Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Dances in the Glen ❯ Painting the White to Gray ( Chapter 4 )

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Dances in the Glen

By SaiyanBlack

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Milliardo Peacecraft sat on his horse at the front of his squadron. He stared out at the small valley that his family home rested in, but it was no longer there. The whole valley was burnt black to the ground, parts still smoldering. Rage filled him but he tamped it down harshly, determined to have a clear mind as he approached the town. He didn't do it for his men; they had seen the extent of his anger and usually went out of their way to prevent him from exploding.

"General Zechs! Wha- what happened?" one of his soldiers asked from the ground behind him. The man had used the nickname that he had been given by the Resh'ta-ne. The name, Zechs Marquis, was roughly translated to `Lord Destruction' and it seemed to have stuck, not only within the Indians but with the American army.

Taking control of the situation, Milliardo turned his horse to his regiment. "Sergeants! Take your groups around the valley's perimeter! Look for any sign of attack and tell any inhabitants to meet in the center square. Anderson! Your group with me into the town!"

The army behind him split into four groups, two traveling down the road to the east end of the valley, one to the west side and the last waiting in place for his orders. They started into town looking into burnt houses and barns, searching for any sign of life . . . or death. All the while Milliardo was trying to see a pattern in the fires, something that would tell him who did all this destruction. But there was nothing. Whoever did this was very thorough at disguising an attack of this magnitude. The fires had somehow consumed all of the houses to a degree, some more than others, but they had completely ransacked all the fields and barns before burning them.

His men had told him that there were no signs of animal bodies or preserved food in the storage houses and by the looks of the tracks left from that night, the animals, including horses, had all taken off toward the forest. The apple orchard in town had no sign of fruit being on the tree and the same went for the small gardens that most of the villagers had by their houses.

Nothing was left.

It was as if they were raiders and not an attacking Indian tribe like he first thought. The only Indians near enough to be the cause of this had their own food stores and gardens. They didn't need to wipe out a whole white man town to get their meals. He should know, being the mortal enemy of the Resh'ta-ne meant he knew some stuff about their culture. And from what he knew, they had never ransacked a whole town before. They weren't that barbaric.

"General Zechs! Milliardo!"

The blonde man turned his head up to look out before him and was surprised to see his parents as well as most of the villagers in a makeshift camp where the center of town had once been. All the buildings in this area were burnt to the ground, including the county store and the bank. The people were dirty, disheveled, and heartbroken. It was a terrible sight.

He dismounted and handed the reins of his white horse over to one of his soldiers. His mother was the first to reach him and she threw herself against him as she sobbed.

"Oh, Milliardo! It's so awful! Relena, my baby girl! She's gone!"

"What?" he asked, his blue eyes wide with horror.

"She was in the house all alone when the town went on fire three days ago! Everything was burnt to the ground! We couldn't find her!" her voice was devastated and he tried to comfort her, although he did it awkwardly. After a moment, one of the other women came and pulled her away so he could talk to the few men that seemed to be there, namely his father.

He turned to the older blonde man, sorrow and rage clear in his eyes, "Is what she says true? Is Relena dead?"

His father only nodded solemnly. "Everything just went up in flames around sunset. No one saw anything set it off or anyone strange come into town. We don't know what happened. Our food preserves are dwindling, son. We're going to have to leave."

Milliardo thought about this information a moment, his mind still filled with the information of his little sister's death. He cast a glance at the horizon where you would usually be able to see the top story of their family house from the center of town. But nothing was there, just ashes and charred wood. It hurt to think that Relena's remains were somewhere mixed with the ashes of the house. As much as he would love to think that his sister was fine, his overly logical military brain told him that his sister would have appeared by now.

He turned to look at all the men that stood before them and he recognized each of them being the heads of their houses. Not even half of the families were accounted for in the small group of maybe thirteen men. He signaled his second and the shorter lieutenant came to stand beside him.

"Tell me everything that happened; how many casualties and how much supplies you have left," he ordered and the men began to tell him exactly that.

When the whole ordeal was done and he made sure his second had wrote down everything correctly. In all there were nineteen deaths, and not all of them by fire. Apparently, the remaining men had gone on a search around the valley's perimeter the day after the attack. They had found the bodies of ten men and teen boys in the woods in the forest on the east side. His men had come in later to confirm that they'd spotted the burial stones in the area, were the villagers had buried them. The other nine almost seemed to be missing instead of dead. The bodies of his sister, her best friend and her little brother, as well as three boys and two girls between the ages of six and twelve and a baby boy no older than three were never found and the houses they had lived in were completely burnt down.

