Crisis, August: Javelin's support slowly dribbles away as it passes through east-central Kaitucky. The Alliance clans shift their families and herds away from the area of Southern Command's column as though they carry bubonic plague. The Mammoth depart to settle a private score with the Coonskins.
Only the Gunslingers and the attenuated Bulletproof remain at a reasonable level of strength, the Gunslingers grudging the Kurians the loss of their dispatcher at the ambush in Utrecht, and the Bulletproof through the force of Tikka's personality and a twinkling affinity for Valentine as a member of Southern Command.
The Moondaggers reappear, reinforced after their successful destruction of the Green Mountain expedition in Pennsylvania, this time in motorized column, hovering just at the edge of the column's last rear guard's vision.
Valentine asked for, and received, permission to spend the day with the Wolves following the Moondaggers on their flanking march. Bloom had granted it halfheartedly, all the usual humor drained from her voice. Valentine wondered whether it was the strain of command-or was the strange lassitude that infected Jolla consuming Javelin's new commander?
It felt like old times, with the odd addition of Bee's constant, protective shadow and a couple of legworms carrying the Wolves' spare gear, provisions, and camping equipment.
Moving hard from point to point, one platoon resting and eating while a second went ahead, the tiny company headquarters shifted according to the terrain and move-ments of the enemy, small groups of wary scouts disappearing like careful deer into stands of timber and ravines.
All that had changed was the strain Valentine felt trying to keep up with them. He considered himself in decent enough shape, but a day with the Wolves made him feel like a recruit fresh out of Labor Regiment fell-running again.
Moytana himself was watching over the enemy whenever possible, a careful woodsman observing a family of grizzlies, knowing that if he made a mistake at the wrong moment, he'd be killed, partitioned, and digested within an hour by the beasts.
The Moondagger column resembled a great black snake winding through the valley. Or floodwaters from a burst dam, moving sluggishly but implacably forward. He could just hear high wailing cries answered by guttural shouts, so precise a responsorial chorus that it resembled some piece of industrial machinery, stamping away staccato.
Flocks of crows circled above. Valentine wondered if they were trained in some way, or just used to battlefield feasts.
The performance did its job. Valentine felt intimidated.
Valentine tried to make out the "scales" of the snake. All he could think was that the army was marching holding old riot shields over their heads.
"Umbrellas," Moytana said. "Or parasols. Whatever you want to call them. They've got a little fitting in their backpack frame for the handle."
"What's that they're-I don't want to call it singing-chanting?"
"That one's got some highfalutin name like the 'Hour of the Divine Unleashing.' Means they're going to chop us into stewing sized pieces, in so many words."
Valentine saw some scouts on motorbikes pull to the top of a hill flanking the column.
They pointed binoculars and spotting scopes at Valentine's hilltop. Valentine waited for a few companies to break off from the column to chase them off, but the Moondagers stayed in step and song.
"They don't seem to mind our presence."
"They want us impressed. That's part of why they're chanting."
"You've heard that tune before."
"Yes. A small city called Ripening, in Kansas. Old maps call it Olathe."
"What went wrong in Kansas?"
"Everything. The operation made sense in theory. As we ap-proached, the resistance was supposed to rise up and cause trouble. Cut communication lines, take the local higher-ups prisoner, blow up trucks and jeeps and all that.
"Problem was, it was kind of like Southern Command and the resistance set up a line of dominoes. Once the first couple tipped, it started a chain reaction. Sounds of fighting in Farming Collective Six gets the guys in Farming Collective Five next door all excited, and they dig up their guns and start shooting, which gets the guys at Four who've been sharpening their set of knives the idea that relief is just over the hill. So they start cutting throats. And so on and so on.
"Early on, seemed like we were succeeding beyond anyone's hopes. Wolves were tearing through Kansas knocking the hell out of the Kansas formations trying to get organized to meet us. Kurians were abandoning their towers in panic, leaving stacks of dead retainers behind.
"The way I understand it, the Kurians launched a counterattack out of the north, just a few Nebraska and Kansas and Iowa regulars. Typical Kurian ordering, from what I hear, futile attacks or defenses with rounds of executions in exchange for failure. Reapers started popping up along our line of advance, picking off the odd courier and signals post. That was enough to put the scare into a couple of our generals and they turned north or froze and right-wheeled, trying to establish a line with the poor Kansans under the impression that we were still coming hard west.
"Well, the Kurians must have got wind of our operation ahead of time. Maybe they even had, whaddya call 'em, agents o' provocation riling the Kansans up to get the resistence out in the open. They had these Moondagger fellows all ready to go in Nebraska, two full divisions plus assorted support troops like armored cars and artillery trains. Kansans started calling them the Black Death."
"I never saw anything like the Moondaggers when I crossed Nebraska."
"Oh, they're not from there. I guess they headquarter near Detroit with a couple of posts in northern Michigan, watching the Canadian border. Sort of a province of the Ordnance. That's one of the better-run-"
"I know the Ordnance. I've been into Ohio."
"They moved them fast, took them through the Dakotas on that spur they built to go around Omaha. At least that's what that Cat Smoke told me. She's the one who urged us to get to Olathe before it was too late."
Valentine didn't say anything. He let the words come.
"But once the Moondaggers started moving, they moved fast. On good roads they travel in these big tractor trailers made out of old stock cars stacked like cordwood. I've seen them riding on old pickups and delivery vans and busses, clinging like ticks to the outside and on the roof. They only do their marching when they're near the enemy, and then they pray and holler like that."
Moytana gestured at the winding snake.
"First they send an embassy of men from another town they've cut up, so the right accent and clothing and set of expressions is passing on all the gory details. I'm told their lives depend on getting the rebels to give up without a fight. Then they send in guys like our Last Chance to negotiate, get men to thrown down their guns and quit, sneak off, whatever-then they make them prove their loyalty to the Kurians. Arm them with spears and one-shot rifles or have them carry banners in their front ranks so neighbor has to shoot neighbor."
He gulped. "Once they go into a town, well, they gut the place pretty bad. There are always a few Kurians in the rear, adding little tricks and whatnot, scaring the defenders. Outside of Olathe a rainstorm worked up and the Kurians somehow made it look like blood. I don't care who you are, Valentine-that'll rattle you, seeing blood run off the roof and pool in the streets. The Kurians get their pick of auras. The Moondaggers get their pick of women."
"You mentioned that before."
"Yeah, everyone from NCO on up in the Moondaggers has his little harem. Flocks, they call them. The gals are the flocks and they're the buggering shepherds jamming the gals' feet into their boots so they can't kick.
"That's the big thing in that outfit, breeding. A guy with a big flock, he's more likely to get promoted. They get decorated for the number of kids they've sired.
"Trick's getting started. You haul as many women as you can control home with you and start churning out babies. Seems the favorite age to grab is about nine to twelve. They don't eat as much, can't put up a fight, and they got all their breedin' years ahead of them."
"So making babies is like counting coup. What happens to the progeny?"
"Starting about five to eight they test them. I'm told one gets chosen to look after household when 'Dad' is away-almost always a boy. Toughest of the kids go into the Moondaggers, smartest go into the Church, the rest go off to labor training or get traded somewheres."
"Who controls the 'flock' while they're off fighting?"
"Dunno. Reapers, I suppose. Maybe the Church brainwashes some of the gals."
"You couldn't stop it in Olathe."
"No, it was just me and a squad of Wolves. We went through town after they pulled out.
Found lots of bodies. And about a million crows eating the bits and pieces left in the streets.
Moondaggers always like to chop a few up and stuff them back into their clothes the wrong way around, feet sticking out of shirtsleeves and heads where a foot should be. For it is the blessed man who obeys the Gods and knows his place, for they are Wise; the man who claims for his head the mantle of godhood is as foolish as one who walks upon his hands and eats with his feet.
"They left three men alive. One with his eyes burned out, one with his ears scrambled with a screwdriver, and one with his tongue ripped out. Just like that trio from the Mammoths.
They did a story on them in the Free Flags. Pretty sad picture to put on the front page. Did you see it? About a year and a half ago."
"I was out west at the time."
"Whole bunch of young women barricaded themselves into one of the New Universal Church buildings and killed themselves with rat poison. I found a note: One kind of freedom or another. Girl looked about fourteen. That Smoke, she cried a good bit. Wasn't a total loss.
We found some kids their parents stuffed up a chimney. Poor little things. I saw pretty much the same story in three other towns. Now they're here."
