by Mike Blakely
High Feather spoke. “I am an old warrior. I wish to die in a good fight before my hair goes white, like the head of the great eagle. Maybe today I will die, and while you shiver this winter in your lodges, you will think of me running without shirt or leggings, hunting elk in the Shadow Land.”
Horseback shook the shield given to him by the Corn People. He leaned on his war pony, and the whole party ran toward the enemy camp at a gallop.
The Northern Raiders of the lodge pole camp did not see the Noomah warriors until they had galloped almost into the village. Horseback screamed his shrill war cry, and the seven True Humans scattered, weaving through the camp like swallows racing through the air. Their war clubs swung at enemy warriors running for their weapons, but only Echo-of-the-Wolf counted a stroke, as he had trained his pony to get him close.
Horseback rode all the way through the camp without taking a swing at his enemies, yet he liked the way they ran from him. He remembered his grandfather dying in the Red Canyon, his mother stoning the Northern Raider warrior to death. He remembered his vision, the bodies of Red Pipe and Spirit Talker. His eyes swept angrily through the camp as an arrow flew past him, tearing the flesh on his shoulder.
Finding the source of this arrow, he saw a warrior drawing a bow for a second shot. High Feather appeared behind the enemy bowman, distracting him with a war cry and a swipe of his club, and Horseback charged. The enemy bowman wore a scalp on his belt, and Horseback knew it belonged to young Red Pipe. He threw himself to the side of his pony as the arrow sailed over him. He swung over the top of the pony and felt his war club shatter the skull of the enemy who wore Red Pipe’s scalp. Holding the mane of his pony in one hand, he reached low to grab the hair of the enemy so he could drag him aside and take his scalp.
The other Noomah warriors had already left three dead in the camp. Enemy screams mingled with glorious Noomah war cries, yet through the noise Horseback heard a shrill voice speaking in the tongue of True Humans.
“Help me, Horseback! Help me, friend of my younger brother!”
When his eyes found her, White Bird was using a length of fire wood to fight off an enemy warrior’s knife. White Bird fought well, but she was weak and thin from her captivity.
Now Whip came between two lodges, his eyes as wild as the scream of rage that escaped his lips. He rode his horse over the enemy warrior, then turned, drawing his bow before the stunned enemy could rise.
“You defile my father’s blood with your seed!” he shouted. He pinned the warrior to the ground with an arrow, slipped from his horse, and gave the reins to his sister. Cutting the belt of the dying man’s loin skins, he grabbed the evil penis of his enemy and cut it off, throwing it aside. Horseback circled protectively, and he happened to see Trotter breaking off the shaft of an arrow that had pierced his thigh.
Now Whip had the scalp of his sister’s despoiler, and he tucked it under his belt as he mounted. “Take my sister on your pony, Horseback. I am going to catch an enemy woman and make her good!”
The Noomah warriors continued to swarm, but the Northern Raiders had gathered women and children protectively at the north end of camp and had started to fight their way back into their own village. Horseback knew the time had come to take the enemy horses and retreat with scalps and war wounds. He pulled White Bird on behind him and circled toward the small herd of enemy horses that had drawn near the camp to see the strange ponies.
He passed Bear Heart, who had loosened his loin skins to urinate on an abandoned enemy shield in sight of the Northern Raiders. He laughed as arrows arched through the sky, missing him.
Looking back, Horseback saw Shaggy Hump and High Feather going from lodge to lodge, using their lance blades to pull the bear-skin entrance covers aside so they could look inside. White Bird held tightly to him as he circled the enemy horses and drove them toward camp.
As his warriors drew toward him, he heard a shout, and saw Whip riding at a gallop all along the front line of the enemy. Arrows sang around him like wasps, his shield catching two. Suddenly, he angled into the surprised enemy warriors and scattered a bunch of women and children who had gathered behind their men for protection. The enemy bowmen would not shoot at him here, for fear of hitting one of their own. Whip chased a young girl who ran faster than the others. She dodged, but he leaned far to one side, grabbing her by the hair and pulling her away through a tangle of low pine branches.
