Fire Arrow A Barnaby Skye Novel

Chapter One Death rose out of the night. A rush of hooves on frosted ground. A chilling howl. Whickering horses. A faint rip, thud, gasp, and sigh. The earth trembled. Barnaby Skye struggled awake. Violence had struck the camp. There was only the thin leather of his lodge protecting him, and that was no protection at all. Victoria gasped. He sat up, threw the thick buffalo robe aside, jamming away the sleep. Dead ash, embers gone, only blackness inside his lodge. He peered through the smoke hole. Bright moonlit night. Stars scattering through the October skies. The Judith River country, aglow in the moon, full of buffalo, full of death. He knew then. A raid. Blackfeet, who else? The horses already gone but now a worse evil, the enemy in the midst of the Crow hunting camp, every man for himself, death stalking the camp. He felt about for his Hawken, didn't find it, but found his belaying pin, that weapon of choice for generations of British seamen. A polished hickory club, thick, heavy, and flared to protect the hand or stop its passage through a ship's fitting. He grasped it just in time. The flap burst open and a dark force smashed in, swinging savagely. A battle-axe slashed the lodge cover, bedded itself in the robes inches from Skye. A knife glinted. Skye jabbed first, felt the belaying pin connect, then smashed hard just as a knife whipped by. Caught the warrior at the base of the neck. Skye jammed the stick into his face, heard teeth snap. The warrior retreated, howling, staggering out into the moonlight. Skye sprang up, pushed outside. The last of the Blackfeet were retreating north. The moonlight caught shadowy forms retreating into the gloom. A few half-naked Crows, kin of Skye's wife Victoria, chased on foot, carrying lances, only to fall back as arrows fell among them. One gasped and tumbled to the frosted grass. Skye was barefoot but he scarcely noticed. He did not see a horse anywhere. His own two buffalo runners, picketed beside his lodge, had vanished. In the distance, the thrumming of two hundred hooves diminished and died. Nine lodges of Crows, and not a horse among them, unless a few escaped the herding of the Blackfeet. Crow warriors armed themselves, but it was too late. It had happened so fast. The Blackfeet had overwhelmed or tricked or killed the night herders, the village youths not yet old enough for battle, and made off with the prized horses. But their triumph would not be complete without visiting some death or injury on the hated Crows. So they had raided the camp on Louse Creek after driving off the ponies, entering lodges, counting coup, killing if they could, making a great victory out of it. Death in the night. The hush suddenly returned, and it was as if there had been no violence, no death, no injury. Several Crow warriors hunted for horses, trotting here and there. Women, along for the skinning and hide-scraping and preserving, peered fearfully from lodge doors. Silvery moonlight flooded the encampment, making the lodges almost as visible as in bright day. And now they wailed, for there were bodies sprawled grotesquely on the frosty hardpan. Skye studied the murk from whence a last hurrah of arrows might come, but he saw only the silvered limbs of autumn-bare trees and brush along the creek. It had been a poor place to camp. He trotted toward a knot of people gathered around one of the fallen. It was the boy, Knot-on-Top, and he was dead, pierced by a Blackfoot arrow. His lifeless eyes studied the moon. Hardly a dozen years had this man-child lived. Three women knelt beside him, including his mother, Wolf Dreams. She did not wail. She sat mutely, cradling her son's arm in her lap. Grim warriors guarded the perimeter, but it was too late. Grief had come to this buffalo-hunting camp.Wheeler, Richard S. is the author of 'Fire Arrow A Barnaby Skye Novel' with ISBN 9780765313232 and ISBN 0765313235.