Valentine, feeling impotent in the face of the river of men snaking south two miles away, picked up a dry branch and snapped it. "Now they're here."
"Yeah. I know what's coming too. They'll just harry us, tire us out, get us used to running away from them. They'll terrorize anyone who even thinks about helping us. Then when we're starved and exhausted, they'll strike. Least they won't get too many candidates for their flocks out of our gals. Southern Command's shoot back."
"That's just one division there. Where do you suppose the other two are?"
"We never marked more than two in Kansas. The other's probably harrying what's left of the Green Mountain Boys."
"How did you find all that out?"
"We picked off one or two stragglers. Some just didn't talk, recited prayers the whole time or killed themselves with grenades at the last second. Some of the NCOs wear these big vests filled with explosives and ball bearings. They'll pretend to be dead and jump up and try to take a few with them. Smoke went and found a boy in Moondagger uniform and took him prisoner.
Couldn't have been more than eleven; his only job was to beat a drum after the prayer singer spoke. He stayed tough for about ten minutes and then broke down and started crying when she sorta mothered him. Heard most of it from him."
Valentine had a hard time picturing Duvalier mothering anything but her assortment of grudges. But then she was a Cat, and it was her job to get information.
They left the hilltop, mounted legworms, and conformed to the line of the Moondagger's march. Scouts found a new wooded ridge with a good view of the highway and they repeated the process for another hour. Moytana took a break and started on a letter. Valentine watched the marchers and the opposing scouts. All Valentine could think was that the Moondaggers were experts at their particular brand of harshness. He wondered how long they could operate somewhere like Kentucky without-
"Sir, scouts have met up with a party of locals," a Wolf reported. "Armed. They saw us riding. One of them asked for you by name and rank, Major Valentine."
"Locals?"
"Hard to tell if they're Kentuckian or Virginian. Mountain folk. Careful, sir. I don't like the look of them."
Valentine put a sergeant at the spotting scope and Moytana abandoned his letter. They snaked down the slope to a rock-strewn clearing and Valentine saw five men in black vests waiting around a small spring-fed pond, boiling water. Valentine carried his gun loosely, as though meeting a neighbor while deer hunting.
Valentine approached. The strangers were lean, haggard men with close-cropped beards and camouflaged strips of cloth tying the hair out of their eyes. They had an assortment of 5.56
carbines with homemade flash suppressors and scopes.
Valentine didn't recognize any faces.
What he at first took to be a pile of littered rocks shifted at his approach.
A mass of straw canvas sitting with its back to him rose. It looked like a fat, disproportioned scarecrow made out of odds and ends of Reaper cloth, twigs, twine, netting, and tusklike teeth. A leather cap straight out of a World War One aviator photo topped the ensemble, complete with Coke-bottle goggles on surgical-tubing straps, though there were holes cut in the hat to allow bat-wing ears to project and move this way and that freely.
A face that was mostly sharp teeth yawned and grinned as a tiny tongue licked its lips in anticipation. The muddy apparition carried a strange stovepipe weapon that looked like a recoilless rifle crossed with a bazooka.
Bee let out a sound that was half turkey gobble, half cougar scream.
What? Valentine thought, feeling his knees go weak.
The mountain of odds and ends spoke. "Well, my David. What kind of fix do you have yourself in this time?"
When Valentine could see again, blinking the tears out of his eyes, he looked around at the two groups of men, Wolves and Appalachian guerrillas, both eyeing the astonishing sight of a man with Southern Command militia major clusters pinned on to a suit of legworm leathers crying his eyes out against the mud-matted hair of a Grog's chest.
"Our general ain't as bad as he smells," one of the guerrillas told a Wolf. "Talks a midge funny, but by 'n' by your'n gets used to it."
Ahn-Kha and Bee exchanged pats, scratches, and ear-cleanings as he and Valentine spoke.
"Did Hoffman Price turn up again?"
Bee turned miserable at the name and muttered into her palm, thumping her chest and pulling at the corners of her eyes.
Ahn-Kha made more sense of it than Valentine could, though he caught the words for
"death," "lost," and "slave" in the brief story.
"I'm sorry to hear of his passing, my David. It seems to have worked out for Bee. You're her, urn, liberator and dignity restorer. As far as she's concerned, you hung her lucky moon in the sky."
"I can't tell whether she's a bodyguard or governess. She's always about yanking me out of my boots at the sound of gunfire."
"Proving that she has more sense than you."
"Can I hear your story?" Valentine asked.
"Oh, it is a long tale, and only the end matters. I managed to get myself put in command of the Black Flags. I still wonder at it."
Valentine still couldn't resist asking. "Your injuries?"
"Healed, more or less. Though I urinate frequently. I use your old trick of dusting with pepper or peeing into baking soda, otherwise the dogs would probably catch on."
"What happened to the pursuit?"
"They thought they caught a dumb Grog driver. I was sold to a mine operator. There matters turned dark in more ways than the coal face. I did not care for their treatment of someone who was kind to me and began a vedette."
"Vendetta, I think you mean."
"Vendetta. Of course. My one-hand war grew."
"What are your numbers now?"
"I will not tell you exactly," Ahn-Kha said. "Not with all these ears around. The Kurians believe our army to number ten thousand or more. But they have multiplied when they should have divided."
"I don't suppose I can count on you at my side this time?"
"These men deserve my presence. I began their war, and I will see it through. This is a strange land, my David. Victory and defeat all depend on a few score of powerful, clannish families who run things in this part of the country. Everyone knows and is related to one or more of these families. It makes my head hurt to keep track of it all. For now, they endure the Kurians as best as they can, though there are one or two families who relish their high placement overmuch. But the others, if they believe that we will win, they will place their support with us."
They talked quietly for a while. Ahn-Kha was waging a canny war against these powerful Quisling families. His partisan "army" had the reputation it had simply because it didn't exist as a permanent body. Ahn-Kha would arrive near a town and his small body of men would gather a few second cousins and brothers-in-law, Ahn-Kha would issue arms and explosives, and they'd strike and then fragment again as the Golden One relocated to another spot.
Sometimes when they struck and killed some officer in the Quisling armed forces with a connection to one of the more powerful collaborators, they dressed him in the guerrilla vests and left him buried nearby where search dogs were sure to find him. This led to reprisals and mistrust between the Quislings, and the rickety Kurian Order in the coal country of the Appalachians was coming apart.
The Moondaggers, on their arrival, had destroyed a trio of the Quisling families under suspicion, creating bad feeling among the rest. If they were to be treated as guerrillas, they might as well join the resistance and hit back.
"You wouldn't be interested in a trip back to the Ozarks, would you? I've felt like a one-armed man since we parted."
"And I a Golden One missing the ugly half of his face. But my men need me. Though I started a revolt more by accident than inten-tion, I must see it through."
"Forget I asked."
"Can I be of assistance otherwise, my David? In this last year my small body of men have become very, very good at quick, destructive strikes. Shall I bring down bridges in the path of your enemy?"
"It's the trailing end I'd like attacked. Do you think you can to bust up their supply lines? I want the Moondaggers forced to live off the land as much as possible."
"It will not be difficult to find men to do that. They have carried off a number of daughters already. As I said, everyone here knows everyone by blood or marriage or religious fellowship."
Valentine felt an excited tingle run up his spine. Ahn-Kha usually underpromised and overdelivered. Ahn-Kha would tweak the tiger by the tail, and if the tiger was stupid enough to turn, it would find itself harried by a foxy old Grog up and down these wooded mountains.
"I can't tell you what this means to me, old horse."
"I have the easy end, my David. Kicking a bull in the balls isn't terribly difficult when someone else is grappling with the horns."
"They may deal harshly with the locals."
"They will find the people in this part of the country have short fuses and long memories, if they do so."
Ahn-Kha always was as handy with an epigram as he was with a rifle. Speaking of which-
"What the world is that thing?" Valentine asked. "A shoulder-fired coal furnace?"
"My individual 75mm," Ahn-Kha said. "Almost the only artillery in our possession. Some clever chap in my command rigs artillery shells so they go off like rockets."
"You're kidding."
Ahn-Kha's ears made a gesture like a traffic cop waving him to the left. "Kidding? It is more dangerous than it looks. That is why I have the goggles. You are lucky you haven't seen me after firing it. My hair becomes rather singed."
