Defiance is a collection of three historical fantasy/paranormal stories set in the American Civil War period by Laura Anne Gilman, Joely Sue Burkhart, and Angela Korra’ti. This is an excerpt from Joely Sue Burkhart’s story.

Storms As She Walks

by Joely Sue Burkhart

Chapter One

With wings of thunder and eyes of lightning, Thunderbird shall bring justice in our darkest hour.

A tattered rag flapped in the breeze above our new captain’s tent. Captain Steadman swore that old flag had been in his family for generations. He even claimed it had once hung above his great-grandfather’s tent in the Revolutionary War or some such nonsense. It did only have thirteen dingy white stars, and once the bars might have been white and red, but now they were so stained the rag could have been Stinker’s unwashed longjohns from last winter.

Around the campfire his first night in our regiment, Steadman regaled Company L with that old flag’s history. How a Redcoat bayonet had cracked the staff and damned near sliced the flag in half when it took the bearer’s arm off at the elbow. Or how an arrow had gone clean through and killed his grandfather in the uprisings that had led to the Trail of Tears. For a moment, Captain Steadman paused his tall tales and looked at me with a wary tightness about his eyes.

I made a point to touch the tomahawk hanging at my belt and leer in the general vicinity of his fancy hat.

Every man paled and drew back, even the two men I’d come close to calling friends in the past eighteen months we’d served in Pamby’s regiment.

That’s what I want, I reminded myself as I rose and swaggered into the night alone. I needed them to fear me. I played up my Comanche father’s blood as hard as the reservation teacher had paddled me every single day because I’d refused to answer to my Christian name. I couldn’t afford for the men to look too closely beneath the floppy hat I’d scavenged from a farmer, my father’s buckskin tunic heavily beaded for ceremonies, and the baggy blue trousers the lazy sergeant had shoved across the table to me when I’d enlisted.

They might see the truth.

I used the darkness to slip past the lazy sentries and found a tight, thick grove of trees. Straining my ears, I listened to the night breathing about me to ensure no one had followed. Then I dropped my trousers and squatted to relieve my aching bladder. Holding my water for the bulk of the daylight hours had grown easier with time, but I couldn’t get used to the way the men avoided bathing. After a month of smelling my own body’s odor, I’d given up. Now I took a dip in every river and creek we forded across Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas. The men just shrugged and decided my cleanliness must be an Injun oddity. As long as I shot and killed as many Rebs as possible, they tolerated me, although I never felt like I belonged.

A half-breed like me would never belong anywhere.

****

On the day of our first battle under Captain Steadman, I performed what I called the “Dawn Ceremony” as I’d done each day of killing in this miserable war. I’d made the whole thing up as a show to keep the men focused on my Indian heritage and not the curves hidden beneath my clothes, but it impressed them enough that I usually had quite a crowd. If I ever pretended to forget, they reminded me in a hurry.

I stood face up to the dawn, arms flung out, and I sang every Comanche song I’d ever heard on the reservation. I couldn’t always remember the words, so I hummed those parts. The men didn’t care, and I don’t think the Great Spirit minded much neither.

I always knew when the battle would go our way. If we were going to be victorious, I heard thunder, even if the skies were cloudless, brilliant summer blue. The thunder rolled in my blood, quickening my heartbeat, and sometimes I even felt the rush of wings fluttering against my face. My father had always claimed to be descended from Thunderbird, but until I heard the thunder and felt the pulse of wings in my heart, I’d never really believed.

This morning, I held my arms outspread until my muscles trembled and the horses pranced and snorted anxiously, but no thunder rolled across the horizon.

“You, there!” Captain Steadman yelled, and I felt his fierce gaze drilling into my back. “Mount up!”

My heart pounded slow and heavy, sweat dripped down my back, and my stomach was a roiling mass of sickness. I didn’t have to say a word to my two friends, Big John and Lying Abe. Grim-faced, they scanned the sky and then checked their weapons.

“What do the gods say, Injun?” Stinker rode by, absently scratching his crotch. “Will we have luck today?”

I shook my head, and his cheeks paled beneath his scraggly beard. Word spread quickly and the troops’ unease communicated to Captain Steadman. Stiff and straight in his saddle, he scanned our line, his mouth tightening at the nervous mounts. He locked his formidable gaze on me, but I remained silent.

