Sabers And... Snippet 2

March 15, 1898

Colonel Waller had the beginnings of a headache.

The twenty plus years moribund, yet still funded, Bureau of Indian Affairs had nearly buried his poor aide-de-camp in messages that they were certain were urgent.

What could possibly be urgent from an agency whose entire reason for existence had literally disappeared 22 years ago.

Well, not entirely.  The Comanche and Seminole had not been invited to where ever all the other tribes had gotten off to.

Not even mages hired from Yale and Harvard had been able to locate the missing tribes.

But his headache had nothing to do with the 'urgent' messages from Affairs.

His headache was entirely from the Lieutenant Colonel of Magery standing in front of him.

"Sir, we've figured out where they went and maybe even how!"

It was a remarkable theory and it stemmed from a failed experiment to move cannon quickly and decisively at Antiem.  While the first attempt had gone well, and the Rebels turned, the second had resulted in an entire battery going missing for an entire month.  They'd been very confused to have stepped out of the gateway and thirty days into their future without spending a moment of it.

"It all stems from the Sun Dance lodges being different that year!" he was explaining.

"That's all well and good, Colonel, but how can you be certain this is how they escaped?" Col. Waller interrupted.

"First off, there have been several important thaumaturgical breakthroughs," he replied, "Secondly, we've identified trade between here and where they've gone."