The Spirit of Thunder

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  He smiled, embarrassed, and was about to reach out and embrace her when they heard a shout. They both stood and looked eastward.

  Out on the perimeter, they could see the picket guard waving his arms. Up and over the hill rode two men on whistler-back. They streaked down the grassy slope and sped into camp, riding down the sun road like demon spirits.

  “It is Big Nose,” Storm Arriving said, recognizing his Kit Fox brother. “And Kills at Night. Where is the rest of their patrol?”

  “Something is wrong,” his wife said. “You had better go see.”

  “Tell your father and then you come, too. They may be hurt.”

  “Yes, I will. Now go.”

  He ran toward the center of camp, to the Council Lodge that still stood tall in the clearing. Others were running in, too—soldiers, Kit Fox and others, all of them concerned and wanting to see what was wrong.

  Storm Arriving ran up and seized the halter rope on his friend’s whistler. Big Nose had a wound on his arm and the hair on his head was matted with dried blood and stalks of pale, dry grass. His quiver was empty. Storm Arriving caught his friend as he dismounted, but Big Nose pushed his help away.

  “I am fine,” he barked. “See to Kills at Night.”

  But others were already helping the younger soldier to the ground.

  “Speaks While Leaving is on her way,” Storm Arriving told them and then turned back to Big Nose. “What happened?”

  “Wait,” the thickset man said, pointing. “I only want to tell this once.”

  Storm Arriving looked and saw that Two Roads and Red Eagle, chiefs of the Kit Fox society, were coming toward them along with other chiefs.

  “Should we go inside the Council Lodge?” Storm Arriving asked.

  “No,” Big Nose said. “It is not proper.” Meaning that this would be a meeting of war, and would not involve the Great Council.

  Speaks While Leaving arrived with her father and the other chiefs. Two Roads, as chief of the returning soldiers, took charge.

  “Take Kills at Night to the Kit Fox lodge. Speaks While Leaving, please see that he is well cared for.” Speaks While Leaving signed her assent and went along as several soldiers bore the wounded man away. “Now,” he said to Big Nose. “What has happened.”

  Big Nose took a deep breath to steady his nerves and then began to speak.

  “I led my patrol to the new vé’hó’e village, on our side of the Big Greasy. We arrived in the early morning and saw that they were building something, I think it is a road across the water, but I cannot tell for sure. There was dirt and wood and stone piled up everywhere and it was hard to make any sense of it. It was all very strange—we all thought so—but they had not built anything beyond that place, and so we left them alone as we had been instructed.”

  He knelt and made marks in the dirt. “The vé’hó’e village lies here, at a place where the Big Greasy turns on itself twice like a snake.”

  Two Roads and Red Eagle muttered their understanding.

  “And here, upstream, is where the Sudden River meets the Big Greasy. We left the vé’hó’e place and were riding this way, toward Foolish Woman Creek off the Sudden River.” He paused to ensure that everyone understood.

  “Almost right away we noticed tracks in the tall grass. We saw the tracks of many vé’hó’e riders and many of their roll-alongs. The roll-alongs left deep ruts in the earth, so they must have been loaded down. We followed the tracks. It was not hard.

  “The tracks led in a straight line to a place with long walls made of tree trunks, and tall wooden lodges perched on top of the walls like giant nests. There were many bluecoats there. When we attacked, they all ran inside the walls and closed the doors. They climbed up into the nests and stood on top of the walls and fired at us with their guns. We lost four men right away. When we rode in for another attack, we lost two more. The bluecoats have great power in that place. Even my dream shield did not protect me completely, and I was grazed in the arm and head by spent bullets.”

  Storm Arriving heard the emotion building in his friend’s voice, and heard his shaking breath.

  “We had to leave their bodies,” Big Nose said, anguished. “Kills at Night wanted to go again, though he was hurt more than I, but I said we had to come back to report what we had seen.” He spoke through bared teeth, his rage and grief seething in and out with every breath. “I had to drag him away from there. Better had I left him, and destroyed only my own honor.”

