Choice of the Cat (Vampire Earth #2)

Choice of the Cat (Vampire Earth #2) Page 5

The Ozark Mountains, May: The Free Territory had its genesis here, among the river-cut limestone, caves, sinks, and thick forests of Americas oldest mountains. Like the armadillos and scorpions found in these timbered, rocky hills, the residents here are scattered, alert, tough, and dangerous. They know the stands of oak and hickory, trout-filled lakes and streams, and each other. But one area they avoid out of respect for its inhabitants, more wary and hermitlike than the most remote woodsmen. That is the ground around the headwaters of the Buffalo River, home to a cluster of Lifeweavers.

The locals call them wizards. Some fear them as a branch of the Kurians and their otherworldly evils. When the residents come upon a Lifeweaver, perhaps among the beeches running along the river as he fills a cask with water, they gather their children and avert their eyes. The Lifeweavers draw trouble like corpses draw flies. The Reapers, when they break through the border cordon to stalk and slay amongst the Freeholders, gravitate to this area in the hopes of killing Kur's most ancient and bitter foe: their estranged brethren.

Perched halfway up Mount Judea, a stoutly built A-frame lodge stands in a thick grove of mountain pine. The foundation of the building was cut from the old seabed a few miles away, thick slabs of varicolored stone that support the massive, red-timbered roof. Two monolithic lodgepoles of granite, etched with obscure designs that suggest Mayan hieroglyphs, gradually narrow toward the peaked roof. The building dwarfs any other house in the area; you would have to travel to the old resorts of the Mountain Home region to find a larger construct.

The Cats of Southern Command call it Ryu's Hall or just the Hall. They also call it home.

Valentine liked the look of the building from when he first set eyes on it, in the afternoon of the day after leaving Cobb Smithy.

"I was expecting another cave," Valentine said as they walked up the hill-cutting switchback leading to the Hall. 'This part of the Ozarks is full of them."

"The Wolves like to lurk in their holes. We Cats like shared solitude and comfort," Duvalier said, leading the way with her swordstick used as a staff.

"Shared solitude? Sounds like 'fresh out of the can' to me. Or 'military intelligence.'"

"Watch it, Valentine. What 'military intelligence' Southern Command has feeds you now."

He didn't need his Wolf's nose to scent pine trees and wood smoke. They were cheery and welcoming odors after their days on the road.

The pair walked across a pebbled path to a metal-reinforced door. A cylinder of wrought iron with a thin steel bar hanging down the epicenter hung next to the door, and Duvalier rang it until the hills echoed.

A face appeared at a high, horizontal window. Female, amber skinned, with sharply slanting eyebrows. "Duvalier! You made good time with your new boy. Let me get the door."

Valentine heard a heavy bolt being drawn back and noticed there was no knob or handle of any kind on the outside of the door. It moved, and he got a good view of the six-inch-thick timbers that constituted the main door.

"David Valentine, meet Dix Welles," Duvalier said by way of introductions. "Dix was the toughest Cat between here and the Appalachians once upon a time."

He noticed that the darkly attractive woman held herself very stiffly and used a cane. "That was a long time ago, before my back got busted up," Welles explained. She was wearing ordinary blue overalls and had a bag of tools hanging from her hip.

"Pleased to meet you, ma'am-," Valentine began.

"Dix does just fine, David. For the last-I guess it's nine years now-I've been the Old Man's assistant, or major-domo, or whatever it is I do here. Have you ever met Ryu, Valentine?"

"No."

"He's met his brother Rho, though," Duvalier said. Intrigued, Valentine looked at the two women. It never occurred to him that the Lifeweavers had families.

"We can talk later," Welles interjected. "Come in, come in. I'll find you some space. We're almost empty right now. The Cats that wintered here left for the summer. About all that's here are some Aspirants like you, Valentine. What are we going to call you, anyway?"

"Ghost," Duvalier answered. "Some of his old friends gave him that name in the Wolves."

The conversation barely registered to Valentine. His eyes had adjusted, and he stood and gazed at the cavernous interior of the lodge.

Ryu's Hall was one big room built around a central fireplace. The fire pit was a good thirty square feet, with a wide metal chimney that disappeared up into the dark rafters. Valentine's eyes followed the metal tube up to the peak of the ceiling, which he estimated to be at least sixty feet high. A series of beams crisscrossed above his head halfway to the roof, holding up two chandeliers. They glowed with formed drops of liquid illumination, bathing the entire lodge in a golden light and deep shadow.

Welles saw the direction of Valentine's gaze. "Those little fancies are something the Lifeweavers brought across the worlds. Leave them out in the sun for an afternoon, and they'll glow like that for weeks. But don't ask me more-I only work here."

The main room of the Hall was subdivided around the edges of the room into a series of six-foot-by-six-foot platforms projecting out of the walls like shelves, all at various heights and connected by little staircases, climbing poles, and even rope ladders. A handful of figures lounged on the platforms, eating, reading, or simply sitting and looking at the new arrivals. Tapestries and sheets and rugs hung from the rafters or from the platform above provided some measure of privacy. Plates and mugs and casks were stacked at the centers of two long tables at opposite sides of the fireplace.

"You like it small and cozy or open and airy, Valentine?" Welles asked as they walked into the hall. She moved with a back-and-forth motion of her upper body that reminded Valentine of a metronome.

"Open and airy, I suppose. That's what I'm more used to."

"I'll take my usual spot," Duvalier said. "Just put him up above."

