Stand

“Stand” 

Land of the Brave

 

Story By Greg Patrick

Stand

By Greg Patrick

“Where now are the horse and the rider?..Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.Who shall gather the smoke of the deadwood burning, Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Inspired by the story of an order given to massacre a herd of Comanche horses during the plains wars.

 

The order is given. Men follow orders instead of their hearts. A horse fights back against the butchers.

It rears, unshod hooves flailing and a shot rings out.

I feel it tangibly.

I know which horse it was even without looking.

The one falling defending the herd..

mine.

I was pulled down by my brethren as more shots rang out..

Dagger-armed hand pinioned before I could even rise as night befell the land and the stars of the plains cast their ghostly spell to the eyes like vigil flames of ancient warriors daring one to follow. I needed a moment alone with them…

Stopped as I tried to intervene..

Then I allowed myself to be led away..

and as I later walked the aftermath of the butchery, the ground under my step shook under faltering stride

as if again the plains trembled under the hooves of the great herds ..

The wind stirred the manes of the horses like fallen banners..I whisper your name..almost singing it..The detached cold voice as chill as the wind that stirred  the manes of fallen horses and the beaded raiments  they bore, strewn where they went down fighting..

I halted before my own horse..running my hands in parting carress through the dark mane interwoven with beads

as if lovingly to the dreams that passed through my hands.

You carried me as huntsman and the horns of the bison seemed as though they couldn’t touch us.

You carried me as warrior as men I knew from earliest memory fell mid-stride to the rifles as the bluecoats arrayed

grew with each pounding stride of hoof as we advanced on the earth we would not yield to be desecrated.

and when I slumped over your neck, never crying out as I was wounded, you bore me back gently to the medicine man.

You carried me as lover when the chieftain’s daughter rode behind me when the landscape was dreamscape

and you seemed to glide rather than stride over plains, unbanishingly green and I felt invincible..

and the horizon burned in the eyes no more but for the sake of one whose gaze bore Gemini stars

in microcosm and was crowned in starless midnight.

I looked and thought homeward..eyes bejeweled with stars like nomad’s beacons we followed

when all other lights are obscured by storm or fire’s unlit so as not to be betrayed to the enemy..

and you have to know your way back by heart..

The bluecoats march on our fires now..

My fingers clutch the lance stave like a dreamcatcher’s chords interwoven..not allowing nightmares to pass unhindered

and to protect dreams and dreamer..the coarse lock of mane and silken strands of a lover’s raven hair..whisper like

dark flames to the dawn.

As spirits mingle with the stars and form with the land to those left below the lances feel as heavy as a highland caber in emaciate hands. Yet as a falcon’s aerial banner’s shadow is cast long spontaneously there begins the chant and song…

The falcon cries like a celestial battlecry sonorous to our ears in a land of frozen tears… our hearts as old as the stones of the hills..even as sheltered East coast statesmen shy from the silverflame- lit windowsills.. and the lightning blazing from afar we follow the falcon’s flight like a nomad or pilgrim after a star.. Ere they sign away another tribal range to despoil..we strike a blow at the serpent’s coil…This is our land and soil..our blood, tears, dreams and toil.

The raptor’s trailing cry daring us to follow.. enraged at treaty’s words that have betrayed and proved hollow..

I disdain the spurs favoured by the cavalry and no reins..I took the flowing mane in hand..

crooning to the horse in my native tongue..this time the sacred songs..and sieving like dwindling

oasis water in a night desert..the strands of mane like dream slipping through the hands..

The red handprint I touched the flank as if adornment, not like the a brand inflicted by the cattlemen..but with something approaching veneration in it’s gesture in contrast to the officer with so much blood on his hands.

He had heard the faint-hearted emissaries of broken word to use and abuse the word “freedom”

and “destiny” too many times so to be lost in translation. I know not your “freedom” for mine is the feeling in the earthbound soar as my horse I tended since a foal, bears me over unfenced and unwalled plains.

There is a moment when riding at full speed when all four hooves of a horse simultaneously are up-lifted so as to

lend the sensation of flying..Not even an eagle knows that flight or height.

Hoofbeats like heartbeats of the Great Spirit pulse in synchrony like a bloodchant. Battlecry and wind’s sigh merge as one like human and equine roar in battle..

