by A. M. Burns
Cunning Bird stood staring at Copperpot, unwilling to approach the metal man too closely. Even with the tribe’s gratitude, they had been unwilling to allow the construct into their camp, and he’d spent the two days sitting near the edge of the forest.
“Come on, Cunning Bird. Maybe if we get airborne, Trey will get moving,” Gray Talon said as he shifted to his eagle form. Powerful wing beats carried him up into the sky. As he glanced back, he saw a crow winging its way upward. They circled the camp three times before Trey finally mounted Spot. Cunning Bird took point and led them north, into ever steeper foothills.
For several hours they flew lazily northward. They could’ve traveled faster but didn’t want to leave Trey and Copperpot behind. The cloudless sky spread out, proving the perfect joining to the mountains to the west and the plains to the east. It was an awesome day for flying, and Gray Talon reveled in it. His eagle form might not have been more agile than Cunning Bird’s crow, but it was better designed for soaring on the thermals that rose off the foothills and provided a perfect path for them to fly along.
A dust cloud puffed up heading north along the hills. The hunter’s sharp eyes spotted a sleek dun horse running full-out with a pioneer woman astride, whipping at it for all she was worth. Behind her three horsemen followed, also beating their horses. They were more than a mile away. With a twist of his tail and a fold of his wings, Gray Talon dropped down to see what was going on. Cunning Bird followed.
Sun glinted off the barrels of the guns in the men’s hands. All three were armed. Shots rang out, but none of them came close to the woman, instead kicking up puffs of dust far off to the side of her horse. Gray Talon was still too far away to make out what they were saying. In midwing beat, he shifted to the form of a gray harrier. His speed dropped, but he could hear much better, as the smaller bird hunted by sound rather than sight like the eagle. The men’s voices carried easily to him.
“I love the feisty ones,” one of them cheered.
“Then be careful not to hit her,” another cautioned.
“You’re just lucky her husband was as bad a shot as you are,” the first one replied.
“We’ve got trouble,” he called down to Trey. He couldn’t see his partner and the metal man who ran along with him. They must be over the hill to the west.
“What’s up?”
“It might be some of the brigands, and it might be someone else, but there’s a woman being pursued by three men who are shooting at her and have, from what I just heard, shot her husband.”
“Maybe we can get some information out of them.”
Gray Talon swooped lower. White men rarely looked up or expected trouble from the sky. “I can try to take a couple of them out. Then we can have at least one to question. How soon will you be here?”
“We’re just on the other side of the hill from you. I was wondering why you and Cunning Bird altered course.”
“Come on this way. We’ll see what we have here.” He headed back into the sky, shifting back to an eagle as he went. The harrier might be good for listening, but its talons wouldn’t make as big an impact as an eagle’s would.
“Cunning Bird, you don’t have to help if you think you’ll get hurt, but I’m going to try to take at least two of these guys out. We need to question the other one,” he called out as he stooped down on the rider falling behind the other two.
“If you can unhorse him, I’ll take care of him on the ground,” the crow shifter replied.
Gray Talon focused on the trailing rider. The man had a brown hat, much like the one Trey purchased in Cheyenne. The rifle in his right hand bounced along as his horse tried to catch up with the ones in front of it. Wings folded tight against his body and his talons outstretched, the Comanche hunter slammed into the brown hat. The blow jarred him a bit, but his powerful wings carried him upward so he could circle back for another fall.
“Damn, Bill, can’t you even sit a horse?” the first man called back to his fallen comrade.
“No wonder the whores all complain about you,” the other man said, laughing.
Gray Talon glanced down to where Bill lay in the dirt. His horse still ran after the others. Cunning Bird shifted in the air as he was coming in for a landing. The momentum of his flight landed the Crow warrior on the fallen brigand. In a quick decisive move and a flash of steel, the white man was dead with the native’s knife leaving a deep cut across his throat.
