Sabers And... Snippet 18

The truth be told, Fowler thought, not all of the Indians had disappeared twenty years ago.

The Commanche were still where they'd, finally, been corralled and disarmed.

The Blackfoots, Crow and Pawnee were living comfortably on their reservations; having once been aligned with the US against their... fellow wasn't the right word... neighboring tribes.

There was old blood there.

It was Crow shamans who'd helped the scholars from Yale figure out what spells had been used to make the spook-holes.

The Commanche had been especially restive and it was clear that the secret of the spell had been deliberately withheld from them by their neighbors.

It seemed that nobody wanted to live next door to them if they could help it.

Indian Territory problem, not a 77th Expeditionary problem...

And this expedition.

Fowler was feeling a little bitter about it.

His Army had been well starved by a Congress that didn't have an enemy to the North and felt that it was large enough to handle a foe to the South.

If the invasion of Cuba, last year, had not been such a near thing, funding would probably still be strangling.

But now we're needed again, he thought.

Urgently now that some members of Congress were noticing that only the Commanche needed active management and all of the other native tribes had absconded.  They were chipping away hard at the monies promised to a Bureau of Indian Affairs that kept watch on a rather small population of Indians.

He had to admit, the lack of Indians had allowed the Army to do its job and kept Indian Territory from being overrun by white settlers a decade ago and the BIA had realized that without an Indian Territory they'd have been wiped out completely by, then, President Harrison.  So they backed the Army in keeping the settlers out.

But there used to be reservations all over the nation, not just Indian Territory.

The Bureau was interested in keep the money taps open and their nests well feathered.

So it was up to The Army, Colonel Fowler and the 77th to prove there were still Indians out there, somewhere.

Which brought up a problem.

The scouts that were integral to his expedition were inexperienced.  In the past, he'd have simply enlisted the aid of a Crow or Blackfoot scout.

But he was ordered to make peaceful contact with the Sioux or Cheyenne, if possible.  He doubted in his bones if that were possible if he brought even one of their eternal foes with him.

General Crook agreed that it was going to be more likely to be found by the Sioux than to find them himself, especially if he didn't do any sneaking about.  As if a formation of this size could do any sneaking.

Sabers And... Snippet 17

There were, maybe eight of the oddly ugly... people?  surrounding Allen.

Not short, but looking like they should be, with blonde hair and blue eyes; but skin as dark as a snake charmer.

"Wood, does everyone have a shot?"

"Yessir."

"Then let's introduce these heathen to how The 77th does war," Lt Fowler announced as he drew the green sword.

It throbbed in his grip.  Eager.

It was the most startling thing...

Today wasn't a day for blades, rifles would suffice.

"FIRE!"

Twenty shots cracked and nine Goo Goo fell dead.  Allen fell as well, losing his captor's support.

The leader of the native band still stirred, looking shocked.  Almost as if he expected Fowler to negotiate or something.

Well, he wasn't going to live long enough to forget that George Crook, and by extension, his men didn't ask for permission to rescue a comrade.

Sabers And... Snippet 16

"They know we're here, Major," magery sergeant Harrington reported when he came back from his aerial scout.

"What did you see?" asked Major Beasley, worrying about just how hostile a reception the Sioux might offer.

"Two things, Sir:  First, there's three of them just over that rise laying so they can see us, but we can't see them.  Second, they didn't even try to hide the wizard eye they sent up to look at me."

Well, thought the major, at least we're not sneaking around.

"Fowler!"  We set up camp here until the Sioux deign to come and say hello.

Thank providence that Sheridan and Custer had long since left the service...

Sabers And... Snippet 15

Lieutenant Fowler marked where Allen had gone down, his horse carrying on without him.

"Wood!  Jenkins!" he barked.

His sergeants were already on it, Wood going left and Jenkins going right.

The Googoo were sneaky to a fault, but slow.  They were also clearly more familiar with the Sioux's tendency for hit and run.

They were clearly not stupid, but they lacked... imagination?

As Wood and Jenkins completed the wide circle and began closing in, one of the Googoos stopped trying to hide in the chest-high grass to stand and scream what must be a challenge.

A challenge answered in the sharp crack of a Krag from some private of Wood's.  The Googoo's head snapped back and disappeared into the grass.

"Goo goo goo goo, to you too, fella!" he yelled.

Panic was starting to form in the encircled savages when one of them stood up holding Allen's limp form with some sort of stone cutter to his throat, "Goo gu ghan guh ghana!"

A ring of Googoo with spears stood up around Allen and his captor a moment later.