Riding  over ground where thousands of warriors had fallen before us. Their lives seemingly squandered in a challenge to empires . Yet it was not a cynicism that I felt that man’s endeavour never led to a decisive peace. I knew my world could not be saved by force of arms no matter how great in scale.  I did not draw strength from whatever slain warriors lay beneath the cold ground, nor did I cast my eyes to the skies for the Great Spirit’s aid. Like all warriors worthy of the name I took to the field of battle to hear the wind roar sonorously in my ears and the hooves falling in sparking synchrony my  heart ere darkness would took the light from my eyes.

I miss those moments now like a ghost missing it’s mortal form..

When last we saw eachother..my horse..my friend..I had left you to graze with your herd

on newly sprouted shoots of grass..I looked back fondly..

but now..

I lingered by the slaughtered horses like the last living brave by the deathbed of a mortally wounded chieftain or elder..listening for last words to share by the nomad fires..I held the wolves at bay as their red eyes flared around me drawn by the carnage.

Then at last in solitude I cried out and my voice choired with the wolves indistinguishable from their own voices..the voices of a bereaved land.

I gave voice at last to an anguished cry that choired and merged with the wolves like a teardrop mingling with a storm’s raindrops till I realised that my cry was soundless and the ghostsong of the wolves lent ventriloquism to expression of my own pain.

Their cries arose like a bier of song, up-lifting the spirit of brave and horse to the stars and we shared a moment of kindred hunger and song.

Feverishly I look to the skies in age old getsure..and the cloud formations like ghosts haunting and guarding the stars, like ancestral spirits holding court amid a horde of celestial gold, like an army of ghosts thronging constellations like threads of thought punctuated by the stars..shadows venerating the moon dispersed before the dawnfire as if a dark host making way before the brandishing of light…

I return later..I have to..to broken dreams enshrined.

A pillar of horse skulls in a future built over the bones of horse and rider alike is left of the herd

and I linger by it’s side, eyes closed face expressionless..feelings warring.

Like a haggard pilgrim before a vandalised shrine..I close my eyes as lifeless eyes

are said to shut to behold eternal fields of green.

Lingering so long that moon replaced sun..

rendering it the apparitional light of a ghostpillar.

I see myself again as if through the eyes of another observer..as if mirrored in my horse’s eye again..once again astride the stallion’s back..the flank-high prairie fronds rendered undulant by the chill gusts like oceanic waves into the infinite expanse of the horizon…

lulling my restless heart to some measure of repose.

The sun is setting over the distance..

I’m shaken as if from the depth of nightmare-haunted sleep…

“Run! The cavalry are upon us!”

I don’t.

My brethren had led me away when the last rifles were silenced..

The deafening silence..

and you lay in red..

“RED”

“Redman”..is that what you call me?

Red..

The colour of the dying sun when it sinks into the west as you measure earth under the stars on eve of battle..

when one looks with a daydreamer’s eyes for the silhouette of a woman and horse waiting in the duskfire..

against the red of sky..

to reassure me she has not fallen to the others..

That the dream still lives..

The red of a captive’s hair as bonds are severed for I cannot suffer the same fate that befell my love..

Red as the fate for freeing the tribe’s captives..

Red..

The colour of war..of future..

of nightmare..

“Redman” you called me but the red I wore after I shook off my kin’s restraining hands at last

and after we met on that sanguined field

was not my red but yours..

I shook off the medicineman’s solicitous hands when I returned

though banished..

I’m unscathed..

except for the heart..

That day of battle I had already begun to chant my deathsong but it ceased at my lips..

as one of your warriors once boasted..”I’ve not yet begun to fight..”

I beheld the vision of horse and woman’s apparition like a poem written in blood against the sunset..yet dispersed like prairie blossoms on the wind and as a cavalryman rose in his stirrups to reunite us..the lance that bore both mane of horse from a massacred herd and lady of my heart gleamed in reply to the descending blade with grim finality.

As he fell I took his riderless horse by the reins and vaulted astride.

That sunset I stood with the captured horse..It’s flanks had stopped heaving and it ate calmly from my palm

rather than graze.

Then I let it free..

watching it go..

as far as my eyes could follow..

and as I turned to face the cavalrymen advancing on me..the vision of woman and horse on the sunset appeared to me again..waiting..

I do not ride this time..

Time to stand.