Firebird
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 5
Learning to Ride Like a Warrior
Iron Hooves and Bareback
The moment Firebird walked toward the corral, she sensed that Swift Elk would be different. Running Bear, the knife master, had been a granite block of silent expectation. Black Dog, the bow instructor, was all precise, hawk-like focus. Swift Elk, however, was a force of nature—a man whose presence felt less like a teacher and more like a barely contained storm.
He was perhaps thirty-five, lean, with the wiry strength of a man who lived half his life mounted. His eyes, dark and perpetually crinkled at the corners, held a complex mix of patience and sudden, scathing humor. He wasn’t loud, but when he spoke, the low resonance of his voice seemed to carry further than a shout. This was her horse trainer, and she knew instantly he would not deal in gentle encouragement.
“You are Firebird,” he stated, his gaze sweeping over her, an assessment that took in her new muscle, her still-present fatigue, and the fresh scar on her cheek. He didn’t wait for an answer, turning instead to the two horses penned in the corral. They were the mares she had claimed from the two white men she had killed—skittish, strong-backed, and still prone to snapping at any hand that reached for them.
“They call you Firebird because of the hair,” Swift Elk mused, gesturing with his chin. “And because of the fire you keep inside. Good. Fire is power, but a good horse needs a cool hand, not a firebrand.”
He quickly ran a hand over the mares’ withers, then stepped back. “They are strong, but wild-caught. They taste the fear of the man who lost them, and they taste yours. They are a mirror for the rider.” He squinted at her, and his lip curled slightly. “I see no horseman in your eyes. Only a woman who thinks if she grips hard enough, she will not fall.”
He stepped closer, making his final expectation razor-sharp. “Forget the saddles you took. Forget the leather straps the whites use to tie themselves onto the animal. You will learn to ride like a Cheyenne warrior, not like a white man clinging to a piece of furniture. You will learn to ride with your soul, with your legs, with nothing but the horse’s mane in your hands. You will learn the horse is your legs, not your carriage. Your journey begins now. When it is over, you will ride like Cheyenne, or you will not ride at all.”
The Humbling
The humiliation started the moment she tried to mount.
Swift Elk had the two mares—a speckled gray and a solid bay—tied to the post. He simply pointed to the gray and walked away, leaning against the fence a dozen paces off, whittling a piece of wood as if her presence were an inconvenience.
Firebird approached the gray warily. Without a saddle horn to grip or a stirrup to boost her, she had to rely on a frantic, awkward leap. She got a good grip on the mare’s mane and flung her leg over, but her weight was uneven. Her right foot scraped the horse’s flank, the mare sidled swiftly, and Firebird tumbled to the dirt on the far side with a muffled ‘Ooof!”
The second attempt was worse. The mare was already irritated and shifted her body the moment Firebird planted her hands. Firebird ended up draped across the horse’s back for a moment like a sack of grain, before sliding off in a slow, ignominious heap.
“A sack of grain,” Swift Elk commented without looking up. His knife continued its rhythmic shick-shick-shick. “A sack of grain has a better center of gravity.”
Frustration burned in her throat. She tried again, then again, then a tenth time. She was too slow, too heavy, too reliant on her arms. When she finally managed to flop onto the mare’s back and stay there, the horse took two jolting steps that sent Firebird sliding down its shoulder, leaving her to land hard on her already bruised inner thigh.
Swift Elk sighed, finally looking up. It was impossible to tell if the faint quirk of his mouth was teaching or outright mockery. “The horse feels your tension before your skin touches him. He feels the rush of blood in your chest as you leap. You are a desperate burden. Until you are a feather, you will not stay.”
The rest of the day was a blur of dust, jarring impacts, and throbbing muscles. She never stayed mounted for more than ten seconds, and the horses seemed to actively enjoy shaking her off.
When the sun finally dipped, leaving her body a roadmap of aches and dark purple bruises, Swift Elk simply stood up, tossed his finished whittling to the ground, and said, “Come tomorrow, Firebird. We will see if the fire has been cooled by the dust.”
Building Connection
The next morning, Swift Elk did not mention mounting a horse. Instead, he handed her a length of rope, a brush made of stiff grass, and pointed to the bay mare.
“The horse is not a thing to be mastered,” he explained, his voice low and serious. “She is a partner. She must know you before she carries you.”
For the next several days, Firebird did not ride. She spent hours in the corral. She learned the exact spot on the bay’s neck where a scratch would make her sigh. She learned that the gray mare hated a loud voice but would stand patiently for hours if Firebird was calm and steady. She learned their subtle language: the flick of a tail, the tension in a lower lip, the way an ear tilted to catch a distant sound.
