Chapter 3

The morning came cold and sharp, the kind of cold that made breath visible and fingers ache. Firebird stood outside the tipi wearing only her buckskin skirt and midriff top, arms wrapped around herself against the chill. Red Hawk emerged, placed a hand on her shoulder briefly—a gesture of encouragement—then nodded toward the practice area where a figure waited.

Running Bear was not what she expected. He was perhaps thirty winters, lean and scarred, with a knife scar that ran from his left temple to his jaw. He watched her approach with eyes that revealed nothing.

Without preamble, he tossed her a practice knife—wooden, but weighted and shaped like the real thing. She caught it awkwardly.

“Show me,” he said in Cheyenne.

She didn’t understand all the words yet, but his meaning was clear. She stepped forward, raised the knife uncertainly—

He moved like lightning. One moment he was standing still, the next her feet were swept from under her and she was on her back in the frozen dirt, the air knocked from her lungs. He stood over her, his practice knife at her throat.

“Dead,” he said flatly in English. “Again.”

She scrambled up, face burning with humiliation. This time she tried to think, to be strategic—

He slapped the knife from her hand, spun her around, and had his blade at her kidney before she could blink.

“Dead. Again.”

Firebird’s temper flared—that Irish fury that had gotten her through the wagon train massacre, that had made her fight three warriors rather than submit. She charged at him with a yell, all technique abandoned—

Running Bear sidestepped, stuck his foot out, and she went sprawling face-first into the dirt. Before she could rise, his knee was in her back, his practice knife pressed against the side of her neck.

“Dead.” He leaned close, his voice cold. “And now your child dies too, because you are dead. Your anger makes you stupid. Anger is a tool—you use it, it does not use you. When you can remember this, we will begin.”

He released her and walked away, leaving her in the dirt, tasting blood from a split lip, rage and shame warring in her chest.

Behind her, she heard Morning Star’s small whimper of distress. The child had been watching. Firebird forced herself to stand, to walk back with her head high, even though everything hurt.

That night, Morning Star clung to her more tightly than usual, as if afraid Firebird might break. Red Hawk said nothing, but she saw something in his eyes—not pity, but understanding. This was the path she had chosen. No one had promised it would be easy.

The days blurred into brutal repetition. Running Bear showed no mercy. Firebird’s body became a canvas of bruises—purple, yellow, green—each one a lesson learned too slowly. She learned to fall without breaking, to rise without hesitation. She learned that size and strength meant nothing if you could take your opponent’s balance. She learned to use her small frame as an advantage—getting inside a bigger opponent’s reach, making herself a difficult target, using their own momentum against them.

Running Bear taught her the language of violence: how to read body weight, how to anticipate movement, how to create openings. He taught her that a knife fight lasted seconds—three, maybe five—and there was no time for thought. Her body had to know before her mind caught up.

“You will never be stronger,” he told her one morning after pinning her for the dozenth time. “You will never be bigger. So you must be smarter and meaner. A warrior twice your size expects you to fight like a woman—scratching, pulling hair. He does not expect you to take his leg, drop him like a buffalo, and open his throat while he’s screaming.”

He showed her the vulnerable points on the human body, the places where a small blade wielded with precision could drop a large man in seconds. The backs of knees. The Achilles tendon. The inside of the forearm where tendons ran close to the surface. The groin, where major arteries pulsed. The soft spaces between ribs. The throat.

“Your enemy will underestimate you because you are small, because you are female, because of your youth. This is your greatest weapon. Let them think you are weak. Then take their ability to stand. Once a man is on the ground, size means nothing.”

She learned to move like water—yielding, flowing around obstacles, finding the path of least resistance. She learned the grappling holds that used leverage instead of strength, the throws that sent larger opponents crashing to the ground. She learned to accept that she would be cut, would bleed, would hurt—and to keep fighting anyway.

“Pain is coming,” Running Bear said. “Accept it now, so it doesn’t shock you then. The warrior who fears being cut hesitates. Hesitation is death.”

Her hands grew callused from gripping the knife. Her muscles learned the exact angle to slash behind a knee, the depth needed to sever tendon from bone. She stopped thinking about the movements and simply moved.

By the fourth week, Running Bear brought her to a place away from camp where several deer carcasses hung from trees.

“Now you learn what your knife really does,” he said.

He demonstrated first—quick, precise cuts that opened hide and found the critical points. Then he handed her the real blade, the one Red Hawk had given her that first morning.

“Show me the cut that takes a man’s leg.”