They shared a simple camp meal of legworm jerky and corn mush. Valentine didn't even have any sweets to offer Ahn-Kha. If it had been in his power to do so, he'd have run all the way back to St. Louis to get some of Sissy's banana bread or molasses cookies.
If he could fantasize about running all the way, he could fantasize about bananas being available in the Grog markets.
"Sorry we don't have any molasses," Valentine said. "We're a long way from home."
Ahn-Kha extracted a small plastic jar of honey shaped like a bear, tiny in his massive fist, and squirted some onto each man's corn mash.
He quizzed Ahn-Kha on the capabilities of his guerrillas and their operations, soaking up his friend's opinions and experiences like a sponge. Ahn-Kha was doing his best to make coal extracted from these mountains as expensive in repair and garrisoning as possible.
As the Golden One told a story about the destruction of a rail tunnel, a report came in that the Moondagger column was turning again, this time north. They might have finally turned toward Javelin. They'd have to relocate again to keep it under observation.
They bolted the rest of the meal and washed their pannikins in the spring. Ahn-Kha wrapped up his jar of honey and stuck it back in a vast pouch on his harness that smelled like wild onions. Valentine gave him a collection of Grog guck scavenged from the men with promises to replace it with chocolate bars from the medical stores.
Valentine would always remember that tiny plastic honey reservoir, and the way Ahn-Kha licked his fingers after sharing it out. Would there ever be a world again where people cared about the shape of a container?
He hoped so.
When they parted he shook the slightly sticky hand again, felt it engulf his own. Fingers that could snap his femur closed gently around his hand.
"Good luck, my David. We will meet again in happier circumstances. "
"You said something like that before."
"And I was right. Give my regards to Mr. Post and Malita Carrasca. And our smoldering red firebug."
The staggering weight of all that had happened since they'd last said good-bye left him speechless. Ahn-Kha didn't even know about Blake.
"I trust your judgment on that one, old horse."
"Major, we have to leave. Now, sir," Moytana said.
So much for the fleeting pleasures of lukewarm corn mash sweetened by a tincture of honey. Valentine considered requesting that "Resting in peace-subject to the requirements of the service" be emblazoned on his grave marker.
Ahn-Kha's ears flicked up. "I'll give you a little more warning next time so you can receive me properly." He pulled his leather cap a little tighter on his head and picked up his stovepipe contraption. "After all, as you can see, I am a distinguished general."
"I'll bake a cake," Valentine said.
"Heartroot would do. See if you can't get me a few eyeroots, would your"
"Good luck, my old friend. I can't tell you how good it is to see you again," Valentine said.
"When matters are settled in these mountains, you will see me again. Chance is not yet done playing with us."
With that, he turned and loped rather heavily off to the east into the woods, his men running to keep up. Valentine wondered what another brigade, three thousand strong or more, of Golden Ones could accomplish if led by his old friend.
The column had turned for Javelin. They were mounting a small force on armored trucks.
Valentine wondered what the urgency was and requested that they make contact with base.
"Javelin's hung up at a bridge crossing. I can't get a warning through-there's some kind of jamming," the com tech reported.
"Moytana, try to delay those vehicles. Avoid a fight if you can. Block the road with trees at some gap."
"I'll see what I can do, sir. Looks like they're taking several routes, though."
The Moondagger column had turned into a hydra. One head crawled up a ridge, trying to get to the next valley over. A second was turning northeast, perhaps to get around behind Javelin.
"Send your fastest messenger back to headquarters with a warn-ing. I think we can guess their route well enough. I'll follow as best as can.
"Yes, sir," Moytana said, calling for his runner.
A boy of sixteen or seventeen-so it seemed to Valentine- answered the call. He carried an assault rifle that made him look even more like a child playing at war. It was a good old Atlanta Gunworks Type 3.
"Here, I'll carry that back to brigade for you, son," Valentine said, wanting the gun's angry bark.
Valentine took a slightly different path on the long road back than the boy. He angled off to the west, to see what that column marching across the ridge intended to do.
There was plenty of daylight left. If the Moondaggers were daylight fighters, it was all the better. His men would worry more about inflicting damage on the enemy and less about what might be lurking in the woods.
He topped another rise, puffing. No one was there to see him take a knee and dig around for a handkerchief to wipe off the summer sweat. His pits and crotch stuck and chaffed.
Legworm leather breathed well, but there were limits to any material.
The west-most column looked to have found the road they were looking for. It wasn't in good shape at all, a broken surface with fully grown trees erupting from parts of the pavement. Of course men trav-eling on foot without heavy weapons could easily find a path. It looked as though the deer had already made one.
He checked his bearings and picked a target on the next ridge north in the direction of headquarters.
Valentine ran down the opposite side of his ridge from the col-umn, firing first his machine pistol, then the deeper bark of the Type 3. Every now and then he broke up the sound with a longer burst.
The phantom firefight might just turn the Moondaggers aside from their path to investigate.
How well they could track and read shell casings was anyone's guess.
What counted at this point was delay.
Valentine came to the Turky Neck bridge, approaching along the eastern bank, and found chaos.
The river ran beneath deep, sculpted banks-Valentine guessed they were a flood prevention measure. Bluffs to the south frowned down on the slight river bend.
The old metal-frame highway bridge had been dynamited, quite incompetently, resulting in no more than the loss of some road bed and a few piles of paving. Bloom had sensibly sent several companies across to secure the far bank. But light mortar shells were now falling at the rate of one a minute all around the bridge area, keeping crews from covering the damage with timber and iron.
Legworms might be able to get across, but not trucks, vehicles, and horse and mule drawn carts. The brigade could cross, even through this shell fire, but would leave the supply train behind.
Valentine did his best not to anticipate the shells as he found headquarters, placed in a defile about a quarter mile from the east bank.
"Well?" he asked the first lieutenant he saw, ready to give someone a few choice words.
Why wasn't anyone shooting back with the light artillery?
"Thank God you're here, sir. We've been under aimed artillery fire, sir. Cap-Colonel Bloom's wounded!"
"What's being done about those mortars?"
"They're trying to find a route north around the downed bridge. We're supposed to be set to move."
"On whose orders?"
"Not sure. You can countermand, sir."
"Why would I do that?"
"I think you're in command now, sir."
If he was in command, he might as well take charge. Valentine walked over to the headquarters vehicle, a Hummer bristling with antennae like some kind of rust-streaked insect.
Valentine studied a notated ordinance map. Pins marked the positions of his various companies. His jack-of-all-trades former Quislings were up waiting to assist the engineers in repairing the bridge.
He checked the bluff where the Moondaggers-if they were Moondaggers, and not troops out of Lexington or God knew where else-had set up their pieces. It was about a mile and a half south of the bridge.
"Set up an observer post, or better, two, to call in fire on those enemy mortars, if they can be effective. I'm going to the hospital."
He issued orders for defense of the temporary camp. He directed their tiny supply of anti-armor gear to the road that would most likely see the armored cars, and gave orders for everyone to be ready to move as soon as the bridge team could go to work. As soon as Moytana arrived, he was to take charge of the rear guard.
Then Valentine grabbed a spare satchel of signals gear, made sure one of the brigade's few headsets and a flare pistol rested in the holster within, and left.
The visit to the hospital was brief. It was the only tent the brigade had set up, mostly because of the big red cross on it. The only other casualty was what was left of a soldier who had a shell go off practically under him. The Moondaggers were dropping most of their shells on the bridge, either trying to keep the rest of the brigade from getting across or in the hopes of a lucky series of shots downing it for good.
Colonel Bloom seemed likely to live, at least long enough for the damage sustained by her pancreas to kill her. She sat up in bed, giving orders.
After hearing the medical report, he sent a messenger for Gamecock.
"Valentine, thank God you're here," she said, pushing away a nurse. "Silence those mortars, fix the bridge, and get the brigade across. These cutters want to sedate me and open me up.
Don't let them stick anything in me until the brigade's safe."
"I think you should do what the doctors ask. I'll take care of the brigade. We'll wriggle out of this fix. The Moondaggers seem to be trying again."
"Yes, I heard the Wolfs report. Right before the world flipped over on me."
"Sorry about that, sir."
She looked like she was trying to smile. "Couldn't be helped. Don't worry about me. Go do your duty."
"If you'll let them get that shrapnel out."
She nodded. Then she opened one eye. "Oh, Valentine?"
"Yes, Colonel?"
"Get a hit."