Gray Talon looked over the other two riders while he circled around. He selected the larger of the two for his next target. Getting some altitude, he focused in on the man’s face. He’d done this maneuver on animals before—he’d even brought down a mule deer once like this—but he’d never tried it with a human. Overall humans were more fragile than the larger animals, so it should work. This time he came in from the front. Claws spread wide, with a savage scream right before he hit, he caught the man square in the face. A satisfying crack echoed out as the man’s horse spooked and took off toward the mountains, leaving his rider to dangle for a second from the stirrup before tripping up the horse and sending it rolling.
“What the hell?” the remaining rider screamed and reined in his horse.
Wings beating for everything he was worth, Gray Talon gained altitude again. If the man managed to get a good shot off, he could still be hurt by the bullet. Cunning Bird wheeled around above him. He circled, looking down at the man who was bringing his rifle up, trying to get him targeted from a nervously shifting horse. The first shot went wide. The Comanche’s heart raced. He’d never been shot at before. But then he’d never killed a man like that before either. A plume of steam showed him where Copperpot raced toward the scene; the construct and Trey should top the hill any second. The brigand fired another shot. This one came a little closer to his wingtip.
Heart pounding, Gray Talon dropped out of the sky. He hoped he’d be able to hit the rider and knock him off his horse before the man could get a good shot at him. With any luck the horse’s natural fear of shifters would make the animal an unsuitable seat for the gunman.
“Die, you damned injun!” the man shouted and fired again.
Another bullet whizzed by. Gray Talon leveled out his flight for his attack. Why does this rifle have so many bullets? he wondered as another shot barely missed his head. He thought for a moment about grabbing the gun, but flared up and slammed the man in the chest instead.
The gunman screamed and rolled off the back of the horse. Gray Talon tried to swing back into the sky like he’d done with the other two, but the man’s gun caught his wing. He twisted in the air and bounced off the horse’s rump, causing the animal to buck. One of the steel-shod hooves caught his other wing, sending him hard into the ground. He landed painfully with a yucca leaf shoved into his back.
Gray Talon lay there panting, trying to catch his breath, but the agony in his back made it difficult. He could heal, but first he had to get the stiff leaf out of his back.
“Talon!” Trey’s thoughts echoed in his head.
“I’ll be fine, just get over here and get this thing out of my back,” he replied. Nearby he heard the sounds of a struggle. He hoped Cunning Bird would be able to restrain the brigand. It would be a few minutes before he would be much help.
Hooves shook the ground as Spot arrived in a cloud of dust, followed by Copperpot’s heavy clanking. Trey shouted something he couldn’t understand, but seconds later the sounds of struggle stopped. Then his partner was at his side.
Trey’s gentle hands lifted him up off the ground. “Hold still and let me get that out of you.”
Then seconds later the leaf was gone. As soon as the yucca leaf left his back, Gray Talon shifted back to his human form. The act of shifting would be enough to heal the wound. He hadn’t stopped to think about the fact that Trey was holding him. The sudden change rocked them both backward onto the ground, where he sprawled across his lover’s chest. He smiled sheepishly as he looked into the blue eyes he woke to every morning.
“Sorry a
bout that.” He struggled to roll off.
“I’m just happy you’re all right,” Trey replied, unable to move much with Gray Talon’s weight pinning him to the ground. “Don’t do that again. I saw you go down under the horse’s hooves. I thought for sure you’d been smashed to the ground.”
“Takes a lot more than a scared horse to bring me down permanently.” Gray Talon settled next to Trey. The rocks under his buckskins were hard, but luckily there weren’t any cactus and the yucca plant was a couple of feet away.
Trey sat up and stared deep into Gray Talon’s eyes. “Just don’t do that again.”
“Master Trey, are you and Master Gray Talon all right?” Copperpot asked. The uneven terrain was giving the construct difficulty, and he had fallen behind in the charge down the hill.
