The Cry of the Wind

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  From Custer’s left, Samuel cleared his throat. “Mister President,” he said.

  Morton blinked at the unsubtle reminder, his eyes squinting at Samuel as if he’d not seen him there previously. But while he did not rise to the bait, neither did he correct his impertinence.

  Custer lifted a hand, inviting his guests to sit in the chairs behind them. Unwillingly, but unable to refuse without rudeness, Morton sat, directing his men to do likewise. Douglas came forward, offering them a drink, which Morton refused. Chaucer gave a wistful look in the direction of the crystal drinkingware, but declined as well.

  Morton looked right at Custer. “What was it you wanted to discuss, Mr. President?”

  Custer noted the slight change in attitude, and felt he had established his control of the situation enough to continue. Steeling himself, he reached out with his left hand and touched the first row of reports.

  “I’ bee’ kee’i up wi’ effor’ in Ter’tory,” he began.

  “I have been keeping up with your efforts in the Territory,” Libbie interpreted for him.

  Morton’s eyes widened. He now understood Libbie’s presence, and the idea of having to deal with Custer through an intermediary was not sitting well with him.

  “Indeed,” he said, trying to cover his surprise.

  “Yes,” Custer said through Libbie’s interpretation. “And I’ve become quite concerned. You are heading down a dangerous path, Levi.”

  “You needn’t worry yourself, Mr. President.”

  “Yes, I do,” Custer insisted.

  Morton sat back in his chair, obviously unsure of the purpose of this meeting. “Mr. President,” he said, “things in the Territories have grown very complex in recent months. I’m not sure you appreciate all of the intricacies of the situation.”

  Custer leaned forward on the elbow of his otherwise useless right arm, inspecting the arrayed reports. “I believe I am completely cognizant of all the details,” he slurred and waited for Libbie’s words to make his meaning clear. “Though my body has been twisted and bound by the assassin’s bullet, I assure you that my mind is clear and my intellect sound.” He pulled one report out from the ranks. “But it does not take a genius to see that you have increased troop strengths in the regions between Mississippi and Missouri rivers, nor a great mind to know the kind of response their presence in that region will elicit from the Alliance.”

  Morton waved a hand, cutting off Libbie mid-word. “This is preposterous,” he said, rising from his seat. “I don’t have time to banter policy with—”

  “You ‘nsuff’ble prick,” Custer said, holding up a hand to forestall Libbie’s translation. He dabbed at the stroke-weakened side of his mouth where saliva gathered and then, putting every effort into his enunciation, said, “You will trea’ th’ Firs’ Lady wi’ proper respect. Now, siddown.”

  Morton wanted to leave. Custer could see it in his eyes. The man may have helped carry New York in the election, but Custer had never liked him, had never cared for his brashness, or his disregard for experience. Since the shooting, Morton’s increased duties had given him a taste for power, and his and Custer’s mutual dislike had bloomed into something more intense. Now that intensity shone from the vice-president’s eyes and he wanted to storm from the library. Only Custer’s position as President kept him in the room.

  Morton sat, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Yancy spoke up to fill the awkward silence. “If I may, Mr. President. We are only continuing in the Territories the strategy of engagement that you yourself initiated.”

  Custer motioned for Libbie to interpret once more. “But on a greatly expanded front, and in so doing, you leave your southern settlements unprotected.”

  “But the southern towns are to our rear.”

  Custer laughed. “I know your service years are well behind you, Yancy, but surely you’ve paid some attention. In fighting the allied tribes, there is no rear.”

  Morton chimed in again. “The savages have left the southern lands alone ever since you began concentrating forces in the north.”

  “Perhaps, but what sort of engagements have you had?” He looked to Yancy. “Only small force engagements, true?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And attacks concentrating on supply shipments?”

  “Also true,” Yancy said, a reluctance growing in his answers.

  “Supplies of weapons?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Morton leaned forward, hands on knees. “What’s your point?”

