No Retreat

Murky fog curled through the grey streaks of cannon smoke.

Kicking Bear and a gaunt Lakota woman hooked their arms under Elena’s shoulders, dragging her slender body out from the collapsed debris of the limestone alcove.

"Wakan Winyan! Fall back! Get inside the deep cave!" Kicking Bear roared over the deafening ringing in her ears.

Elena pushed herself up.

Using the hem of her buckskin dress, she wiped away a streak of fresh blood mixed with pale grey stone dust from her cheekbone.

She turned her head toward the secret deep cave to the North—the safer ground, where there was no hail of shrapnel or burning fog.

Then she turned to look toward the frontline barricade—where crimson flames still surged and Grey Elk’s towering back stood firm amid the hail of rifle bullets.

Elena bent down and picked up the blood-soaked titanium instrument tray.

She did not retreat.

Stepping forward ten paces, she chose a limestone alcove carved deep into the cliffside—shielded from the east wind and protected from direct shrapnel—to set up the new medical post.

"Spread the bison hides here!" Elena commanded in short, precise statements, devoid of a single wasted word: "Reboil the water! Kicking Bear, gather all the crude gauze!"

The new field hospital was established right on the razor-thin boundary between life and death.

The limestone ledge was bone-chilling cold, the acrid stench of gunpowder thick in the air, mingling with the frantic, repeated shrieks of warhorses out in the valley.

Elena and Kicking Bear used broken cedar trunks and two thick, dried bison hides stretched tight as a shield against the artillery dust.

A heavy crunch of footsteps on soft snow—crunch... crunch...—came rushing toward them.

Running Deer burst inside.

The long scar on the warrior’s cheek was caked with dark crimson blood, his chest rising and falling violently beneath the buckskin wrap on his left side.

His bloodshot eyes glared at her, preparing to roar at her to fall back.

But seeing the medical post already assembled, seeing the sharp intensity in her ash-grey eyes and the blood-soaked hands re-arranging her scalpel set... Running Deer abruptly fell silent.

He stared at her for a long beat, then whipped around, bellowing orders to four Lakota warriors holding stone-tipped lances:

"Set up two lines of wooden stakes around this ledge!"

He turned back to Elena, uttering a harsh statement—a final declaration that erased every boundary of suspicion they had harbored for so long:

"Where you stand... we stand."

Elena nodded. She didn't answer, only tightening her grip on the strip of gauze in her hand.

BOOM... MMM!

The artillery line opened fire again, though the intervals between salvos grew wider.

Elena and Kicking Bear threw themselves into saving two consecutive casualties.

A warrior shot through the calf by a rifle bullet had his vessel clamped and field-sutured in precisely four minutes. A young brave struck in the nape by flying rock had his neck washed and cervical vertebrae immobilized.

Between the two surgeries, Elena collapsed against the rock edge.

She lifted the terracotta jug and took a gulp of boiled water that had gone cold.

The crisp water slid down a throat raw from sulfur smoke, and for the first time that day...

The thoracic surgeon’s long, slender hands began to shake in violent, erratic spasms.

Her body had pushed past the absolute limit of physical exhaustion.

Elena did not sigh.

With absolute resolve, she pressed her blood-stained hands hard against her thighs, tensing her muscles to force her fingers to stop trembling.

A Cheyenne warrior with a minor shoulder wound, sitting propped against the nearby rock wall, observed her in silence.

He looked at the trembling hands and the unyielding glare of the Wakan Winyan, then picked up a strip of rough gauze on his own, quietly binding the wound on his shoulder without uttering a single groan.

Through the narrow slit between the bison hide and the artillery-shielding cedar trunks, Elena’s vision pierced straight out into the burning expanse of the frontline barricade.

Dense clouds of grey gunsmoke billowed up in thick layers, yet Grey Elk’s towering silhouette remained stark and clear.

He stood amid the storm of bullets, his dark bear-skin cloak matted with clotted blood and jet-black soot.

