The Scourge of God

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

OGALLALA HOCOKA, WESTERN SOUTH DAKOTA

JUNE 3, CY24/2022 AD

"Wake up, people! Get up and wash your bodies, drink a lot of water, make your blood thin and healthy!"

The crier was shouting at the top of his lungs and beating on an iron triangle as he walked; now and then someone would stick their head out of a tent and shout back at him, usually something unfriendly and sometimes involving invitations to do things with horses, sheep or his mother. Rudi Mackenzie woke, yawned and stretched beneath the comforting buffalo-robe. Most of the aches and scrapes from yesterday's running fight were fading, though some of the bruises would have to go through the gamut of colors before they left him. Still, that was familiar enough; if you fought, you got thumped, and counted yourself lucky to have no more.

The welcome was nearly as strenuous as the fight! he thought.

It flickered through his memory in bright shards; the great ring of fires, the excited crowds pushing forward to hear Red Leaf's impassioned description of the action, the discordant wailing from the womenfolk of the fallen in the background. Louder chanting and nasal song from the throng, drums throbbing, cheers around him as the victors showed their captured horses and weapons and the grisly personal trophies and boasted of their deeds.

And then Red Leaf had gotten to the part where Rudi beat the Cutter officer and saved Three Bears from the lion: hands lifting him out of the saddle, pounding him on the back, pulling him into the whooping, whirling, stamping, screeching, leaping delirium of the scalp-and-victory dance, until he could scarcely stagger to his bed.

He sat up and ran his hands through his hair as the crier outside called his message again, winced as he hit a tangle, then searched for his comb. The tent where he and the other men of the party had been put up was something new; he'd expected tipis, and there had been a few in the encampment, some of them huge. But most of the dwellings were like this one, a round barrel shape twenty feet across on a wheeled platform, the walls five feet tall and topped by a conical roof rising a little higher than Rudi's head in the center. The structure was an interlaced pattern of thin withes crossing one another in a diamond pattern and lashed together with thongs; the outside was covered in neatly sewn hides treated with some sort of glaze to make them waterproof, and from the look of it the interior could take a quilted lining as well in cold weather. The floor was plywood covered in rugs.

Everyone was stirring; Rudi took down a canvas water bottle from a peg and obeyed part of the herald's injunction. The more he looked around, the more he was impressed with the neat economy of space; their weapons, armor and other gear were all stowed overhead on racks that folded down from the ceiling, for example, and the middle of the tent had a ceramic plate inset to mount a stove in cold weather, with a space for a flue running up to a hole in the central peak. Light came from actual glass windows set in the latticework walls, and there was an unlit lamp on a shelf over the door; the interior smelled of well-tanned leather and faintly of smoke.

"Rise and shine, men!" he called, as he rolled up his bedding and lashed it to the wall with the thongs provided.

Groans and grunts answered him; like his mother he was always cheerful in the morning, and it had always mystified him why some people resented it.

Why waste the day? There's things to be doing! But sure, you can't convince the sleepyheads.

He slipped on his kilt instead and picked up his shaving kit; Ingolf joined him, and they ducked out of the door-thoughtfully leaving it open to the bright early-morning sunlight and cool air. A pillow thrown by Odard, who was not cheerful in the mornings, bounced off their backs.

"Whatever's cooking smells very good indeed," Rudi said; it involved frying and, he thought, onions. "Odard will crawl out when it penetrates."

Men in breechclouts were walking past; the two travelers jumped down from the wagon platform and joined them at their friendly invitation.

Seen by daylight the hocoka was a great horseshoe of the tents-on-wheels, with an opening to the east and the tent doors facing inward; their white exteriors were painted in colorful geometric patterns, or stylized birds and beasts, or what looked like murals. Some of the larger ones had words inset in the decorations: at a glance he saw LIBRARY and CLINIC. Rudi estimated at least a hundred and fifty of the dwellings in all, not counting two huge conical tipis flanking the entrance and another, even larger and colored red, in the center of the open space. Smoke drifted from cookfires, mostly under sheet-metal tubs on legs or Dutch ovens, and the intoxicating smell of brewing chicory was strong.

And I'm even beginning to like the taste.

The interior of the great encampment had been trodden to bare dust, but grass was soft beneath the soles of his feet when the crowd left it. Around was a view of mile upon mile of rolling green splashed with drifts of the delicate white-pink prairie rose, taller purple coneflower, scarlet western lily and yellow wild sunflower. The ground dropped off to a fair-sized river southward, and the Black Hills showed clear to the north, but most of the horizon was like a bowl dropped over a world of infinite spaces.

