Beneath a Wounded Sky

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  “Let them bleed for a while.”

  A bugle sounded, and the Kit Fox turned their attention back toward the valley.

  “Finally, they see us,” Red Wing said.

  “Stow rifles and bows. Spears up. Move with me, slowly. We are expected, but vé’hó’e can be very stupid.”

  The Iron Shirt officers bellowed orders and soldiers moved to take up defensive positions. Ranks of riflemen stood or knelt as they made weapons ready, cavalrymen cantered their mounts to take posts on either side of the approaching Kit Fox. As Storm Arriving walked his forty soldiers to within a bowshot, he noted the condition of the force before them. Their faces were tired and besmirched with soot, and their pale blue uniforms were muddy from marching through the first rain of autumn. The men with the roll-alongs halted and leaned against the shoulder-high wheels, watching with yawns and sleepy eyes. All around, Storm Arriving saw faces that were older, with grey at chin and temple, while other faces were wide-eyed and unsure; hardly anywhere did he see the set, steady eye of a true warrior, and this was especially true of the riders with the tall hats and gold braid on their uniforms.

  “This is what they send to face the bluecoats?” Storm Arriving said under his breath.

  “These are only good for catching bullets,” Grey Bear groused.

  “They’ll surely do that,” said another.

  “Halt,” Storm Arriving said, both to stop their words and their progress. He’d allowed himself to become distracted by the condition of the Iron Shirts’ army and now refocused on his duty.

  The Kit Fox were ranged in a single row, well within range of the riflemen, and they were downwind so the whistlers caused no problems with the Iron Shirts’ mounts. Their position was a statement of trust, but Storm Arriving could not be sure the message was understood. He raised a hand in greeting and toed his drake a few steps forward from the squad. Three of the Iron Shirt officers nudged their mounts a few paces in advance of their line.

  “Soyez les bienvenus à notre pays,” he said in the Trader’s Tongue. The Iron Shirts glanced at one another. “Est-ce que vous comprenez ce que je dis?” Storm Arriving asked. “Parlez-vous le français?” Uncomprehending stares were the only reply. Storm Arriving felt his temper begin to rise.

  The young officer with the most gold on his uniform waved a hand as if brushing away a fly, and began to speak rapidly in a language that was filled with burrs and odd lisping hisses. To Storm Arriving, it sounded like the Iron Shirt’s tongue was too big for his mouth; he had heard the Iron Shirts’ language before, but never heard it spoken so fast. The officer’s face was unwrinkled, his moustache thin, and his hands were soft and pale. His body was untested by combat, but his demeanor was one of confidence and superiority. He completed his speech with a gesture toward Storm Arriving and then stopped, obviously waiting for a response.

  “Spirits give me strength,” he said, biting down on his anger, and then spoke to the Iron Shirts in signs that even a drunken idiot could understand.

  “You,” he said, pointing at the officer. “Follow.” He made his fingers walk up his forearm. “This,” he said, and pointed to his drake’s hind end. Then he turned his mount and nudged him into motion. His soldiers followed suit. They moved a few strides ahead and Storm Arriving looked back. The Iron Shirts hadn’t moved.

  “Come!” he ordered with word and gesture. “This way!” He kicked is drake into motion and didn’t really care if the Iron Shirts followed them back to the Council or not, but the shouted commands and the ton-ton-ton of bugles told him his point had been made.

  The Iron Shirts moved slowly and no amount of gesticulation or pointing to the cloud-banked fire of the descending sun could urge them to a greater speed. At evening, still with a hand’s worth of light remaining to the waning day, the Iron Shirts called a halt. They had covered only a fourth the distance Storm Arriving and his own party could have traveled on foot, and it became clear that this was going to be a long, tedious journey back to where the People had camped along the Red Paint River.

  “Send two riders home,” he told Grey Bear. “The Council should know of this delay. And send scouts out to the east. I do not want to be surprised while rolling this stone across the prairie.” Grey Bear appointed soldiers to the tasks, and then ordered the others to gather wood for an evening fire. Storm Arriving watched the Iron Shirts set up their own encampment.