I’d learned long ago that it was best to say as little as possible; my voice was too feminine. My nonchalant shrug made his eyes narrow even more.

“I have three rules,” Captain Steadman’s low voice rang with intent. The horses stilled, ears flickering back and forth, as though they, too, were mesmerized by his words. “First, I will never ask you to do something that I myself refuse to do. Second, I’ll never leave a man behind.  I’ll do everything in my power to ensure none of you ever end up in a Confederate prison camp. I’ll shoot you myself before I allow you to suffer that fate. And you can be assured of my promise, gentlemen, because rule number three is I never lie.”

“How about slavers?” For once, Lying Abe, the trickster of our company, was dead serious.  If President Lincoln was “Honest Abe,” he joked he’d be the Lyin’ one, but the only thing I’d ever seen him actually lie about was cards.

His somberness only worsened the heavy feeling on my chest. Today was a dread day. I could feel it in my bones.

“I shan’t allow slavers to have you either,” Captain Steadman replied, his words ringing up and down the line. “You signed with good intentions to fight in this United States Army and no one shall claim you from this service except God himself.”

“Good, good, Cap’n.” Abe nodded vigorously, his eyes suspiciously wet in the weak dawn light. “Shoot me first.”

I don’t know the name of the place where we battled, nor even the Confederate commander on the other side of the fortifications. I remember that the summer heat beat us mercilessly, our horses’ flanks dark and damp long before the height of fighting; the trees and fields were green; and our orders were impossible. We were to charge the main Confederate line and eliminate the 6-pounder punishing our infantry.

Now our boys were superb at hit and run attacks, but the Rebs had had plenty of time to dig trenches about their precious gun. More, they had sharpened stakes and driven them down into a punishing wall of death for our horses. There weren’t no way, no how, we were getting a horse through that prickly wall of wood. We were going to have to go over.

Captain Steadman studied the fortifications through his glass. Moment by moment, his shoulders stiffened even more, his mouth a flat slash, his brow furrowed. He dropped the glass and stared down the hill as though his naked eyes could compute the likelihoods and distances. Someone started to whisper and the captain’s hand shot up, silencing us all.

Finally, he said in a low whisper, “I need your best jumpers. The horses with the most heart.”

He turned in the saddle and scanned the column. Instinctively, I wanted to draw back and fade into the rear lines. My ghostly gray mare was my only hope for my future. With my bounty and wages, I was going to buy a parcel of land. It would be mine, not the government’s, and once I found a stud for my mare, I was going to raise a herd of the finest horses in the land. I’d rather rip my tunic open and expose my breasts to the entire company than risk her.

But Captain Steadman had a fine eye for horseflesh. He recognized the fire in my mare’s eyes and cast an approving look at her deep chest and powerful haunches. “You, Indian, what’s your name?”

“Thunderer,” I growled out, forcing my tone as low and bass as possible.

“Can she clear a wall as tall as your head?”

I nodded, not daring a long explanation of my mare’s abilities.

“If we clear the branches, we’ll have a pace or two to gather ourselves and launch over their ditch. It’ll take some fancy riding. I fear that ditch is at least six foot wide. One misstep and the horses are dead.”

I didn’t say anything but shifted in my thin saddle, searching for a deeper connection with my mare’s sensitive skin. Her ears flickered back and I felt her muscles gathering beneath me. She knew exactly what was coming.

“Don’t bother with the rifle. Use that saber to cut down the guards. I’ll eliminate the gunner. You,” Captain Steadman pointed to Abe, proving his eye for horseflesh once again because no one had a rangier, more nimble horse, “follow us over and immediately begin clearing the abatis. Until we clear the spikes, we’ll be on our own.”

And so it was that I found myself galloping between my captain and a negro pell-mell down the hill straight toward certain death. We had to ride fast and low, hoping to dodge their sharpshooters. Minie balls whizzed about us, but I used the subtle pressure of my knees and weight to guide Mist in a weaving pattern across the ground. Ahead, the wall of spikes loomed, the fresh scent of wood in my nose, the raw, pale flesh bared of bark, hungry to impale my own.

