Alejandro closed his eyes and began to plan.
Chapter 5
Plum Moon, Waxing
Four Years after the Cloud Fell
Headwaters of the Red Paint River
Alliance Territory
George dug his heel into the walker’s side. The massive beast banked in a sharp, turf-tearing curve and powered back toward the herd, legs pumping, ribs heaving beneath her rider’s thighs. The walker had grown lean during George’s trip to Spain and now they both needed to hunt—and hunt well—to prepare for the coming winter.
The bison were pounding down the hillside, hooves clicking as they ran. The cows and their calves were deep in the dense heart of the herd while young males and old veteran bulls ranged along the dusty fringes, eyes alert, heavy heads ready to turn and rake horns along an attacker’s flank.
Yips and hunting cries slashed through the bisons’ thunder. Whistlers trumpeted as they dashed in and out of the fleeing herd, bringing their riders in range for a killing shot. Some of the older riders still used bow and arrow to bring down their buffalo, but the pop-pop of rifles was everywhere this season. War and politics had made it a difficult year for hunting and the younger men opted for what worked over what was traditional. Their families needed meat for the winter, and they could sing praise over the spirit of a bison shot dead by a bullet just as easily as over one brought down with an arrow in his heart.
George worked the lever on his own repeating rifle and slapped his walker’s flank. The walker bellowed—the blast of an angry locomotive—and pushed her bulk in pursuit of the retreating herd.
They rode into the thick cloud of dust, crossing dark earth shredded by a hundred thousand hooves. Two young bulls trailing the herd panicked at the monster’s approach, peeling off from the rest to gain room to maneuver. The walker roared again and turned to follow.
Barrel level, knees tight against the wicker saddle, feet in the taut riding ropes, George readied himself for the moment when the two bulls split up. The walker put on as much speed as she could—a final burst to close the gap. The nearest bull saw her coming and leapt completely over the back of the other bull to escape. The second bull faltered, stumbled. The walker lunged. Tooth-filled jaws snagged the second bull’s hind leg while George tracked the first. He aimed, fired, and the first bull went down as well. George leapt to the ground and both he and his walker moved in to finish their kills.
Within minutes the herd was gone, a rising cloud of choking dust and a wide path of torn earth marking their route west. Over the rise, whistlers appeared carrying the families who would butcher the kills, celebrate each bison’s sacrifice, and sing their fallen spirits into the next world.
George spied Mouse Road as she topped the rise. Speaks While Leaving was with her, and the two women rode down to greet him.
“She took one for herself,” George said, pointing to his walker as she crouched on the prairie grass, bloody jaws working on her gory meal. “And I brought down another. Over there.”
“Two for us, then?” Mouse Road smiled and threw her arms around his neck. “That is very good news.” He held her tight, flushed with pride, and dizzy with love for his new wife. She slapped his hand when it roamed too far from propriety and laughed as she spun out of his grasp.
Later, she signed. Then she motioned to her former sister-in-law.
“Speaks While Leaving wanted to help, since she has no other family, now.” She sounded unsure of herself.
Speaks While Leaving peered at him through her short, unruly hair. She glanced around at other women from the Tree People Band who were riding out onto the hunting ground, meeting husbands and brothers.
Speaks While Leaving had been detached recently. Whenever George had seen her she had been silent, alone, almost as if she was avoiding her neighbors. For years she had been a problematic figure due to her gift of prescience; men avoided her company, fearful that her great power would overwhelm their own and leave them defenseless in battle. Now, cast aside by her husband, in mourning over her daughter’s death, and in contempt of the Council’s demands, she was bad luck personified. George realized that her isolation during the past weeks had not been completely self-imposed.
He reached out and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You are most welcome,” he said. “I am glad to see you back among us.”
Her smile was tentative and sad, but it lingered. Then she set her jaw. “My thanks,” she said, and turned to join Mouse Road and begin the work at hand.
They worked at the first kill, splitting the hide down the spine to get the tenderest meat, and then skinning the carcass, setting the organs aside for special attention. At each task, they sang to the spirit of the bull, thanking him for the sacrifice that would keep the family fed, clothed, and sheltered through the winter ahead. George heard such songs across the hunting ground, grateful voices laying down respectful words beneath the joy and celebration that followed successful days of hunting.
But a dissonant chorus of yipping shouts cut across the prairie, and everyone looked up from their work. George shaded his eyes against the sun as he saw a half-dozen soldiers ride up on the low spine of the eastward hill. They were patrol riders, and their sudden appearance here was not good news. The group separated as they headed out onto the plain, each man seeking a different target. One rode toward George.
“One Who Flies,” the rider called to George. “You must come.”
“What is it?” George asked.
“The Iron Shirts,” he answered. “They ride toward us. You are wanted.”
The Spanish, George thought to himself. Here? Now?
He did not know what this sudden appearance meant, but if Spaniards were involved it could easily go very wrong. He needed to be there, if only to provide diplomatic translation. He turned to Mouse Road, but she anticipated him.
“Go,” she said. “My other mother and her daughters will help us. But take your walker. We need the whistlers.”
