Running Wolf. Jenna Kernan

had asked her to run. She had disobeyed. Had she traded her grandmother’s life for her brother’s? Snow Raven began to weep. She wept for the lodges toppled like trees before the whirlwinds and for the family she had lost and the brother she had endangered. Shame devoured her. She could live with her capture if she knew he was alive. But to be responsible for the death of her brother was a stone in her heart. She did not think she could bear it.

      Her tears washed her cheeks and dried in the sunlight. Snow Raven curled into a ball, encircling her pain as she waited. After a time she realized she was alone, and so she relieved herself in the grass. Then she stood to see where the men had gone. She could hear them, of course, but it was not until she stood that she saw they had taken the forty horses and roped them into five strings of eight. Song, her mount, was there with the others, second in the line behind the black-and-white stallion belonging to the one who had taken her. Running Wolf, that was what the older warrior had called him. He had a wolf on his shield, as well. Wolves had strong medicine.

      She found him easily. He stood with the others, but seemed unlike them. Was it his carriage or his size? This was her first real opportunity to look upon him. He stood twenty paces away with the others, and she noted first that he was broad across the shoulders and narrow at the hip. He moved with an easy grace and confidence of one gifted in movement. It explained how he had plucked her from the ground while on horseback and done so as easily as she might pluck a flower from a field.

      She did not make any sound, but he turned to her and they stared across the distance. Her skin prickled. Perhaps he had been checking her location at regular intervals. He pointed to her horse as if telling her that he had taken that, as well. She nodded. Not knowing if she should thank him or hurl insults at him.

      None of the Sioux cut their forelocks, and that was one of many reasons the warriors of her tribe called them women. But this hairstyle of the Sioux was not feminine in the least. In fact, she found the look of all the warriors elegant and masculine.

      Running Wolf wore his long black hair in twin ropes wrapped in the pelts of beaver and tied with long strips of red cloth. His war shirt was decorated in elaborate bands of quillwork in red, green and white. The shirt was not stained with colored clay like the other men wore, but remained a natural tan color with long fringe at the arms and the side seam. Grandmother said the fringe took the rainwater away from the seams, but it was also for show. Over this shirt he wore a breastplate made of a series of long cylindrical white trade beads punctuated with red glass beads and round brass beads. The breastplate could deflect an arrow, if it was not shot at close range.

      About his strong neck was a cord of tanned leather threaded through five bear claws. Each claw was separated by a red bead. She could not see his leggings or moccasins but had seen both while hanging over his saddle like a dead buck. Beneath his war shirt, she knew he wore his medicine bundle. All warriors did. Inside were the sacred objects that helped protect him. Each warrior was different, so each bundle was different and private. Her own brother would not even tell her what lay inside his, but he was never without it.

      The warrior started toward her, his stride long and sure. He had the confidence of leadership. Were he not the war chief, she was certain that he would have held some other position of authority. It was clear that all respected him, even the older warrior, Yellow Blanket, who had advised him to let her go.

      Running Wolf continued forward with such intent aim that she thought he might better be called Stalking Wolf.

      He stared at her with fixed attention so that for a moment it seemed as if the rest of the prairie did not exist. She met his gaze, noticing the fine strong angle of his jaw and the broad chin. His elegant nose bisected his symmetrical features showing flaring nostrils that reminded her of a horse at full gallop. His brows peaked in the center as if she was some puzzle he must solve. She liked the shape of his eyes and the way that they were bright and dark all at once.

      He drew closer and she noticed something else—the buzz of energy that seemed to shimmer between them, like the waves of heat off rocky places in the summer. The tension began in her belly and pulled outward until she had to clench her fists against the need to lift her arms in welcome. He would not let her go free, and for one ridiculous moment she was glad.

      This made no sense. He had captured her. She should spit at him or hurl insults or weep and tear her hair. Instead, she stood and stared like a lovesick calf. He had captured her. Was that what made him different than other men, or was there some other reason for the tingling sensation of her skin?

      Would he really keep her or would he turn her over to someone else? In her tribe, her father let the warriors keep what they captured and distribute possessions as they saw fit.

      He stopped very close. She had to tilt her head to look at him. He frightened her, this wolf of a man. But she also wondered if her fate would be better with this man than with any other among his warriors. Certainly it would be better than with the one who tried to strike her. The one she had knocked to the ground.

      She smiled in satisfaction at the memory and heard his intake of breath.

      She knew the possible fates that awaited her at his village. She knew that her test of endurance had only just begun. She lifted her bound hands between them, but kept herself from laying them on his chest.

      “How are you called?” he asked.

      His voice resonated in her, rumbling through her chest like a roll of thunder. She pressed her clasped hands to her chest, squeezing tight to hold on to her courage.

      “Snow Raven.”

      “That is not a name for a woman.” He frowned as he swept her with his gaze. “But it suits you, for you are not like any woman that I have ever met. You are causing trouble, you know. No one knows what to do with you. Some say you will steal a horse and run, but then we would catch you and you would die. Some say they would like to ride you as you rode that gray mare.”

      That prospect frightened her more than death. She did not want to be debased and used in such a manner. She squeezed her eyes shut at the images now assaulting her mind.

      “Ah,” he said. “So you do feel fear. For a time I thought you were immune to such emotions.”

      She looked at him now. “A warrior does not admit to fear.”

      “But a woman does. She cries and uses her tears to gather sympathy. Yet you do not.”

      “Would that work?”

      “It would make you less interesting. And you are very interesting.”

      “I do not want your interest.”

      He laughed. “Then, you should not have unseated one of my warriors. Who was the old woman?”

      “My grandmother, Truthful Woman.”

      “She will not be happy at your sacrifice.”

      “She raised me and I love her. I could do no less.”

      “Apparently you are alone in that, because none of the other women even slowed down. They ran like rabbits.”

      “That is what they are expected to do. To flee, so the men can fight.”

      “Yet you did not do so. So you are brave but not wise.”

      Raven made no reply.

      “You can ride and you carry a bow. Can you shoot?”

      “I do not think I should tell you what I can do.”

      “Hunt?”

      She found herself nodding.

      He smiled and her stomach twisted. His smile was dazzling, bright and beautiful, making him suddenly seem approachable and even more handsome. She gritted her teeth against the attraction. He was a Sioux snake, enemy to the Large-Beaked Bird people.

      “I like to hunt,” he said. “I once brought down an elk with seven points.”

      “Nine,” she said, and then pressed her joined hands before her mouth. Why had she told him that?