Each time a barrage of cannon fire lulled, before raising his lance to command his warriors, the chief would turn his head back toward the makeshift limestone ledge.

Their eyes locked across the smoke-drenched air.

A distance of a hundred paces.

No wave of a hand. No shouted call.

Only a single, piercing look, heavy with iron resolve and fierce love on the brink of life and death.

Grey Elk saw that she was still standing firm, her bloodied hands steady beside the medical tray.

Decisively, he turned away, driving his stone-tipped lance high into the air as his commanding roar tore through the sky once more: "Hokahey!"

Elena stood rooted to the rocky ledge.

Her chest felt crushingly heavy, as if pressed by a thousand-pound boulder; every breath was icy cold and bitter with the taste of sulfur.

CRACK!

A Springfield rifle shot cracked right beside the edge of the limestone ledge.

Running Deer reeled backward two steps, his back slamming hard against the wooden partition shielding the medical post.

Fresh blood spurted from the bullet graze on the warrior's right shoulder, staining the worn buckskin strip dark red.

He didn't go down. Cursing wildly in ancient Lakota, he reached out with his remaining hand to grip the shaft of his lance.

"Stay still!"

Elena lunged forward, grabbing his shoulder and forcing him down onto his knees against the stone floor.

She didn't bother with antiseptic anymore.

With steady, relentless pressure, Elena’s blood-stained hand pressed a strip of rough gauze over the open wound while her other hand pulled a sinew thread tight around his broad shoulder.

"Damn it! Those blue-coated foxes...!" Running Deer ground his teeth, the long scar on his cheek twitching with rage. "The medicine woman said... you'd even heal the enemy!"

Elena didn't look up. Her hand snapped the sinew stitch clean, her voice cold and cutting, crushing his curses underfoot:

"I heal the wounded."

Running Deer froze.

He stared into the white doctor’s razor-sharp, ash-grey eyes, taking in the dried blood smudged across her cheekbones.

Ha...

A dry, raspy laugh broke from his lips—the fierce warrior’s only laugh amid the shattered ruins of the massacre.

"Good!"

Running Deer surged to his feet, nudging her hand aside, and swung his battle-axe as he bolted out from the ledge to rejoin the brutal hand-to-hand fight.

Suddenly...

The roar of the artillery near the Powder River died down completely.

No more whistling air. No more ground-shaking detonations.

A dead silence fell over Talon Ridge Valley.

A heavy, suffocating silence, ten thousand times more ruthless than the roar of cannon shells.

The murky grey smoke slowly drifted away on the east wind, laying bare the desolate ruin of the flattened village.

And then...

Thud... Thud... Thud...

The rhythmic, cold march of hundreds of blue-coated army boots echoed from the canyon.

Mingled with the rhythmic clack-clack of cavalry hooves striking the frozen ice.

Thomas Whitfield’s federal forces had closed the trap. Bypassing further long-range bombardment, they were launching a full-scale infantry assault to wipe out the last remaining lives.

The Lakota and Cheyenne warriors gathered around the medical post drew their final stone-tipped arrows to their bowstrings.

Their knuckles whitened around their lance shafts, their bloodshot eyes staring straight into the fog ahead.

Kicking Bear stood beside Elena, her thin lips trembling, mouthing silently:

"They... they're here."

There was no longer any safe distance. The hand-to-hand clash had pushed straight into the heart of Talon Ridge Valley.

Elena didn't turn back toward the deep cave.

Unhurried, she walked over to the titanium surgical tray now drained of supplies.

Reaching out a calloused hand speckled with dried blood, she drew out the smallest titanium scalpel—the last fragile, razor-sharp steel blade left from the 21st century.

Elena concealed the blade inside her crude buckskin sleeve.

She had no intention of killing the enemy. She was no bow-wielding warrior.

She simply refused to let the hands that had saved hundreds of lives stand empty when the darkness of war descended.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

A volley of Springfield rifles erupted in quick succession, shredding the lingering quiet of Talon Ridge Valley to pieces.