by Lenore Wolfe
DARK WARRIOR:
To Tame a Wild Hawk
From the Dark Cloth Series
Book One
Copyrighted © June 2010 by Lenore Wolfe
Smashwords Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locals are entirely coincidental.
Triquetra Press
Jacksonville, Florida
First Printing June 2010
ISBN 1460944224
EAN-13 9781460944226
Copyrighted ©2010 by Lenore Wolfe
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Look for Fire Sprite
Realm of the Elemental Witch Book One
To be released 2012. A YA Paranormal Fantasy
Other Works by Lenore Wolfe
Doorway to the Triquetra
Children of the Atlantis Series Book One
Released June 12, 2011
Paranormal Fantasy
Look for the free sample chapter at the end of this novel.
The Fallen One
Children of the Dark Mother Series Book One
To be released January 1, 2012
Paranormal Fantasy
A Tribute Novel
Solstice Fire
Daughters of the Dark Moon Series Book One
Paranormal Fantasy
To be released August 19th, 2012
A Special thank you to my editor Katy Sozaeva.
Katy, you make all of this possible.
She dreamed of him…
and he came to her.. .
Dark Warrior: To Tame a Wild Hawk
by Lenore Wolfe
Prologue
We are born of ashes—and as the young boy stared at the ashes covering the palms of his hands, at six years’ old, he knew—to ashes we would return. They had appeared to ride from hell through the haze of the fiery sun as it lit the prairie grass around them. Flames from the setting sun licked at their feet, the thunder of horses’ hooves hitting the ground as though the Gods of thunder played the drums—burning the sky down around them.
Screams of women and children filled the hot, prairie air, and they ran without direction but could not escape. They could not evade men on horseback, who rode them down and shot them with no more emotion than they would show a wild animal. The men from the wagon train swore viciously and shot back at their invaders, diving behind anything that offered them cover on the barren, prairie grasslands. Horses’ high-pitched whinnies rose above the melee, and they lunged in fright and pain whenever a stray bullet struck them and brought them down or caused them to stampede out of control.
The boy could not tear his gaze from the scene before him. He wanted to, but his eyes refused to obey. Everything around him moved as if in slow motion. He could not understand what was happening—to him—to his friends—to his loved ones. He could not understand why this was happening.
A bullet struck the ground at his feet. He stood, staring at it. It befuddled him; refused to give word or heed to the reality happening around him. As he stared at it, stillness settled within him like fractured pieces of time. A voice that seemed to come from nowhere, yet everywhere, yelled, “Run!” and in blind panic, he obeyed.
He ran past a wagon; the thud of a bullet, slamming into the side and splintering the wood, causing him to flinch. A long sliver struck him in the cheek as he dove into the bushes at its rear. Then, the sight of a man on a pony caught his attention—and, once more, all he could do was stare.
He stared, paralyzed, as the man shot a boy in the back, heard the heart-stopping scream of the boy’s mother and saw her go down beside her son, an ugly, red stain covering her chest. He swallowed hard at the bile that burned its way up his throat. Tears pooled in his golden eyes. Much later, he would recall how the mules brayed in panic and broke loose from their harnesses, trampling any who got in their way. But, for now, he did not see them. Later, he would remember the wagons tipping over in the frenzied melee, crushing the few who hid beside them. He would dream of this, have nightmares of this. But, for now, he saw only the man.
“Papa,” Jordy McClain whispered.
He squinted through the haze of dust at the man who took careful aim, killing their friends, one-by-one. Giving a small cry, he leaped up. His only thought that somehow he must stop his papa. But a bullet slammed into the dirt beside him, and he hunkered back down. Dust spiraled all around him, choking him. He covered his nose and mouth with a mud-streaked hand. He mustn’t sneeze. If he did, they would kill him too. Maybe if he got really little, they wouldn’t see him. He hunkered down and got as small as he could.
A screaming child ran past his hiding place, and Jordy couldn’t help himself; he stood to help her. In the next instant, her small body jerked backward as if pulled by an invisible thread. His knees buckled. He slid to the ground in a heap. Open-mouthed, he stared at the man who held the gun. “Papa,” he mouthed. Paralyzed, he watched his father rack another bullet into the chamber; watched as he lifted the rifle and took aim. Jordy’s gaze followed the direction his father pointed the gun.
No!
The bullet slammed into Yellow Wolf’s back. As if in slow motion, their scout spun around and fell to the ground. Tears streamed down Jordy’s face, leaving dusty tracks in their wake, and this time he did scream, “Yellow Wolf. No, no, no!” He realized what he had done, caught his lip between mud-streaked teeth, covered his mouth with his hands and whimpered, but no one paid him any mind.
The prairie grasslands carried the last screams of the dying across the plains. Jordy placed his hands over his ears and rocked back and forth in his hiding place in the tall, prairie grass. Then, even the screaming stopped, and he sagged in the silence. The men looted the dead and shot those who moaned. Jordy’s breath left his lungs and lodged in his throat. Papa? Tears rolled down his chubby cheeks, leaving a trail of wet dust in their wake. He swallowed at the huge lump in his throat. How could his papa do this?