  “Do they do everything so slowly?” Grey Bear asked, coming up beside his war chief.

  But Storm Arriving had noticed something. “Watch them,” he said, and pointed to individuals, first this one, then another. “It is like a dream dance,” he said. “It is slow, but each step is repeated. Look.” He pointed. “That one with all the gold rope starts it all. He speaks to one of those men with the feathered hats, and they speak to the men with the many brass buttons, and they speak to others. Each man is told what to do; no man thinks for himself.”

  Grey Bear laughed quietly. “It is like they have never camped the night before.”

  “And they look like they intend to stay until the next moon.” He pointed to the Iron Shirts being set out as picket guards. “Pass the word: do not wander toward the Iron Shirts in the night. They’ll shoot at anything.”

  Grey Bear laughed again. “You think they could hit anything?”

  Storm Arriving shrugged. “With that many rifles, even a blind army could hit a bull’s eye, just by luck alone.”

  Chapter 8

  Plum Moon, Waning

  Four Years after the Cloud Fell

  North of the Sand Hills

  Alliance Territory

  Before dawn on the third day, Heron in Treetops brought a scouting party to Storm Arriving with news.

  “Bluecoats,” Storm Arriving said to the others. “Break camp. Heron in Treetops, you and the scouts will follow me.” They rode toward the Iron Shirts at once. The shell of the world had just begun to pale, but the sky was clear. The Iron Shirt pickets at the camp perimeter had learned not to shoot at their new allies, so Storm Arriving kicked his drake up to top speed. They sped into camp, clods of mud flying from their whistlers’ feet. Sentries scattered and horses tested their tethers as the group slid to a halt near the command tents.

  “Wake up!” Storm Arriving called out to them. “Wake up!”

  Angry voices came from all sides as Iron Shirt officers emerged from their tents, buttons undone and sleep still crusting the corners of their eyes. The young commander of the Iron Shirts came out, wiping lather from his face. His gaze was narrow and his jaw was set in a thin line beneath his moustache. He spoke to Storm Arriving in sharp syllables, obviously upset by the abrupt termination of his morning ablutions. Storm Arriving was just glad to see that he at least had not been still asleep.

  When the commander was finished complaining, Storm Arriving slipped off his drake and walked toward him. Again, he spoke as if to the simplest of minds. He crouched and cleared a spot in the moist soil at their feet.

  “You,” he said with a finger toward the officer, and drew a circle in the dirt.

  “I,” he said, indicating himself, then the direction of his camp. Another circle, to the north of the first.

  “Bluecoats,” he said, and drew a third circle, to the east of the first two, and then finger-walked from the bluecoats to their own position. “Boom,” he said, miming a rifle shot.

  The boom and pretended aim of a rifle were understood immediately. The commander leaned closer, pointed, and asked a question. Storm Arriving had no idea what was being asked, so he just repeated the information in word and sign.

  “Bluecoats. Coming here. With weapons.”

  Another question, and the commander pointed to his foot and then to one of the horses that whinnied nearby.

  “On horses,” Storm Arriving said, and signaled a count of five times ten. “Five tens, at least.”

  More gestures, and pointing to the sky.

  Storm Arriving understood and lifted a hand to point from where the sun w
ould rise to where it would be after a few hands passed.

  “Soon,” he said. “You must prepare.”

  The commander called out to his officers and immediately began issuing orders. The older men snapped into motion, shouting orders of their own, and the Dance of the Iron Shirts began again with barked commands that made men leap into action.

  “He is young,” said Heron in Treetops, a strong, sharp-eyed young man who liked to wear a black vé’ho’e vest and a round black hat he picked up on one of their southern raids. “But they do listen to him.”

  “That’s a good thing,” Storm Arriving said. “But what is he telling them to do? That is what worries me.”

  General John Meriwether dismounted and held out his horse’s reins. McGettigan, his second-in-command for this excursion, swapped him reins for a pair of heavy binoculars. Meriwether leaned up against the trunk of a tree to steady his view and peered through the lenses.