A roped-off enclosure not far away held the ready-use horses, and herds of horses, red-coated cattle and off-white sheep dotted the landscape. Outside the circle of living-tents was a vehicle park, wagons of every size and shape and description, from ones that wouldn't have looked out of place on the Oregon Trail to cut-down pickup trucks and converted mobile homes.

Red Leaf waved, then came over as they walked down to the water. "Men bathe here," he said. "Women over there, and stock water below that."

Rudi nodded; Mackenzies didn't have much of a nudity taboo in their communal bathhouses, but other folk were more prudish, he knew. There were a good three or four hundred in the crowd who dove into the water and splashed around with much horseplay, from boys just a little too old to join the women down to the few elders; his mind automatically noted that well over half were fit to bear arms, and looked as if they could, too. A lot of them had brought their weapons to the riverbank, within easy grabbing range, even though it was obvious nobody expected real trouble.

He swam in the cold water, scrubbed with soap and sand, cautiously around the sore spots, shaved with his straight razor, and headed back for the tent.

Should I try growing a beard again? No, still too patchy.

The warm dry air had the last of the water off his skin by the time he'd gotten back…

And I'm a little reluctant to put the old clothes back on. Well, we'll have time to wash them There was the first surprise; their clothes had been taken away to be cleaned and repaired, and new outfits set out for all of them-his consisted of buckskin trousers with buffalo-hair fringes down the seams flanked by colorful quillwork, and a linsey-woolsey tunic bleached creamy white with bands of beads in geometric patterns along the sleeves and in a triangle at the neck.

Mathilda and his sisters and Virginia Kane came back from the women's section of the river; they'd been decked out in dresses that had capelike upper sections, with rows of shells across the yokes, flowers and birds along the hems, belts with hammered silver conchos, and moccasins done with a buffalo-hoof design; some of Red Leaf's female relatives sat with them, dressing their hair in local style. Others headed for Rudi and the others with combs in their hands and determination in their eyes; Odard's bowl crop, Father Ignatius' neat tonsure and Fred Thurston's short cap of wiry fuzz defeated them, but Rudi and Ingolf and Edain soon had twin braids fur-wrapped, albeit rather shorter than the local fashion.

Rudi's had two long raven feathers tucked in. "Sure, and the Raven is the bird of my sept," he said.

The girl doing his hair nodded. "And she's the bird of the battle-fields. These are for the two coups you counted yesterday. And this"-she added an eagle feather-"is for saving my brother's life."

He stood to buckle his sword belt, and the girl-she was about fourteen-glanced up at him with an unconscious sigh, clasping her hands together. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Mathilda looking at him with a pawky raised eyebrow. She mouthed peacock at him, and he replied with a silent you're another!

"My, my, don't you all look fine," Red Leaf said, when the work was done.

He poked a finger at Rudi: "You know, you're a dead ringer for a guy on the cover of one of those Sweet Savage Romance books I saw before the Change. There was this Swedish… woman… who used to haunt the powwows, she read 'em by the cartload; thought she was the reincarnation of an Indian Princess. We called her Princess Yumping Yimminy-"

Rick Three Bears grunted; probably because the massive bruise along his flank and the left side of his face made talking painful. He rolled his eyes and made the effort anyway:

"Dad, nobody's interested in what happened before the Change-at least, not right before. Let's go eat. Mom got up before dawn to start breakfast and she'll have a cow if anything spoils."

The visitors kept their faces polite, as was fitting for guests; Rudi suspected it was with a bit of effort.

Because each of us has thought exactly the same thing about our own oldsters, haven't we now?

From the wry smile, Red Leaf knew what they were thinking; he led the way to his own extended family's quarters, located in the place of honor near the hocoka 's entrance. His household had a set of five of the round platform-tents, with the sides rolled up to the roofline for better ventilation on the fine early-summer morning. The itancan introduced his wife, Sungila Win-a matronly lady a little younger than he, presumably named Fox Woman for her hair, with pleasant green eyes-and their four children, from one barely walking, stumping around in a moss-stuffed hide diaper, to Rick Three Bears' early twenties; his wife, his two children, his widowed sister and her three children and their spouses and infants, four young cousins and a brace of servant girls (who ate with the rest), and a couple of guests.

Evidently an itancan — chief was expected to keep open house.

Fair reminds me of home and the Hall, it does, Rudi thought, accepting a plate from Three Bears' mother. What does Aunt Judy call it? A mispocha?