Sabers and... Snippet 14

Colonel Waller looked up from his paperwork and tried to figure out what was missing.

He double checked his figures.

Reread the dispatches.

Then it hit him.

No telegraphs from distant superiors or rival commanders.

Nobody jostling his elbow.

It was refreshing!

The constant infighting and backstabbing that was the norm in the Army was entirely absent here on the other side of the spook-hole.

These men were HIS!  It was sobering to realize the loyalty which had formed in the isolation of this command.

It also made him wonder what such a loyal regiment might be capable of back home if the infighting remained as irrational as it had been before they'd departed.

Sabers And... Snippet 13

These horse-monsters were different.

The gathered in flocks like the killer-birds and worked together to hunt.

Like the other horse-monsters with feathers in their hair, they possessed the metal sticks of death.

The Wolf Tribe needed to know more about them if they were to drive them away.

They needed to be driven away before they found a place where their magic worked and the tribe's didn't like the other horse-monsters had in the dead mountains.

Lion's Bane would be honored around the fire for leading one of the new horse-monsters into the trap... an honor he would only attend in spirit.

Fleetfoot would be honored for catching the top half of the new horse monster.

Assuming his sling had not killed it.  They might be more fragile than the feather hair tops.

Sabers And... Snippet 12

"Corporal Allen!  After him!"

The Googoo was running flat out away from the scouting party.

The purpose of the scout was to find the Googoo, not to be found out by them.

Allen wheeled his horse around and gave her the spurs.

He knew from experience that the mare needed to get settled on her gallop before he had even half a chance at a shot.

He let go of the reins, steering with leg pressure and brought his carbine up and grabbed a round out of the magic loop in his ammo belt.

He'd closed within 20 yards as he chambered the round and put a bead on the back of the Googoo.

"Roll with the rhythm of the horse, don't fight the bouncing..." he thought as the sights aligned...

BANG!

A small puff of dust came off the leather shirt the Googoo wore and it tumbled to the ground almost as Allen got even with it.

Allen dropped the carbine on its sling and recovered his reins.

He never saw the Googoo that hit him in the back of the head with sling-stone...

Sabers And... Snippet 11

The land of Not-Dakota was lovely.

A man could lose his soul just gazing at it.

The blue-gray of the distant mountains and odd black-green of the pine forests.

The seemingly endless waist-high grass... there must be an end, there's the mountains there after all.

It would seem a paradise if it weren't for the uncountable gulleys, streams and rivers.

Even if there was no water, there was still a steep walled eight to ten foot deep trench to cross.  Always just a bit too wide to jump.

Maybe if one was a farmer, this wouldn't matter.

But Major Beasley was moving troops and wagons.

The old hands grumbled about such things hiding entire tribes of murderous red-skins back before the treaty and the spookholes.

Then there was those giant long-horn buffalo...  You just wouldn't expect a bovine that large to be, well, sneaky.

You'd be minding your own business tending to getting a wagon over a ravine and suddenly there's fifty of the damnable things wandering right up to the pickets and being angry at human intrusion into their path.

The men were eating well, at least.

9

Sabers And... Snippet 10

It just never got old.

Major Beasley would draw his saber and it would burst into flames and the Sioux would "oooh and awwww" over it.

It was, admittedly an expensive trick, $15,250 to be exact; that included the half caret ruby and six months work from one of the better enchanters; all of this on top of the very finest blade that could be fashioned.

No ugly blade this, engraved and etched, it had been $659.09 in and of itself before being sent to the enchanter.

The price was not something he mentioned.  Major Beasley was not a braggart.

But he knew down to the last red cent how much it had cost.

His father, already piqued that his only son in twelve children, was "wasting" the better part of his life "playing soldier" instead of learning to make the family fortune larger; had castigated him for hours when Underwood Enchanters had presented the bill.

His mother's only comment was, "at least it's pretty for all that."

Sabers And... Snippet 9

Lieutenant Fowler was dreading this moment.  It wasn't going to be popular with the men at all.

"Sergeant Wood!  Assemble the troop!"

"SIR!"

With I-Troop assembled, Lt. Fowler addressed the men.

"Men, for the expedition through the gateway, we will be taking our sabers."

As expected, the troop responded with groans.

"I know, I know, they get in the way and just weigh the horse down, but we don't know what we're going to find on the other side and if we can expect anything like a resupply.  Your sword will not run out of ammunition and will work even under extreme magical assault."

Sergeant Jenkins raised his hand to ask a question.

"No Corporal, the fact that I have an enchanted saber was not part of the decision for us to bring our blades."