I reached up and touched the amulet I wore about my neck. The entire tribe—those few who still lived—had prayed and danced over it before I’d left the reservation. Thunderbird’s symbol with wings outstretched had been worked in beads.

Please, I prayed. Lend us wings. Let us soar.

Mist gathered beneath me and surged up over the spiked branches. I threw my heart and soul over that barrier, casting my will to the other side with no hesitation. The mare answered, powering us up and over. She landed hard but I kept my weight tight and centered against her withers. One pace and then I asked her again to jump for all she was worth in a long stretch across the six-foot-deep ditch.

She stumbled on landing but quickly righted her footing. I couldn’t spare a glance to see if my companions had made it over because four men had been set to guard the cannon. A shot burned its way across my upper arm. I hissed with pain, but it was just a graze. I whirled Mist and charged the rightmost guard. He tried to duck out of the way but Mist and I had long ago learned the natural instincts of a foot soldier charged by a horse. I cut him down and galloped past the cannon.

Two men stood back to back, bayonets at the ready. I couldn’t risk my mare, so I sheathed the saber and dropped my hands to the weapons on my belt. Tomahawk in one hand, knife in the other, I threw both weapons, one after the other, and wounded the men enough to risk darting in and eliminating one with a saber cut. The other man scrambled out of the way with my knife buried in his shoulder.

A Reb jerked at my reins, trying to use his weight to pull the mare’s head down and throw us to the ground. I plunged my fingers into his eye. Shrieking, he let go and fell beneath Mist’s scrambling hooves.

Shouts warned that reinforcements were coming. Smoke thickened the air, burning my lungs. Our troops had set the abitas on fire. Billowing dark clouds of ash and sparks choked me. The cannon. Had the captain made it over? Had he eliminated the gunner? In the thick air, I made out the body with my axe buried in his chest. I swung down and jerked it free, but I didn’t hope to ever see my knife again.

Abe limped toward me on foot and disappeared in the billowing smoke. “Thunderer!”

The dirt exploded between us. Mist screamed and reared, nearly unseating me. I muttered a curse at our own boys shooting cannon at us and started toward my friend.

Captain Steadman blocked the way with his horse. “I set the charge on the cannon. We’ve got to ride!”

Abe called out again, his voice close, so I risked disobeying my captain. If the charge went off or another cannonball blasted the area, then I wouldn’t live to suffer his punishment. Ears flat to her head, Mist trembled beneath me but charged through the thickening smoke.

A choked shout drew me toward Abe. I grabbed his forearm and tried to heave him up behind me, but he weighed too much for me to manage alone. Mist danced and snorted, making it more difficult for the wounded man to get his leg up over her rump. Another blast tore through the ground, tossing dirt and shards of rock in a geyser. Blood dripped into my eyes, blinding me. Abe must have been hit, too—his weight dragged at me, nearly pulling me off my horse.

From out of the thick smoke, Captain Steadman galloped toward us. He grabbed Abe’s other arm and together we made a run for it, carrying the wounded man between us. Foam flecked on Mist’s shoulders, but I didn’t dare slow her. When the cannon exploded with an angry roar, she found even more speed, forcing the captain’s mount to catch up or risk tearing Abe in half.

In the melee, we couldn’t tell up from down, let alone North from South. However, we did see Captain Steadman’s ratty old flag carried by someone galloping up the opposite hill. I’d never been so happy to see a flag in all my born days. We slowed enough to let Abe haul up behind Captain Steadman and then we trotted after our company.

My breathing didn’t slow; in fact, I was having a damned hard time catching my breath at all. I slipped a hand beneath my tunic and yanked out a piece of shrapnel. It must have cracked a rib, for every breath grew tighter and more painful.

I didn’t dare say a word. One look beneath my shirt and every man in Company L would know a woman had been sleeping and fighting in their midst for months.

“Thunderer, pick a man and take this soldier to the infirmary,” Captain Steadman ordered. “Your mount is done for the day.”

Big John had already moved over to help our wounded friend off the captain’s horse. There was no one more skilled in medical treatment in the whole regiment, and most of us would argue the entire Army. Not only had he received professional training at Rush Medical College in Chicago, but he also cared. He actually gave a damn whether we kept our legs and arms.

