as far as the edge of Harrison’s prized walnut grove.

  Those trees were the whole reason Harrison had picked this spot for his estate, Ger had heard. Prime location, along the Wabash and surrounded by walnut trees.

  The Crow didn’t care, not about prized trees or anything else. Bark splintered and flew. Foliage shredded, exploding into clouds of green debris. The green globes of not-quite-ripened walnuts shattered and burst. The Crow strafed the clearing and straight into the trees, missing nothing.

  Then its guns fell silent, leaving behind the sound of cracking branches as it crashed through the walnut trees’ crowns in an upward arc. On the ground beneath, four twisted bodies in blood-drenched waistcoats stretched unmoving arms toward the bullet-blasted trunks mere feet away. The two Army officers had joined the already-fallen Shawnee in the scarlet mud of the treaty clearing, one tall and one short, still side by side in death.

  Pulverized tree matter drifted toward earth, dragging through a heavy crimson mist.

  “In the house! Go, God damn it, go!”

  Bradley’s voice, somewhere behind Ger and still shouting.

  Get into your Crow. Get out there and do something!

  The link in Ger’s head stood open, a cool sense that was both presence and emptiness in the back of his mind. He felt its location above him, rising above his horse, waiting for Ger to give it additional direction. Ger hesitated, glanced once more to his left.

  Kellen’s horse tried to dance, but she had the reins wrapped around one fist. Her .36 wavered in her free hand, barrel pointed skyward, not aimed at anything but at the ready. Goodson had managed to drag Ackermann from his horse—both their horses were long gone, no doubt into the trees with Rawle’s and Colley’s. Goodson kneeled with his full weight on Ackermann’s gun arm, pinning the .36-holding hand to the ground.

  Ackermann lay flat on his back, staring toward the sky with that eerily blank expression. He didn’t struggle. He didn’t seem to even notice that a full grown man was crushing his arm. His free hand lay open in the dirt beside him, palm up and unmoving.

  Staring at the sky.

  The sky.

  Ger closed his eyes, because that made the initial shift from his own head to the Crow’s easier sometimes. Faster, and fast was good right now.

  It won’t matter. It’s too late. Ger ignored that along with the accompanying urge to let his horse carry him into the trees and far away.

  Because it’s our turn now. We’re next.

  “Dale! Please!” Goodson’s voice, close enough to be disorienting as Ger’s vision opened far overhead. The ground fell away beneath his sight, the dark roof of the mansion and the neat rows of Army tents, the shattered line of horses and gray uniforms and the great splotches of gore and stillness that marked Ackermann’s path of destruction.

  To the southwest, toward the thread of river spinning beyond the heavy green of forest canopy, three sets of black wings. Above Ger, another set of wings, larger because they were closer.

  Its trajectory told Ger it wasn’t coming for the Crowmakers, not yet. It aimed toward the mansion.

  No time for strategy. No time for thought. Ger threw every ounce of his awareness into his own Crow. Tilted, angling sharply, and pointed his Crow’s nose at Ackermann’s Crow. Flew, moving his wings with as much speed as he could muster.

  Blue filled Ger’s vision, a bright and cloudless mid-morning sky with a patch of knife-edge black at its center.

  Moving away. Ger adjusted his path, just a tilt to the side and back on course.

  The black loomed larger. Closer. Filled all of Ger’s sight.

  Impact shuddered through his vision. The crack of impact reached his own ears, far below.

  Gasps. More shouting. Those came from the ground, from behind Ger’s physical body. Crying, too. Woven between words and harsher sounds, the fearful trill of weeping.

  The sky jittered, bouncing around Ger’s vision through his Crow. Spinning.

  Falling. Which way is up?

  A snatch of green provided a landmark. Ger pulled at the link in his mind here, pushed there, reoriented and looped higher as his Crow turned back for another run at Ackermann’s.

  “Shit.” Jennett’s voice came from just beside Ger, down on the ground. “Son of a bitch!”

  Ger saw what Jennett already had. Ackermann’s Crow had recovered already. The other three Crows hurtled past Ger’s, hard on its tail, but even after Ger’s delay, too much sky lay between them and Ackermann’s Crow.

  On the ground below, a broken line of black hats and gray uniforms on horseback. Beyond them, the mansion’s pristine white steps. As soon as Ackermann’s Crow passed the Crowmakers’ line, the mansion would be in range of its guns.

  On the porch, people shoved their way through the mansion’s great double doors but a handful remained outside. Ger had bought them time, but maybe not enough.

  “Go,” Ger whispered. “Go, go, go.”

  Ger cranked on the link in his head. His Crow dove after the others.

  We can’t get there in time. Can’t do a thing.

  He kept going anyhow.

  On the ground below, Vincent Bradley stood at the edge of the porch, feet planted and .36 held double-handed in front of him. The barrel pointed, unwavering, at Ackermann’s approaching Crow.

  He won’t do anything but maybe block a few bullets from hitting someone else for a few seconds. We’re too little, too late, every last one of us.

