by James Axler
“What?”
Jak shrugged. “Just feel it. Bristle, like when know being watched. But nothing else. Not right.”
“My dear Jak,” Doc murmured, “there are many things that are not right about this area. I feel sure that nothing would surprise me.”
Yet even so, it was still a shock when, within a few minutes of this pronouncement, Doc bore witness to the sudden appearance of dark clouds that crowded in over them. At first, they weren’t noticeable. With no prior warning, and no real need or desire to stare up into the sun, none of them saw the wisps of darkness that seemed to appear from nowhere, growing incrementally over the space of a few minutes until they began to cast a shadow over the sun. Only then did the war party look up to see the heavy, broiling clouds that were forming and obscuring that part of the sky that lay directly above them, forming a low ceiling of dark that brooded and threatened to let loose the load that made its belly sag ominously overhead.
Jak shook his head, turning to Doc. “Not right. Skies like this smell, make air change. Air not changed.”
“Are you sure about that?” Doc replied, suppressing a shiver. Yet he didn’t know whether this shiver was from a kind of fear, or because the temperature seemed to fall with a bizarre rapidity. “Seemed,” he felt, because in the distance he could see the land lit up by the sun.
Before he was able to articulate the bewilderment he was feeling, the first flakes of snow began to descend. Ice-cold to the touch, the snow made the war party and its mounts shiver as it landed upon naked skin.
The warriors stopped their mounts to gather blankets from the hide sleds that trailed behind some of the horses. They didn’t notice at first that the snow didn’t melt away as it touched the plains, and that the sparse grassland soon became a lush blanket of white.
Doc looked around for cover. It was impossible. The land had been monotonously flat for as far as he had been able to see when they were mounted; and now it was hard to see more than a few yards in front, as the snow was now falling in a thick curtain that made visibility poor.
As well, the layers of snow that gathered on the ground dissolved to icy water when coming into contact with the body heat of the war party and their horses. Doc could feel his teeth chatter despite attempts to still them, and a numbness that spelled danger began to creep up into his limbs from his extremities. Unless they were able to find or construct some kind of shelter, he knew what would happen next: a torpor that would sweep over them, lulling them into an unconscious sleep of what would, in every sense of the word, be a chilling.
Willing himself to move, Doc tried to find Jak in the all-consuming white that obscured his view.
“Jak, we must do something,” he heard himself say in a faraway voice that told him the cold was already beginning to take its toll.
“Work—keep warm and make shelter,” Jak barked. Of course, the boy was right. If they warmed themselves by exertion, they could stay conscious long enough to take advantage of whatever shelter they could create…But it just seemed so hard….
Doc felt the snow form a blanket around him that now felt warm, the numbness seeming to be comforting. He did not know that he had fallen back and was looking at the sky until he felt hands plucking at his sodden coat, hauling him to his feet. He opened his eyes, almost unsure of the orientation of the earth. He seemed to be at an angle that made little sense to him. It was only as he pitched forward again that he realized that his inner ear had gone haywire.
“Doc, take this,” Jak yelled, thrusting an ax into his hand. “Help us.”
Doc teetered on his toes, unsure as to whether he could stay on his feet. As his vision cleared from a snowblind bleariness, he realized that while some of the warriors were clearing snow from the ground, others were constructing a makeshift shelter from the skins and hides of the sleds, into which they could crawl and take the horses. It would have been some kind of undertaking under any circumstances, let alone with a blinding and freezing hail of snow. Yet Jak and the shivering warriors were making the best of things. The heat from their bodies rose in steam like the jets that issued from their noses and mouths. Hypothermia was kept at bay by sheer exertion, driven by the knowledge that only this shelter could offer them any kind of hope.
For a moment Doc stood as frozen as he felt, observing them as though looking into a glass snow globe from the outside. Dimly, he could recall buying such a token for Emily when he had traveled into the city one Christmas…
By the Three Kennedys, Doc thought, such surrender to idly drifting thoughts could only end in his own surrender to the grim reaper. He threw himself forward into the task, working shoulder to shoulder with the others. As he did, he could feel the blood begin to surge in his veins, its previous sluggish flow given further impetus by the adrenaline that his panic unleashed.
While the snow began to rise around them, that small area proscribed by the warriors and the hides they had erected became a haven of untouched, if slightly damp, grassland.
Within a short while, they had cleared a space and made a shelter that came down on three sides, with a fourth that opened in a flap. The horses were gathered beneath, and the warriors now squeezed themselves in, closing that flap to secure themselves as much as was possible from the snowstorm that still fell with relentless intensity from the darkened skies.
Isolated now from the elements, and stilled as opposed to their previous action, the war party could feel the cold of the air begin to seep into their bones. Their own body warmth seemed to rise from them with a mocking rapidity, almost taunting them as it filtered through the sagging skins that dipped above them, full already of snow.
Yet surely the snow should have acted as an insulation when gathered on the skins? Seeing the steam rise from them, Doc was able for the first time to think clearly about what had been happening.
“No. This is not right,” he said, almost to himself. “Jak is right. It is weird. Does not make sense.”