  The Spanish army was spread out west-to-east in a sloppy tumult of mud and tents along the cleft of a creekbank. Between the main camp and Meriwether’s eastern vantage point was a plain of low grassland flanked on the north by a curving line of rumpled ground forming a long shallow bowl. This would be his first testing ground.

  It had been sheer luck that they caught sight of the Cheyenne scouting party the day before. Under normal conditions, the Cheyenne would have outmaneuvered them within hours, but the Spanish forces were like a Judas goat, limiting the scouts’ mobility and guiding Meriwether’s expeditionary force straight to the object of their search.

  And now he had them in his sights. It was a sizeable force—the cluster of command tents alone spoke of at least two brigades—but he could see at once that the Spanish commanders were inexperienced in this terrain.

  Infantry outnumbered cavalry by at least ten to one; a classic ratio, but men on foot were slow and exposed in this theater. In addition, the rifled artillery they had brought was heavy and cumbersome, and the soil, especially in the coming season, would not support such large ordnance. It was as if the Spaniards were planning to establish a permanent presence. That thought made Meriwether uneasy, and as he scanned the gathered host below, it was clear that this was indeed more than just an invasionary force. This army was here to establish a foothold, and that meant the wind was blowing from a very different quarter than he and the President had expected. The Spanish goal was not to support, but to occupy.

  He considered recalling his men, but decided against it; regardless what the Spaniards long-term intentions were for this army, a lot could be learned from this first encounter. Already, he could see that the Spanish commander was green, his tactics learned from battles fought in Europe almost a hundred years ago. Meriwether smiled. The tutelage of enemy generals in the realities of war was one of his favorite pastimes, and he was glad for the chance to take it up once more.

  Storm Arriving squatted on the elevation north of Crazy Woman Creek, gritting his teeth and feeling helpless. The commander of the Iron Shirts had wordlessly but unmistakably dismissed him and his scouts after the news of the bluecoat presence had been understood, and no words or signs would make a difference. The Iron Shirts did not want their help.

  So they had ridden back to the rise on which they had camped the night before and watched as the army roused itself like a hibernating walker disturbed from its winter sleep. Clumsy, slow, heedless of any danger, the Iron Shirts buttoned up their sky-blue tunics and wiped down their rifles with a deliberate calm that Storm Arriving found maddening. As the sun rose, he watched the bluecoats take up positions just beyond view of the camp, taking full advantage of the land’s limited topography. The Iron Shirts had been oblivious to it all.

  Now, the sun two hands into the morning sky, the Iron Shirts ordered their men onto the plain. Their foot-soldiers were deployed in massive squares bristling with swords, rifles, and bayonets, and their horse-soldiers were split into two groups to the side and rear of the infantry. On a strip of hard land near the creekbed, Iron Shirts had wheeled out the large iron guns and pointed them at the field. Small wagons stood nearby, ready to resupply them with shot and powder.

  Meanwhile, mounted bluecoats formed a skirmish line along the far limit of the battlefield. Beneath the trees to the east, Storm Arriving could see the glint of brass and steel worn by their commanders, but there was something he found more disturbing. Herons in Treetops noticed it too.

  “Where are the rest?” he asked.

  “Our scouts said they numbered five tens, at least,” Storm Arriving said. “I see half that, at most.”

  “Where are the rest?” Heron in Treetops asked again.

  As the bluecoats began to advance down toward the battlefield, Storm Arriving knew the answer. He knelt and squinted into the distance, scanning the terrain beyond the Iron Shirts’ far flank.

  “There,” he said, pointing, and Heron in Treetops cupped hands under the brim of his hat to get a clearer view.

  “Yes,” he said. “I see them.”

  Crazy Woman Creek ran fast, cutting a smooth, steep-sided cleft through the land. In a land generally devoid of hiding places, the trees and brush that grew along the creek provided a perfect opportunity. As they watched they saw shapes flitting through the deep growth and now and again a head surreptitiously peering through the scrub.

  As the Iron Shirts advanced their formations of men toward the oncoming line of skirmishers, the other half of the bluecoat force was creeping up along the defile, preparing to take the artillery from the rear.