Shaggy Hump and High Feather circled back to cover the retreat of Whip with his captive. As High Feather whirled his pony, an arrow angled in behind his shield and pierced his side, hurting him so badly that he fell from his mount. As the Northern Raiders rushed to count the first strokes, Trotter and Echo turned back to protect High Feather. Riding one to either side, they ignored the weapons of the enemy as they swooped downward to grab the arms of High Feather in a maneuver they had practiced often around their own camps. Lifting the old warrior between them, they bore him beyond the reach of enemy scalping knives, yet High Feather left a trail of blood on the ground.
Horseback chose this moment to stampede the captured horses southward. His puha had empowered his party, but with the fall of High Feather, the spirits were telling him to withdraw with the ponies and escape further bloodletting.
Echo pulled High Feather onto the rump of his mount, and they retreated in a rain of arrows. Shaggy Hump and Trotter rode to either side to hold the wounded man on the back of the horse, and the whole Noomah raiding party moved southward. Already they could hear the wails of women, and Horseback knew that one woman who shrieked especially loud must have been the mother of the girl Whip had taken. The shrill, mournful yells sounded as sweet as morning birdsong to Horseback, and a dizzying swirl of power engulfed his whole heart and mind.
He cried, “Ye-ye-ye-ye-ye!” in a piercing victory yell that echoed through the voices of his warriors.
Passing over the first ridge, Horseback pulled up to look over his war party. Every man had taken a scalp. Never had he heard of such a victory. Even High Feather, though he was badly wounded, had a fresh patch of hair tucked under his belt. They had rescued Whip’s sister, and Whip had caught the girl he wanted to make good with his seed. This was medicine beyond anything ever told at the council fires.
Bear Heart was changing to another horse, for the one he rode had been wounded in the hind quarter and was bleeding to death.
“Get down,” Horseback said to White Bird, and she slid to the ground.
He cut three poor horses out of the herd and White Bird caught one wearing a rope around its neck. Bear Heart caught another, and helped High Feather onto it, though the old warrior could barely sit up straight. Whip gestured for his captive girl to catch the third horse, and she obeyed, much fear showing in her face.
“My father,” Horseback said, “will Teal’s father live?”
“The spirits know. The arrow is deep inside him, and we must move. He fought well. The brave never die old.”
“Before we move,” Whip blurted, “I must know.” He rode his pony up next to the girl he had captured, grabbed her hair, and put a knife to her throat. “Am I going to keep this girl and make her good? If I do not keep her, she dies here, and she will never be good.”
“My friend, you will have the girl,” Horseback replied. “You fought well and caught her by yourself. But you will not have her until we are safe in our own country. Even then, we will have much ground to cover, and she will ride better if she is not bruised and hurting from your blows.”
Whip grinned and returned his knife to its sheath. The Northern Raider girl seemed to understand. She knew she would live. She knew she would belong to the warrior who had caught her. And she knew that if she tried to escape, she would be punished.
“I will watch her for my brother,” White Bird said, a vicious edge to her voice. “This one never struck me in that camp, but neither did she ever give me food.”
Horseback chuckled. “Your sister has done well, Whip. See how bruised and skinny she is. She has
not honored our enemies. Now we will take her home.”
“My sister should not have let herself get caught. She should have fought until they killed her.”
“She is only a woman. She has done well.”
“We have all done well,” Shaggy Hump said. “Lead us home, my son.”
As they started away, High Feather began to sing the song that his spirit-protector had taught him in his vision many winters before. It was a good death song, and it made the younger men ride livelier upon their ponies. Somewhere beyond the foothills, upon the high, grassy plains that looked out over the sage country of the True Humans, High Feather’s death song ended, and his soul flew to the Shadow Land.
45
Teal wrapped her arms around Horseback’s waist and worked her cool hands under his antelope skin shirt to warm her fingers. She flattened her palms against the rigid muscles of his stomach. “Do you know what the Corn People say about you, my husband?”