He had the remaining village men describe the state of the ten deaths in the forest and he got a fairly gruesome and detailed explanation. They had been killed with sharp objects, most likely daggers and arrow heads being used like daggers. Every victim was slit across the throat, slicing both arteries in the neck and the jugular vein. The men said they were extremely decent cuts and that the ten had died almost instantly.

This brought Milliardo's suspicions back to the Resh'ta-ne. One of their signature killing moves was a throat slice that sounded almost identical to the one that these men were describing to him. There had been no other wounds and that meant that these Indians that attacked had well trained braves and ancient techniques that had been refined and honed down to an ability that was almost inherited.

Although, it still didn't make any sense for the Resh'ta-ne to raid before they burnt everything to the ground. It just wasn't like them. He had a hunch that maybe it was a band of slackers that had been roaming around the area and had run low on supplies. But that didn't make sense either. There was rarely a Resh'ta-ne group around these parts ever since the forts had gone up almost ten years ago. The settlers had started coming in and even though they had put up a fight, the small villages that had been around this valley had moved back up north towards their City. The exact location of which was still completely unknown to the Americans. It was so well hidden that only if you were a Resh'ta-ne did you know where it was.

It was said that no outsider had ever ventured in and returned to tell were it was. Some people said that the forest got to them long before they reached the City. Others said that they had made it and were killed on the spot before they even got within twenty feet of the gates . . . even if they had been dressed and acted like an Indian.

Of course when Americans thought about their City they always imagined it to be some medieval fortress set in a mountain in the deepest part of the forest. In reality, no one had a clue what it looked like. All the time that he'd spent looking at the paintings of the Resh'ta-ne that he had captured he had never seen anything reference to a huge city of Indians. That in itself was confusing.

Why would there be this legendary City but nothing in their possession that represented it? Most cultures even had that much. May it be a deity or a religious site every culture had some sort of picture or writing that represented that. But the only things that Resh'ta-ne paintings showed were animals and other things in nature; wolves, hawks, suns, mountains, water, fire, plants. Anything that appeared in nature was depicted on their tepees, not unlike most Indian tribes.

The white-haired general pondered all this while sitting at his desk in his tent late that night. The military tents had been set up around the village tents to protect them in case another attack happened. But Milliardo knew it was very unlikely that they would be attacked again. Especially if the culprits were indeed the Resh'ta-ne.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to relieve the headache that had begun to plague him. Tomorrow he and his regiment were escorting the remaining villagers to Fort Dodge where they would be treated as refugees. It was better than camping out in the remains of the destroyed valley and that way he could speak with the other officers about the whole incident.

Deciding it was time to turn in, Milliardo reached to the other side of his collapsible desk and turned down the oil lamp that sat there. The light went down to a very small glow and the general sighed. That was much better on his strained eyes.

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Peals of childish giggles drew Heero's attention to the side from his position by the fire in front of his hut. He could see Finn's tail twitching by the corner, but the rest of his lean body was hidden behind the leather housing. Again he heard the sound of the little boy's laughter and the soft chuckling of the girl. There was a horse's whinny and he recognized it as Zero.

In his hands were his unstrung bow and he polished it to make sure the length he'd strung hadn't ruined the balance or the fine wood. They'd all been a little on edge while riding through these last valleys of the white man's Iowa territory and even more so since they'd had that close call with General Peacecraft's army. It had put everyone on alert and ready in case they had another moment when they wouldn't be so lucky.

It was amazing they hadn't been caught, but the white soldiers weren't as aware of their surroundings like native tribes were. Their whole cover would have been blown if the girl had called out when she had the chance, and it still stunned Heero to think that she had just stood there instead of called out. Any other captive wouldn't have done that.

Duo, the pervert that he was, had mentioned something about dominance after he had tackled the girl, but he hadn't been paying attention. After everything was clear, he had yanked up the blonde girl and pushed her in the direction of the hidden camp. His `nerves of steel,' as Quatre had called his patience and attitude once, were quite shaken. But he wouldn't show that. It had been too close. Way too close.