George started to argue, but she was right. The women needed the whistlers to roll and move the carcasses as they were butchered, and then to cart everything home on a travois. He looked over at his walker. She had finished gorging on her kill and lay nearby, basking in the sun, her eyes half-lidded in gluttonous stupor. She was not going to be pleased.
He walked over to her. The ground was soaked with blood and gore, as was her head, maw, and the hind feet she had used to hold down the body as she tore it apart. Her belly was distended with her meal, and gobbets of dark flesh hung from her teeth. She was grotesque.
Four years ago, George knew he would likely have pissed himself if he’d been within ten feet of such a creature, but now he walked over to her and kicked her in the ribs.
“Nóheto,” he said.
The white membrane across her eye slid down and she skewered him with her yellow-eyed gaze.
“Now,” he said, and beckoned her up with a lifted hand. “Let’s go.”
If she wanted, she could have reached out and bitten that hand clean off or disemboweled him with a twitch of her outstretched foot. But she did not. Such was the tie between rider and walker.
George had bonded with her years ago. Her old bond-rider had died during the Battle of Cumberland Gap, leaving her bereft in the midst of war. The image of that day was still etched in his memory: she stood ten feet tall, breathing hard from the climb up the mountainside. At her feet lay the bloodied body of Dull Knife, her rider, shot dead in an ambush by the bluecoat soldiers. Oblivious to the fighting all around her, she leaned down and nosed her rider’s lifeless body, breathing in the scent of blood and death. Then she lifted her head to brush the lower limbs of ancient maples and roared; a harsh, howling sound that chilled George’s blood and brought the battle to a sudden stop. To the trees that towered above and the sky beyond she bellowed out her rage and grief, and then, with a quick eye, she spied the nearest bluecoat, ran forward, and tore him in two. The fight was rejoined, but did not last much longer.
Afte
r the fight had ended and the walkers were exhausted, Storm Arriving grasped George’s arm and shoved him to stand before her.
George stood there as Storm Arriving slowly backed away.
“Face her,” Storm Arriving whispered. “Meet her eye. Show her your resolve.”
A walker was an immense presence, even when bonded to a rider, but the animal George stood before was now a rogue; a free being, unbound, in pain, wounded in body and spirit alike. His reflex was to turn, to run, but he decided to trust Storm Arriving instead of his fear, thinking not of what the beast could do, but of what they had come to do, of their goal, and of his desire to see justice done for the People.
The walker was lying down, breathing heavily from her exertions. Even though she was on the ground, she could still look down at him, glaring at him first with one eye and then the other like some gargantuan raptor. She opened her mouth. George heard her intake of breath and braced himself. She growled at him, a deep, resentful sound, and he felt her anger in his own heart. He stood his ground, letting her grief and rage wash over him, his skin vibrating with the strength of her pain, and his breath shortened by impassioned empathy.
She extended her neck, coming closer to him. Her knife-bladed teeth were before his shoulder. She blinked, the white membrane flicking across the great yellow eye that was close enough to touch. At Storm Arriving’s instruction, George scratched her dusty skin, staring into that eye, his heart pounding, sweat sudden on his skin. The walker breathed in, then out, her breath bathing George, her exhalation warm in the cool forest clearing. And then the tight knot in George’s stomach just...went away. The walker made a rumbling sound in her breast and lifted her head.
“Good,” Storm Arriving said. “She is yours now.”
George had never asked what might have happened otherwise.
Since that day she had been bonded to George and he to her; two individuals with one purpose. According to tradition, she had been given no name, but was merely “the walker bonded to One Who Flies,” or, as Mouse Road had said, simply “your walker.” But George knew that no ownership or mastery was implied by that label. She may have been “his” walker, but only so far as that distinguished her from all other walkers. She was still an individual and as such deserved respect.
Which she now demanded.
George looked to the clouds above. “Yes, you’re right,” he sighed. He walked around her small upper arms with their three-inch long claws and gently rubbed the silk-haired skin of her shoulder. “I know you have just eaten and don’t want to move, but I need you. The Iron Shirts have come.” He let all his anxiety at the situation bubble to the surface; his fears, his hopes, and his emotions made his heart pound and his skin flush. His walker sensed his mood, and in a moment she rolled to her feet and stood, ready to ride.
George stepped up onto her thigh and settled onto the wicker and ropes that formed the rudimentary saddle that kept him from sliding down her spine. Her breathing was labored from such activity so soon after gorging, but she did not fight his will as he directed her to move.
“Let’s go,” he said, and she stepped into motion, taking him up the ridge toward the patrol riders. One Bear was there, as was Two Roads, war chief of the Kit Fox soldiers, and several other chiefs of the bands that were still in residence. The other riders were not bothered by the close presence of a walker, for she was obviously sated and would not pose a problem for their whistlers. For some, though, their feelings about George were not as benign.
“I suppose you must come,” Two Roads said with condescension. “After all, you are the reason they are here.”
George frowned but did not otherwise react to the sting. It would serve no purpose. Besides, the remark was, for the most part, true.
They headed off at a trot. The walker lumbered and huffed as she worked to keep pace, but the whistlers slowly pulled ahead. A few miles from the hunting site George spied other patrol riders who rode in to join them. The massive drake ridden by Storm Arriving was unmistakable.
