Half-Breed

by Anna L. Walls

  Canis wasn’t about to try to explain how the Wulfen could understand him, so he let the man assume what he wished.

  After they were finished with the lists of people, presents, and supplies that would be going along with his daughter, they went out to look at the wagons and carriages. Three carriages would be for the women, two wagons for the presents and another for their supplies.

  Lord Lincoln wanted two men on each wagon, one driver, and an armed guard. Riding along in escort were another twelve armed guards on horseback.

  “Sir, I do not understand. If you are sending eighteen guards to protect your daughter, why are you sending me?”

  Lincoln looked at Canis with an appraising eye. “I’m sending eighteen boys with no officer. They will be my daughter’s personal guards for the rest of her life. You will be the officer they lack during this trip. That way, I will not short myself.”

  Canis didn’t see the sense of a group of men on a mission without an officer of their own, but the decision was not his to make. “I would like to meet the men before we depart.”

  Lord Lincoln nodded as if he expected nothing less from him so they went to the garrison to meet the soldiers. After inspecting the chosen men, Canis pulled out three men and insisted that they be replaced. Two smelled of illness and another had an injury in his wrist and elbow that would hinder his use of a sword.

  He went over the drivers the same way and discarded one of those as well. All of his discards were done solely on scent. If he was to be in command, he wanted able men, and if they smelled of illness, injury, or even alcohol, he wanted nothing to do with them.

  When everything was settled, plans for departure were made for the morning after next. In the meantime, Canis asked to bunk with the horses so they could get used to the Wulfen.

  Here is where Lincoln’s composure cracked. “You want to stay in the stables? With the horses? I have an apartment arranged for you and your young friend. I have even ordered Hasfras to allow the wolves inside with you.”

  “That is generous of you, but it is important that the horses become accustomed to the wolves. We will stay in the stables.”

  Lincoln blustered for a moment, quite disconcerted, but then he said, “Well…well all right, but you will eat here. Someone will retrieve you when it’s time to eat.” The poor man was quite unused to arranging such details or even having to.

  Canis and Cepheid went back into the town to complete their interrupted shopping then retrieve their horses.

  With a lot more work than he expected, Canis managed to get the caravan moving almost on time. He would have liked to leave at dawn, but young women were notoriously difficult to get moving so early, especially when they were not at all anxious to be going in the first place.

  They reached the edge of the city before he could organize the soldiers where he wanted them. He quickly learned that they were all headstrong trainees and none of them were too keen to follow the orders of a complete stranger. He arranged them so there was one guard on each side of each wagon. The horse that belonged to the guard sitting on each wagon was tied fifth-wheel beside each wagon team within easy access. The soldier need only leap to the saddle and cut the lead if such an emergency occurred that called him away from the wagon.

  Cepheid took up tail guard with Nnarr and the puppies at her side. At least they knew what they were doing and even the puppies behaved better than these young soldier wannabes.

  Long before the end of the day, Canis took to throwing clods of muddy ice at the young men whose attention wandered away from their duty all too easily. They learned to watch for him to dip down from his saddle and pick some up, but it usually did them little good. It seemed that he had eyes in the back of his head because they were caught even when he wasn’t looking in their direction.

  That night, after camp was set up, Canis counted the marks on each of the young men and their uniforms. He made each young soldier do five pushups in the snow for every mark then he didn’t allow them to bed down until their uniforms were clean again. This was not an easy task on the trail, and it was made more difficult by the fact that it was winter. He made them all stand in formation until the last of them was finished.

  The next day, the men did infinitely better. They seemed to accept that it was easier to do what Canis said. As a reward, he broke up the boredom of their trek by sending them off in different directions, to the front, to one side or the other, one at a time, each in his turn. He even allowed the guards on the wagons to take a turn, though someone was required to replace them for that time.

  “Pick a spot on the horizon we cannot see past. Go there and have a look, then get back here and report. Do not allow yourself to get out of sight of the wagons. We are guarding here, not playing out there.”

  Rrusharr and Ggrrawrr did the real scouting while Rranggrr stayed close to the wagons. Canis noticed that she was looking a bit wide. He was reminded of Cepheid and looked back at her. She smiled back at him then looked off to the right. Canis groaned; his children had found a new way to act up. It didn’t take him long to start thinking of them as children. They were no younger than he was, in fact, most of them were at least a year or two older, but they acted like children – irresponsible children.

  When he stopped sending them out, they began to grumble, but they stopped when he started throwing mud again.

  He knew the missing scout was waiting just on the other side of a small rise about a quarter mile back now. Ggrrawrr was watching over him, so he knew the boy wasn’t in trouble. Canis wondered how long he would wait before returning to the wagons, but he wasn’t about to find out. Scouting wasn’t something to take lightly.

  As soon as he was sure the boy could no longer see the wagons, he dismounted and handed his reins to Cepheid. When he returned to the caravan an hour later, he had the young soldier stripped of his uniform and tied across the saddle of his own horse. He tied the horse to the back of the last wagon and retrieved Midnight.

