One Who Flies got angry. “What is it?” he asked, turning. He stood defiant, fists on hips and now Storm Arriving saw a challenge in that gaze. “What is it you are trying to get me to say?”
Storm Arriving kept his gaze fixed on the southern shore. “I want you to choose. One side, or the other. Ours...” He nodded toward the far shore. “Or theirs.”
“Why you—” One Who Flies took a step and shoved Storm Arriving with both hands. Storm Arriving staggered back and crouched to face his friend’s rage.
“How can you doubt my loyalties?” the former bluecoat asked. His voice was taut like a rope stretched to its limit. “What do I have to do to convince you?”
Storm Arriving straightened. “It is not me you have to convince,” he said. “You must convince yourself.”
“What?” One Who Flies ran a hand through his hair, pulling at it in frustration. “Convince myself? Don’t you think I already have?”
Storm Arriving tapped his temple with a fingertip. “Up here, you have.” He tapped his chest. “But not here. In your heart, you still doubt yourself. In your heart you are afraid to give up the thing that you were for the thing that you have become.”
“You think I still want to be one of them?” One Who Flies said, pointing across the river.
“No,” Storm Arriving said. “I don’t think you want to be a vé’ho’e. But I think you are afraid to be one of us. In this war, you cannot be both. You cannot be a soldier of the People and a vé’ho’e, as well. You cannot be a vé’ho’e and do what you know must be done.”
One Who Flies opened his mouth as if to speak but made no sound but for a small choking gasp. The anger in his eyes drained away and the tightness left his shoulders and arms. His gaze drifted. He stood as a man stunned by a heavy blow and he turned, not toward the river, but toward the forest.
The walnut trees were nearly bare and their leaves covered the ground like a dirty yellow quilt. Whistlers crouched in the leaf litter, their skins mottled yellow and gray to match the scene, their eyes half-closed in wary rest. Men sat near them or leaned up against them, tending small fires or cleaning their weapons. They chatted, shared stories, and now and again someone would grouse or laugh as a green-coated walnut fell on the unsuspecting head or back.
One Who Flies then looked down at himself, at his leggings of antelope skin, his moccasins of buffalo hide, his breechclout of red Trader’s cloth, and his shirt of fringed deerskin. He lifted the scabbard that hung across his shoulder and pulled out the long knife that had been the gift of Laughs like a Woman, now more than a year dead.
“Are we so alien,” Storm Arriving asked, “that you cannot accept us in your heart? Are we so different that you cannot bear to be one of us?”
One Who Flies stared at the blade of the knife. His fingers pulsed on the horn handle. “How can you accept me?” he asked. “I am a vé’ho’e.”
“Not any more—”
“Yes, I am!” He pulled back the collar of his shirt, revealing his pale white skin. “Underneath all this, I am one of them. I will always be one of them.” He turned and walked off toward the river.
Storm Arriving jogged to catch up, but One Who Flies kept walking along the river, scattering a mob of fishing lizards that had gathered on the muddy bank.
“One Who Flies. That is just the color of your skin. It is not who you are.”
“Is that so?” One Who Flies asked. “You would feel differently if I said I wanted to marry your sister.”
Storm Arriving stopped, confused. “Mouse Road? You want to marry Mouse Road?”
One Who Flies squinted. “What if I did?”
“I wouldn’t let you.”
“There,” One Who Flies said with perverse satisfaction. “You see? You say you accept me as one of your own, but you don’t want me to marry your sister.”
“Of course I don’t want you to marry my sister. You’ve not courted her properly.”
“But what if I had?”
“But you haven’t. I can speak to her...I didn’t know that you had any intentions—”
“You miss my point entirely,” One Who Flies howled and sat down on the ground. He put his head in his hands and tangled his fingers in his hair. His breath was harsh and heavy.