  Behind Bradley, Annie James looked back, black eyes wide and face contorted as her father planted both hands on her shoulders and shoved her through the door.

  “Shoot him!” Jennett. Shouting, but a nearness of tears wavered through his typical coarseness. “Just fucking shoot him!”

  Kellen.

  A gunshot. Just one, somewhere to the left of Ger’s ears on the ground.

  Ackermann’s Crow passed over the Crowmakers’ line, angled straight at the mansion’s porch. Ger tensed for the inevitable flurry of gunfire, waited for bullets to riddle Bradley’s body.

  Ackermann’s Crow tipped its wings, one jerk that it righted, then a second and longer
wobble.

  Ger held his breath.

  The Crow’s nose dipped. Its wobble became a spin, wings limp as its body tumbled.

  Heavy black metal crashed into the mansion’s white steps with a sound like an axe striking wood. Shards of white splintered and flew around its impact.

  At the top of the steps, Bradley lifted one hand in front of his face. But even then, his .36 stayed trained on the fallen Crow.

  For a long moment, Ger thought silence had fallen. He held his breath and counted seconds in his head. Waited.

  Ackermann’s Crow remained still. Bradley edged down the steps and bent, grabbed the Crow by one wing and flipped it. Snatched open the ammunition hatch on its back and then, only then, holstered his .36 and used both hands to shake the dead Crow. Bullets fell from its opened gut.

  Gradually, sound crept into Ger’s awareness, rising from the silence he’d imagined like tendrils of fog—weeping, ragged voices high-pitched with horror and grief, rising at the end in questions that might have no answers.

  13

  August 1806

  Indiana Territory: Tecumseh’s Town

  By noon, Tenskwatawa had retreated to his lodge once more. Once more, he had dismissed Laughing Girl. She sat outside his hide-covered door, quillwork in her lap and fingers moving over it.

  Despite Laughing Girl’s appearance of busy-ness, Wind Man felt her unhappiness like a cold current in the humid summer air, even before he drew near enough that his footfalls caught her attention. As her face lifted toward him, Wind Man stopped, miserable in his knowledge of how much greater he was about to make her unhappiness.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Husband.”

  “Wife.” Wind Man infused the word with every bit of affection and kindness he carried in his heart. Do not be angry with me, he longed to say. Do not hold your father’s decisions against me.

  Laughing Girl looked from Wind Man’s face to the blanketed door of Tenskwatawa’s lodge. The furrow between her eyes deepened.

  “He has sent for you.” Her words fell like a handful of dropped stones. She did not look again at Wind Man but instead returned her attention to her quillwork.

  Wind Man cast about for words which would erase Laughing Girl’s frown, perhaps even return a smile to her mouth. Finding none, he sighed and simply stepped directly to the door instead.

  The interior of Tenskwatawa’s lodge remained much as it had the night before. The fire pit held no fire. Smoke wafted from a stone bowl to one side of the cold fire pit.

  Despite the cedar and sage smoke, the air inside the lodge tasted like an old river and pressed against Wind Man’s skin as if filled with a weight of water. His stomach soured.

  Whatever the incense that burned, Tenskwatawa did not kneel before it. He paced, with nearly as much vigor as Laughing Girl had the night before. The scarlet bandana around his head sat askew, as if hurriedly wound by shaking hands. He wore very little of his usual ornamentation.

  When Tenskwatawa saw Wind Man, he ceased in his pacing. He waited until the hides had dropped into place behind Wind Man, covering the doorway.

  “Son of my father.” Tenskwatawa spoke the traditional greeting as if by rote. And then, without preamble, he added, “I am ill at ease.”

  The sour feeling in Wind Man’s stomach tripled. From any man, such words might be troubling. From Tenskwatawa—ferociously defensive, fiercely refusing to admit weakness—they were perhaps reason for real fear.

  He has taught his people as well as he can. Despite his failings, he has done more for us than any man.

  And so Wind Man fought to set aside his own doubts and fill the space they left with compassion, instead. “What is it that concerns you, my brother?” he asked.

  “I have been blind.” Tenskwatawa turned toward the stone incense bowl and stared as if pondering some mystery. “But I see now, and I cannot un-see. I cannot un-see my foolishness. My pride.”

  Wind Man gave the incense bowl a second look and saw what he had missed at first. So many times of late, there had been the white deerskin with the crystal-laced gray stone sitting at its center. Indeed, the white deerskin lay, as always, beside the incense.

  But the skin did not lie open. It remained wrapped, corners folded tightly inward. Sinews had been lashed around it, so that it could not fall open. Indeed, a great deal of effort would be needed to unbind it now.

  Around that bundle lay four others, smaller and newer-made. Protective medicine bundles, like those the Master of Life had bade them to destroy. Like those Tenskwatawa had convinced Wind Man to aid in burning.

  The smell in the lodge grew stronger, a stagnant scent of too-still water and rotting fish. And something… more, although Wind Man couldn’t decide if that more was a scent or a sound.