Although he hadn’t been addressing anyone in particular with his remarks, he found that one of the warriors was willing to answer him.
“It does not have to make sense. It is a test. The Grandfather wishes to see if we are the worthy ones, so he makes play with the elements to see if we rise to the challenge. Only if we can make our way through these tests are we the ones who can gain the knowledge and insight we need.”
“Must be better way than freezing ass off,” Jak muttered.
Doc kept his own counsel. He had seen too much of the ways of man and nature in his time to deny outright the existence of any spiritual dimension. Whether this was the work of Wakan Tanka or any lesser spirits didn’t concern him. It was the empirical truth of it that caused him any concern he may feel.
The weather could be manipulated, but even if it was, then there were certain basic facts of nature that couldn’t be denied. Even to hasten a change in a weather pattern would mean changes in pressure that Jak had previously referred to as the smell of the air. These had been noticeable by their absence. Then again there was the way in which their body heat had risen and ascended through the roof of hide above their heads, despite the heavy snow that weighed it down and should—under any normal circumstance—have made a blanket to keep in that very heat.
When nature misbehaved it was one thing. When she broke any of her own rules, it was highly suspicious.
So it was that Doc was less than surprised when the temperature began to rise suddenly and the light through the skins that surrounded them on all sides became that much brighter.
“Well, this is all very interesting, is it not?” he murmured to himself as he pulled the hide flap to one side and stepped out into the scrub grass.
The sky above was ochre-tinged blue once more. The sun beating down, the heat relentless. Casting a gaze around him, Doc couldn’t help but notice that not only had the snows evaporated with an alarming quickness, there was also little sign of any of the ground around them being in the slightest damp.
He turned and to
ok a step back, so that he could see the roof of the shelter. It still sagged, but now only from a looseness in pinning, rather than from a weight of snow.
As Jak, the warriors and the horses also came out into the light, Doc noticed something else.
Where they had all been wet from the snow moments before, they were now dry, only the salt marks of their dried sweat giving any indications of damp.
Doc fingered experimentally the heavy material of his frock coat. It should be sodden, having been soaked by the snows.
It was bone dry.
“I wonder…” he murmured to himself.
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
“I see it, but you know I don’t think I can quite believe it,” Mildred muttered softly.
“I dunno about believing in it,” J.B. countered, “but I’ll tell you this much—if they turn our way, we are really in trouble.”
Ahead of the Armorer and Mildred, shimmering in the haze of heat thrown up by the evaporating rains, rode a group of Otoe warriors, proud and resplendent on their horses. In full decoration, ready for war, they moved across the horizon, seemingly oblivious to the small party of their tribesmen who stood some small distance from them.
“Where they come from?” Little Tree asked. “We’re the chosen ones. Wait…” he added to Mildred and J.B., as he turned to answer the questions that poured from the rest of the warriors. On emerging from the cave in the wake of Mildred and J.B., they had been brought up short by the sight they beheld and were now in a state of confusion. They spoke poor English, which was why Little Tree was the main point of communication between themselves and the chosen ones. As with many of the tribe, the necessity had been absent, so now this kind of delay in communication was hitting Mildred and J.B. as a potential problem.
Turning away from the procession in front of them, they could see Little Tree arguing with the others. It didn’t take a grasp of their language to understand that he was being bombarded with questions to which he had no answers. He looked at Mildred and J.B., his face a mask of confusion.
“How can this be? We were chosen. The idea was for a small party. What could have changed—”
“I don’t think these men have anything to do with us,” Mildred said softly. “Take a better look. Tell the others to do it.”
Relaying the instructions, Little Tree looked as confused as the other warriors. Yet they did as he requested, and as they watched the warriors pass in the distance their confusion took on a different hue.
“They are Otoe, but they are not of us,” he said wonderingly.
Mildred shook her head. “Their decoration is different. Not much, but enough. I’m not sure where they’ve come from, but they’re not from your people.”
“Then who—” he began.
She cut him short: “Only one way to find out.”
Passing on the order, Little Tree and the rest of the warriors joined Mildred and J.B. in mounting their horses and setting off in pursuit of the war party that now preceded them.
It was only after they had been riding for a while that J.B. turned to Mildred, a puzzled expression on his face.
“You notice anything about the land?”
She followed his gaze. As she took in the land over which they now rode, it was a few moments before it registered with her exactly what he was talking about. When it did become clear, she began to wonder about the wisdom of following the war party in front of them.
For the ground around them, which had been so distorted and churned by the floods, then baked hard into ruts and ridges that threatened to slow their progress, had flattened out and gone from rocklike ridges to the same powdery and dusty layer of topsoil on hard-packed earth that it had been before the rains started to fall.
How was that possible?
The sound of battle, faint strains growing as the warriors in front of them speeded up, reached their ears and made them wary now of what they rode toward.
“Better get your boys ready,” J.B. said. “It looks like it might be time to fight for that destiny you talked about.”