They rode double on a docile mare, beyond sight of the lodge poles of the Corn People’s camp on the River of Lightning. The mourning period following the death of High Feather had ended, and Horseback had taken Teal into a new lodge. The first snows of winter had fallen and melted, and now the two lovers would enjoy each other’s warmth through the cold moons.
“I know what they say,” Horseback replied. “They say it is well that I have married Teal and come to live with the Corn People to hunt meat for Teal’s mother, now that Teal’s father has passed to the Shadow Land.”
“Yes, they say that,” she replied, pulling herself closer against him as a cold blast of north wind lifted the mare’s mane. “But they say something more.”
“What do the Corn People say, wife?”
“They say my husband does everything on his pony.”
He reined the mare to a stop. “Everything?”
“Yes. This morning when you rode your pony to our lodge and took the piece of meat roasting over the fire, my friend Little Cloud said, ‘Look how Teal’s husband eats the meal she cooks for him. He does everything on his pony!’”
“Everything?” Horseback repeated, looking over his shoulder at his wife.
“That is what they say. Two suns ago, my friend, Grass-in-the-Wind said, ‘Teal, your husband is strange. Look in the shade of that willow. He sleeps upon the back of his pony!’”
Horseback chuckled. “I may need to sleep horseback on the war trail in days to come. I prepare myself, according to my visions. But there are many things I have not tried on the back of my pony.”
“Like what, my husband?”
“I have not coupled with my wife.”
Teal put her lips against Horseback’s ear and laughed low in her throat. “Not even Slope Child has coupled with a man on the back of a pony.” She slipped her hand under the flap of his loin skins and squeezed. “Is that your medicine bundle, my husband, or the tall warrior in your loin skins?”
“If it grows, it is not my medicine bundle.” Horseback knotted the reins and tied them into the mane of the mare. He slipped his knees tightly under the coils of rope that wound around the mare’s barrel. He twisted far to his right and wrapped his right arm around the curve of Teal’s left hip. He grabbed her right leg at the knee and pulled her over his right thigh, leaning to his left to maintain his balance on the pony. She squealed in surprise but he continued to swing her around his right side until she sat in front of him on the mare, facing him, her thighs on top of his.
“How do you love your husband?” he said, reaching under her skirt as he worked it over her hips and untied the soft hide belt of her loin skins.
Teal’s heart was pounding from the way he had so suddenly and skillfully moved her around to face him. She wrapped her legs around him and crossed her feet behind him on the back of the mare. “I love my husband the way a storm loves the tall aspen tree, and surrounds it with rain and wind to make it move and grow.”
She reached for his waist and untied his belt, releasing the tall warrior she knew so well from their nights alone in their lodge. He brushed his lips across hers and pulled her closer with his hands cupped hard around her hips.
When she settled onto the tall warrior, Teal sighed, and Horseback made the mare walk. The motion of the walking pony eased him farther inside with each step. They closed their eyes and rocked to the cadence of hoofbeats as the mare plodded obediently across the rolling sagebrush prairies. Wind cooled the bare flesh of their thighs.
They rode on, and Teal began to make sounds in Horseback’s ear. She liked the feeling of the cool wind, so she lifted her dress higher, until she felt the breeze caress her breasts. She rested her elbows on Horseback’s shoulders, pulled his face against her breasts and threw her head back. The pony was walking faster now, ambling aimlessly through the sage. Horseback’s arms were around Teal’s waist, pulling her hard against him.
Teal held each breath as long as she could to prolong the ecstasy she felt approaching. When she knew by the strength of her husband’s embrace that his release was near, her legs locked around him and clenched tightly as waves of pleasure surged between them, and their gasps sounded like mighty blasts of wind moaning in the mountains. She held on until her legs and arms grew tired, then she relaxed and enjoyed the continued gait of the mare.
Finally, she drew back and looked at Horseback’s face. “Ha-i’i!” She sighed. “Now you have made me good.”
He chuckled quietly. “You are Noomah. You were born good.”
“Yes. But now you have made me good for the new nation. The Horse Nation of your Great Vision.”