He smiled. The old Bloom was back. "Their infield's in. I think I can poke one through."
Valentine found the doctor he'd first talked to.
"Have you ever tried transfusions from a Bear?" Valentine asked.
"I've read about some amazing results. But I believe it must be done quickly, while there's still living tissue and nerve impulses."
Gamecock arrived, breathless from a run across the bridge. His Bears were sheltering on the opposite side.
"What's Bloom's blood type?" Valentine said.
"O positive, suh," the doctor said. "Fairly common."
"Gamecock, get your Bears' blood type,"
"I've kept up with the research too, Major," Gamecock said. "You might say I have needle-in experience. I spent a week at Hope of the Free hospital, passing blood to critical cases. They bled me white and kept trying to refill my veins with orange drink."
"I need an-no, make it two-two Bears with either O positive or O negative blood. Right away. Doctor, give Colonel Bloom a transfusion as soon as one can be arranged. Then a second in twelve hours. Is that clear?"
"If the Bears are willing, I am. I've heard stories about injecting one and getting your jaw rewired in return. I want willing and, more important, calm subjects."
"I'll watch over them myself, suh," Gamecock said.
"I'm going to need you for a few hours, Lieutenant," Valentine said. "We're going after those mortars."
"Did you take a look at that bluff, sir? It's a steep one. I'd hate to waste Bears taking it."
"The Moondaggers will have to prove they know how to hold off a Bear assault. I still think they don't know what to do about someone who fights back."
"It's still a steep hill. It'll look a lot steeper with bullets coming down."
"I know a way to get up it."
Valentine got a report from the artillery spotters. The height of the bluff made it impossible to accurately spot fire, so Valentine told them to save their fireworks.
"Infantry strength?"
"All we can see is perhaps platoon strength on this side. They're right at the top."
"Right at the top?"
"Yes, sir. I don't think they can see jack at the base of that hill."
They really didn't know how to fight. Or they just liked the view. No matter, Valentine had to take advantage of the error quickly, before a more experienced Moondagger arrived and corrected the matter.
The hardest part was getting one of the Bulletproof to agree to ride the legworm.
"Up that?" Swill, the Bulletproof veep in charge of their contingent, said. "If the footing's poor, you could roll a worm right over on you, especially if men are hanging on it in fighting order."
"I'll take mine up that hill," Tikka said, stepping forward. "I'm the best trick rider in the clan."
"There's trick riding and there's getting shot at. You don't know enough about the other,"
Swill said. "I'm not risking our senior veep's sister."
"So you told me. You're afraid to take your worms across under this shell fire. Watch this."
They did watch as she hurried to her worm grazing in some brush farther downstream.
Digging her hook into its hide and using the spurs on the inner ankle of her boot, she mounted her worm and prodded it toward the bridge.
Swill ran in front of her worm and tried to divert it, looking a little like a rabbit trying to stop a bus. The worm nosed him aside, off his feet, and Swill threw off his hat in frustration.
"Watch those shells!" Swill yelled. "It'll rear back if one comes too close!" He turned back on Valentine. "The exec told me to keep her from doing anything stupid. Lookit me now. I'm going to have to go back and admit I couldn't keep a rein on one little female."
"Not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the fight in the dog," a handsome Guard sergeant detailed to the Bulletproof said. He rubbed his jaw ruefully. "That gal has her own mind about things."
Valentine sent a field-radio message to Gamecock to move his Bears toward the bluff, and then trotted up and joined his company, waiting for their chance to fix the bridge. They had all the tools and materials resting in the ditch next to the road.
"How's the shell fire, Rand?"
"Poor, if they're trying to kill us. I think they're just trying to keep us off that bridge. The fire's slackening, so I think they're running out of shells. Excuse me, sir, but is that worm rider crazy?"
"Feisty, more like," Valentine said, watching the legworm glide up the road on its multitude of black, clawlike legs, ripples running the length of its thirty-yard body as it covered ground. "Someone suggested she couldn't handle her worm."
Valentine watched Tikka fiddle with the gear on her saddle. She extracted another pole with a sharp hook, this one with a curve to the shaft.
"What's that for?"
"Legworms aren't very sensitive anywhere but the underside. She gives it a poke now and then to keep it moving."
Tikka aimed her mount straight for the hole. A shell landed near her and the legworm froze for a second. She goaded it forward again.
When it came to the hole in the pavement, she gripped the reins in her teeth, used one pole to goad her beast forward, and swung the other under what might be called its snout. It was where the food went in, anyway.
She poked it good at the front and it reared up, twisting this way and that. Tikka clung as another shell whistled down. It must have dropped straight through the hole in the pavement, because it exploded in the water beneath the bridge.
Tikka clung, shifted the forward pole down the legworm's belly, and then poked it again. It reared up, and she released the painful spur. It came down again, a good thirty legs on the other side of the hole. The legs over the gap twitched uncertainly, like the shifting fingers of sea anemones Valentine had seen in the Jamaican reefs.
"I didn't know they could do that," Rand said.
"I expect they can't, usually."
Tikka hurried her worm forward, a living bridge over the hole in the pavement. As she passed across, the beast's rear dropped into the hole, but with the rest of it pulling, it got its tail up and out.
Valentine checked his pack ot signal gear again. How long until the Moondaggers got here?
"Preville, you've just been attached to headquarters," Valentine said. "You get to come on an assault with the Bears. Bring your radio."
"Er-yes, sir," Preville said, blinking.
"Red, then blue if we clear the hill. Understand?"
"Red, then blue," Rand repeated. "Got it, sir."
"Every minute counts. The opposition is on its way."
"They picked a good time to turn on us."
"I'm not so sure they picked it. The Kurians have long tendrils."
Valentine slapped his lieutenant on the shoulder and then ran up the extreme right of the bridge, Preville trailing, trying to run while folded in half. Another shell fell into the water.
Valentine marked the glimmer offish bellies bobbing in the current.
Someone downstream would collect a bounty of dead sunfish.
Tikka rested her mount on the other side, letting it graze in a thicket. Valentine watched brush and bramble and clumps of sod disappear into its muscular lipped throat. Valentine waved the Bears forward.
They came, three groups of four, in the variegated mix of Reaper cloth, Kevlar, and studded leather the Bears seemed to favor. Valentine even saw a shimmer of a chain mail dickey over one Bear's throat and upper chest. Their weapons were no more uniform than their attire.
Belt-fed machine guns in leather swivel slings, deadly little SMGs, grenade launchers, assault shotguns, an old M14 tricked out with a custom stock and a sniper scope . . . never mind the profusion of blades, bayonets, and meathooks taped or clipped onto boots, thighs, forearms, and backs. Most of Gamecock's team favored facial hair of some kind. All wore a little silver spur around their neck-a team marker, Valentine guessed.
The Moondaggers, used to slaughtering rebellious farming collectives armed with stones and pitchforks, were in for a surprise.
"We're riding to the bluff. Can your worm hold them all?"
"It's young and strong," Tikka said. "As long as we're not riding all day."
Tikka unrolled a length of newbie netting from the back of her saddle, where it served as a lounger while coiled up. Gamecock's dozen picked Bears climbed uncertainly onto the creature.
"I've blown a few of these up but never ridden one," a Bear with a shaved, tattooed scalp said.
Another, who'd somehow stretched, teased, or sculpted his ears into almost feral points, wiggled his legs experimentally as he gripped the netting. "Not bad. Ride's smooth, like a boat.
You could sleep while traveling."
"We do," Tikka said.
She kept them in the trees, keeping leafy cover over their heads whenever possible as they approached the bluff. The hills closed in between them and the riverbank. Then, suddenly, the steep slope was before them.
Valentine dismounted, carefully went forward, waiting for the sniper's bullet or the machine-gun burst. Every twig and leaf seemed to stand out against the blue Kentucky sky.
Nothing.
The Moondaggers had erred. Or at least he hoped they had. They'd put all their troops at the top of the hill, rather than on what was referred to as the "military crest," the line of the hill where most of the slope could be covered by gunfire. Even experienced troops had made the mistake before.
He trotted back to the head of the worm and tapped Tikka on her spiked boot.
"Still think you can get it up?"
Tikka winked. "I'm five and oh, Blackie. Wanna be six?"
"This isn't the time-"
She laughed. "I don't quit that easy. If I get you all up so you can cork those guns, you going to finally give me a taste?"