Not trusting my ribs, I stayed in the saddle and followed them to the makeshift tent. I hoped he didn’t need my help holding Abe down.

Chapter Two

“Okay, Thunderer, you’re next.”

I jerked awake and couldn’t stifle the low cry. My ribs throbbed and burned like a live coal. Gritting my teeth, I growled out, “I’m fine.”

“So you always cry out when you wake up?” Big John laughed, a deep belly rumble that sounded like my thunder. Maybe that’s why I’d liked—and trusted—him so much from the very beginning. “Is that an Indian habit I don’t know about?”

His tilted my face up and examined the scalp wound that had left rivulets of dried blood stuck to my skin. “This one’s not bad, so why are you whimpering like a baby?”

I thought about getting up and making my escape, but I knew I couldn’t pull it off. “It’s nothing.”

“Your fancy beads are blasted all to hell on your right side. You sure you don’t want me to take a quick look?”

I surged up but my chest felt like a cannonball had ripped through me. I fell back and clutched my side, gasping.

“Shit.” Abe propped himself up on his elbows and shared a huge grin with his buddy. “You really don’t think we know?”

“I took some shrapnel to my ribs, that’s all.” At least pain made my voice harsh and tight. “I’m bruised and it hurts like hell, but I’m fine.”

“Naw, that ain’t what I’m talking about.”

Cold fear trickled down my spine despite the red-hot poker stabbing my ribs. “I don’t understand.” Belatedly, I remembered the act I’d been following, so I muttered a few choice curse words in my father’s language.

“Is there a particular reason you don’t want me to examine your ribs?” Despite his size, Big John’s voice was as smooth as my mare’s canter. He dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. “Something you don’t want me to see?”

I looked from him to Abe and back, searching their gazes.

“Sugar?” Big John whispered.

I swear my eyes just about bugged out of my head.

Abe burst into laughter and fell back on his cot, gasping, whether from his mirth or his injuries I couldn’t say. “She thought we didn’t know. Damn, girl, how dumb do you think we are?”

My mind lurched, staggering like a drunk brave on whiskey the agents were always pushing to help our adjustment to life on the reservation. “Does anyone else know?”

Big John took advantage of my confusion and eased me flat on the tent floor. Gently, he pushed my tunic up for his inspection. “I don’t think so. We suspected for a long time, but no one knows you as well as we do. Your secret is safe with us, Thunderer.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting to remain calm. I kept a long cloth wrapped tightly about my chest, so I knew he couldn’t actually see much but flattened bumps. His fingers probed gently at my ribs and I made a low, strangled sound that wasn’t all pain. “How did you know?”

“Well,” Abe drawled out, “I got to wonderin’ exactly why we never saw you take a piss.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, then, even though it felt like Mist had trampled me. A curious warmth expanded in my chest that had nothing to do with the radiating pain from my ribs. These men had fought at my side, on horseback and in trenches, with minie and cannon balls busting into our lines and bayonets from all directions. We’d sweltered in the summer, shivered beneath moth-eaten blankets in blizzards, and survived everything from battles to diseases and the intolerable boredom of camp life.

I’d never had friends before. The kind of friends you’d trust to stand at your back in a fight.

“You’re lucky, Thunderer.” Big John smoothed my tunic back down. “The band you’re wearing is keeping that rib nice and tight. It’s going to be sore for weeks, but keep it as tight as you can. If you need help wrapping it, just holler. It’s going to hurt like a bitch when you try to do it yourself. I’ll speak to the captain and let him know both you and Abe need reduced duty for a few days. You stay here with Abe for now and sleep.”

My throat tightened. I tried to think of something to say. In my whole life, few people had ever truly cared about my welfare or taken care of me, not even my own mother. When faced with the horrific reality of her relationship with an Indian, she’d hightailed it back to Boston. She’d rather live as a ruined woman with her high-society family than take care of her half-breed daughter. My father had done his best, but we’d been forced to move further and further west, long ago abandoning any lands that his people knew. He’d tried to teach me his ways, but we couldn’t hunt or forage for food, and many of our rituals depended on nature’s bounty and a deep communion with the Great Spirit.