“My friend,” Storm Arriving said as he squatted beside him. “I do not understand you. I say you are one of us. You say you are not because your skin is pale where the sun does not touch it. I say that this makes no difference. You say it does.” He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “This is just what I have been telling you. It only matters because it makes a difference to you. You are not one of us because you are still afraid of no longer being one of them.”
The muscles along his friend’s jaw bunched and tensed. A tear fell from his eye and skittered down the side of his leggings. “Why would you ever accept me as one of your own, after all that my people have done?”
“Because of all that you have done to try and make up for it.”
One Who Flies looked at him in surprise. “Is that what...I suppose that is what I have been trying to do.”
“And you can never succeed,” Storm Arriving said.
One Who Flies took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No,” he said. “I don’t suppose I can. I don’t suppose anyone could.”
Storm Arriving patted him on the shoulder and stood. He held out his hand to help One Who Flies to his feet. The former bluecoat looked up through pale hair that had come loose in his anger.
“Should I stop trying?” he asked. “Stop trying to atone?”
“Yes,” Storm Arriving said. “Do things because they are right, and because you believe in them; not to rid yourself of the stain of someone else’s crimes.”
One Who Flies took his hand and stood.
“Now,” Storm Arriving said. “What is this I hear about you wanting to marry my sister?”
One Who Flies smiled, then checked Storm Arriving’s face to see if he was joking. Storm Arriving laughed at his friend’s apprehension, and they walked back along the riverbank.
More soldiers arrived the next day. They came in groups of ten and twenty—Little Bowstrings from the Northern Eaters, Crazy Dogs from the Flexed Leg People, Red Shield soldiers from the Hair Rope band—and by evening their number had grown to nearly two hundred and the forest was filled with the quiet voices of men and the tuneless songs of whistlers. Small cookfires scented the air, but most men, of the opinion that starting fires, along with drawing the day’s water, was a woman’s job, ate their provisions in the cold and dark.
George through the camp, weaving between lichen-clad boles of the tall walnut grove, greeting familiar faces, learning the names of new ones. He felt the steel bands that had constricted his chest throughout the day begin to relent. With fifty men the attack was risky, but with two hundred, they would have the game in their hands. The train would be protected, to be sure, but even for a shipment of weapons they would not be prepared for a force of this size.
He checked on his whistler, scratching her neck until she crooned, and then moved to check and re-check the two small crates he had set down on opposite sides of a large tree trunk. He lifted the oiled leathers on the first case and opened it. Inside, swaddled in cotton and pale, dry summer grass was the smaller box that held the blasting caps. Around the other side of the tree was the second crate with their last sticks of dynamite and some coiled fuse. George saw that each bundle was secured in its cushioned nest and then, satisfied, tucked the oiled leathers in around them, putting them to bed like treasured children.
On his way back toward the others, he looked up through the lacework of dark branches. The sky was clear and edged with turquoise after the sun had set. It promised to be a cold, clear night, and many soldiers were preparing for it with blankets and buffalo pelts. George envied them their calm: these were seasoned veterans while he had only seen combat on two occasions—and both times he had been fighting against his own countrymen.
He looked
down at his left hand and the stub of his little finger. It was the most visible of his wounds bought in battle, but not the deepest. He wiggled what remained of the high joint, contracting it, curling it, and could feel the missing two phalanges. He closed his eyes and could feel the finger whole, could feel the missing joints curl and he half-expected to feel the long-gone fingertip touch the heel of his palm. His breath caught in his throat.
Like my heart, came the thought. Trying to reach out with a limb that has been cut away. Trying to reach out. Trying to touch. Trying to...hold on.
“One Who Flies.”
George jumped, startled from his thoughts. It was Storm Arriving. In the gloaming, he was a figure of blue and gray, made of night and shadow except for the white feather at the nape of his neck. “Am I disturbing you?”
“No,” George said. “I was just...thinking.”
“The fathers,” Storm Arriving said, glancing back at one of the few fires that flickered under the bones of the autumn branches. “They would like to discuss plans for tomorrow.”
“Yes. Good.” They went together to join the meeting.