Just get it over with. "A three-course dinner."
"With dessert," she added.
"I think that's included in the price."
"Sir, how am I supposed to go red when an episode of Noonside Passions is running at the other end of the fuckin' worm?" a Bear named Chieftain asked Gamecock.
They started up the hill, sidewinding on the long worm. Tikka found some kind of path, probably an old bike or hiking trail. The worm tilted.
A shot rang out.
"You all better side-ride-it's going to get nasty here," Tikka called.
"Can you keep the worm upright?" Valentine asked.
"Do ticks tip a hound dog? Grab netting."
The Bears slipped down the side of the worm facing downslope. Valentine heard bullets thwack into the worm, and Tikka shifted her riding stance, clinging on to the saddle and fleshy worm hide like a spider on a wall. Somehow she managed to work the reins and goad.
The mortars fired again, blindly, sending their shells down to explode at the base of the hill.
Valentine heard shouts from above, cries in a strange warbling language.
"Drop off now. They'll keep shooting at the worm," Valentine told Gamecock, seeing a cluster of rocks trapping fallen branches and logs.
The Bears scrambled for cover. Preville pulled out his field radio.
"Whenever you're ready, Lieutenant," Valentine said.
Gamecock took out a little torch and heated his knife. "Uh, sir, if I'm not mistaken, you're the brigade commander now. I don't think it's your place to be at the forefront of a hill assault.
Let me and the Bears-"
"There's a good view from that bluff. The Moondaggers are on their way, and I need to assess the situation."
"Red up, red up," Gamecock cried.
Each of Gamecock's Bears seemed to have their own method of bringing the hurt, and with it the willed transformation into fighting madness that made the Bears the killing machines they were. One punched a rock, another stamped his feet, others cut themselves in the forearm or ear or back of the neck. A Bear, perhaps more infection-minded than most, made a tiny cut across his nose and dabbed iodine from a bottle on it.
Valentine heard fire following the worm.
"Time to fuck them up," the one with the iodine rasped, wincing.
Gamecock pressed the hot knife under his armpit, clamped down on it hard.
Preville looked around, gaping. Valentine knew what his com tech was thinking: If this is what they do to themselves, what the hell's in store for the enemy?
If Valentine wanted pain, all he had to do was think of his mother, on the kitchen floor, the smell of stewing tomatoes, what was left of his sister lying broken against the fireplace . . .
Heart pounding, a cold clarity came over him. The next minutes would be either him or them. Doubts vanished. Everything was reduced to binary at its most simple level, a bit flip, a one or a zero. Life or oblivion.
Three ... two ... one ...
"Smoke 'em up," Gamecock yelled.
A Bear from each four-man group pulled the pins on big, cyclindrical grenades. The senior nodded and they all threw toward where they heard orders being shouted.
Valentine smelled burning cellulose. The smoke grenades belched out their contents.
There was a stiff breeze on the heights and the smoke wouldn't last long. Gamecock put two fingers into his mouth and whistled.
"Action up! Action up!"
The Bears exploded out of the cover like shrapnel from a shell burst, save that each piece homed in on the target line with lethal intent.
Valentine followed them through the smoke. Gamecock kept toward the left, where more of the hill and therefore more unknown opponents potentially lay, so Valentine went around the right, trying to keep up with the barking mad Bear with the clipped ears.
White eyes with a thick bushy beard appeared from the growth to the right-a Moondagger opening a tangle of branches with his rifle butt. Valentine swung his machine pistol around and gave one quick, firm squeeze of the trigger and the man fell sideways into the supporting growth, held up by a hammock of small branches and vines. He heard a shout from behind the man, a yapping, unfamiliar word, and fired blindly at the noise.
He followed the sound of bursting small arms fire up the hill.
The four-man groups divided into twos, covering each other as they went up the hill in open order and they vanished into the smoke.
"Target in sight. Grenades!" Gamecock's disembodied voice sounded through the smoke.
Bullets sang through the trees, tapping off down into the thicker timber, followed by the tight crash of grenades going off uphill. Valentine felt the heat of one on his left cheek as it passed.
Then he was through the smoke. A wide, bright green mortar tube sat, a bloody, bearded man fallen against the arms of the bipod, looking like a dead roach in the arms of a praying mantis. Just beyond, a severed head lay next to what had been its body.
A brief flurry of gunfire turned to cries and screams as the Bears did what they did best: close quarters fighting. Only it was closer to murder.
The Bear with the cuts on his nose was perhaps the most impressive of all. He grapevined through the position with only his .45 gripped carefully like a teacup, his body following the foresight like it was a scouting dog. Valentine saw him drop three Moondaggers spraying bullets from assault rifles held at their hips in the time it would take Valentine to clap his hands.
Valentine saw Moondaggers fall, blown left and right by shotgun blasts or gunfire. The men on the other side of the slope saw the slaughter and ran from their positions and into the thickest timber they could find while their officers fired guns in the air, trying to stem the panic.
By the time Valentine realized the top of the hill and the mortar postions were theirs, the Bears were already over the hill and chasing what was left of the Moondagger infantry and mortar crew down the gentler reverse slope. Gamecock recalled his team and sent them to the right to check out the rest of the hilltop. The Bear with the old M14 knelt against a moss-sided rock, squeezing off shots as he squinted through the scope.
A bullet came back and he sank down, reloading. He rolled to his right, fired three times, and then rolled back behind the rock. No shots came back this time.
Some bit of sanity recalled him to duty. Valentine posted Preville by the mortars and followed a path north, finding himself atop a lime-stone cliff with a good view of the river valley and the treetops they'd advanced under. He withdrew into cover and fired first the red flare and then the blue, but as the first went off he saw work was already started on the bridge.
Rand had put the engineers to work as soon as he heard firing from the bluff top, figuring the mortar crews would have better things to do with Bears roaring up through the woods.
Valentine hurried back up to Preville and reestablished contact with headquaters. They connected him with Moytana, who reported the destruction of two armored cars. He'd delayed the center column, forcing them to come off the road and deploy, before retiring and leaving a screen of scouts who were giving enemy position reports as they fell back. The center column wouldn't reach the bridge for hours yet.
The long day would be over soon.
Valentine looked around at the dead being arranged by a couple of Bears in a neat row under the trees, their faces covered and arms and legs placed tightly together. Most of them had jet black hair and copper skin. Valentine recognized again the old game he'd seen so many other places-Santo Domingo, Jamaica, New Orleans, Chicago: elevate an ethnic minority to a position of authority, where their posi-tion and status depended on the continued rule of the Kurians above. More often than not, the more-visible middlemen took the blame for the misdeeds of those at the top.
Valentine counted heads. All the Bears were upright, including the four keeping watch to the south and west.
"Not even any wounds? Your command's not even scratched, it seems."
"Not exactly unscratched, Major," Gamecock said. "You left something behind, sir. Left ear. Lobe's gone."
Valentine reached up, grabbed air where the bottom of his ear should be.
"You could take up painting French countrysides cafes," a better-read Bear laughed.
"Doberman can fix up your ears so they match," Silvertip said, pointing to the Bear with the docked ears.
"Want me to go look for it, sir?" Preville asked, perhaps desperate to get away from the combat-hyped Bears.
"You, with the iodine. Spare a little."
"Absolutely, Major," the bear said, exhibiting what was perhaps the deepest voice Valentine had ever heard in Southern Command.
"What's your name?"
"Redbone," the Bear said.
"Thanks, Redbone. Good shooting with that pistol. You don't give lessons, do you?"
"I can make time."
Valentine could turn the hill over to the Guard infantry now. With a few platoons posted on the bluff and some more companies spread out in those woods, the flanking column could bust itself to pieces in this manner, and every moment his forces on the west side of the river would grow stronger as men, vehicles, and legworms crossed, platoon by platoon.
With the brigade across and flanks well secured by river and lime-stone cut, the men could afford to relax and swap tales of skirmishes against Moondagger scouts. The Moondagger columns, discovering that Javelin had escaped the bridge choke point, skulked off for the sidelines like footballers who'd just given up a fumble.
The Wolves were coming in with reports that they'd turned tail.
"A mob. That's all they are," someone ventured.
"Like most bullies, they're toughest against people who can't fight back," Valentine said.
"What happened to the third column?"
"Don't rightly know, sir," Moytana said. "Some of the scouts thought they heard explosions a mile or two to the east. The column turned toward them, then reversed itself, then turned back again east before it swung around south to where they were when we were first watching them. That's all they saw before it got dark."