“F IREBLAST AND FUCK. Where the hell did they come from?” Ryan breathed, awestruck by the tribal gathering that raced across his field of vision. There had been little indication, as the dust storm abated, that this was in the reckoning. In their shelter, there had been no sound penetrating the storm and then—more significantly—the stillness that followed. No notion that such a large party was approaching from distance. It was almost as though they had sprung, fully formed and close by, as soon as Ryan had chosen to leave the shelter.
He wasn’t sure—it was so quick, almost too much so to register—but it seemed as though the massed war party had been silent when he first saw them. Like a mass of horse flesh and humanity, moving at speed, mouths open in roar, and yet silent like ghosts. And then, before this had time to fully sink in, the sound kicked in. A deafening clatter of hooves, yelling voices, clashing metal on metal of axes and knives.
There were at least two separate forces within the melee that had formed in front of him. He could tell this from the warpaint and markings that decorated the warriors. One section of the battling forces he could identify as Dakota Sioux as they were similar to—though not exactly the same as—the warriors with which he and Krysty were traveling.
The others he could not identify with any such assurance. They had decoration, warpaint and markings that singled them out as different, yet as he watched it seemed as though there was more than one tribe in opposition. He had no idea who these other tribes might be, but the fact that there were two of them got his mind racing.
Three tribes. Three pairs of chosen ones. Could it be that Mildred, Doc, J.B. and Jak were nearby?
One thing he could say for certain: whoever these warriors were, they were not real in the sense that the men who now stood at his shoulder were real. Krysty had joined the warriors of their party as they emerged from the shelter, and was also casting an eye over the battle unfolding in front of them.
“I don’t recognize any of the Sioux in there,” she murmured.
“They’re not from this tribe,” Ryan returned softly. “There’s some seriously weird shit going on here. There’s either more than one tribe of Sioux around here, or—”
“Or these warriors aren’t for real,” she said, shaking her head.
“What does your doomie sense tell you?” Ryan questioned.
Krysty shrugged, then bit her lip. “There’s something going on here that’s dangerous, but I just don’t get it off these guys,” she said, indicating the battle in front of them. “We need to be triple red, but not about this.”
As if to emphasize this point, one of the warriors watching with them said, “Who are these men who claim to be us? Their warpaint is not the same.”
“Mebbe they’re what your people used to be like,” Krysty said to him. Then, when he looked puzzled, added, “Mebbe we’re not seeing what’s happening now. Mebbe it’s what did happen.”
The warrior’s face brightened with understanding and joy. “You mean that the Grandfather is showing us the great battles of the past so that we may understand the way ahead?”
“Yeah. Something like that,” Krysty said. The warrior turned to tell his fellows of this great sign, while Ryan shot Krysty a questioning glance. She shrugged once again. “It may be a replaying of something from the past. That doesn’t mean that it’s some great spirit try ing to tell us something. Just means that there’s something out there playing weird shit games with us.”
“So we need to keep it triple red and real frosty.”
“You can say that again.”
STILL TRYING TO COME to terms with the sudden cessation and disappearance of snow, Jak and Doc led their war party in the direction that had been laid out for them by the shaman before they had left the Pawnee settlement. That strange things were happening as they journeyed farther into the areas surrounding the promised land was something to which they would just have to adjust
; yet despite this, none of them—whether expecting the spirits to play tricks, or perhaps something more malevolent—were quite prepared for what came next.
The flat grasslands on which they had been traveling began to slowly give way to a landscape that was even sparser, yet more uneven. Ridges and hillocks of earth, tufted with spiky grasses of many colors, began to slow their progress and also to provide shelter for creatures that they could barely glimpse as they raised their heads above the levels of the ground before darting into hiding. Strange chattering sounds echoed from ridge to ridge, almost as if the creatures were talking to one another.
“Jak, what are these creatures?” Doc asked in an undertone. He didn’t wish to be overheard, as he could already see that the noises made by the creatures were unsettling the warriors who rode with them, and he had no desire to add to this dread.
“Not seen before,” Jak said, with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. “Not ever,” he added for emphasis. “Weird shit muties some kind.”
“Perhaps,” Doc said cautiously, mindful of the thoughts he was forming about the region in which they traveled. “If they are, we should be careful of what else may be here.”
“If not?” Jak questioned. Unspoken was the further question of what they might be, if not muties.
“If not, we should not be surprised about what may happen,” Doc mused. “I mean, really not surprised.”
Jak’s brow furrowed. He figured that Doc had some crazy bastard idea that was so crazy that he was wary of discussing it. But that didn’t mean that it wouldn’t be right…
While the two men murmured to each other in low tones, the war party had made its way into the middle of a trail that snaked between low hills and ridges that now ran almost unbroken for a distance of about half a mile. It was bright daylight, but despite this the atmosphere as they rode between the ridges dipped like the trail, so that it seemed that the party were riding into a sludge of despondency. This was not helped by the alien nature of the spiky grasses that seemed to loom out of the ground and angle toward the trail, as though narrowing the path until it was almost claustrophobic. Although the warriors still rode tall on their horses, their unease was betrayed by the flickering of their eyes as they uneasily surveyed the banks that rose around them.