  “The point,” Custer said, “is that you have yet to encounter a home camp of these people. Instead of the mounted squadrons I’d deployed, you deploy infantry. You have lost more supplies than you have transported, and you have overextended your troops, sending them farther in than you can protect them.”

  Morton smiled. “All that is about to change,” he said. “I have personal assurances from several industrial chiefs that if I can secure the lands this side of the Missouri River, they will back the expansion and settlement.”

  “Settlement means taxes,” Chaucer said, wading in for the first time. “And taxes mean revenue.”

  Yancy continued for Morton. “Thanks to the maps made during your negotiations with the Cheyenne, we have learned the extent of certain rivers and have sent troop steamers deep into the Unorganized Territory. Several columns will soon be heading out onto the plains. They will search for the tribes as they gather for the summer hunts. We’ll be heading due west in four columns. When one column finds the Cheyenne, they’ll contact the others and all will converge. We should have the situation solved within a matter of months.”

  Solved. Custer knew what that kind of wording meant, and he found it sickening. It was one thing to fight combatants, to battle against soldiers and warriors for control of territory, but to overtly and consciously work toward extinguishing an entire people.... Years ago, decades ago, he might have been accepting of that goal. Even in recent years, he’d allowed such an attitude—even encouraged it in subordinates and generals under his command—as long as he could temper it and keep it in hand. But Morton had adopted the idea as policy and was preparing to implement it. Running unchecked, such acts were heinous in the extreme, and without a doubt, Morton was running unchecked. This was not the legacy that Custer wanted to leave behind.

  “I cannot condone this course of action,” Custer said.

  Morton actually sneered. “I thank the President for his concern, but right now, I am the one in charge around here. I shall give your advice all due consideration, sir, but if you will excuse me, other problems require my attention.”

  “Problems like Cuba?” Custer asked through Libbie’s interpretation. Morton stopped mid-stride, foiled in his second attempt to leave the conversation before Custer chose to end it. While the Vice President watched, Custer deftly flipped open the folder and pulled out the thin report contained therein. Ignoring Morton’s gaping stare, Custer leafed through the pages of thin foolscap, grey with densely-packed typing. “I read here that you have increased our support and shipments to the Cuban rebels. Has Congress been apprised?”

  “Where in blazes did you get that?” Morton shouted. “How did you hear it? That’s restricted information! Only I...”

  Custer gave Morton a long look with a calm eye, letting the man’s unfinished sentence hang in the room like a bad smell. Then he looked back to the report.

  “I heard of it, because I asked to hear of it,” Custer said. “Regardless of the fact that you may very well be ‘in charge around here,’ I am still the President. I have been in this house for four years, and was in the other House for years before that, and ‘in charge’ or not, I still have a few friends here and there.” He put the report back in the folder and closed the cover.

  Morton slumped, staring at nothing, trying to understand where he had lost the argument. Custer almost pitied him, but knew that soon, Morton would realize that he’d lost the argument when he’d accepted the meeting, and knew j
ust as well that Yancy and Chaucer would be the ones to bear the brunt of his anger.

  “Now tell me, Levi, why have you increased shipments to the Cuban rebels?”

  Morton lifted a weak hand. “An independent Cuba,” he said, “is the next step in bringing Cuba into the Union.”

  “I agree,” Custer said, and Morton looked up in surprise. “Cuba is on the brink, as near to independence as it’s ever been. But why act now, if the rebels are making progress on their own?”

  “Our interests there,” Morton said. “The Spanish Crown has imposed draconian restrictions on our sugar interests. They’re hurting; the shipments barely pay for themselves now, between costs and tariffs—”

  “And the damage caused by those same rebels you’re supplying.”

  “Yes, perhaps, but it’s a necessary first cost for final victory.”

  “I see,” Custer said, drumming the fingers of his good hand on the table. “I had kept our support of the rebels to a minimum. This increase raises our exposure, and our danger. How do you think Spain will react when they can no longer ignore our supplying an insurrection within their borders? And how will you respond if you have your army wandering around the prairie? ‘To protect everything is to protect nothing,’ a man once said, but to fight everything is to lose everything.”