The work of Ahn-Kha, perhaps, with ambushes or miscellaneous sounds of destruction getting the Moondaggers marching in a circle, chasing the noises of their own troop movements.
Valentine wondered what would have happened back at Utrecht if they'd united with the Green Mountain Boys. The Moondaggers had come to oversee a surrender, not wage a war. If only Jolla hadn't felt overwhelmed by the responsibility of command.
He'd leave the might-have-beens to the historians and armchair strategists. He had to check on his commanding officer.
For two days the column crept southeast as Bloom recovered from her taste of Bear blood.
The doctors complained that it made her even more restive than usual.
The Moondaggers hovered in the distance, keeping in between the brigade and Lexington.
Valentine wondered what sort of orders and threats were passing between various Kurians, high Church officials, and the Moondagger headquarters in Michigan. Bloom was soon up to half days in her jeep after one more Bear-blood transfusion.
Valentine, now that she was on his mental horizon, suddenly saw Tikka everywhere: giving orders to her fellow Bulletproof, cadging for strips of leather to effect repairs on tack and harness, giving advice to the cooks on the best way to quick-smoke legworm meat.
Perhaps it was just his libido, but she always seemed to be reach-ing, squatting, climbing, or bending over, the muscles of her backside tight in jeans and legworm-leather chaps.
She caught him coming out of the wash tent after dinner and revealed a glass flask tucked in her summer cotton shirt snuggled up next to a creamy breast.
Valentine had seen hundreds of liquor advertisements while pag-ing through the tattered ruins of old magazines, but for all the tales of subliminal depictions of fornication in ice cubes, he'd rarely so wanted to reach for a cork in his life.
"I came here to collect on a promise," she said, taking the kerchief out of her hair and letting the carmel-colored curls tumble into into a waterfall splashing against her shoulders.
"Or are you going to Cin-Cin me out of my reward?"
What the hell. He should do something to celebrate his brief command of the brigade.
Tikka seemed like five and a half feet of uncomplicated lust. He'd just have to make sure to use a condom for something other than keeping rain out of his gun barrel.
uDo you want to be seen walking into my tent, or will you sneak in under cover of darkness?"
"Let's go to mine. It's more secluded. I'm picketed to make sure the dumb things don't blunder into the stream."
"I'll change so I can blend in."
He buttoned his shirt and threw his uniform coat over his arm and went to his tent. While he put on his leathers, she refilled her pistol belt from the company supply.
"What in the world did you do to your rig?" she asked. "All your hooks and catches are gone."
"My maiden aunt Dolly was always complaining about the chips to her furniture. Kept snagging doilies at headquarters too."
She licked her lips. "I think I can tell when you're joking now."
"Good."
They walked through the knee-high grasses to the legworm camp, a little below the Southern Command encampment and closer to the stream. They wound through grazing legworms. On the hill opposite the stream, two riders sat on a mount back-to-back, keeping watch.
She beckoned him into her tent. Some tack odds and ends sat in a chest that opened out into shelves, and various ponchos and bandannas hung on a grate-like folding clothes tree. Her bed was a net-and-frame double with a rather battered-looking down mattress. It looked too rickety to support both of them.
"You should have taken better care of your leathers," she said, disrobing with a matter-of-factness that made Valentine remember a girl he'd once known in Little Rock. "You know, it's supposed to be the mark of a real well-suited pair of riders if they can do it without any punctures or lacerations. Kind of a good omen for their future together."
She had muscular buttocks and legs, good shoulders and a sleek, feline back. Her breasts, high and small and capped by determined, thumblike nipples, gave the tiniest of bobs as she danced out of her leathers. Their full firmness made her waist look even narrower by comparison.
"I could put some barbed wire around my nethers."
"Don't you dare," she said, coming forward and into his arms.
Her kiss was as wanting, hungry, and open as a baby bird's mouth. It had been so long since he'd had a woman press against him like this, her arms tight on his shoulder blades, he'd almost forgotten the delightful feel of breasts crushed against his chest, or a round hip just where his hand could fall as he tested the curves.
He lifted her easily and she laughed, pulling at his ears. She still had the day's sweat lingering between her breasts. It smelled like salt and sun and that powerful, caressing scent that women carried like a secret weapon for infighting. One of her heels pressed against the small of his back; the other rubbed the back of his leg. His pants seemed insufferably confining.
They worked together to get him out of them.
She dropped to her knees, employed her mouth, but he hardly needed encouragement.
"Now. Hurry. God, I'm so fucking horny!" she said.
They didn't even bother disturbing the bed. The tamped-down grass was cool and smooth inside the tent's shade, and there was less chance of breaking it as she bucked and gasped under his thrusts.
After, she played with his hair. "God, that was good. I even forgot about Zak while you were doing that Morse code with your tongue. Why didn't we do this four years ago?"
"I had someone else then. Or I thought I did."
"That redhead? She could be pretty if she tried. And cut back on the attitutde."
Valentine let her be wrong. He didn't want to talk about Malita and his daughter. In the rather formal, most recent letter, she'd been described as half monkey, half jaguar, climbing trees as easily as most kids walked.
Valentine felt strangely uncomfortable at the mention of Duvalier.
"We could try making up for lost time," he said, changing the subject. He reached for her.
So began a love affair carried out as discreetly as could be managed in a camp full of soldiers.
Luckily Kentucky was full of glades, quiet hillsides, and swimming holes. Valentine had a tough time being spared from his duties, shorthanded as the headquarters was with their losses and Bloom still needing a long night of uninterrupted sleep. They had a magnificent yet lazy, four-hour afternoon fuck when Valentine had a midnight to four/eight to noon watch.
Once she tried to use her mouth on him as he was supervising the empty headquarters tent-empty save for one sleepy radio operator with his back to them-and he had to send her back to the Bulletproof camp.
Good thing too, because Duvalier came in soon after. She extended her tongue at Tikka, disappearing into the dark in a disappointed flounce.
"That Reaper the Wolves thought they saw turned out to be a scarecrow," she said. "Some clever clod rigged it to a little track so the wind blew it around his cornfield."
She looked at his trousers. "You trying to win a blue or something?"
Valentine, embarrassed, finished zipping up.
"Odd that we haven't had more trouble with Reapers."
"They keep away from big bodies of men, at least if they're alert. Too many guns. Plus, I don't think the legworm ranchers like Reapers poking around in their grazing lands."
"Any problems between the Moondaggers and the ranchers?"
"I went into Berea right after they left and played camp follower. They left the townies alone. Of course, the Kentucks hid their girls and showed their guns."
"Si vis pacem, para bellum" Valentine said.
"No, these guys favor buckshot and thirty-oughts," Duvalier said. "Does the Atlanta Gunworks make the Sea-biscuit mace-'em? I never heard of it."
After his duty, he retired to his tent. He heard someone tap outside.
Probably Tikka, wanting to finish what she started in the headquarters tent. He rose and was surprised to see Lieutenant Tiddle standing there, looking freshly shaved and combed.
"What is it, Tiddle?"
"Can we talk, sir? Like, off the record?"
"Come in."
Tiddle rubbed his nose, looking like he was desperate to jump on his motorbike and disappear in a fountain of dust. "Major Valentine, that story you heard about the Colonel and Colonel Jolla ain't quite what happened."
"Excuse me?"
"We lied to you, sir. We sort of agreed about it. There was a struggle over a gun, sure, but it was Colonel Bloom's. When the shells started falling and Colonel Jolla was just standing there and started talking about surrendering while watching it like it was a rainstorm and not doing anything, she took command. He put his hand on his pistol and told her she was guilty of mutiny. The next thing we knew, they were fighting. Then we heard the gun.
"She was the one who put the barrel under Jolly's chin. Awful sight. We took another bullet out of Jolly's gun and put it in Bloom's."
"Why are you changing your story ?"
"I-we all agreed, as we were treating Colonel Bloom, that whatever their fight was about, Colonel Jolla wasn't right in the head, ever since we lost the colonel. I remembered that story they taught in school about how the president wasn't giving any orders in 2022 and then he shot himself, and we decided that something like that was happening with Jolly."
Valentine decided Tiddle bore watching, in more ways than one.
"I'm still not sure why you're changing the story."
"Will this cause trouble for his family with line-of-duty death and all that."