They rode for many miles, the whistlers always about a bowshot ahead, until they stopped short. George caught up to them just as he saw, emerging from a shallow vale a league distant, the Spaniards.
It was a large group, more than just an expeditionary force. Two files of cavalry flanked a company of infantrymen, and coming into view were wagons, some with men and many with supplies.
Storm Arriving spun his whistler and came up to where George’s walker stood. “Was it not enough that we had the bluecoats to fight?” he asked. “Did you need to bring us yet another enemy?”
George looked to the side in respectful deference. “They come as allies, not enemies, if you will receive them as such.”
Storm Arriving snorted in derision. “You have been gulled by the Trickster,” he said. “He has drawn webs across your eyes, and now you see light as dark, and call the moon sun.” He raised a hand in exasperation. “Between you and my former wife, we are surely lost.”
George toed his walker a step closer. “If you approach them in this way, you will create the thing you fear.”
Storm Arriving glared at George, an eye-to-eye challenge that George refused to meet. “Hunh,” was all the soldier said, and then turned his whistler to rejoin the others.
They waited for the Spaniards to see them. Finally, they did, and a small group of riders detached from the main force and rode in their direction. Cavalrymen escorted officers and a few civilians up to the hilltop, but the Spaniards had obviously never met with Alliance riders, before. Their horses pranced and shied as they approached the lizard-like mounts of the People. When they were within fifty yards Storm Arriving’s drake stretched out his neck and delivered a low, trumpeting call that made the hair on the back of George’s neck stand up. The horses of the Spanish cavalry immediately halted, some rearing. A half dozen men were thrown and several horses—with or without riders—spun and tore up the turf in retreat.
The patrol soldiers and chiefs chuckled, but George knew that humiliation was a bad start to this relationship. “Stop it,” he said in a harsh whisper. “You only make it more difficult.”
Storm Arriving did not respond.
The Spanish cavalrymen got their horses under control and the troop split into two groups, each wheeling to take a flanking position twenty paces from the chiefs as the officers and civilians came forward to meet the delegation.
The military officers approached first; a colonel with a brace of lieutenants, all resplendent in their pale blue uniforms despite the dust of travel. The civilians came up behind them.
First was an older man with grey hair and the black cassock of a clergyman. Around his neck hung a rough leather lanyard with a simple wooden cross, but the heavy gold ring on his finger spoke of his true power and position.
Next to ride forward was another man in black, but this face George knew well. Alejandro looked uncomfortable in the saddle, though he tried to hide it with a straight back and a pleasant smile. George did not know if the ambassador’s discomfort came from his days in an unaccustomed saddle or from lingering guilt for his part in the treachery at the Havana harbor, nor did he care; the mere fact that he was uneasy was good enough for George.
The men remained on their horses as the colonel moved forward and in a loud, clear voice, made the introductions.
“My name,” he began, speaking in French, “is Colonel Baltazar Rolando, and I bring greetings from Her Glorious Catholic Majesty, María Cristina Deseada Enriqueta Felicidad, Queen Regent of Spain, to the indigenous leaders of the Cheyenne Alliance. She presents to you His Excellency Señor Alejandro Miguel Tomás Silveira-Rioja, Special Ambassador to the Cheyenne Alliance; and the Reverend Father Domingo Alberto Simeon Velasquez, envoy from the Mother Church in Rome, with the hope that together we may build peace and a lasting friendship between our two nations.”
George said nothing, but waited. When One Bear signed, asking him to translate, George passed on the introductions for the chiefs who did no
t speak the Trader’s Tongue.
“Ask them what they are doing here,” Storm Arriving said.
“You know what they are doing here,” George said.
“I want to hear it from them.”
This first meeting required a deft hand, and Storm Arriving was spoiling for a fight.
“I am not translating your words,” George said. “I speak for One Bear, who speaks for the Great Council.”
Storm Arriving glared back over his shoulder at George, then looked to One Bear. “Ask them,” he said, his anger putting a hard edge to his words. “Make them say what it is they want here.” Then he pointed to Alejandro with his war club. “Especially that one. Ask him what he really wants here.”
Alejandro’s face blanched at being singled out with such vehemence. The colonel frowned and his officers began to look edgy. George tried to keep calm, but his walker sensed his agitation. Horses whickered in fear as the bloodstained monster took a step forward. Lines on both sides wavered; horses danced, whistlers fluted, and then George saw the face of a man behind Alejandro, a familiar face with a familiar smirk. Fury filled him, and he forgot about diplomacy, first impressions, and new alliances. He could think only of that face, and of the betrayals, pain, and loss that always followed the man who owned it.
Vincent D’Avignon.
Before George could control his emotions his walker reacted. She pulled in a massive breath and bellowed it out in an ear-splitting roar. The parley broke apart; horses scattered, whistlers bounded away from the raging walker. Alejandro kept his saddle as his mount fled the scene, but D’Avignon fell from his plunging horse and rolled as he hit the ground. The walker took two steps and lunged.
Beneath a Wounded Sky Page 6