“We’re fine, Copperpot,” Gray Talon replied. He stood up and offered Trey a hand. Behind them Cunning Bird stood next to the still form of the brigand with his arms crossed over his narrow chest. “You didn’t kill him?”
The Crow warrior shook his head. “Trey used magic on him.”
Gray Talon looked at Trey, who shrugged. “He’ll be fine in a few minutes. You were down, so I decided to remove him as a potential problem until I was sure you were okay.”
“Who are you people?” The woman who had been trying to get away from the riders sat on her heaving horse some twenty yards away.
“We’ve been looking for these men,” Gray Talon shouted back, thankful for his mother’s insistence that they understand and speak the white man’s words as well as the various Indian dialects, if for nothing else than to honor Trey’s heritage. “We’re hoping he can answer some questions for us.”
She cocked her rifle and leveled it toward the downed brigand. “When you’re done with him, I lay claim to him.”
Gray Talon carefully kept his hands out, away from his side, just in case she thought he might be going for a weapon that wasn’t there. Being a shifter of many shapes, he had no need for conventional weapons. He hoped Trey and Cunning Bird did the same. Copperpot didn’t need to worry about flying lead.
“I got no problem with that,” he said evenly. “From what I overheard, you owe these men a bit of justice, and the nearest white justice is several days away.”
“You look like an Indian but speak pretty good English,” she said, never taking her eyes off the rider at their feet.
“My brother over there.” He nodded toward Trey. The whites understood the idea of brotherhood, so that’s what they often claimed to be, unless like in Cheyenne it was better for the situation to claim otherwise. “He taught me everything I know.”
“Oh,” she replied. “Well, we’re wasting daylight here. Get your answers out of the man so I can be done with him,” she ordered.
“She’s kinda pushy, isn’t she?” Cunning Bird said in Crow.
Trey chuckled. “Reminds me a bit of my mother. She was pushy too.”
“Trey, can you wake this guy up so we can get some answers out of him?” Gray Talon asked. “Copperpot, why don’t you hold him in case he tries to run off?”
Without a word the construct picked up the brigand and held the limp body across his wide, shiny chest.
“What is that thing?” the woman asked, gesturing with her rifle at Copperpot.
“He’s Copperpot,” Trey replied. “The rest is a little complicated. Let’s just say he’s friendly, for now.” The mage laid a hand against the man’s forehead. He whispered a couple of words Gray Talon couldn’t make out, and the man jerked awake. Trey stepped out of the way so his partner could handle the interrogation.
“Damn you, injun!” the man yelled at Gray Talon. “I’ll kill you for this.”
Gray Talon grinned wickedly. “I don’t think so, white eyes. We have some questions for you. Rumor has it you and your band have someone we’re looking for.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man sneered.
“You’re part of the band of thieves and cutthroats that operate out of the mountains, robbing people from here down to Santa Fe. I think this here lady will back us on the fact that you and your two friends caused a bit of trouble for her and her husband recently.” Gray Talon gestured to the mounted woman, whose rifle still pointed their way. “The local Crow tribe concurs that your band operates out of this area. So I think you probably do know what I’m talking about.”
“We didn’t do nothing to that woman. We were just riding along the same trail as her.”
“Which is why I saw you shooting at her and heard you telling your friends that her husband was a bad shot?”
The man paled and tried to struggle away from Copperpot. The construct held fast until the man sagged in his grip.
“So.” Gray Talon stepped closer to the man. “Where is the dragon’s daughter? We know she was last seen with your band.”
The man glared defiantly. “I don’t know nothing about no dragon’s daughter. There’s no such thing as dragons.”
“A young woman, blue hair, golden eyes. We have it on very good authority that she was with your band of thieves the last time she was seen. We even know that there have been other people in the area looking for her.” Out of the corner of his eye, Gray Talon saw that Cunning Bird was offering him a knife. He reached for it.