"No. Let's leave it be," Valentine said. "Conscience clear now?"
"The lie's been bothering me, sir." He sighed, and is face relaxed into the more agreeable expression Valentine had seen here and there around the brigade.
In Southern Command, if a court found that a soldier had been killed while in the commission of a crime under either military or civilian laws, their death benefits were forfeit.
"Don't worry, Tiddle. You did the right thing. Both times."
"How can it be right both times?"
"Good question. Why don't you think about it for a while?"
Valentine decided to forget everything Tiddle had told him, if possible. Whatever Boom had or hadn't done, survival was their main concern now.
"Sir, if you don't mind me saying, there's one more thing that's worried me."
Trust established, Tiddle seemed intent on unburdening himself entirely. Valentine wondered if he was going to hear about Tiddle's loss of virginity to a cousin.
"Colonel Bloom, sir. She's been kind of distracted lately. Just like Colonel Jolla at the end.
Absent, only half listening."
Valentine bit off a "Are you sure?" Stupid question. He had to act.
"I'll talk to her. Thanks for expressing your doubts, Tiddle."
"Whatever's going on, nip it in the bud now, would you, sir? I don't want to be known as the com officer who's had two commanders shoot theirselves."
"I'm not sure we should be in such a hurry to leave," Valentine said, trying to wash down a hunk of legworm jerky and sawdust at the next route-planning meeting.
"How's that now?" Bloom asked.
"After their last try, the Moondaggers seem content to just nudge us along. They haven't made any real attempt to cut us off or even engage. Maybe they're licking their wounds from the last fight."
"Time is on their side, then."
"Not necessarily," Valentine said. "They're used to getting their way, and they're used to shoving around civilians when they don't. The legworm clans, they're not poor Kansas farm collective workers who don't know a rifle from a hoe. These boys can ride and shoot and they don't back down."
"They backed down easily enough back at the union," a Guard captain said.
"Now they're on their own land, though. I remember how startled I was, seeing Quisling uniforms walking around in Little Rock. Made me kind of mad. Felt more like a violation. I'm hoping the legworm ranchers will feel the same way," Valentine said.
"So what of it? They get jacked and take out a few Moondaggers in return. Does that help us?" Bloom asked.
"It gives the Moondaggers a new set of worries," Brother Mark said.
"The Moondaggers will respond the only way they know how. It could grow into a full-scale revolt. There could be advantages to that. Like better supply for us," Valentine said.
Moytana shook his head. "And disadvantages. There's a big garrison in Lexington and another in Frankfort. Right now they seem content to sit and not make waves."
"And the Ordnance, just over the Ohio," someone else added. "They've got a professional army. A lot of Solon's best troops came from there. If the Kurians there think Kentucky is up for grabs, they might make a move."
"We came across the Mississippi to establish a new Freehold," Valentine said, giving the table a rap. "I'd still like to do it. But I want it to be the ranchers' idea, not ours."
"Too risky, Valentine," Bloom said. Javelin's low on everything."
"We win a battle and we might get more local support," Valentine said. "Right now they're just obeying the Moondaggers because they've seen that we aren't doing anything about them."
Bloom glowered. "Pipe down, Valentine. You're dancing toward a line marked
'insubordination.'"
"Sorry, sir," Valentine said, using the soothing tone that always worked with his old Quisling captain on the Thunderbolt.
The rest of the meeting passed with Valentine deep in thought.
He buttonholed Brother Mark as they left to get some dinner and look over the nighttime pickets.
"Is it possible that-that a Kurian agent is manipulating her? Sowing doubt, fear?"
Brother Mark's gaze looked even more droopy. He nibbled at a turnip. "The Kurians and their agents may play with your senses, just as the Lifeweavers do. I suppose you've . . . ahem . .
. experienced ..."
"The night I got this," Valentine said, rubbing the side of his face where his jaw hadn't healed right. "Speaking of night, it always seems like she's at her most timid then. Dawn comes up and she's almost her old self."
"Sunlight interferes with their abilities. If it is someone manipulat-ing her, it would be like no agent I've ever heard of, that would put him-or her-on par with a Kurian."
"Then a Kurian-"
"No, they have to see, hear, smell-feel your aura, even, to be the devil whispering in your ear. Though I suppose they could work it through a proxy. Relay their mind through another, just as a Reaper becomes the Kurian when the Kurian is manipulating it."
"I haven't seen anyone touching her. She likes to pat you and slap you, locker room stuff, but that's never when she's making decisions. It's an 'at ease' thing with her to let you know you can relax."
"She's never slapped me," Brother Mark said in a tone that sug-gested he might enjoy the experience.
Churchmen. You never know.
"Anyway, I can't remember anyone going out of their way to make contact with her,"
Valentine said.
"Physical contact isn't necessary, you know."
Valentine straightened. "But you said-"
"An aura projects up to, oh, nine feet from the body. You didn't know that?"
"No."
"I saw it on a scanner once, during my education. An aura shows up on certain kinds of electrical detection equipment. It looked a little like the northern lights-ever seen them?"
"Yes, as a boy."
"It's an odd thing. A man missing his arm will still have the aura of his arm. It just looks more like a flipper. He can even move it around, to an extent, by working the muscles that used to work his arm. They could turn up the sensitivity of the equipment and show just how far an aura extends. Fascinating stuff. It's one of the reasons I don't eat cooked food. There's more aura residue clinging to uncooked vegetables."
"You don't say," Valentine said, wondering how to get the Brother back to the subject at hand. "Thank you for continuing my education."
"You weren't wrong-of course the connection is a good deal clearer when there's physical contact."
"How often would the Kurian have to make contact?"
"All I can do is guess. Different Kurians have developed different skills."
"Guesswork, then."
"Every few days. It's like a- Do you know what hypnosis is?"
"I saw a hypnotist once in Wisconsin. He was doing it for entertainment."
"It's like a hypnotic suggestion. Much of it depends on the will of the subject. With a strong-willed individual, I expect there'd have to be contact every day or two."
"Can you detect the connection?"
"Possibly. But I don't think our good commander would appreci-ate me hovering around her at headquarters, feeling the staff up until the hooded hours. I'd rather not have another noose put around my neck." He tugged at his collar, as if he could still feel the rope's abrasive coil.
"No sense wasting time," Valentine said. "Come to the headquarters tent tor that glop that's passing for coffee. I need to talk to you about visiting the legworm clans anyway.
Perhaps you can help with snack table."
Luckily Valentine could lose himself in the detail of his position and his appetite's arousal as the food trays came in. As the nighttime activity commenced, his collection of officers gave Moondagger position reports from the Wolves and a Cat who'd single-handedly dispatched a three-man patrol, keeping one alive for interrogation. Clean bit of work, that. Valentine would talk that up with the companies as he passed through them on the march. Nervous pickets liked to hear that the other side suffered its own devils in the dark.
Bloom listened rather absently. She only spoke once.
"Send that prisoner back to the Moondaggers. Tell them if they'll leave us alone, we'll leave them alone."
A less Bloom-like order Valentine could hardly imagine. She earned her rank during Archangel by taking her company forward, hammering in the morning, hammering in the evening, hammering at suppertime (as the old song went) against Solon's forces at Arkansas Post to cut off the river.
Then there were more mundane announcements such as the discovery of leaking propane tanks in the mobile generator reserve-he'd put his old company on finding more-and the field kitchen was running short of cooking oil and barbecue sauce.
Legworm meat needed lots of barbecue sauce to make it palatable.
Valentine wondered if his opposite number in the Moondaggers was listening to his own briefing, worried over just what had happened to that three-man patrol and dealing with a shortage of hydrogen fuel cells for the command cars.
Brother Mark made himself useful. After giving his briefing regarding their allies'
dwindling enthusiasm, he went about the room with a coffee pot, touching distracted officers and staff and asking for refills. Now and then he shrugged at Valentine or shook his head.
Valentine passed close and noticed that Brother Mark was sweat-ing from the effort.
Tiddle took some catching, but Brother Mark finally managed to corner him and point out that his cuff and elbow were both frayed-Tiddle had spilled his bike with his trick riding.
Valentine held his breath-he liked Tiddle.
Brother Mark sighed and shook his head.
"Perhaps it is someone not on the staff," he whispered, patting Red Dog's head as they passed. "Good God," he said, shocked.
"What?" Valentine asked, but he knew.
Brother Mark led him out of the tent. "It's the dog."
"How?"