"Sure, and it's a delight this hospitality is," he said, as they settled cross-legged around a low folding table that made a complete circle of the biggest tent. "I thank you for the trouble."

"You saved my boy Rick," Fox Woman said flatly.

Rudi blushed a little, made the Invocation, and applied himself to the food. The women had been busy with three portable stoves, and not in vain; there was frybread, lamb sausages redolent of garlic and sage, grilled walleye fillets fresh from the river, done with butter and pecans and steaming white and flaky on the fork, and plates of buffalo-hump hash and scrambled eggs savory with herbs and wild onion. While they ate, and drank the chicory and rose-hip tea and talked, Rudi leaned closer to Ingolf.

"You seem a little reserved, my friend," he said.

Everyone else is happy as crickets; Nobody's trying to kill us, for starters, which is a pleasant change from yesterday and too many days this past year. Edain saved two lives with a close shot, which is something he needed to do… but you are a bit grim.

Ingolf chuckled. "Yah. Thing is, back when I was your age or a bit younger I spent years when the worst nightmare I had started with waking up in a Sioux camp. I nearly crapped myself this morning for a second, before I remembered the circumstances."

Rudi's brows went up. "Well, I suppose these folk can be bad enemies. Though they think there's nothing too good for a friend, I'd say, from how they've treated us, the which makes me think well of them."

"Yah… you know how the Anishinabe called the Sioux the rattlesnakes?"

"I'm not likely to forget," he said, wincing a little with remembered embarrassment. "I should have noticed you were signaling me to shut up…"

"Well, that's not the only name the neighbors had for them."

"Oh, so?"

"Yah. The torturers was a favorite too."

"Ingolf!"

He looked up as Mary called. "Come on, let's have a walk. The girls say there's going to be some all-female do later."

The party broke up. Three Bears and some other younger men captured Edain and demanded that he show them his longbow in operation, with Odard and Frederick in tow and Virginia following, elaborately casual. A collection of grave older men and women took Father Ignatius away to spend the day administering sacraments; there were evidently a fair number of Catholic Christians in the hocoka, but a shortage of clergy.

Red Leaf looked a little surprised when Mathilda automatically joined him and Rudi.

I don't think women are much put upon here, Rudi thought. Certainly his host's wife and daughters hadn't been shy about offering opinions-they'd been strongly in favor of the men hunting down and killing all the lions, for instance. But I get the impression war and politics are men's business, at least formally.

"Ah…" Rudi said. "We didn't have time for formal introductions beyond the basics. This is Princess Mathilda Arminger, heir to the throne of the Portland Protective Association. Which is-"

"Yeah, I've heard of them," Red Leaf said. "Knights in armor… which after yesterday sounds a lot more credible. I've also heard that they're at war with the Cutters now; that all you Westerners are. Them and Boise."

Rudi nodded gravely, and Mathilda made a gesture of stately politeness, like the beginning of a curtsey.

"OK, I see your point. C'mon, I'll show you both around the place."

They strolled around the great circuit. Children and dogs followed them, but the people were mannerly; there seemed to be a code of conventions about when and how you could step within a family's section of the encampment, and for that matter who could speak to, or even notice, whom. Red Leaf pointed out the public facilities-the school-tents (in recess right now), the armories, the big tipis that were used for meetings of the warrior societies starting with his own Kit Foxes, the women's societies like the Tanners and Virtuous Women "Or so they claim," Red Leaf observed sardonically.

"Oh, Mathilda's as virtuous as you'd care to see," Rudi said blandly, and suppressed a yelp as she prodded him cruelly in one of the bruises on his ribs.

Some of the dwellers were setting out goods-weapons, tools, household gear, a vast array of leatherwork-including a few traders from towns like Newcastle that had coal mines to fire their foundries. There were craftsmen at work as well: women spinning and weaving, a blacksmith with a portable forge, carpenters making the latticework frame of a tent, a saddler tooling intricate designs into the flaps of a silver-studded masterpiece.

"Fewer than I'd have expected, though," Rudi said. "From the abundance of well-made things."

"Ah, you noticed," Red Leaf said. "Yeah, we spend a lot of time in winter making things, when we're split up in our cold-season camps."

He nodded at two men a few years younger than himself. "Those guys are talking a big livestock deal."

Farther out from the hocoka men and a few younger women were practicing with arms; shooting at marks on the ground, and from the saddle at targets or at hoops of rawhide thrown to bounce and skip. Others picked pegs out of the ground with light lances, or speared hide rings held on the ends of poles, or cut and parried with shetes and used lariats.