We’d been dying long before this war broke out, whether the Union allowed us to fight or not.

I gripped my amulet and shifted into a comfortable spot, trying to think of something to say to these two men who’d proven so worthy of my trust.

Abe rolled over on his side so he could look at me, grimacing as he eased his bandaged leg to a more comfortable spot. “There’s something I’ve got to ask, Thunderer. Even if I disregard your little secret, I just can’t wrap my mind about why an Indian would fight for the Union Army.”

The tent was stifling hot, but it was tight and dark and secure. A soldier learned to take a nap as often as possible to make up for the long marches and endless battles. I fought to keep my eyes open. “Why do you fight?”

“You saw my back.”

Yeah, I had. His back was a mass of thick scars. “You fight so you don’t have to be a slave.”

“Naw. I fight to be free.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?”

Big John brought us both a steaming cup of coffee and squatted down to join us. We might have to eat bread made with more weevils than flour, but the good old U.S. Government made sure we always had plenty of coffee. “I never was a slave but I can say it isn’t the same thing at all.”

I knew he’d been well educated, but the fact that he hadn’t been a slave, ever, startled me. I guess in some ways I was as bigoted as any white man. “How did you go to university? I thought…”

“I paid my way, worked, like many other young people. Took me twice as long,” Big John shrugged good-naturedly. “But I grew up easy compared to Abe, here. I never worked outdoors, but city life is different.”

“No one ever treated you like a slave?”

“Oh, I didn’t say that. There are all sorts of people, Thunderer. You know that. Some treat you like you’re a person and others treat you like a dog, whether they know you or not. I admit, I have the same question as Abe. I never thought an Indian would fight for the government after the Trail of Tears.”

“I can’t say what it’s like to be a slave,” I began slowly, searching for the right words. “But I know what it’s like to be exterminated. To have your very way of life wiped off the face of this earth. My father says we’re descended from Thunderbird, a great creature of power. The beating of its wings causes thunder and lightning shoots from its eyes. It hunts its enemy and protects the Indian.”

“No shit,” Abe breathed out, falling back on his pillow. “So that’s why we hear thunder about you. Next time you feel this Thunderbird stretching out his wings, why don’t you tell him to shoot some of those lightning bolts up Namby Pamby’s ass?”

None of us liked Colonel Pamby much. I thought I’d seen the worst sort of human louse in the Indian agent in charge of our reservation, but Pamby was the worst sonnofabitch I’d ever met.

We three laughed softly, but in the distance, I heard the soft rumble of cannon. The battle had moved quite a ways, so Pamby hadn’t had much luck today, as I’d expected. “It’s hard to explain, but I never really believed in Thunderbird. If he were real, and if my family had any special powers, why didn’t we blow up President Jackson or any of the other bastards who kill women and children while the braves are away?

“I asked my father these questions, and he said the ways of the Great Spirit are too difficult for humans to understand. We can pray, and hope that someday, Thunderbird will come when evil is at its greatest. Then we will ride on the wings of the storm.”

“Is Thunderer really your name?” Big John asked in that quiet soft voice of his so at odds with his size and strength.

“The translation is ‘Storms as She Walks’ but Thunderer is sort of a nickname that my family uses.”

Abe’s eyes were bright with curiosity despite his yawns that made me crack my jaw and settle back down to sleep. “So, Storms as She Walks, why fight for the government that did this to you?”

A cannonball lodged in my stomach, cold and hard with a metallic taste on my tongue. “As bad as the reservation is, my people have nowhere else to go. My father is no longer a warrior. The sons my age were never warriors. We hope that if we show our service to the United States Government, that we will be able to keep the puny lands we’ve been given.”

“Why you, though?” Abe mumbled. Big John carefully took the cup from his hand and set it aside.

In my mind, I saw the tribal council: three old men and one ancient blind grandfather. The only other men in my tribe, which didn’t have families to support, were drunks or jailed for some offense or another. The older boys had left the reservation as soon as possible, many of them cutting off their hair and trying to find their way in the white man’s world. Even the children were gone, taken away from their families and forced to live at the school where schoolmistresses tended to hold the Holy Bible in one hand and a switch in the other.

A tear escaped before I could stop it. “There was no one else.”