  Storm Arriving picked up his rifle and fired a shot into the air. Several heads turned at the sound, including the commander. Storm Arriving shouted and pointed toward the creek beyond the artillery, but his gestures were ignored and the commander turned his attention back to the approaching bluecoats.

  Orders were bellowed across the plain. A bugle sounded and the advancing square of Iron Shirts stopped and reformed into four rows. The bluecoat skirmishers moved erratically across the field, keeping the enemy’s attention on the battlefield. They were within range of the riflemen, but only barely, and the Iron Shirts did not raise their weapons.

  Storm Arriving saw the artillery soldiers, positioned along the creekbed, load their cannon and adjust their aim. How the Iron Shirt commander expected them to hit the skirmishers was unclear—to Storm Arriving it was like throwing stones at hornets—but it was obvious the commander’s orders were never going to be tested. The flanking bluecoats had moved up through the underbrush along the creekbed and were only a stone’s throw from the artillery.

  “The bluecoats are going for the wheeled guns,” he said aloud.

  Grey Bear laughed. “You said you wanted the Iron Shirts to bleed.”

  Storm Arriving ran to his whistler. “Not all at once!” Then he shouted to the others. “Mount!”

  Soldiers leapt onto their whistlers and slapped them into motion. They streaked down the slope and hit the flatland just as the flanking bluecoats burst upward from the creekbed and fired a volley. The Iron Shirts manning the cannon went down screaming. The entire army’s attention was suddenly drawn away from the plain, and that was the moment the skirmishers turned and fired into the ranks of riflemen.

  Chaos spread like a stain across the field. Shouted commands competed with bugle calls and wails of the wounded and dying.

  Storm Arriving sped straight through the Iron Shirt rearguard. He drove his men past the cavalry, heedless of the panic they sowed among the horses. They swept around the rear of the commanders who stood in a knot shouting at the top of their lungs. He did not have to give his own men orders; they knew exactly what was to be done. A child could see that the threat lay at the wheeled guns, now in the hands of the bluecoats.

  A couple of his men had rifles in hand, but like him, most opted for spears or long-handled war clubs. Storm Arriving grinned as they approached the line of artillery. The bluecoats were turning the loaded cannon toward the main body of the Iron Shirts, and the sight of a cannon
’s swiveling maw set Iron Shirt foot soldiers running. Storm Arriving gripped the leather-wrapped handle of his club and lifted its heavy stone-weighted head. Beneath him, his drake flashed battle colors across chameleon skin, bars of red and white that pulsed and gyred. Storm Arriving and his Kit Fox soldiers let loose a war cry.

  They flew in. Rifles fired. Storm Arriving swung his club in a crushing, upward arc. His whistler leapt a caisson, butted a man with its crested head, its feet pushing through the line with claw-toed strides. One cannon fired in a gout of smoke and noise. The ball ripped a tear through the frantic mass of Iron Shirt soldiers. And then the bluecoats were on the run, diving back into the underbrush and down toward the rushing creek. The scrub was too dense for the whistlers to charge through, so Storm Arriving signaled his men to halt.

  They reined in at the end of the artillery line. The flanking bluecoats had escaped up the creek and the skirmishers had retreated from the plain. Storm Arriving inspected his squad. There were smiles and sweaty brows and chests filled with the thick breath of battle, but they were all there and all untouched.

  “Two,” Heron in Treetops said, enumerating his coup with a grin.

  “One for me,” Storm Arriving said. “The same for this big boy here,” he added, patting his whistler’s flank. The drake’s head and neck were still striped with battle colors, but the patterns had slowed and now barely crawled across his skin.

  It had been a good encounter; a decisive outcome with several coups and no injuries. A Kit Fox couldn’t ask for more. Storm Arriving lifted his head and looked over toward the snarl of men that surrounded the commanders like bees in a disturbed hive. The Iron Shirt commander caught sight of the Storm Arriving’s smile and his eyes went cold and hard. Storm Arriving laughed all the more and the commander looked away.