  Tenskwatawa jerked as if pinched. His eyes widened. He shook his head.

  “Tecumseh will return.” The words left Wind Man’s mouth with little thought. “All will be well.”

  “Perhaps.” Tenskwatawa showed not even a twinge of irritation at the suggestion that Tecumseh would be necessary to set things right.

  But long-attuned to the delicacy of the power balance between the brothers, Wind Man quickly added, “With your help, of course. With the Master—”

  “No!” Tenskwatawa shook his head so violently that his bandana slipped away from his ruined left eye, exposing a scar-covered socket. “I have made a mistake. A terrible mistake. I cannot do what they say. I cannot be led by that which does not have the best interests of our people at heart.”

  The intensity of Tenskwatawa’s fear rolled through Wind Man, striking him speechless and unable to move.

  Tenskwatawa leaned in. His empty eye filled Wind Man’s vision. “Whatever power they promise, I cannot give them what they ask.” Tenskwatawa half-turned and pointed behind him, toward the tightly-wrapped white deerskin. “They are chained. They must remain so.”

  The air inside the lodge thrummed, as if filled with angry but unseen wasps. The old-river stink redoubled its efforts to sicken Wind Man.

  Breathless, Wind Man struggled but at last rediscovered his voice. “‘They.’ But the Master of Life—”

  Again Tenskwatawa leaned in. Again, the scarred flesh of his ruined eye filled Wind Man’s vision.

  “It is not the Master of Life with which we deal.”

  IV: Then Came the Rain

  1

  August 1806

  Indiana Territory: Grouseland

  How many times had Vincent stood in a room very much like this one—polished wood floor, heavy walnut door, yellow damask drapes bright alongside embellished wallpaper. How many times with his heels pressed together and eyes forward, waiting silently while Ellis decided what his orders would be?

  The difference this time was in the persistent hush of voices outside the closed door, sometimes laced with a sniffling or quickly-caught sob. Most of the outright wailing and weeping had finished earlier in the day. Although with sunset’s glow over the Wabash to the west and night coming on, Vincent supposed there might come renewed outbursts. Things you thought you’d come to accept by harsh daylight had a way of sneaking up on you all over again in the dark.

  In the meantime, Ellis sat in a high-backed chair at Governor William Henry Harrison’s desk.

  Former governor’s former desk. Guess he won’t be needing it anymore.

  Ellis grasped a quill pen in one hand and held a sheet of fine parchment firmly in place with the other as the pen’s nib scratched its surface. A lit lamp cast a pool of illumination onto the desk’s surface. With the curtains closed as they were, the rest of Harrison’s study lay in near-darkness already.

  With the dark would come cool, though. Maybe some of the slaughter house scent that thickened the air, even with all the windows in the study shut tight, would dissipate along with the day’s heat. The steady snick and scratch of shovels in the distance made Vincent hope that by morning most of the bodies would be in the dirt. Maybe that would help with the smell, too.

&
nbsp; A whole hell of a lot of other things it wouldn’t help with.

  “You understand the seriousness of this situation.” Ellis inked a final flourish at the bottom of the parchment sheet and returned the pen to its stand.

  As Ellis sanded the finished writing, he looked up and directly into the shock-wide eyes of Ewen Ames, the current commanding officer of the Army regiments currently at Grouseland. Despite his new position of power as highest-ranking living officer—courtesy a whole bunch of dead higher-ranking men—the shirt beneath Ames’s blue coat carried smears of dirt and blood. He blinked and twitched, like he wanted to squirm under Ellis’s stare.

  Know that feeling. Know it well. And while Vincent’s uniform was charcoal gray instead of Army blue, similar stains marred his shirt. Every time Vincent allowed himself to think about that, the urge struck him to strip down and scrub at his clothes until the blood washed away. He’d managed, mostly, to not allow himself to think about it.

  “Once they learn of Tecumseh’s death, the Shawnee at Tecumseh’s Town will not hesitate to strike at us—at Grouseland and at every United States settlement and homestead between there and here.” Ellis leaned forward across Harrison’s desk as he spoke. “The Crowmakers are the only force strong enough and close enough to stop them.”

  The Crowmakers are the reason we’re in this mess to begin with. Vincent did not, of course, say that out loud. Ellis had lost no time in reassuring Ames and every other surviving soldier that Ellis had everything under control. That they could better serve their country by setting things right than by worrying about blame.

  To Vincent, Ellis’s true intention was clear. It was all about saving his own skin. Vincent felt not a single twinge of surprise about that.

  “Yes, sir.” The soldier’s voice wavered. He twitched again.

  The civilians at the mansion, in shock and therefore easily impressionable, had been mostly convinced that they saw something different than what they actually saw—that the Shawnee had opened fire on Harrison, that Ackermann’s Crow had stopped the Indians, that the army somehow got caught up in the crossfire. The scene had been chaos, and probably especially so from the mansion. From the Army camp too, Vincent reluctantly allowed.