And as he peeked through the prairie grass, there stood a man in the middle of the melee. He stood, in his long, fancy coat, out of place even to a six-year-old boy. As Jordy squinted through the smoke and dust, he realized the man was looking for someone.
A terrible feeling crawled through his tummy.
Jordy hunkered down as far as he could get in the grass as the man’s gaze turned directly to where he hid.
The hair stood up on the back of the boy’s neck.
The man had no face.
Worse, instead of a face, he seemed to wear some kind of mask, which looked like a face—but was not a face at all.
Jordy wanted to scream. He felt as if he were having a bad dream and couldn’t wake up. He’d swear he was awake, that everything was real—yet not real.
Not real at all.
He let out a breath when the man turned to one of the other men, who were by now, showing signs of wanting to shoot each other, if their raised voices and arguing were any indication.
The men hollered at his father, and his papa shouted back at them. Jordy bit his lip until he tasted blood as they mounted up, and he didn’t breathe until they rode out. Mor
e tears rolled down his face. His papa hadn’t looked around for him—not once.
He curled up into a ball and cried. His throat burned, and something squeezed his heart until he thought it would burst. He wished his ma was here. But she was gone. She had died in childbirth, changing his father. His papa had become angry and drank a lot after she died. And he wouldn’t even look at Jordy’s new, baby sister. Then, one day, his papa had packed Jordy up and headed west, leaving his baby sister behind with his Aunt Sarah. He didn’t know how to get back to her. He was all alone.
Yellow Wolf was dead, now, too. The Cheyenne scout always talked to him when he hurt. But he never would again. With deep, wracking sobs, he cried for some time, rocking back and forth. He must have fallen asleep. Because, the next thing he knew, he heard the sound of a lone horse coming his way, and he held very still.
For those who would listen, who could tilt their head and hear it, the wind blew a death song across the prairie. It lifted and danced among the grass tops, a sad and mournful song.
To the Cheyenne warrior, looking out over the massacre of the wagon train, the voices of many joined in that song. He rode his pony with the ease of his people. The richness of his ancestry was etched in the lines of his regal bearing. His pony picked its way amongst the dead as if to show his own reverence for what had taken place here this day. The warrior tilted his head as if listening to their story. For, indeed, there was a tale to tell.
He heard their sorrowful song because he had learned to listen. Their broken bodies cried out to his spirit. Their sightless eyes stared up at the heavens. Women who’d fallen by their children. Men who’d fought to save their families. Horses dead under their saddles, and mules and oxen fallen right where they’d stood, still in their harnesses. Wagons tipped over.
Women’s trunks strewn all over the ground.
The warrior dismounted and walked amongst the carnage. He reached to pick up a pan, looking around. It saddened his heart. It was a sight he had witnessed many times.
Spotting a thatch of dark hair amongst the corn-silk color of the prairie grass, he walked silently toward it. As he got closer, he could make out the figure of what looked to be a young boy. He picked up the slight sound of movement and sat down against a broken wagon wheel, his back to the child. He plucked a blade of grass and rolled it back and forth between his thumb and finger. “Only a white man would do such a thing as this to his own people.” He waited a second, and when the boy didn’t respond, he added, “A civilized man would never do such a thing. There is no honor in the doing.”
Without looking, he sensed the child’s fear and felt the boy shrink from him. “You can come out now. They are gone.” Again, he waited a moment. “No one here will hurt you. Besides,” he paused and glanced back, “that is a mountain cat bed you lay in. She might be upset when she returns and finds you in her bed.”
The child sat up. He was pleased to see the child was indeed a boy. The boy looked around for the cat—then back at him. The boy’s green-gold eyes locked with his, the boy clenching his jaw, perhaps to keep from betraying his fear. He would make a good son.
“Are your people, your parents, here?” He waved his arm to indicate the dead.
The boy shook his head.
He studied the boy, puzzled. “I am Standing Bear, son of Swift Knife.” He placed his hand on his chest. He waited. “Where are your parents?”
“Dead.”
He heard the hesitation in the boy’s answer. It was a lie. What was the boy hiding?
A young hawk soared above them. Swooping down, it landed on a log near the boy. For several long seconds, the hawk’s cold, proud eyes riveted to the child’s green-gold ones. Then, in the same mysterious way the hawk had appeared, it flew off. A good sign. He would call the boy Hawk. But, for now, he’d wait for the boy to accept the future set before him.
“You can come with me. You will be safe.” He walked to his pony and waited.
He watched as the boy’s golden gaze darted over the melee and lit on the Cheyenne scout. The child’s eyes filled with pain. The scout was the boy’s friend. Perhaps the scout had taught him about the Tsistsistas. Perhaps he had taught him the civilized people were different from the whites. “I will not harm you. The Cheyenne will not harm you. You will be safe.” Something in him yearned to help the boy.