  Through his daze, Morton sensed the rebuff, and shook off his fog. He straightened, smoothed the hem of his vest, and looked Custer in the eye.

  “If you will excuse me, Mr. President.”

  Custer waved a hand, dismissing him. Morton turned and finally, successfully, escaped the room, his aides following him closely. The door closed behind them.

  Custer coughed, his throat dry. Talking was difficult and he was out of practice. Douglas came forward, pouring him a glass of iced water.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Douglas said. “That man was either whupped too much, or too little; I can’t tell which.”

  Custer sipped the cool water and felt slither down his throat and gullet. He wiped his mouth with his kerchief.

  “I’m not sure either,” Custer said, “but I’m pretty sure he’s going to get whupped again, one way or the other.”

  And if it will keep him from destroying an entire people, he said silently, I’ll do it myself.

  Chapter 16

  Moon When the Whistlers Get Fat, New

  Fifty-seven Years after the Star Fell

  South of the White River

  Alliance Territory

  Storm Arriving knelt with his soldiers in among the cattails at the edge of the creek. The reedstalks creaked against each other, and the air was thick with the moist scents of warm mud, sweaty men, and broad-leaved foliage. With his every move, the soggy ground smacked its lips like an old man before dinner, and with every breeze, the reeds talked volubly among themselves. The soldiers, though, said little.

  He had fewer than a hundred men now, and more left with every phase of the moon. Storm Arriving looked up into a blue sky patched by bright clouds and held up by an even brighter sun. Summer was well upon them. The name of the moon said it all: The Moon when the Whistlers Get Fat. Looking back, toward the lazy creek, he could divine the outlines of their war whistlers, their flanks a striped green to match the reeds, their eyes closed as they soaked up the humid heat. But their whistlers were not growing fat; he knew from riding his own that their frames were lean and muscled, for that is what the soldiers needed: speed and agility, not summertime complacency.

  And out beyond the reeds, out past their hiding place, he heard the approach of the reason for that need.

  Vé’ho’e music was strange to his ear. It had too many tones, all crammed in between the handful of notes that his ear could distinguish, all arranged with intricate precision in short phrases that repeated over and over. He found it confusing and boring at the same time, but he was glad for it because before the bluecoats even appeared, their song announced their coming.

  The sunken creekbed carved its way through a prairie that barely noticed its presence. The hills, thick and green with summer grasses, lay on either side of it like dogs sleeping in the sun. From beyond one such rise a mile distant came the herald song of flute and drum.

  “There,” Whistling Elk said, pointing toward the two scouts who ran in advance of the column.

  “Good,” said Mosquito from his place nearby. “Let’s get this fight over with. It’s time we went home.”

  “Agreed,” said another soldier.

  Storm Arriving frowned. “You cannot leave,” he said. “I need every man here. I need more than every man here.”

  “It is summer,” Mosquito said. “My family needs me, too, and more than you do.”

  “Some must stay,” he said through bared teeth. “The patrols have pulled back to the lands north of the White River. We are the only ones protecting this land. If we leave, the bluecoats will be able to go wherever they wish.”

  “And if I stay much longer, my wife and her mother will die of hunger this winter, because I have not provided them with meat to survive it. Besides, the bluecoats grow in their numbers while we only diminish.”

  “We diminish because soldiers like you leave! And meanwhile, look! Look!” He pointed out toward the column of vé’hó’e that had now appeared from behind the gentle hill.

  The two scouts were a mile ahead of the bluecoats, their eyes scanning the land along the creekbed. Behind them, the men in dark blue wool marched in easy order through the knee-high grass. Unlike previous encounters, this was no supply train or escort for new recruits. These men walked without fear; their raucous song said as much. There were a hundred or more of them, with pack beasts carrying supplies and chiefs riding horses near the rear. Each man carried a pack and a rifle.

  “This will be a hard fight,” Mosquito said.