Rudi grinned as one young man stood on the saddle of his galloping horse, dropped to one side with his hand on the pommel, vaulted over to the other flank and then bounced back up as if he were on a trampoline, doing a handstand on the saddle before flipping himself down again.

"Not bad, eh?" Red Leaf said proudly.

"Not bad at all."

Which is true enough, he thought. They're fine shots and better than fine horsemen. Only middling with the blade, though, at best.

Two youngsters brought them saddled horses. "Let's go up somewhere high and private," the itancan said.

"Your folk have done well by themselves," Rudi said.

They hobbled their horses, then sat and looked downward at the bustling activity as they shared a cigarette-from here you could see things kept at a sensible distance from the hocoka, like the butchering ground well southward along the river, downstream. The smoke of the cookfires was a faint tang from here. The scent the noonday sun baked out of the prairie was like lying in a haymow, with a spicy undertone and the grassy-earthy smell of the horses.

Mathilda coughed a bit as she handed the cigarette back. "I know this is an acquired habit," she said. "But why would anyone acquire it? And the old fo-ah, people who were around before the Change say it's bad for you."

Red Leaf gave a slight shrug and a smile. "It's sort of a religious thing here," he said. "Like sweetgrass. Besides which, the weed's so expensive these days you can't have enough to kill you."

He sighed and looked at the butt, then carefully ground it out; Rudi had noted that all these plainsmen were very careful about fire.

The last of the smoke blew away; the air had a hint of ozone to it as well, alien to someone raised in the well-watered Willamette but not disagreeable. And under that huge sky even the bustling hocoka looked tiny, an anthill among the vastness.

He's friendly because I saved his son, and because we fought with his band, Rudi thought. This is a man who takes honor's obligation seriously. But also, I'm thinking, he's interested in us because he knows we're not just travelers. And that what we are could serve his people's need; which is also the honor of a Chief.

"Yeah, we've done pretty well," the Lakota itancan went on. "Sure as hell better than most people did after the Change. Of course, when you're already flat on your face falling doesn't hurt as much. And we were way the hell away from anywhere urban. Unless you counted Sioux Falls as a big city."

Evidently he considered that funny, for some reason; probably a local joke, even a pre-Change one. Rudi went on, remembering things his mother and the other older Mackenzies had told him:

"And I imagine that a lot of your folk were more ready than most to believe that something had happened. Their spirits not being comfortably settled in the way things were before the Change, so. One of our founders said… what was it… When the going gets weird, the weird get going. "

"Ah, you're not just tall, handsome and quick with a chopper, eh, kilt-boy?" Red Leaf said with respect. "Yeah, there was that. It'd been one damned shafting after another for us since my great-great-granddaddy's day, when we lifted Custer's hair. Not that the son of a bitch didn't deserve it… Everyone else around here was knocked flat mentally in 'ninety-eight- their happy time was over, but they didn't want to admit it. A lot of us thought it was time to rock."

"We in the Willamette are the only place we know near a big city where everyone didn't die. And most did, so," Rudi pointed out.

Mathilda nodded. "There were more than a million people in Portland," she said. "My father and mother managed to get a couple of hundred thousand through alive. Nobody here… nobody east of the Cascades… was that badly off."

Red Leaf lay back on one elbow and handed them a skin bag from his saddle. "Yeah, the Ranchers got back on their feet after a while, doing the Lonesome Dove and Kit Carson thing. But a lot of us Lakota saw the Change more as opportunity knocking and landed on our feet. We knew what we wanted to do and we went and did it."

"And when you know that, and others don't, they'll follow your lead," Rudi said, and took a drink.

After a moment he looked down at the chagal. The liquid within tasted faintly alcoholic, and very slightly fizzy. The rest of the taste was something vaguely related to sour milk; as if you'd poured beer into what the hearth-lady of some farm left out for the house-hob. He took another swallow for politeness' sake and handed it to Mathilda; if he was going to suffer, why shouldn't she?

"Damn right," Red Leaf went on. "Though there was a fair bit of argument over what sort of opportunity it was. I mean, we couldn't really go back to the old ways."

"I remember my father complaining about that," Mathilda said. "He did want to go back to the old ways-the new ones having failed. But it was impossible. The people were different."

Red Leaf nodded. "Yeah, by 'ninety-eight it'd been five generations since we followed the buffalo; a lot of things we had to dig out of books and experiment with, or set up relays of people to learn from some old geezer who was the last one who knew it, or find a hobbyist, all the while not starving to death in the meantime. Would you believe it, there were even people on the rez who'd never butchered an animal or ridden a horse? Lakota who'd never ridden a horse! And finding people who knew how to make things like bows… Jesus."