  For the rest of the day, the other soldiers were very quiet. Seeing one of their number tied like so much meat across his saddle for most of a day, was daunting. He was able to move some, so everyone knew he was alive, but the way he was tied left him little room for such movement, and with only his cloak tossed over him, he wasn’t very warm either. Knowing that Canis had gone after him on foot was another quieting point.

  When they stopped for camp, Canis was the one who tended to the ‘side of meat’ and his horse. He pulled the kid from the saddle and propped him up against a tree while he unsaddled their two horses and tied them to the picket line. Then he guided the kid to the center of camp, supporting him until circulation returned to his legs and feet. In the center of camp, he halted him and left him standing there alone.

  When all the other young soldiers had finished their camp duties, which included pushups for muddy marks, then cleaning said marks, they took their positions in their formation. Through it all, the one soldier stood alone shivering in nothing but his small clothes.

  When everyone was assembled, Canis rounded up the women and the drivers for a semi-formal affair. Speaking for everyone to hear, Canis said, “You men have had two days to try my tolerance. We have had two days of grace, since we have not been attacked. From this moment on, if I decide that you are a danger to our mission, I will strip you and discard you. We already have one man here who is guilty of desertion. Since I am your commander only for the duration of this trip, I will leave such decisions up to a final vote of the men and women we are here to protect. If it were left up to me, after two days of putting up with your shameful behavior, the snow would have been stained with blood today, and this…would not be standing here.” He tossed the man’s uniform to him allowing more anger than he actually felt to show in the move.

  Speaking directly to the offending young man, he said, “You will stand guard tonight, all night, and you will remain alert all day tomorrow. Do not even consider that I might not notice whether you slack in your duty.” He turne
d back to the rest of them. “You had better hope that no one out there was watching us over the last two days.”

  The kid caught his uniform and succeeded in not letting it get any dirtier than it already was. “Yes sir,” he said. While he was dressing, Canis set up the rest of the sentry roster, then settled down to eat his supper, glowering – again something he wanted them to see.

  As he was eating, Enid came up to him. “I realize that my father hired you to get us to Omaha, but do you have to be so harsh with the men? I know all of them and they are good with a sword. They all earned the right to be my guard.”

  “I am glad you know all of them. As I understand it, you will be their supreme commander after I have left, but being good with a sword is only one small step to take in seeing to your protection. All of these men must be alert and watchful all of the time. The more alert and watchful they are, the less likely they will miss their chance to put themselves between you and a killer.”

  He turned and faced her directly. “How lucky do you think you are?” he continued. “You had better hope that you are very lucky because as long as these boys continue to play at being soldiers, the sooner you will die, or the sooner you will lose all of them. I strongly suggest you start treating them as your guards rather than your friends.”

  Enid didn’t know what she expected, speaking to this strange man with glowing eyes, but it certainly wasn’t being painted as a target for a killer with only human flesh as a shield. “I didn’t want this, you know. I didn’t want any of it.”

  “Your father has seen fit to tie himself tighter to the seat of Omaha. You have a duty to your father to honor his obligation. With things this big, if you try to escape your duty, your father and all you love could be destroyed.”

  Enid backed away indignantly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Perhaps,” said Canis and he turned back to his stew. She didn’t have to tell him he didn’t know what he was talking about. He didn’t.

  Enid went back to her fire and was soon in a heated, though soft-spoken conversation with one of the older women there.

  Cepheid watched her for a moment, then leaned over and said softly, “I don’t understand these customs. What is it that you speak of between her, her father and this Omaha we are taking her to?”

  “I do not understand it either. The words are not mine,” said Canis as he looked into his stew and frowned.

  “How can you say it if you don’t understand it?” asked Cepheid.

  “It is like the healing. The words come out of my mouth as if another were speaking them. It has happened before.”

  “You frighten me when you do things like that. Are you a puppet?” she asked in a hiss.

  “No, not a puppet exactly, more like…more like a messenger, I think.”

  Meetings

  The river came in sight on the horizon early in the afternoon of the next day. Their journey was half over and there had been no further incidents that weren’t simple mistakes made by inexperienced men on the march.

  Shortly after sighting the river, the scouts returned from both the south and the north with an unusual urgency to report that they had seen riders. Canis tightened up their line. “How far away? Do we have time to cross the river before they reach us?”

  “No sir,” said one of the young soldiers. “If we ran the horses all out the rest of the way, we might reach the water before they do, but even so, we won’t have time to cross. We’d barely have time to get one or two wagons in the water.”

  Canis let out a piercing howl that got the undivided and completely astonished attention of everyone around him. “Circle the wagons. Have the teams inside. You, wagon guards, get everyone inside the circle. You are our last line of defense. The rest of you, get in another circle around the outside of the wagons. Cepheid, you get inside with the puppies.”