"I don't know. Perhaps they've made some alteration to the animal, modified its brain. It seems a normal enough dog."
"It's the perfect spy," Valentine said. "It can't give anything away. Dogs won't break under duress and talks."
"You're wrong there, Valentine. I got a flash of something. A little of the Kurian's mind. I broke it off. I've had enough of that to last me more than a lifetime."
"How do we break the dog's hold on her?"
"A strong endorphin response. Alarm, maybe. An orgasm might be perfect."
Valentine could just picture Duvalier's reaction to that bit of line-of-duty cocksmanship.
She'd herniate herself laughing.
"Regulations," Valentine said.
"You'll have to come up with something. Perhaps just explaining it to her, so she was conscious of it-"
"If there's some kind of connection between her mind and the Kurian, I'd like to use it, not break it. Play with the dog a little, see if you can get anything."
Brother Mark made himself ridiculous for a few minutes with Red Dog, wrestling and hugging it. Red Dog enjoyed himself and so did the churchman. Those passing in and out of the headquarters tent shrugged.
He returned to Valentine dusty and dirty. Valentine gave orders for Red Dog to be taken around to the sentries for the usual midnight Reaper check.
"What did you get?"
"A sensation. Cool and moist air. A glimpse or two through its eyes. The Kurian is high, over a small town on some kind of aerial tower. Fine view of these Kentucky hills. One odd thing about the town: There are train tracks running right down the center of town along the street. Shops and buildings to either side. Quite odd."
Valentine checked with the Wolves and had word back in ten minutes. There was a town to the north called La Grange that had train tracks running straight through town. Wolves on foot could be there before dawn if they pushed hard.
He had Gamecock alert his Bears.
"Can you just order an operation like this, even as chief of staff?" Brother Mark asked.
"No, I need Bloom's assent."
"I hope you get it."
"I will. I just have to get her back into the fight, somehow."
Valentine presented his plans for an attempt to bag the Kurian. He didn't know if the mind manipulating the dog was also directing the Moondaggers, but any chance to take out an aura-hungry appetite would be a blow for humanity.
Bloom listened impassively. "I don't think we should risk it."
Valentine slapped her. Hard.
"What in-"
"That's no way for a leader to talk. Especially not the Cleo Bloom who spearheaded Archangel."
"See here, Mister," she said, bristling.
Valentine's hand became a blur. The slap carried like a gunshot.
"I'm putting you under arrest for assault."
"You've lost your nerve, Bloom. Showing the whites of your eyes. And your teeth. All you need is a gingham dress and we'd have a minstrel show."
She gasped, swung for his jaw. Valentine took the blow. If anything, he was grateful for it.
"You couldn't do Morse code with a tap like that," Valentine said, tasting blood. "Try again, you alley ho."
"Motherfucker" she said, falling on him. They went down and it was a dirt fight of knees and elbows. He covered his face with a forearm as she rained blows down on either side of his head, right-left right-left right-left.
"Woo! Officers fightin'," someone called.
Cleo Bloom stood up, her eyes bright and alive. "Jesus Lord," she panted. "Jesus Lord."
"Feel better, Colonel?" Valentine asked.
Later, they talked about it in the dispensary as a nurse put cold towels on Valentine's bruises and dabbed his cuts with iodine.
"I figured pressure must have been building up in you somewhere," Valentine said.
"I don't remember feeling any kind of presence," she said. "I just had all these doubts all of a sudden. I thought it was because it was the first time I was in command."
"I'm sure that helped," Valentine said. "The Kurians know what they're doing. They attack when someone is most vulnerable. It's how they fight. No need to beat us if we beat ourselves."
"Boy, when it came out, it was like a firehose. I feel better than I have for weeks. I remember you were saying something about an operation?"
"We found the Kurian's temporary hideout. Dumb luck, really. It's in a unique-looking town, as seen from above. Of course there's a big radio mast, so it makes sense that he would be there."
"And we're waiting for what, exactly?"
"Your orders."
"Given. Let's get this brigade of ours back into the war."
"I'd like permission to accompany the Bears."
"No, I'll send that Duvalier. She's very good, and she knows the country. Besides, I need you here. I was looking at the map, and there's a nice notch in the ridge ahead. We could use a rest from moving, and I think with some flank security we could mess with the pursuit. The thought scared me before, but now I want to take a crack at them. They're so used to us running after brief holding actions, we might catch them strung out."
Valentine passed a busy, sleepless night. While Gamecock and Duvalier, guided by a trio of Wolves, headed for La Grange, Bloom turned the brigade and launched an exploratory attack on Moondagger reconnaissance following them up the road.
Then Javelin took a much-needed rest while waiting for the Bears to return. Scavenging parties found green apples and early squash to eat. The fall's first bounty was coming in.
The hours dragged as Valentine experienced the doubts of a man who'd rather be on the job himself sending others into danger. He gnawed on an apple core, reducing it by tiny shavings, waiting for the parties' return. Bee sensed his mood and tried to comb out his hair and pick ticks.
They came in at dusk, one Bear short and Duvalier limping on a twisted ankle.
Gamecock, thick with smoke and dirt, gave a brief report, with Silvertip standing silently behind. Silvertip looked like he'd spent the morning wrestling mountain lions.
"Town had a Moondagger garrison, but they were living it up in the roadhouse at the edge of town," he said. "Sure enough, there was a little Kurian blister on the antenna, made out of whatever crap they use as tenting. They'd camouflaged it like an eagle nest."
Valentine had heard of some kind of specially trained bug that excreted Kurian cocoon.
"No Reapers?"
"The Cat took one jumping from a roof. She gave us the all-clear even with her bum foot. I sent the Bears right for the antenna with demo gear. There were some sentries but we disposed of them with flash-bangs and blades."
Valentine wished he could have been there. Or better yet, peering into the Kurian's eye cluster when it saw the Bears hurrying up.
"Did you blow the nest?"
"Yes, but it ran before then. Went sliding down one of the support wires or whatever you call 'em, suh," Gamecock said. "Gutsy little shit."
"You saw it?"
"No, Silvertip did. A Reaper hauled outta town like he was carrying hot coals. Silvertip managed to trip him up."
Sivertip. Big, brave Bear, that. "Very commendable," Valentine said, wondering if he sounded pompous.
"I don't train my Bears for dumb. Reaper running for the line like that? He looped a satchel charge on him. Of course, the thing animating the Reaper had us on his mind so he didn't notice. It dropped onto the Reaper's head and shoulders-looked like an umbrella collapsing on him."
"Looked back at me with all them eyes," Silvertip said.
"I don't think they're all eyes."
Silvertip shrugged. "Well, anyway, it was watching me take pot shots, carried like a baby with tentacles, when the charge blew. Reaper's head went straight up like a rocket."
"Best stick I ever saw, suh," Gamecock said.
"What happened after that?" Valentine asked.
"We knocked off three more Reapers pretty easy-sprayed fire into their shins and then took them out with explosives. The Moondaggers started tracking us on the way back, but the Wolves got a twist on them. Those boys are cruel but they sure don't know much about fighting."
All that remained was the decision about Red Dog. Valentine had him returned to his old company for a last meal together. He explained the situation and asked for a volunteer to shoot the poor hound.
"The whole brigade likes Red Dog, sir," Rand said. "Not the mutt's fault he's a Kurian spy."
"It's just a dog," Valentine said. "I'll kill it myself." He'd had to kill dogs before. Even gut them and stew them.
Glass stood up. "That Kurian's dead, right? Whatever connection he had is gone."
"Maybe the Miskatonic would want to study it," Rand said.
"It's too much of a risk," Valentine said. "One of you might fall asleep petting him and wake up kissing a fused grenade."
"I'll take the chance, sir," Glass said. "Like the lieutenant said, the Miskatonic should have a look at him. I'm stubborn and Ford and Chevy, well, I don't know that even a Kurian could make them much more confused unless there are bullets flying, food to be eaten, or a she-Grog around."
"What about you?"
"What, sir, 'n have me lose faith in the Cause? That train long since departed. Besides, I'd like to have a word or two with one of those Kurian sucks."
Valentine looked at Red Dog, utterly uncognizant of his peril but evidently just as happy to be with the old company as parked outside headquarters with the engineering gear.
"I guess one more ex-Quisling won't hurt. And I don't know how Glass's attitude can get much worse."
The men whistled and hooted and tossed scraps to the dog.