"And they more precious than gold," Rudi said, remembering Sam Aylward.

"Damn right. And for another, just between me and thee and don't tell Three Bears I said so, the old days weren't all that great. They probably beat the hell out of living in a leaky mobile home on the rez and dying of diabetes or crawling into a bottle of bad whiskey or just plain what's-the-use, or even running a casino, but I and a bunch of others realized we'd have to make something new-with the best of the old, sure, but new. And including things like germ theory and books. You can carry books around in a wagon-printing presses too, for that matter, and microscopes."

"I'd noticed the tents weren't exactly tipis," Rudi said.

"The gers?" Red Leaf laughed. "That one was my doing. There was this guy from Mongolia at South Dakota U while I was there. Name of Ulagan Chinua-it means Red Wolf-he was studying how we managed our grasslands, some sort of State Department foreign aid thing, and he actually built a ger out of stuff from Home Depot-"

That required a minute's explanation, though Rudi had once helped strip the last useful goods out of a burnt-out shell with that name on the front.

"— and lived in it just off campus. A bunch of us used to hang out there and drink airag — "

He held up the leather bottle.

"What's airag?" Mathilda said; to Rudi's surprise she took it and drank a long swallow. "It's not bad. Sort of like small beer."

"Fermented mare's milk," Red Leaf said. "Red Wolf home brewed it; his mother sent him the starter culture by Federal Express. We'd swig it and swap stories about Crazy Horse and Genghis Khan or talk about girls and horses and football… I really miss football… It's too weak to get really blitzed on, and it makes milk easy to digest for us non-palefaces. Something about breaking down the lactose."

"What happened to Red Wolf?" Rudi asked curiously.

"I pretty well dragged him back to Pine Ridge with me about Change Day plus six; the poor brave bastard was going to try and ride a horse back to Mongolia via Alaska, but I talked him out of it. He married my t'anksi, my kid sister, as a matter of fact. Died three years back on a buffalo hunt-those bulls will hook you if you're not careful. But he was real helpful. Nice guy, too."

"I'd guess his people did well after the Change."

"I'd be surprised if they didn't, from what he told us about the place. Anyway, tipis are drafty; there's all that waste space above your head. A ger 's easier to heat, it doesn't blow over in storms, and if you put it on wheels all you have to do is unhitch the horses and you're there, wherever there is. And we had to get out of those shacks and trailers or freeze, with no more gas. Took a couple of years, but we managed."

He pointed; a family were leaving, their two gers drawn by half a dozen horses each and a wagon following along behind; two more were coming in, heading for the banners of their tiyospaye — clans-and being directed by the camp marshals.

"Moving around makes more sense here than trying to stay in one spot where you eat the land bare; in the winter we spread out in the sheltered places along the rivers or in hills, and in the summer we get together to swap and trade and socialize and talk politics. We're really stockmen now-we grow a few gardens here and there, we put up lots of hay, we mine the ruins and make stuff, and we hunt a fair bit, but there aren't enough buffalo to keep us fed. Not even now, and we've got a couple of million as of last summer's count. Back right after the Change, not a chance; plenty of cattle, though. You can live pretty well in this country, if you know how and you're careful and you've got enough acres."

"The real problem being the neighbors," Rudi guessed.

The Indian sighed. "No shit, Sherlock. Not the Fargo or Marshall people and the other Staters. We can live with them-they're not short of farmland anyway. When they do get crowded they'll move East. It's the Cutters."

"Who are mostly cattlemen too," Rudi observed.

"And we've got a lot of good grazing country; but even that wouldn't be too bad without that crazy religion of theirs. Yeah, a little raiding back and forth with the Ranchers, some horse-stealing.. that keeps the younger guys on their toes, and keeps life from getting dull. But Corwin wants everything and they want you body and soul. And there are a hell of a lot of them nowadays. We Lakota can put thirty, forty thousand men into the field, max. The Cutters can do three or four times that."

The young man and woman from Oregon winced. "The Protectorate.. my country… has about four hundred thousand people," Mathilda said.

"And the rest of our area… the realms that come together at the Corvallis Meeting… about as many again," Rudi added. "All of us together could probably match their numbers in war, or nearly."

Red Leaf cocked an eyebrow. "But I hear Boise has thrown in with the Cutters, made an alliance at least. That kicks up their numbers even more. We're not afraid of the Cutters, exactly, but we sure don't want to take 'em on by ourselves again. Once bitten, twice shy."