The boy’s golden gaze shot up and met his, and the child again set his jaw. Many things crossed through his eyes, and they darkened to a deep shade of green as he looked back at his murdered friends—fear, panic, pain, and something else.
Hate.
The boy hated the white eyes. He was too young to recognize the emotion for what it was. But someday he would. Standing Bear looked out over the dead, littering the ground. He knew hate.
The boy would not rest until they no longer cried out to him in his sleep.
Chapter One
Cheyenne, Wyoming—Late Summer of 1871
Dancing rays of heat coiled up from the dirt-packed street beneath the hot, Wyoming sun. A cowboy sat on the boarded walk with his chair tipped back against one shaded wall, his feet propped against a post, and his Stetson pulled down low over his face.
The ladies stayed inside the shielding walls of the buildings lining the streets of Cheyenne. In summer, the time-weathered, boarded walls of the buildings provided shade. In winter, the walls provided shelter from the endless winds that blew the snow around, but did little to hold in the heat or keep out the cold. In the cold, the ladies huddled around the large, pot-belly stove, or the stone fireplace, drinking tea. But today, they mainly sat in the small diner, sipping lemonade and gossiping about their men—and the latest fashions.
The town boasted several saloons, where cowboys got drunk and stumbled down the still-untamed streets of Cheyenne. Twice a year, at the spring and fall roundups, they went down the streets, shooting and hollering, waving their pokes of money, proud and happy to have survived another year. But today the town sat quiet, baking in the endless rays of the sun. An occasional frisky breeze, which should have felt good, only kicked up dust when it did a little dance, spinning sand in small circles that would have been mesmerizing if it weren’t for the grit they left behind in your teeth.
Beside Cord’s Mercantile, the town’s main mercantile, sat one of the town’s hotels. The mercantile, a single-story building, held canned goods, pots and pans, slabs of bacon, and clothes. The latter you could buy already made up. Even so, there were also a few bolts of fabric, since a woman usually sewed her family’s clothes herself. The hotel was a tall, two-story, building, where the clerk, his glasses sitting nearly on the end of his nose, was occasionally seen sweeping the endless dust that coated the boarded walk.
Upstairs, in one of the hotel’s well-kept rooms, Amanda Kane sat with her feet soaking in the coolest water she could find in this--what did they call it?--oh yeah: God-forsaken land.
She’d propped her head on her arms over a small table. She had always hated being inside, but there was no help for it in this sweltering heat.
Three layers of pristine petticoats were pulled high up on her thighs.
She hated them too.
She sucked in another breath of the hot, dry air. Her dark curls cascaded down around her face and over her arms. Several damp tendrils clung to her forehead and neck. A healing crystal dropped forward from around her neck, sending tiny prisms of light dancing across the room.
She pulled the petticoats higher still, sending the tiny bells sewn into her skirts singing. These wretched skirts, she thought, shoving irritably at her long, dark locks in a desperate attempt to escape the heat they held around her face. The bells sang with each movement, so tiny, the sound nearly imperceivable. Despite her agitation, she never failed to calm with their music.
Her gaze traveled the length of a crack in the floorboards. Again, and again she followed the crack. In the heat, the boards had turned hard. Tough. Tough, like the life one led out here in the untamed west. Was that why her father had betra
yed her? He hadn’t believed she could run the ranch alone. Through his death—her papa had won.
She felt the stage roll into town before she heard its wheels crunching across the ground beneath. She closed her eyes, a single tear breaking free and dropping to the water below.
Outside, the driver pulled the team to a halt—the harnesses jangling as the driver yelled, “Whoa! Easy now. That’s it.” The great beasts started shaking their heavy coats, sending the metal jangling once again.
Mandy barely heard the hesitant knock at the door. She knew her childhood friend had come to warn her of McCandle’s return. “Come in,” she managed through her dry throat. She couldn’t have said another word. She couldn’t swallow past the lump that had formed there. She lifted her head and met her best friend’s gaze.
She didn’t want to see pity there.
Meagan’s crystal-blue eyes held the pain that, Mandy was sure, mirrored her own, but bore no trace of pity. “He’s standing outside.”
Mandy thought of the sapling trees, their leaves yielding against destruction. They’d sway with a gentle breeze—and bend to a great wind. Her gaze dropped, once again, to the floorboards. She could be tough, like these dried boards. Tough like the west. Or—she could bend like saplings. Strong. Strong—even in the meanest wind.
She followed the tough, worn boards to the window, leaving a trail of wet footprints in her wake. He stood there, beside a man dressed in a black, tailored jacket, looking up, his cold, green eyes searching for her, his hand on his Stetson as he met her gaze. His unusual, green eyes had shown warmth when her father was alive, but she knew him well and was not deceived. As a child he’d been mean. He’d never lost that growing up, And now, as a man, he had a hole in his soul where his heart should have been.