Horseback smiled. “Perhaps the nation of my vision has now been conceived on the back of this pony.”
“Perhaps this time,” Teal replied. “Perhaps next time. But next time will be different.”
“Different?”
Her eyes glistened and she smiled cunningly. “Next time we will make the pony trot.”
PART III
Nation in the Mist
46
“On the day of my birth,” he said to the ten ponies surrounding him, “First Horse circled my lodge—a gift from the Shadow Land, but only for the brave.”
When he gestured with his hands, the ponies tossed their heads in mock alarm, as Horseback knew some of the elders would when he gave the same talk at the council.
“Those who master the ways of the four-legged spirit-gift will die with stomachs full of buffalo meat and other good things. Those who do not will die with empty stomachs, or stomachs only half-full of bad things like snakes and grasshoppers and—”
The sound of hoofbeats interrupted his rehearsal and made him look beyond his listeners to see who approached. It was his wife, Teal, her hair bouncing in rhythm to the lope. Horseback smiled. She rode well on the Spanish saddle he had brought back from the Land of the Metal Men five winters ago. This saddle had made other women so envious that many had copied it, shrinking rawhide over frames of wood, elk antler, or buffalo bone.
Beyond Teal, Horseback could see the lodges of a great village strewn out along the banks of Icy-Water Creek, on the eastern slopes of the mountains called Medicine Bow by the Yutas. Once, the True Humans had been afraid to camp long at this good place, for it was on the fringes of Yuta country. But now, the Noomah-Yuta war was like a hibernating bear. For the past five winters, fighting between the two nations had dwindled away to nothing and trade had increased. The Yutas, who once had seemed so eager to raid for Noomah slaves, now preferred to trade for captives the Noomah had taken in horseback attacks on the Northern Raiders and the Crows. It was told throughout the nation of True Humans how a young warrior named Horseback had ridden right through Yuta country five winters ago, winning the respect of a Yuta leader called Bad Camper, and how Horseback and Bad Camper had agreed not to make war on each other’s camps. Now there was peace in the south of the Noomah country, as long as the Noomahs did not invade the Yuta hunting grounds.
Horseback knew he could abide with this condition. There were better
hunting grounds than the Yutas’ to invade. The best hunting grounds lay far to the east and south—on the buffalo plains, in the country of the Wolf People and the Na-vohnuh.
It was the spring that followed Horseback’s twenty-second winter, in the year that the Metal Men called by the number 1710, during the Moon of Flowers, when the True Humans watched the skies for birds returning from the south, when wobbly legged colts rooted at their mothers’ udders for milk, when the hunters bleated fawnlike to lure does within arrow range, when the children devoured raw brains and marrow blended together and served on squares of rawhide. A great camp-together had risen in this good country near the plains, including the lodges of the Burnt Meat People, the Corn People, and a band called the Wild Sage People.
Neither the Corn People nor the Burnt Meat People had heard much about the Wild Sage band for twelve winters, for they had been living in the western extremes of Noomah country for a long time. Now they had come south and east to investigate strange things they had heard about horses and hairy-faced white men and a warrior named Horseback who had traveled far to the south and knew the hearts of ponies.
The winter had left much snow slowly melting in the high country, feeding the streams. Rains had come, and grass was high, allowing the horsebacks to remain camped longer in one place. The three bands raised more than one hundred lodges along Icy-Water Creek. None of the elders in the village could remember seeing so many lodges in one place.
The people hunted and feasted. They worried little about war, here on the fringes of Yuta country, far from the villages of the Crow or the Northern Raiders. There seemed to be two horses for every lodge, for although some warriors owned no horses at all, many of the Corn People and Burnt Meat People warriors owned several apiece. Horseback, who owned more ponies than any warrior ever known, claimed one for every day of the moon.
The hunters had made enough meat that men, women, boys, and girls spent their days and nights playing games, dancing, and gambling. The women chose teams to play shinny, each team trying to knock the stuffed rabbit skin ball into the other team’s goal with their sticks. They played hard, the younger girls possessed of great speed.