The man blinked. “She never said nothing about being a dragon’s daughter. We picked her up at the base of Bald Peak. She said she was running away from home and wanted to join up with us. She’s a pretty good shot, so the boss said she could come along. She also proved to be very good at some of a woman’s more entertaining skills… if you know what I mean.”
Gray Talon glared at the man. He would never understand the white man’s ability to degrade women. “Where is she?”
Sweat poured down the man’s scruffy face. “If I tell you, will you let me go?”
Knowing the woman with the gun wouldn’t, but having a low tolerance for thieves, believing them to be the lowest form of white man, Gray Talon relented. “I will let you go,” he whispered.
“Rockwall McNair came and got her about two weeks ago. He had a bunch of his metal men with him. They can be really persuasive.” The thief looked relieved. “The boss wasn’t real happy to let her go, but what was he to do against the metal men? Bullets don’t work against them, you know.”
Gray Talon simply glared at the bandit. “We know. Do you happen to know where they were taking her?”
“They didn’t say.” The man’s voice shook. “But everyone in these parts knows that Rockwall and Dabinshire are north of Cheyenne. They got that big ranch, the one with the huge stone wall around it.”
“Well, it looks like we head back to Cheyenne, then,” Trey said. The mage turned and walked toward where Spot grazed on the sparse grass nearby. “Come on, Copperpot. We might as well get going.”
The construct looked questioningly at Gray Talon. When Gray Talon indicated, he released the man to fall to the ground.
Gray Talon turned toward the mounted woman. “He’s all yours.”
“Hey, you said you weren’t going to kill me,” the man objected.
“I’m not,” Gray Talon replied as he walked toward Trey and the horse.
A shot rang out before he’d taken three steps. Seconds later a heavy thud sounded behind him.
“So are you guys really going to chase after Rockwall McNair in Cheyenne?” the woman asked as she rode closer. She glanced down at the dead thief as she passed him.
“We are, but first we’re going to find the rest of these thieves and finish them off,” Gray Talon said, stopping to look at the woman. She was young, probably about twenty. She sat the horse like she’d been riding most of her life. The rifle rested in her arms like she was comfortable with it. Her brown hair was disheveled. A look of determination was etched into her round, dusty face.
“Are you sure?” Trey asked.
“Trey, I’m betting these men are the ones who killed your parents back on the slopes of Bald Peak. I kno
w you don’t remember much about that time, but I do.” He swallowed, remembering the blood splatter in the cabin and the look in the men’s eyes as they searched for anyone else they could kill. That was the day Trey’s magic had first manifested, and he’d hidden the two of them from the men. The trauma of losing his family on the same day his magic had shown itself caused Trey to forget what happened. For years since, Laughing Hawk and Singing Crow had been determined to keep the truth from him until he was old enough to comprehend, and now they were given the opportunity to give him vengeance. Gray Talon would make sure he got that before they continued on with their search for the dragon’s daughter.
Trey paled and grabbed hold of Spot’s saddle. “How can we know if these are the same men?”
“We were there, you and I,” Gray Talon said, reaching out a comforting hand. It was hard to tell Trey about what had happened. He knew it would be even harder for his lover to hear his words. “You made us invisible, but we saw everything. I can recognize the men who killed your folks.”
Trey latched on to his hand harder than he ever had before. “Were any of these three them?”
Gray Talon shook his head. “No. That’s why we need to find their base camp. These thieves have been terrorizing these mountains far too long for it to be anyone else. We find their camp, we put them down like the rabid dogs they are. Then we fulfill our obligation to the Old Man of the Storms.”
“I honestly don’t follow everything that you’re saying here, but if you’re going after the men who killed my Gary, then I’m going with you,” the woman announced. “I’m a crack shot and can ride like the wind. I’ll be an asset to you.” She had a determined set to her jaw that reminded Gray Talon of a Comanche woman who was not to be crossed. From his limited experience with women, maybe a lot of them got that look. It could be a woman thing, not a Comanche thing.
“We would be happy to have you with us as long as you understand the danger we might be facing,” he said.