  “No,” Storm Arriving said, and Two Roads put a hand on Big Nose’s shoulder.

  “There is no dishonor in this,” the chief said. He turned to those gathered. “There is no dishonor here. A duty was done. Had Big Nose not returned to warn us, we would have sent out more to seek him, and they too might have died, unprepared for what they found.”

  Big Nose grabbed onto Two Road’s arm. “But I must go back,” he said, the tears on his cheeks bright in the morning light. “I must. I owe it to the others to bring their bones back to their families.”

  “And you will go,” Two Roads said. “How many bluecoats did you see?”

  Big Nose thought a moment. “Perhaps four times ten. No more than five times ten.”

  “And the creatures they ride?”

  “Yes, many, but they were all inside the walls. It was not like the bluecoat camps we saw during the war against Long Hair. I could see through the doorway when we first attacked. They still live in square lodges made of cloth, but all of them were inside the walls. Everything was inside the walls. We could not run off their mounts, we could not pull down their lodges. We could do nothing.”

  Two Roads paused to confer with Red Eagle. They came to an agreement.

  “You,” he said to Big Nose, “and you,” he pointed to Storm Arriving. “You two will lead a war party. Take eight times ten men. That is a good number. There are still many Kit Fox soldiers in camp—”

  “What about us?” asked Badger, one of the Little Bowstring soldiers. “We want to go, and so do others.”

  “This is a Kit Fox matter,” Two Roads said sternly. “It was a Kit Fox patrol, and it is Kit Fox soldiers who lie dead before the bluecoat camp. It will be a Kit Fox war party that answers.”

  “We should still tell the Council,” said another man.

  “This is a matter of war,” Two Roads said, “not one of policy, but tell the Council if you wish. We will go regardless. Big Nose, Storm Arriving, prepare to select your men. You others, run through the camp and make sure every Kit Fox brother knows: a war party leaves before the sun reaches the top of the sky.”

  Men scattered, running to all the remaining bands to spread the news and call for volunteers. Storm Arriving turned to his friend.

  “Go home,” he said. “Kiss your wife and your baby boy. Eat a good meal and wash yourself in fresh water. Then meet me at the end of the sun road when the shadows grow short.”

  The two men embraced and Big Nose led his whistler off toward his home.

  Storm Arriving did not tarry. He had much to do and little time.

  When the lodge’s shadow had run under its sloping sides and a man cast no more darkness than a circle near his feet, Storm Arriving waited with Speaks While Leaving at the end of the sun road.

  “I am sorry I have to go,” he said.

  “I am proud that you go,” his wife told him. “But you must promise that you will come home to me.”

  “I promise that.”

  Others began to arrive, some of them stern-faced, some of them smiling at the chance to prove themselves in war.

  “Will you kill many of them?” Speaks While Leaving asked.

  “I will try,” he said.

  She sighed. “Why will they not leave us alone?”

  “One Who Flies tried to explain it to me...it seems very long ago now. He said that they think that this is their land.”

  “But they do not live here,” she said, stating it all so simply that it could not be argued.

  “No, they do not. But
to the vé’hó’e, that does not seem to matter.”

  Big Nose rode up, looking grim and unhappy. With him was his youngest brother, Wolf Robe, a youth of fourteen summers.

  “He will be going with us,” Big Nose said.

  Storm Arriving began to object but his friend stopped him.

  “He says we cannot tell him what to do. If we do not take him, he says he will follow us.”

  Storm Arriving looked at the young man. He was thin and still reaching for his full height. He wore a brave face—with furrowed brow and stiff-set jaw—but Storm Arriving saw that his fingers shook as they held his whistler’s halter rope. He would follow if they tried to leave him behind. It would be better to keep him close, where he could be watched. And where they could limit the trouble he caused.

  “As you wish,” he said.

  Over a hundred men had gathered, all prepared for a long, hard ride and a fierce battle. Storm Arriving and Big Nose weeded out the young boys who came hoping to join their first war party. With the exception of Wolf Robe, they selected only seasoned veterans, until they had the eighty men they needed. Then, with goodbyes for their loved ones and spirits high, they mounted their whistlers.