The night was long, with the feel of winter at the edges like a cool, satin border. George did not sleep after he left the war council. He leaned against his whistler’s warmth, smelled her spice, and listened to the darkness. Storm Arriving slept nearby, a shoulder and arm bared to the night’s chill. George watched his friend’s breathing for a time, and then looked for shooting stars. Hours later, the morning star appeared, shining on the horizon like a fisherman’s lure in the deep waters of the nighttime sky. Around him, men began to stir, awakened by some inner sense or by some silent signal George could not hear. Whistlers croaked and complained as they were made to rise. George saw the leaders move among their men, laying out the morning’s plan by starlight.
Before the morning star was half a hand high, they were across the river and riding.
The sky retained the cold clarity that only autumn could provide. They followed a wandering route which George did not understand until he saw the dark mound of a settler’s shack in the distance: the war party was winding its way among the homesteads scattered across the plain. The sun, when it rose, did not warm, but only blinded them as they rode into its light.
Finally, a dark, raised line appeared, a welt across the land ahead of them: the railroad. The sun was less than a hand high, its low rays ricocheting off the shiny tracks. The men stopped a quarter-mile from the railroad, and Two Roads looked at George.
“We wait on you, One Who Flies.”
George set his jaw and dismounted. He gathered the items he required—charge, fuse, initiator, and the all-important matches—and walked ahead to the tracks. His heart was clog-dancing in his chest as he knelt along the rail ties. The scent of creosote was strong, even in the cold. George scraped away the dirt alongside one of the black-stained timbers. He cut the fuse, giving himself a few minutes to run back to the others. He placed the cap on the end of the charge, crimping it in place, hoping that a single stick would be enough to dislodge the rail. He inserted the fuse in the cap and laid the explosive under the rail, next to the tie. The concavity would focus the blast upward, forcing the rail up against its spikes. At the very least, he hoped it would loosen the spikes so they could unseat the rail. He took out a match and struck it to life, touched it to the fuse and waited one...two...three seconds before the fuse spat, burning his finger with a jet of hot gases. He swore and put the finger to his lips as he backed away. The fuse continued to burn and George turned and ran.
He waved to the others. “Down,” he shouted. “Get down.” But none of these men had ever seen the explosions at the mining site, and even when they dropped to the ground, curious heads still popped up above the short grass.
“Stay down!” he yelled as he reached the line and fell prone. A long minute passed and George could hear the hissing of the fuse.
“What is wrong?” someone asked.
“Stay down,” George cautioned. “It won’t be long unti—”
The explosion shook the ground with a cracking rumble like a lightning strike. Men flattened and George looked up to see the iron rail flying up into the air, a bent hairpin flung by a giant’s hand.
One stick seems to have been plenty, he noted silently.
Rocks and gravel pattered down like hailstones and then the men were up, standing, staring at the damage and exclaiming to one another.
“It is like thunder.”
“Look at what it did!”
What George had prayed would at least dislodge the rail had in fact blown a wide, shallow hole in the roadbed. The rail directly above the charge had landed a hundred feet away and the ties and the other rail had been blown almost as far in the opposite direction. There was no way the train would make it past the damage.
George looked at the hole again and saw a problem.
“They’ll see it,” he said. “They’ll see it. We’ve got to fill the hole. Two Roads, we’ve got to fill in the hole.”
Two Roads and the others, still grinning at the display of power, turned to him with puzzled looks.
“If the men on the iron hardback see the hole too soon, they will stop. If they stop in time, they might even go back. We have to cover the hole so that they do not have time to stop.”
Two Roads heard his words and took a silent poll of his fellows. They all agreed. The war chiefs whistled at their men and issued instructions. In moments, five score men were working, scooping earth back into the hole, smoothing out the damage, camouflaging the area with uprooted scrub.
A huffing on the horizon told them that time had run out. “Back,” the chiefs ordered. “Back to the line.” The men retreated and hid behind crouching whistlers and clumps of tall grass.