Sergeant Jenkins jerked his hand down.

Stick Horse

Mages were strange.

Sargent Harrington packed a stick-horse with him.

The expedition had real horses!

But he packed a child's toy anyway.

It confused Lieutenant Fowler for weeks of travel.

Then one day Major Beasley ordered an aerial scout ahead of the column.

Sgt. Harrington dismounted, took his saddle off his horse, placed it carefully on the ground then mounted the stick-horse where a real horse's head would go.

Then he plopped down on the saddle as if he was going to ride it just like that.

Lieutenant Fowler almost laughed, but then Sargent Harrington, saddle and stick-horse rose into the air and then flew off ahead of the column to scout ahead.

Mages were strange.

Sabers and... Snippet 8

It was over.

Fowler stood, gasping for breath.

The green sword throbbing with his heart beat.

Unstained by the blood.

Pulsing.  Alive.  Seeking more.

He felt used.

The sword had wielded him, not the other way around.

It had saved his life, his command.

The Cursed By God and all that was Holy savage Goo Goo would learn to fear this blade or they would all die by it!

I-Troop would take a new name from this.

Grass Cutters.

Nobody would mock or laugh at this moniker.

Not twice any way.

Sabers And... Snippet 7

It was inevitable.

From the journal of William Fowler, First Lieutenant, Regular Army:

When the Indians bolted through their temporary gateways, the narrow spots between the worlds were left behind.

Hundreds of them.

General Crook tried to keep a lid on where the Indians had gotten off to.  But the thaumatologists from Harvard had spilled the beans both by publishing papers and talking to the newspapers about their breakthroughs.

It was, therefore, inevitable that some enterprising person would cast the gate spell fresh on that spot and try to settle on the far side.

Red Dog told us the tale.

While the Sioux were less than thrilled at the 77th's appearance; we at least had come through carrying The Word from Lieutenant General George "Nantan Lupan" Crook.

We'd also come armed to the teeth, not knowing how warm our reception would be.

These naive settlers, though, they'd come prepared to farm.

The Goo Goo hated us whites worse than the Indians.

The old stories about what the damned Redskins would do to a white captive paled to what happened to these settlers.  It was a fate so gruesome that Sgt. Jenkins had to threaten our photographer at gunpoint to record the grisly scene.

The Goo Goo had feasted that day.

If that weren't enough, the settler family appears to have been flayed alive and their near intact skins made into macabre banners flown over their homestead site.  Even the children.

The Goo Goo don't seem to take captives or slaves like the Indians would.

Sabers and... Snippet 6

"It's old-magic, Sir." the regimental mage explained.

Colonel Waller sighed, knowing with certainty that two things were coming; an explanation of what the mage meant and a headache from knowing the explanation wouldn't be very useful to him.

"See this piece of amber in the center and the elaborately braided leather holding it?"

"It's a genuine talisman!"

"Why are we excited about this, Major?" Waller asked.

"As everyone knows, civilized magic stopped using old-magic centuries ago.  Not even the Ancient Greeks or Egyptians still used it."

"It's just too wasteful.  It requires very specific materials and methods to make even the simplest spells work, often completely consuming the materials used.  Silver, in particular, is consumed in the making of these talismans.  This also means that Major Dawes is correct, those pits were mines."

"Old-magic cannot affect gold.  This is also why I suspect that the Goo-Goos, uh..."

"It's alright Major, we understand."

"...Um, yes.  Excuse me.  This is also why I suspect that they don't enter the area surrounding the Black Hills on the other side.  Anywhere there's a great deal of gold, their magic will not work."

"That's fine, Major, but you were explaining this talisman."

"Yes, sir.  It's a primitive version of a missile shield."

"That's a damn irritating spell, Major.  It forced a lot of engagements into hand-to-hand fights when we were fighting the Rebs."

"Yes, sir, I agree sir.  But this is both more powerful and less useful."

"The effect it has is any projectile projected at the wearer is turned into water."

"That's bothersome..."

"True, sir, but it also takes about half a second to work.  Ideal against the weapons they're accustomed to, such as slings and spears.  Useful, but not ideal against a bow at shorter ranges.  Nearly useless against a Krag at the ranges they typically can be seen to be fired at.  A 'bonus' here is the difference in density betwixt lead and water.  The expansion is nearly explosive and at 300 to 400 yards, it could have a deleterious effect on them."

Colonel Waller's headache never formed.

Sabers and... Snippet 5

"Bill," she said, holding up a long box, "my father sent this from Chicago.  He wanted you to have it before you left for... for... the other side."

