“If you won’t let us avenge our murdered brothers and sisters—if you won’t let me avenge my sister—against that monster, then you aren’t worthy to lead your own nation, Hammerhand.”
The sun shone hot. The wind whispered in the tall grass. Hammerhand stood alone toward one side of the open patch, gazing calmly into the furious black eyes of the warrior who faced him within a circle formed by a growing, nervously excited throng of Blood onlookers.
His challenger was another Blackfoot—a Sikiska, or what some called a “true” Blackfoot. Like many of the North Plains First Nations he was tall—a mere two inches shorter than Hammerhand—and spare, with wide muscle-roped shoulders. He wore only buckskin pants, his weapons belt and an eagle feather in his black ponytail. His craggy features were painted red from the eyes up, dead white below. He had at least three confirmed kills to his belt, every one hand-to-hand.
All told, he was a serious chiller. People were tense.
“Is that your last answer, Three Suns?” Hammerhand asked. Like his opponent, he wore only a belted knife and a pair of pants.
He knew many in the Nation still harbored hatred in their hearts for Mariah and festering resentment against Hammerhand for insisting she become one of them. So when the inevitable challenge had come, he had welcomed it.
“It is,” Three Suns said. “Now and forever.”
“Forever’s a long time, my friend. So be it. Do what you must do, Blood.”
Three Suns whipped out his hunting knife and raised it over his head.
Hammerhand was already in motion the moment steel cleared sheath. He crossed the intervening space in three lightning steps. He caught the still-rising knife arm beneath the triceps with his left hand. His right hand he brought slamming down onto Three Suns’ forehead in a furious hammer fist.
Bone crunched. Three Suns’ eyes rolled up in the red half of his face. The knife fell from his hand, and his legs folded beneath him.
The onlookers gasped. The front of his forehead was dented in by the brutal force of the blow.
Hammerhand shot his hands above his head in triumph, which gave him a pretext to wag his stinging fingers. Nuke! I need to practice that shit more often, he thought.
The crowd erupted into chanting his name, and he marinated himself thoroughly in their adulation.
* * *
“SHE SAYS YOU can come in,” Mindy Farseer said, poking her head out the flap of Hammerhand’s tepee in the early-morning light. “She wants to see you.”
It was the early morning of the second day since Hammerhand had brought the strange and dangerous girl to his tepee. The day before, he had quieted down the lynch-mob talk with his brief but impressive performance in his duel with Three Suns.
He had spent the past couple nights in a borrowed yurt with Miao and Gracie, another pair of women from his volunteer harem. And remembering their smooth-bodied beauty and almost-matching green eyes, he couldn’t think he’d gotten the worst of the bargain. This morning he reckoned it was time to check in on Mariah.
“You don’t seem triple pleased about this,” he said to his lieutenant.
She emerged and stood up. “I’m confused,” she said. “Is that ace with you? I don’t really know what to think about all this. Or feel.”
“Whatever you say, Mindy. I know you’re there for me, whatever happens.”
She looked around. Nobody was near enough to overhear.
“What is this going to do to us, Hammerhand?”
“Either make us an empire or destroy us. I don’t see much middle ground there. If that’s what you mean.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t, but whatever.”
Mindy started to walk on.
“We’re after the good here,” he called after her. “The power to do good. And if what we do is righteous, the way we do it is righteous, too!”
Without looking back she waved and kept on walking.
Shaking his head and grumbling under his breath, Hammerhand turned, stooped and entered the lodge.
It was dark inside and still warm against the previous night’s cool temperature with trapped body heat. It had a comforting feel and smell of home.
Mariah was dressed in fine doeskin. Her hair hung free, black and lustrous. A couple of giggling girls of about her own age were showing her how to play rock-paper-scissors. Of course there were children in the Nation; it was truly shaping up as that. Mariah wasn’t exactly taking part, but she was watching with interest, with something that might hint at a smile on her thin lips.
A spill of orange hair from beneath a heap of buffalo robes indicated Shelley was still sacked out. Prairie Fire nodded a greeting to Hammerhand and went back to stirring a pot of rabbit stew brought fresh from the fire outside.
The two girls looked at him wide-eyed as he approached. “Give me a few minutes with her, will you, ladies?” he asked. They nodded quickly, hopped up and scampered out.
Mariah gazed at him as he sat down across from her, none too close. He didn’t want her to feel crowded. For any number of reasons.
“Your old friends betrayed you,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”
For a moment she frowned so ferociously he feared he had overplayed his hand. I fear no man nor power on this Earth, he thought. But I don’t see there’s shame in fearing her power. Whatever it is, it isn’t of this world.
Then she nodded. Tears ran from her eyes.
He nodded. “So you’re with me? Please?”
She nodded, then she raised her head and her eyes were clear, if red. “Yes. I am with you.”
He nodded and stood. “Right. Then I say to you, Mariah, I will be big brother to you, and the Blood Nation will be your family, for so long as the sun keeps crossing the sky!”
* * *
THE COMPANIONS STOOD in the grass of a knoll and watched the old trader and his heavily laden mules make their way across a rolling landscape yellowed by the early-evening light. A herd of pronghorns watched the procession pass from a rise to the east.
“So Hammerhand’s got himself a ‘young witch who can summon the power of the storm to blast his foes,’” Ryan said, shaking his head.
“You think that’s Mariah?” Ricky asked.
“Of course it is,” Ryan said. “Who else could it be?”
He scratched his ear. “Hammerhand got her after all. I should’ve expected that, I suppose.”
“He’s forcing her to work for him against her will,” Krysty said. “He has to be!”
J.B. snorted. “How you reckon that’s possible?”
“But she fought against him, when he tried to kidnap her.”
“Mebbe he asked nice this time,” Ryan said. “He seems like a smart man.”
“Why would she ever join him, though?”
“She probably got to feeling we’d abandoned her, after a day or two by her lonesome,” Mildred said. “You know how loneliness works on a body. Especially when you’ve finally started to get used to friendly faces around you for the first time in your life. He could’ve won her over just by being willing to take her in.”
“But she was the one who said she had to go away.”
“And we didn’t exactly try to talk her out of it. Not even you.” Mildred shook her head. “We weren’t willing to accept what her power was...making her become. I bet he’s eager to embrace it.”
“So, what now, Ryan?” J.B. asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Do we keep doing what we’re doing or try to do something about this new situation?”
“Do something? Like what?”
“Seems like the girl’s kind of our problem. An ambitious dude like Hammerhand could do a lot of damage with power like she packs. Mebbe we should do something about one or the other.”
“A daunting task,” Doc said, “either way.”
“Doc’s right,” Ryan agreed. “I’m not ready to throw my life away just yet, or even this line of work, truth to tell. I like this break from jumping all over the place to nuke knows where. We’ve got it easier than we have had in a long time, just being errand runners. Hammerhand hasn’t come after us so far. Until and unless he does, I think we keep on doing what we’re doing.”
“But won’t Mariah make him too powerful?” Krysty asked.
“Mebbe. But remember why we had to go our separate ways. She got so she couldn’t control her own power anymore. So now I’d say she’s like a stick of dynamite that’s commenced to sweat nitroglycerin. She’s a bigger threat to Hammerhand than anybody else mebbe.”
“Mebbe,” J.B. echoed.
Ryan shrugged. “When do we ever get a better answer than ‘mebbe’?”
No one could find anything to say to that.
“You with me on this?” he asked them. They all nodded, agreeing to continue working as they had been.
“Right,” Ryan said. He took a deep breath. “Now let’s forget about mebbes and might-have-beens and start looking for a good place to camp for the night.”