George could barely catch his breath. The train pounded its way toward them, blazing the sky with smoke. The men kept low, made ready. Rifle levers clacked all around him. Those without rifles tightened bowstrings and loosened quivers. The locomotive approached, its lantern glaring into the early morning, a Cyclopean eye in the circle of its black face. Steam spewed forth from either side like the breath from the nostrils of a monstrous bull. It loomed large, bringing along its own brand of thunder: harsh, mechanical, driven. It came onward, within a half mile of their position. George saw the cars behind the locomotive, more cars than normal, more even than he had expected. Sunlight glinted off the sides of the cars, flashing off glass, off windows. Rail cars with windows.
George thought: Oh, dear God. Passengers. It’s not just freight. It’s a troop transport.
Brakes locked as the engineers spied the broken track. The train shuddered, compacting with deceleration. Iron screamed as metal pulled on metal. Sparks danced at the train’s feet. The locomotive, massive with the crush of tons of steel and cargo behind her, slid inexorably onward with a sad grace as if sensing herself at the threshold of death. She slid forward into the gap in the rails. Her prow dug into the ground, tearing up the earth, tossing ten-foot ties like pencils, bending the rails in her path. Her coaler slipped the track behind her and pushed the locomotive to the left. She dug her trench into the prairie grass, wheels half-buried in black earth. Fire gouted from her stack, and the sound of tearing metal—like the agony of a legend—bellowed above the roar. Behind the coaler, more cars jumped the rails, crashing right and left in terrifying succession. Baggage cars broke ranks and then the windowed cars—the passenger cars—leapt up and onto the open plains. George saw men behind the shattering glass, heard their shouts. One car slipped and rolled, flinging men into the air as it spun. A shot like an artillery shell blasted the air as the locomotive’s great boiler cracked in a scalding fount of steam and fire. More passenger cars skipped and slid, kid goats tumbling men to death in their play. Behind them, other cars had slowed enough to keep upright or nearly so as they jumped track. Further back, boxcars pushed forward, crushing the lighter cars, killing as they slowed. The din of mechanical death diminished and George heard i
nstead the voices of men. Screams and shouts were everywhere, pain and fear given up to the prairie sky. Bluecoats poured out of the broken cars, hollering to the heavens. Only along the line was there silence, only among George and the soldiers of the People. They waited beside their whistlers, stunned, two hundred men suddenly faced with an army.
Good Voice, chief of the Red Shield soldiers, grabbed George by the shirt sleeve. “You said there would be few.”
George waved at the wreckage and the hundreds of bluecoats. “I was wrong.”
“We are outnumbered four to one, at least. We cannot kill this many, not without heavy loss.” He began to signal his men but Two Roads stopped him.
“If you leave, we will never get the weapons we need.”
“Look,” Good Voice said. “There are hundreds of bluecoats out there.”
George gritted his teeth and grabbed the chief’s arm. “Yes,” he said, struggling with his emotions. “Look.”
Out at the wreck, men in blue staggered and stood. Some helped others from the cars. Some tended the wounded. Here and there an officer asserted his command. Ten cars or more, all filled with men. Eight hundred men. Maybe a thousand.
“Look,” George said again. “They are the winter garrisons. Leave them here, and you will only fight them later.”
“I will gladly fight them later,” Good Voice said. “When the odds are more in my favor.”
“Look again,” George said. “How many rifles do you see?”
Good Voice looked. George knew what he saw. “These are green recruits,” he said. “Only the officers are armed. The soldiers have not been issued their rifles. The weapons are all in the rear cars.”
Good Voice looked again and smiled slowly, but the contemptuous expression George saw on Two Road’s face echoed his own feelings.
“How are the odds now?” George asked, unable to keep a sneer from coloring his words. “Your rifles against unarmed men? Do you think you can handle it now?”
Good Voice heard the insult. He jerked his arm from George’s grasp. “I see no weapon in your hands,” he said.
The Spirit of Thunder Page 28