  Silently, Storm Arriving agreed, and then one of the scouts did something that caught his attention. Like any scout, he trotted for a bit parallel to the creek, then stopped to view the scene, but when he stopped, he also made a motion with his hand.

  “What is he doing?” Whistling Elk asked, noticing, too, the odd behavior.

  It was not at every stop, but only when he was in front of the other scout, with his back shielding his gesture from the others. Storm Arriving squinted, trying to see what the man was doing.

  Running forward, he stopped. His hand in a fist against his chest, he made a motion as if tossing something to the ground and then, hand stiff like a chopping blade, made a forward thrust.

  Bad, the first sign said, and Go, said the second.

  “He is one of ours,” Storm Arriving said. “And something is wrong.”

  “He is warning us,” Whistling Elk said.

  “Of what?” Mosquito wondered.

  Storm Arriving watched the scout signal again: Bad, Go away. But not away, in the direction opposite the approaching bluecoats. The scout signaled away, down the creekbed, downstream and at an angle. Not the quickest route of retreat. He turned to look across the north side of the streambed.

  The land on the far side was as rolling as to the south, and being so, could conceal as much.

  “Mount!” he commanded as the bluecoat cavalry rode around a rise, rifles raised and ready. “We go!”

  Cavalry carbines popped and spat, and the reeds hissed as bullets shot through. Soldiers dropped their cover and leapt to their whistlers, the war mounts calm under the incoming fire.

  The soldiers urged their beasts into motion. Some rode up onto the south side, but the bluecoat infantry had already deployed into firing ranks and the first volley sent the riders back toward the creek. But the creekbed slowed them with its mud and thick growth.

  “To the north bank,” Storm Arriving shouted, and the men, long habituated to command, complied.

  A shout went up from the cavalry riders as they saw their quarry reach level ground on their side of the stream, but Storm Arriving and his soldiers had faith in their whistler mounts and kicked them into their fastest pace. The
beasts leaned forward, necks extended, tails straight out behind them. Their tough, flat-clawed forefeet dropped to the seedheads, and with powerful rear legs, they pumped across the flat terrain, impelled by the shots from their pursuers’ rifles.

  Distance grew between the mounted groups, but not quickly enough. The carbines the cavalry bore were repeaters, and they sent shot after ill-aimed shot after the soldiers. With so many, some were bound to find a mark, and as they did, whistlers howled and men cried out.

  “Heel left,” Storm Arriving shouted, and they did, holding on to the ropes of their riding harnesses and leaning into a sharp left turn around a grassy rise. Rifle shots tore through their exposed flank, but quickly the rise was between them for protection. “Prepare!” he ordered. Rifles came out of sheaths. “Halt!”

  They reined in and wheeled to face the oncoming cavalry. Whistlers ducked down into the grass, their chameleon skin fading to green blotches. Soldiers leapt down behind them using their size and coloration for camouflage.

  It was no longer a matter of victory for Storm Arriving. It was a matter of escape and survival. “Aim for their mounts,” he said, and heard the agreement of others.

  When the bluecoats appeared around the rise, both sides opened fire. Shooting from atop a galloping horse in a turn, any bluecoats who found a mark did so by luck. For Storm Arriving and his soldiers, luck was not needed. Horses screamed as bullets hit sweaty flanks and froth-spattered breasts, and those not hit shied and reared. Bluecoats fell or were thrown. Some kept their saddle seats, but as Storm Arriving sent his third round into them, the cavalry was tossed into chaos.

  “Away!” he shouted. Holding the first rope of his riding gear, he let his whistler pull him up as it rose. He tucked his feet into the harness loops and sped away. Looking back, he saw four whistlers had been left behind, wounded beyond recovery. The soldiers, though, had been picked up by fellows, as had the wounded, and they fled the confusion they had created, heading for the safety of the prairie’s gentle folds. A final look back told him that the bluecoats had broken off their pursuit, unable or unwilling to continue with their reduced force. He was just as glad.