Lieutenant Fowler took the box from his wife and opened it, knowing before looking what it had to be.

It was her father's sword.  The one he'd carried in Crimea.  The sword his father had taken off a French colonel at Waterloo.

The green one.

It's blade was more curved and heavier than the 1860 saber he'd been issued and the hilt and guard had been reworked several times.  But that's not what made it stand out.

It was the color of the blade.

It was green.  Green the way copper is red, not green like verdigris.  It was shiny and untarnished.

Despite its heft, it felt light as a foil in his hand.

Under the scabbard was a hand written note:

"Use it well.  Bring it back.  I loan it to you, I give it to my grandson."

"But we don't have any children," he muttered.

"We will soon," Emily Fowler said, "the doctor says I'm two months along."

Sabers And... Snippet 4

He'd said he'd had a vision.

Their not-a-chief-but-very-much-a-repected-leader Standing Bear had explained that he'd had a vision that The Black Hills wasn't the sacred Black Hills and that he was destined to find them.

And here we sit, in a tent smoking from the same pipe at the border of the sacred lands of The Black Hills in an Earth that isn't Earth.

While we talked, I realized several things.  I also noticed that I'd came to some conclusions and made decisions which would likely not be popular back home.  Colonel Waller might not even be on board.

Assuming we had any right to be here at all, I think that this time the Indian's claims would be honored on pain of death to any white man who violated them.  Level enforcement had been missing from all of the other treaties, regardless of what the text read.

Such enforcement was needed, because a wave of white people was surely to follow our expedition.

Of course, they'd also have to contend with what Standing Bear had called "the little people" who weren't very little.  Stoop shouldered and stocky.  Blonde hair, blue eyes and skin as white as mine.

They were everywhere in this world.

Seldom in groups larger than a family, but you were hardly ever out of sight of one of these groups.

Sgt. Harrington thinks they're pacing us and reporting in.

Sabers And... Snippet 3

July 20, 1899

It was a conundrum.

The red-legs had surveyed the area and we were still in the Dakota Territories, barely a mile from the fort which was clearly not there.

Earth but not Earth?

It was lieutenant Wilson of E-Troop, fresh from The Point who asked the question once we realized we were still where we were.  He's a good kid, but he's got a lot to learn about keeping his mouth shut when someone outside the family was listening.

"If we'd ceded, according to the treaty, all the land from here to here and there to there and THIS place had land from here to here and there to there and the 'escaped' Indians where living within the confines of that space...  Aren't they obeying the treaty?"

If he hadn't said it where Mrs. Fitzhugh could hear it, this mission would have remained a scouting mission for the gathering of intelligence and information.

But what Mrs. Fitzhugh hears, Mr. Fitzhugh hears, and Mr, Fitzhugh being our representative agent from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is a man who can make "requests" of the commanding officer which have career implications.

One ignores such requests at ones peril.

Now it was H-Troop's job to find an Indian encampment and ask them, pretty please, what they thought they were doing here and if they believed everyone was obeying the treaty.

That made it my problem.

I also note that that ring knocking son of a bitch who started this entire mess is not in the troop given the task.

There's no Justice.

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."

Sabers And... Snippet 1

June 7, 1875

We'd ridden hard at the behest of the Affairs agent to stop the Indians from doing their annual Sun Dancing.

They simply wouldn't learn the practice was forbidden and that allowing it was just making their lives worse as their warriors took great vows to strike at us and settlers.

We'd been ordered to be extra strict this year because of the recent discovery of gold in The Black Hills by Colonel Custer and the Sioux and Crow were being extra agitated about the Treaty being blatantly ignored.

Never mind they routinely violated the treaty by wandering off and murdering folks.

Our arrival was not what we'd expected it to be.

"Gone? What do you mean 'gone'?" I asked.

The Affairs agent looked like he'd eaten a frog, "Gone! Major. As in, 'they were here last night and they aren't here now' gone!"

That was self evident. Aside from my troop and the agent's people there wasn't a soul to be seen.

Even more bothersome was our mage tracking them to the center of where they'd been doing their Sun Dances and finding no sign they'd left. Sgt Harrison didn't mess up simple spells like that.

The question remained. Where had over a thousand Sioux gotten to if they'd not walked away from the community center, and why hadn't we seen them as we rode in?

Not Sure What To Title It

My snippet of a world is growing some legs.

Brainstorming with Willard gave me several scenes that might make part of a good story.

He came up with a good world title that I, of course, promptly forgot...

Sabers and...?  Dangit!