  “Fight well,” Speaks While Leaving said, reaching up to hold his hand a last time. “Remember to thank the spirits.”

  He smiled down at her. “I thank them every day.”

  “Kit Foxes,” Big Nose shouted, preparing them. “Are you ready?”

  In unison Storm Arriving and the others shouted the rally cry of their society. “A Kit Fox is always ready!”

  And with yips and barks and howls, they all set their mounts in motion, riding east, off the end of the sun road, toward the camp of the bluecoats.

  General Herron climbed up the ladder. He felt the rough grain of the wood under his hands and stepped up onto the gangway that ran the length of the timbered wall. The air was still redolent with the smell of freshly-sawn wood. He stomped a booted foot on the walkway planks, was satisfied by their soundness, and turned to his aide Quincy and Colonel McCormack, the man he’d put in charge of building the fort.

  “I want to see it from up there,” he said, pointing to the lookout tower.

  “Yes, sir,” McCormack said, and led the way.

  Herron noticed with approval that the walkway behind the parapet was a good eight feet wide: room enough to lay down a stricken comrade or to set a heavy gun. The battlements rose four feet above the walkway and were crenellated every ten feet. A man could stand and fire over the top or crouch and shoot through the embrasures. The whole design Herron had borrowed from castles he’d visited in Wales and Scotland. While they wouldn’t stand against a modern force, he expected they would be able to turn the trick with the Indians.

  He walked to the secondary ladder that gave access from the battlement to one of the four towers that topped each corner. The tower platforms had proven themselves during the Indian’s recent attack, allowing gunners to fire along the ramparts and enfilade Indian forces attempting to scale the walls. They also gave an extended vantage of the fort and the surrounding terrain.

  Herron climbed up, returned the salute of the corporal posted as lookout, and gazed outward across the land.

  Trampled turf surrounded the fort, and horses grazed on pale grass beneath the protection of watchful guards. Farther away was the dark mound of earth where his men had buried the Indians killed in their doomed attack, but beyond that, the land was a flat sea of dun-colored knee-high grass. Its only features were the wandering indentation of a creekbed and the movement of the grass itself as it bowed beneath the wind that sped across the plain.

  This is a different land, Herron thought. We can’t fight here like we did at Gettysburg or Sharpsburg. Can’t hide or move behind a screen of trees or beyond a ridgeline. No.

  He looked all around the fort and in every direction saw the hard line of the horizon delineating land and sky.

  No. You can see a man for miles in this country.

  He could see the almost imperceptible bow of the earth, the curve of the planetary sphere, and with the waves in the windblown grass, he felt like he was sailing on some alien ocean. The only flaw in the illusion was, as he looked eastward, the track of trampled grass and upturned earth that the engineering regiment had made when they had carted the tons of wood and supplies out to the site.

  It had taken a week just to transport the timbers for the walls, and wagons still came, every few days, deepening the ruts that wandered their way back to the Missouri River.

  But the ruts did not bother Herron. He knew that soon the ruts would be gone, replaced by shiny rails. He knew it, could see it all, as if it had already come to pass. These forts—his forts—were just the first step.

  He inspected the yard from the tower’s vantage. The east-facing gate had been opened to allow the horses out to graze. The walls on either side of the gate stretched out to enclose the interior, nearly three hundred feet on a side. In the northern half of the yard were buildings that would serve as the commander’s and officer’s quarters. Across the yard on the southern side were the commissary, smithy, and carpentry shops. In between, two rows of white canvas tent shells lined the western wall. The rest of the yard—most of it, to be truthful—was unused.

  “Looks pretty empty,” Herron said.

  “For now, sir, it is.” McCormack was a thick-set stump of a man with florid cheeks and watery blue eyes above muttonchop whiskers. He was well known for his tendency toward loquaciousness, but today—perhaps at Quincy’s suggestion—his responses were blissfully curt. “It will be a different story, though, with a full fighting regiment in residence.”

