Chapter 29: River Junction

The western river branch was narrower but faster-moving, its ice-choked current tugging at the dugout canoes the Missouria hunters provided. Wind Rider watched Eagle Eyes’ sister—the badger-tooth girl—press her palm against the frosted gunwale, her fingers tracing whirlpool patterns in the condensation. “The river’s angry,” she observed, sniffing the air. “Smells like wet iron.”

The canoes scraped against the eastern bank’s ice-crusted gravel just as the first snowflakes began to spiral down. Wind Rider’s boots sank into the slurry of half-frozen mud, his breath hitching at the sight before them. River Junction wasn’t the scattered cluster of wigwams he’d expected—it was a palisaded town with timber-framed longhouses whose smokeholes belched steady streams into the gathering storm. Between them stood rectangular structures with glazed windows, their steeply pitched roofs shedding snow in fresh white sheets.

The scent of molten metal hit Wind Rider before he saw the forges—rows of stone hearths lining the palisade’s inner wall, each tended by blacksmiths working iron blooms into tools and arrowheads. A Missouria woman with soot-streaked braids paused mid-hammerstroke, her eyes narrowing at Winona’s rifle. “I have not seen guns like yours. What kind of powder do you use?”

Winona smiled, “No powder at all. These are called Girordoni rifles, and we learned of them from a German gunsmith. He taught us how to make them. We can shoot the eye of an owl at 200 paces — twenty times in a few minutes.”

The blacksmith’s hammer hovered mid-air as her gaze flicked between Winona’s rifle and Wind Rider’s combat boots—one foot still leaking melted snow through the cracked sole. “No powder,” she repeated, wiping soot from her brow with a forearm. Behind her, apprentices hauling charcoal baskets slowed to gawk. “Then what pushes the ball?”

Winona smiled again. “The air.” She blew a puff from her mouth. “We have learned to gather the force of the air, from a new Goddess, named Science.” My mate,” she gestured at Wind Rider, “is not of this place or time. He was placed here by a Great Wind, and is our teacher.”

The blacksmith’s hammer clattered to the anvil. She stepped closer, her calloused fingers twitching toward Winona’s rifle before hesitating. “Air?” Her brow furrowed as she turned to one of her apprentices—a gangly youth clutching a pair of tongs. “Fetch Grandmother Flint.” The boy dashed off, his bare feet slapping against the frozen mud paths between the forges.

The boy returned minutes later with an elder whose hair was braided with what looked like fish vertebrae—each segment polished to a dull sheen. Grandmother Flint moved like a heron stalking shallows, her steps precise despite the uneven ground. She stopped within arm’s reach of Wind Rider and inhaled sharply through flared nostrils. “You smell like lightning,” she announced. “And your woman smells like gun oil and crushed mint.”