Rudi smiled. "Now, those numbers of theirs are a shame and a pity. But it isn't necessarily so that if you fight them you must do so alone."

Red Leaf nodded slowly. "We haven't had much luck with alliances," he said. "Virginia's dad aside. We'll talk about this more later. Right now, there's some things planned for later today."

"So this ceremony is OK?" Mathilda asked, feeling a slight flutter of nervousness beneath her breastbone.

Father Ignatius nodded. "It's more a civil matter than religious in our sense, strictly speaking," he said. "I've questioned the Catholics here. In fact, there would be no problem with even a priest taking part. God is no respecter of either persons or names-Dieu or Gott or Kyrie or Adonai or Wakantanka. He is the Great Spirit whose pity we ask. If this helps you direct your thoughts to Him, or to Our Lady or your patron saint, there is no harm in it."

The women's sweat lodge was surrounded by a square of leather panels on poles. Two older women stood at the east-facing flap with their arms crossed and stern expressions on their faces. Mathilda swallowed and ducked through. Within was the dome-shaped lodge, set directly on the earth, with a door made of a hide flap, facing eastward. The fire was ready, and the rocks were already starting to glow and crackle…

Rudi blinked into the dimness of the men's sweat lodge. It was made of sixteen willow poles bunched to the four points of the compass and covered in buffalo skins; the last of the hot rocks had just been handed in held between wooden paddles and dropped into the pit in the center. The roof was no more than four feet high at the tallest point, and it was crowded with the five men of his party, plus Red Leaf and Three Bears and the wicasa wakan, the Sacred Man, the shaman sitting at the end of their circle by the entrance. Naked bodies crowded to either side of him. It was already hot; there was a smell of sweat and earth and scorched rock and leather, of the tobacco and sweetgrass already burned, of the sage padding beneath them.

"Yuhpa yo!" the Sacred Man cried, in a cracked elderly voice.

The flap was thrown closed from the outside, and the darkness became like hot wet cloth over the eyes. The stones hissed as the shaman sprinkled water on them. The eight men cried out together:

"Ho! Tunkasila! Ho, Grandfather!"

The shaman's voice rose in nasal chanting prayer, directed to the four points of the compass; the sprinkling and response was repeated, and each time it finished the men called out " Hau! " together.

The rite was strange, but Rudi could feel the power in it. A calling had been made, and Someone had answered. Sweat poured from his body, and with it he seemed to feel all impurity leaving him; the darkness was absolute, but he could see with a clarity he'd rarely had before outside dreams. He stilled mind and heart, breathing in deeply of the scented steam, drawing it down into the depths of his self. Something glowed in the darkness…

A command, and the flap was thrown open. He gasped and shuddered, his skin rippling as the cooler air flowed in, and with it a little light. The old shaman grinned at him with his wrinkled eagle face, and the dipper was passed around. The sip he took was like wine… like the spirit of cool white wine, and when he poured a little over his head the chill came like a breath off the glaciers of the Cascades.

"Mitak oyas'in," he murmured as he'd been instructed, and passed on the dipper to Odard beside him.

The Baron of Gervais was looking very pale, he thought; beyond him Father Ignatius had a secret smile on his face as he stared into the heat quaver over the rocks-almost the look a man might have when he contemplated his beloved.

I wonder how Matti is taking it, he thought. And I wonder if the women's rite is much different.

The thought flitted through his mind without leaving any tracks; it was as if something within-the part that carried on a conversation with itself and watched itself in endless contemplation-was being lulled to sleep. Then the shaman cried:

"Yuhpa yo!"

Darkness fell once more. He was falling with it, like a particle drawn in by the breath of a beast larger than the Earth. He tumbled through the dark, and panic started to build up, and with it consciousness of the sage beneath him and the others around. Rudi took a long breath and released it, letting his heartbeat slow, letting awareness of everything but the steam hissing up and the wailing chant vanish.

"Ho! Tunkasila! Ho, Grandfather!"

He sank again, but this time it was a spiral glide-a dance, where his feet moved through a mist of stars. He could hear thoughts roaring by him, buffeting at him like storm winds against a man on a mountaintop. It was exhilaration, like a perfect stroke with the sword, like the kiss of danger, like the exultation of rising above fear.

Light glowed again. It took shape The flap opened. He felt as if he could laugh aloud, but there was no impulse to actually do it. Instead he took the water, sipped, poured a little over his head.

"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.