S. Stirling - The Scourge of God

"Mitak oyas'in."

Darkness fell again, and he danced with stars. Flaming curtains walled creation; beacons shone across endless skies. But he was not alone; the others were with him; Edain's earth solidness, Ingolf's elk strength, the priest's joyful stillness that vibrated like a single harpstring, Odard's sharp-flavored complexity, Fred's young eagerness. Distantly he knew he was slapping his hands on his shoulders and thighs; when he cried Hau! at the end of a prayer it was as if the breath left him in a plume of silver light.

The cycle repeated. The sword is a mind, he thought. The sword is my self. The sword is a song that They sing through me.

Light returned; the light of common day, but it was shining through him now. He became aware of the shaman's high call:

"… but the one eye which is the heart, Chante Ishta. We give thanks to the helper, may his generations be blessed. It is good! It is finished! Hetchetu welo!"

The men turned and paced sunwise, the shaman leading them out of the lodge, each stopping to purify their hands and feet over the fire of sweetgrass. Rudi blinked; hands led him gently to the edge of a leather tank on poles, and he scooped cold water over himself. With each shock of coolness he could feel himself sinking down into his body once more, but that was good as well. That was where he belonged, and there were things that must be done before he walked amid the sea of stars again.

And I could use dinner, he thought suddenly, grinning.

The helpers handed them their clothes. The shaman looked at him.

"You're one strange white man," he said. "I wasn't sure if my nephew was being smart about this, but he was right. You've got some important wakan people looking after you, Strong Raven. Your friend Swift Arrow"-he nodded at Edain-"has a Wolf; and White Buffalo Woman is with the Father. But you, you've got Mica-Coyote Old Man-nosing around, and not just him. That can be really good or really bad…"

Rudi bowed gravely, and made his own people's gesture of reverence, as he might have to an antler-crowned High Priest in the sacred wood.

A crowd stood outside, a blaze of feathers and beadwork and finery in the light of the setting sun; a shout of "Hunka! Hunkalowanpi!" went up. Red Leaf and his son led them proudly to the great tipi which had been pitched nearby-this was no ger, but in the ancient twenty-eight-pole conical form, the hides snow white and drawn with pictograms. His wife and the women of Rudi's party were there as well. Suddenly Red Leaf and Three Bears seized Rudi by the shoulders and thrust him within; he staggered past the doorway, nearly colliding with Mathilda and then the others as their hosts pushed them through. An earthen altar stood in the center of the tipi, with a buffalo skull and a rack that held the sacred pipe. Two wands decorated with horsetails and feathers stood in the rack; another was speared into the earth, with an ear of corn on it.

Beside him Virginia Kane drew a sharp breath. "Hunkalowanpi!" she said.

"And what would that be when it's up and about?" Edain murmured.

"It's the making-relatives-ceremony. Red Leaf must have been really impressed with you guys. You're about to be adopted."

The platters went around again. Ritva contemplated a cracked marrow bone, decided not to, and belched gently.

"So, the big one with the brown beard is your guy?" one of the Lakota girls asked her.

She was Red Leaf's sister's daughter, and her name was Winona-which actually turned out to be a Sioux name, and meant something like First Female Kid — but she looked a little different from her uncle, her eyes much narrower and more sharply slanted, and her nose nearly snubbed.

"No, he's my sister Mary's," the Dunedain said. "She won the toss when we flipped for him. I still say she cheated."

Everyone laughed. There were a couple of dozen of young Ogallala women within earshot, watching the men dancing in a way that involved hoops, drums, flutes, chanting and some extremely acrobatic maneuvers, and the feasting was at the stage Dunedain called filling-up-the-corners. The drink was mainly herbal teas and the vile, and vilely weak, airag, but there was beer and some just-barely-passable wine in jugs as well. She took a mouthful of frybread; one of the stews had enough chilies to pass for hot even in Bend.

And all of these girls are just as curious as I would be in their shoes… or out of them.

"I did not cheat!" Mary chided. "You just have no skill in coin-flipping, Ritva. Anyway, I won paper-scissors-rock for him, too! Plus, I had to catch him all on my own."

"Hell, I always said you should make 'em chase you until you catch them," Virginia Kane said.

"Or until they catch you and you scalp them," Mathilda said dryly.

I don't think she likes Virginia much, Ritva thought. Don't worry, Matti, Rudi will always love you best. Though yo u 're driving him up the wall, poor boy…

There was another laugh at that, but there was a trace of uneasiness in it, and the glances Virginia got were halfway between admiring and apprehensive.

"That's nice dancing," Ritva said.

"Oh, that's nothing. You should be here for the Sun Dance-the costumes are gorgeous."

"So, your fellah is the tall, good-looking one with the hair like a sunset?" the teenager said to Mathilda, returning to the subject with terrier persistence.

"Ah… well, we're very good friends."

That produced more giggles. "I'd like to be his good friend too," one young woman said.

"Oh, looks aren't everything," another said. "He might be one of those I-am-a-buffalo-bull types, bone clear through the head."

Mathilda bristled, and Ritva smiled as she went on: "Well, he's smart, too, and a fine swordsman"-her blush went up to glowing-coal levels at the laugh that got-"and a good hunter and he has a wonderful singing voice!"

"But can he cook?" one asked teasingly.

"He'll get a chance to hunt," another said. "The itancan says the buffalo need trimming."

That brought a bit of a groan. Ritva raised her brows. "You don't like hunting?" she said.

"The men get all the fun, and we get to do all the work."

We'll see about that! Ritva thought.

PRAIRIE, WESTERN SOUTH DAKOTA

JUNE 10, CY24/2022 AD

"It's different, seeing so many together," Rudi said quietly. "They're impressive enough one by one, but it's something else here."

The rise they were on was a hill only by prairie standards, but it gave them a good view. The bison were in clumps and straggling groups and lone individuals, grazing their way across the rippling plain and working gradually northward; the grass was fetlock-high before them, and cropped to an inch or less behind. The morning sun cast their outlines eastward, until the shape was like cloud shadow moving over the plains.

And as you raised your eyes there were more, and more, and more.. almost to the edge of sight. The wind was from the south, and it brought the scent of them, like cattle but harsher, a wild musky smell. Birds flew about the great animals' feet, snapping up the insects they stirred; a twenty-strong pack of wolves hoping to cut out a calf had sheered off to the westward when the mounted humans arrived. Several pair of golden eagles swept the sky above, seven-foot wing-spans tiny with height, waiting for the herd to flush something bigger. As he watched, one of them folded its pinions and struck like a bronze-colored thunderbolt.

Rudi mentally drew a box, rough-counted the buffalo within and multiplied.

Eighty or ninety thousand head, he thought. I don't think I've ever seen that many of anything breathing but birds in one place before.