  Another time, Cepheid would have protested, but she had another life to protect besides her own, so she went with the women. She could fight there if she had to. If their attackers made it that far, Canis would be dead and there would be nothing else to live for, but she would fight. They would pay dearly for coming within her reach.

  The wagons were circled quickly and the men assembled around them. “Keep your eyes toward your front. Never assume that just because we are attacked from one direction that we cannot be attacked from another as well. An open attack may be a diversion for a much more stealthy attack elsewhere. This is where all your training will be needed. We are not so numerous that we can afford to make mistakes, so do not make any. Friends die when friends make mistakes, and I know you are all friends.” He turned to the four Wulfen who were closing on his location from their different directions. “Rranggrr, guard our backs.”

  She too resented being sent from the fight, but she also had other life to consider and went to find a vantage point that overlooked their back trail. This flat country that hid so many ripples was difficult to guard.

  When their attackers didn’t show up as expected, Canis began to get nervous. He hated being cornered in this wide-open plain. When they still didn’t show up, he questioned the men who had reported seeing them. “Why are they not here? Tell me exactly what you saw.”

  “I saw several mounted riders, perhaps a dozen, I didn’t wait to count, but they were coming fast,” said one of the soldiers.

  “I saw riders too, but I only saw a handful before I turned back,” said the other, “and they certainly weren’t walking.”

  Canis growled to himself. Where were they? He was tempted to send out scouts again, but that was just asking to get them picked off. The river was in sight, but it would still take them a couple hours to reach it if they hurried.

  Canis knew he was being watched; he could feel it. They didn’t expect him to be ready for them. He paced around the wagons again, and again admonished the men to watch the area directly in front of them and to let the men behind them worry about the area behind them. Even if a fight was brought, it was important to watch every direction.

  Rranggrr’s soft rumble came into his head, “They come. Side and side. Slow and low. They have left their horse-meat behind.”

  Horse-meat? Rranggrr considered the creatures as any other game – huntable as long as they didn’t belong to her clan. He looked where she had indicated and saw nothing yet. He was thankful she had found such a good vantage point.

  A few minutes later, they found themselves almost surrounded by long lines of men both to the south and to the north of the road. Circled as he was, he could move in either direction along the road, and if he decided to head back, they could very well outrun the men on foot, but it was entirely likely that the men with horses had circled around in order to block the road farther back, so Canis opted to stay were he was. If they managed to get strung out, they would be slaughtered.

  The bandits stopped when they were well within sight and two men from the north side of the road continued forward at an amiable pace.

  Canis watched them warily for a while then dismounted to meet them. As he handed his reins to the closest man, he said, “Watch them all.”

  Only Rrusharr and Ggrrawrr flanked him. Nnarr stayed close to her companion; this was no hunting trip.

  As he got closer, Canis recognized Bill and Riley from the buffalo hunt. The others behind them, he did not, but then he had seen very few of them and no old man would be on such a mission as this.

  Before they reached speaking distance, Canis saw the two men halt for a moment and Bill firmly set Riley aside, he was denying him something and obviously telling him to stay behind, then he came on himself.

  As soon as they could speak without yelling, Bill said, “When I recognized you, I called off the attack. You have given us too much. I will not take what you are guarding.”

  “It is dangerous to take what another is not willing to give,” said Canis. “I told you that once.”

  “And you are very right. For many years, we have been forced to ‘take’ beca
use we were not allowed to ‘earn’, but you showed us a much better way. As sketchy as the teaching was, it will provide us all a much better life than what we had before. This was to be…”

  There was a commotion back at the wagons. One of the women was running in their direction and hard on her heels were two men on foot and one on horse. All of them were having difficulty catching her. She was a very fast runner, and though she couldn’t outrun the horse, it’s very difficult to catch a person on foot from a horse, if you are unwilling to injure the runner.

  She cried out as she ran and dodged, and Riley suddenly cried out and started running as well. Both Canis and Bill sprang into action, each of them trying to intercept their target before damage to the negotiations could occur.

  Bill caught Riley and took him to the ground in a flying tackle while Canis caught Enid and quickly sent the men back to the wagons. Many of Bill’s men had started forward as well, but they halted when the situation didn’t turn into a fight, at least it wasn’t a fight between the two parties. Enid was still kicking and struggling in Canis’s arms and Riley was doing much the same on the ground, though the bigger and stronger man was able to hold him down.

  “Stop struggling, both of you,” growled Canis, “or I will feed you to the wolves.” The obvious growl in his low rumble of a voice cut through their struggles and froze them all, even Bill looked at him in stunned disbelief.

  Bill pulled Riley to his feet and shook him by the shoulders. “Calm yourself, you fool, or I’ll feed you to the wolves myself.”

  He dusted himself off and turned to Canis who still held Enid off the ground. “Well, as I was saying, this was going to be our last raid. Riley didn’t want to leave without trying to take his girl with him. We knew Lincoln would try this, but we didn’t know when. We got the message the day after we met you and headed for this place as soon as the elders were in a comfortable camp.”