  “Hmm,” Herron said, nodding. “True enough.” Four hundred men, he thought. Not to mention their horses and supplies. They’ll be crammed together like pickles in a jar. It’ll be—what was the word Greene used?—ah, yes: medieval. Still, it’s all very well done.

  “My compliments, McCormack. Your experience at Fort Whitley shows.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the colonel said.

  “Sirs?” the corporal said, pointing.

  Herron looked back out toward the horizon. His eye caught a blur of motion far out to the west, like the shadow of a cloud as it passed in front of the sun. He looked up. The sky was clear.

  “My glasses,” he said and Quincy, always near, quickly produced the binoculars. McCormack called for his as well, and the two men peered out across the pale plain.

  Herron turned the wheel and brought the jittery view into focus. Stems of grass swayed, individuals in the ocean that covered the land. He swept the vista, searching for the anomaly that had caught his attention. Slowly, back and forth until there! it blurred past his sight. He followed it, caught it, and tried to understand what he saw.

  Shapes, brown and tan in color, tumbled across the plain, altering size and hue as they went. He knew immediately what they were, even before he heard the first fluting call.

  “Whistlers,” he said.

  Dreamlike animals in shifting colors, they ran across the plain. He could see the outlines of their curving crests, he could see the pumping legs. Their skins were colored in pale hues of dun and buck and tan, splotchy shapes that moved across their bodies, winking from one color to the next. There were dozens of them, perhaps a hundred, but it was impossible to be sure.

  He watched them, fascinated, but also compelled. There was something not right about them. He’d seen thousands of whistler flocks during his years on the frontier. What was different about this one? The flock was less than a mile away, following a curving path that would take them around the fort on the northern side.

  “McCormack,” he said. “Do you notice anything odd about those whistlers?”

  “No, sir,” the colonel said. “Not really, unless...I don’t know that I’ve ever seen them use more than one color at once, if that’s what you mean.”

  The flock was closer now, a thousand yards or so away, swinging around the northern side of the fort a
s they continued on to the east. Only they weren’t continuing. The flock swung closer.

  Herron saw it at a glance. The open gate. The grazing horses. The flock’s shifting colors that didn’t hide them so much as they hid something else. He looked through the glasses again, re-focused, saw the whistlers, closer now, all brown and tan, saw a rope, a halter rope around the neck of one, and then, as the flock curved closer and turned toward the fort, saw Indians hanging low on their mounts’ far side like trick riders in a Kansa horse show.

  “Colonel,” he said calmly. “I believe we are under attack.”

  McCormack jumped as if pinched, saw the danger for the first time, and turned to bawl at the top of his voice, “To arms! To arms! Everyone inside!”

  A hundred men leapt into action, running for rifles, climbing ladders, corralling horses back toward the gate and the safety of the yard.

  “Sweet Jesus,” McCormack said. “The horses.”

  Herron felt the old coolness descend upon him, the clarity of mind and serenity of soul that he always experienced during battle. It was his own personal irony that he should never feel more at peace than when gripped by the teeth of war, but he accepted it when it came, and he relished it.

  He took in the factors: the speed of the attackers, the skittishness of the horses, the Indians’ ready bows.

  “The horses are gone,” he said. “Concentrate on the men.”

  “Yes, General.” McCormack bellowed more orders. The men obeyed and ran inside the gate, having driven in less than a quarter of their herd. The gate closed as the whistlers swept in and sent the rest of the horses fleeing across the grasslands.

  Got to give them credit, Herron thought. That was well done. We’re as good as trapped here now, but will they be able to capitalize on it?

  The attackers split up and began to circle the fort in both directions. They spread out, giving none of McCormack’s men an easy target.

  “Everyone to the walls,” the colonel ordered, and in minutes every walkway was manned. The soldiers spread out to cover every approach.

  “Fire at will!”

  The command was passed and the popcorn sounds of riflery broke out along the walls. The white smoke of black powder began to fill the air. Herron sniffed, taking in the warm scent of battle.