She groomed them meticulously, cleaning mud from their coats and picking stones from their hooves. She brought them fresh water and shared her morning rations of dried meat and berries. The horses, suspicious at first, slowly began to accept her presence. They stopped shying away when she reached out. They began to lower their heads for the bridle.
By the end of the week, Firebird could approach either mare anywhere in the corral, and the horse would simply watch her, its ears relaxed. She had mastered the connection, trading her anxious fire for quiet focus. The horses were still challenging, but now, they were willing.
The transition back to riding was immediate and brutal. The connection had lessened the humiliation, but the physical work remained relentless.
She learned to mount with a fluid, silent motion—a single, practiced leap that put her weight softly on the horse’s back. She learned to stay on the horses at a walk, a trot, and a canter. Swift Elk forced her to keep her hands low and still, demanding she rely entirely on her legs, core strength, and balance to communicate. She had no reins, no saddle to grip—only the powerful animal beneath her and the air above.
She fell, and fell again. The dry ground became her constant, unwelcome acquaintance. She fell when the horse spooked, she fell when she lost concentration, and she fell simply because the jarring pace of a half-broken horse was meant to unseat her.
Swift Elk’s commentary was sparse but effective: “Your hips are wood.” “Do not grip with your knees, breathe with them.” “Let your weight settle, Firebird. You must move like the shadow of the horse.”
Slowly, painfully, her body adapted. The muscles in her inner thighs screamed at night but grew stronger by morning. Her core tightened, finding the perfect, subtle shift of balance required to flow with the horse’s gait. The weeks blurred into a continuous cycle of falling, mounting, riding, and falling again. The winter chill gave way to the crisp, optimistic air of early spring.
Milestone
Then came the moment.
It was a cold, bright morning. Firebird was on the gray mare, which was having one of her more energetic days. Swift Elk signaled a change, and Firebird tightened her legs. The mare launched into an earth-eating gallop, the wind immediately flattening Firebird’s hair against her head.
At first, the instinct to grip the mare’s mane was overwhelming, but Firebird fought it. She remembered Swift Elk’s words: let your weight settle. She stopped trying to hold on and began to flow. Her hips became loose, absorbing the raw, piston-like power of the mare’s stride.
She rode past Swift Elk, past the corral fence, and out across the open prairie. She was barely holding on, but she was balanced. The world became a blur of speed and thundering hooves. In that moment, she was not a rider, she was part of a single, magnificent, rushing creature. She was flying.
When she finally pulled the mare to a stop—a smooth, steady transition accomplished by nothing more than a change in her posture and a subtle tightening of her knees—Swift Elk was waiting.
He did not smile. But he gave her a gesture more valuable than any praise. He gave a single, sharp nod of his head. “You stayed,” he said, his eyes finally showing a glimmer of approval. “You did not fight the animal. You felt the earth move. Now you are a rider.”
Adding Combat
The next phase was less about endurance and more about deadly coordination. Firebird was now expected to perform the tasks of a mounted warrior.
It was easy to hold a bow while sitting still. It was near impossible to shoot with accuracy from a horse at a canter. The horse’s natural movement—the roll, the pitch, the shuddering stride—sent the arrow wide every time.
“You must find the empty moment in the gallop,” Swift Elk instructed. “That fraction of a second when all four hooves are off the ground and the horse is still.”
Firebird practiced for days, drawing her bow, holding the shot, waiting for the invisible moment of stillness, and releasing the arrow. She moved from target practice to mock hunting, chasing a rolling hoop and trying to hit it. She learned to control the gray mare entirely with the pressure of her knees and the shifting of her hips, leaving both hands free to draw, aim, and shoot.
Then came the knife work. Controlling a horse while pulling a knife from a sheath and leaning out to strike a ground target demanded supreme control. The weight shift was dramatic, yet the horse had to remain unconcerned.
Swift Elk set up mock combat scenarios, having a young Cheyenne boy charge her with a padded spear. Firebird had to evade the charge, ride past, and slash a piece of leather tied to the boy’s side, all while guiding her horse without reins. It was a chaotic, intense, and deeply demanding form of dance, and it took several more weeks of bruised shins and near-misses before she achieved the lethal efficiency of a true Cheyenne warrior.
White Man’s Way
One morning, Firebird found the two saddles she had taken from her kills sitting on the corral fence.
Swift Elk gestured to them with dry sarcasm. “You have learned the true way. Now learn their way, so you can fight them better.”
For Firebird, the saddles felt like riding a cushioned chair. The stirrups, meant to give stability, felt like clumsy hooks for her feet. The reins, which provided a direct and harsh connection to the horse’s mouth, felt restrictive after the subtle communication of her legs and body.
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