Speak of the devil, the girl came around the corner of the tent right at that moment, drawing his attention to her even if he didn't look at her and kept his eyes on his work. She had Eli on her hip and Finn followed her around the tent to keep an eye on all three of the humans. She sat across from him in front of the small camp fire, the child in her lap, and checked the pot over the fire, stirring it with the wooded spoon.

Heero watched her through his long bangs, his hands still working the pliant wood in his lap. He had to admit that her cooking was . . . interesting. She was experimenting making white man food with the dried and native food that the braves carry around with them when they're away from the village. This night she was creating some type of watery soup with the dried buffalo and various preserved greens. It smelled good to his hungry stomach. It also seemed to attract the attention of the bottomless pit.

"Hey Buddy!"

Duo casually walked up to the fire, his cheery face lit up by the warm glow. He had that mischievous look in his violet eyes that usually told everyone around him that he was about to scam something off you. The girl, of course, didn't know Duo so she didn't know that. Though, she seemed to be the observant one.

The braided warrior sat in front of the fire, basically inviting himself into their meal. Not that Heero minded any. The girl caught his eyes over the fire, silently asking if she should feed the perky brave as well. He nodded. No reason why not. Duo caught his attention before he could go back to working on his bow.

"So, Heero. What have you been up to lately?" he asked as the girl passed him a wooden bowel of the strange soup. He smiled charmingly at her and thanked her in English. Heero took the bowel that was offered to him over the fire and put his bow aside, though not too far out of reach. He took an appreciative sip of the watery liquid.

"Cut to the chase, Duo. It's not like you to bum a free dinner."

The violet eyed brave pouted, "Aw, come on pal. A little small talk never hurt anyone."

"I don't do small talk."

Duo sighed and took another spoonful of meat and vegetables. "Trowa's taken off to the Village like you suggested with the map skin for Treize. Wufei went to the east to collect the remaining raiding party and Quatre is getting worried about our situation. When our faithful leader gets worried, I get worried."

"Is that all?" Heero asked in his monotone voice. Duo looked up at him abruptly, stunned.

"You know, I'm really starting to believe the others when they say you're emotionless. You don't feel that dark cloud hanging over our heads? Just waiting to pour down on us?"

Heero met Duo's gaze straight on and the braided teen saw the truth in his deep blue eyes. Although he showed a great amount of indifference to the world, his best friend could clearly see beyond those barriers and into the vast emotions that the stoic brave hid inside.

He did feel that ominous presence and knew that something bad was going to happen. But like the rest of them, they had no clue what it had to do with.

The meal, after that, continued on in silence. Relena fed herself and Eli and the two males served themselves for seconds; that's thirds and fourths for Duo. The sun had long set and the only light in the camp was the spots of fires outside every hut. The night was quiet, only the sounds of the camp and the forest broke through the air and filled it with a comforting feeling. The three sat around the fire in companionship, although Relena didn't have a clue what their conversation had been about. She could only tell from their expressions and tones that it was an unpleasant subject.

So comfortable in their silence, they were startled by the quick approach of a very young brave. He only looked to be in his thirteenth year.

"Heero, Duo! Quatre wishes to see you. He told me it was urgent!"

The two said braves launched from their positions on the ground and onto their feet. Relena jumped, but stayed in her seat, confused about what was going on. She was really starting to wish she could understand their language. Uncertainly, she looked between the three braves, waiting for a sign of recognition.

They discussed something and they started away. She panicked, unsure about what to do. The blonde held out a hand, hoping to stop them.

"Wait!"

Heero stopped and turned to fix his gaze onto her reaching form. His Prussian blue eyes locked onto her equally blue eyes, holding her with a look.

"Take the boy to Catherine's hut and meet us at the hut with the sun painted on it," he commanded in his emotionless voice, filled with authority and seriousness. "Do you understand?"

She nodded dumbly but didn't move from her position, transfixed as she was on his presence. He noticed this.

"Go now!"

That command gave her the power to move and she gathered up the three-year-old and practically ran to the hawk decorated tent. Meanwhile, Heero watched her race away from him, his thoughts stuck in limbo as her form ducked into Trowa's family hut.

"Heero!"

Duo's call snapped him out of wherever he had been and he spun and took off after the other brave, thoughts once again in order and pondering this new development.

Why did life always seem to be so difficult?

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