"Easy enough. These tables are the common eating area." Welles led them into the depths of the lodge. "You are free to make your own food, of course, but we usually have a morning meal and a night meal made up by the Aspirants. That's you now, Ghost-man. We have genuine toilets in the back, along with two showers and a tub, but you have to attend to the boiler. When there are a few more bodies here, we take turns with that duty so there's always enough hot water for all. There's a sauna that works whenever we got the boil up. This place is built practically on top of a mountain spring, so mere's the best drinking water you've ever had whenever you want it. We don't even have to work a pump handle. Sweet, no?"

Valentine felt the warmth of a few dying charcoal bricks as they passed the massive fire pit.

"The fireplace is more for heat than cooking, but we've had a pig roast here on occasion. The main kitchen is in back. You wouldn't be any good at making bread, would you Valentine?"

"In an emergency."

"Great, you're our new baker. These kids go bluescreen whenever they try to bake anything but flatbread. Ryu has the rooms above the kitchen, and he doesn't take to visitors, so stay away from the back staircase. Questions so far?"

"Just as long as you don't have him in the kitchen at all hours," Duvalier grumbled. "We've got a lot of work to do if he's going to be ready to come out with me in a couple months. When can we see Ryu?"

"You know that's not up to me. Okay, here we are. Your usual spot, Smoke, and the Ghost will be in the attic."

Duvalier had a small space beneath Valentine's platform and its stairs. Valentine noticed she already had curtains up, blinds made from some kind of wicker. She dropped her pack under the stairs and sat on a footlocker to unlace her boots. He looked up at his own platform directly above, bare and featureless.

"I can find you a futon if you want, Valentine," Welles offered.

He didn't relish spending too many nights in his ever-ready hammock. "Thank you, I'd appreciate that."

"I'll let Ryu know you've arrived," she said, and rocked her way back to the doors at the rear of the Hall.

As he placed his possessions on the platform, connected by a stairway to the main floor and by a little walkway to still another platform, it occurred to him that his whole life amounted to two little heaps of gear: his carbine and the new sword, a pack containing a few tools and utensils, pans, and spare clothes, and one moldy-smelling nylon hammock. He had a locker back at Regiment with some heavy clothing, books, and odds and ends that he would have to write to somebody about.

"Hey, Duvalier," he called.

"Yes?" she answered from below, like a fellow camper in the bottom bunk.

"Where am I?"

"Southern Command calls it Buffalo River Lodge, Newton County. We call it Ryu's Hall. You confused about something?"

"What are we going to be doing here?"

"Didn't you listen? You're going to bake bread. That and learn how to kill Kurians."

Ryu himself woke Valentine the next morning. The nearly windowless hall slumbered in darkness, lit only by the red glow in the fire pit.

The Lifeweaver chose to appear as an ordinary man, with a hooked nose and a regal bearing that made Valentine instantly think of Pharaoh from illustrations in the Padre's storybook Bible. He wore a simple black loinclom and sandals.

"I am glad of this opportunity to meet you, David," he said as Valentine sat up, a little startled. "Would you share the sunrise with me?"

"Yes, just give me a moment," he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The futon didn't look like much, but it was bone-deep comfortable. He slept heavy in the hours before dawn, but duty seemed to require him to awaken then more often than not.

Ryu turned and slowly walked down the stairs. Not sure whether that was a yes or a no, Valentine hurriedly pulled on his pants and followed. The Lifeweaver led him, with slow, graceful steps, almost floating back through the kitchens and spring-cave. They stooped into a rocky passage cut into the side of the mountain. They walked, and at times climbed, in silence through the shoulder-wide tunnel. They arrived at a wooden ladder, and Valentine smelled outside air.

"This is my private entrance. The ladder ends at a little fissure in the mountain."

Sure enough, the predawn quasi-light came faintly down the tunnel. The Lifeweaver began to climb the ladder, and Valentine followed. They emerged in the trees on the north side of the rounded-off mountain with birdsong all around them.

"It will be a fine morning. My spot for dawn-keeping is up the hill."

Valentine followed him up the slope, eventually coming out at a pile of boulders. Ryu sat down on the cold stone without even wincing, and Valentine joined him on the broad slab of rock. To the east, the green-carpeted mountains of the Ozarks bent away to the southeast. The high, scattered stratus clouds were turning from pink to orange as the unseen sun began to touch them.

Ryu said, "It will be a morning of rare color."

"What should I call you, sir?" Valentine asked. Amu, the Lifeweaver who'd been in charge of the Wolves, had acted like an old man who enjoyed teasing his grandchildren with riddles, and spoke as though he knew Valentine his whole life. Rho, the Lifeweaver who'd trained his father, he'd known only a few hours before he died. Ryu seemed cold and detached compared with the other two.

Valentine shivered in the chill morning air. The rock they sat on leached his body heat, but that was not the reason for the shudder. Ryu looked solid enough-he brushed aside small branches and flattened grass with his feet-but the Lifeweaver had no presence. Valentine thought it like having a conversation with an unusually lifelike portrait.

"Just Ryu. In our Old World, we had long and complex names describing our family, profession, planet of origin, and planet of residence. My brother and I were young then, born when the old Interworld Tree was still intact, and the rift with the researchers of Kur just beginning. We are old now, but not what we consider ancient. I mention my brother because my first duty to you is to thank you for getting him free. The torments and humiliation he suffered at the hands of the fiends ... I had no idea until you brought him out of there. His death was free of grief. He went in peace, among friends."

Valentine couldn't find the proper words, so he resorted to a quiet yes.

They sat side by side, staring off into the warm palette of the coming sun.

"You have questions for us. You have an inquisitive mind."

"Sometimes I sense the Reapers. They say there are others like me, but I've never met one. Is that something Amu did? When I was invoked as a Wolf, one of the men said that I'd been 'turned all the way up.'"

"Some bodies are more ready for the change than others; the genes are there to do more. Your family had an aptitude, I understand. But as to this sense-I cannot say."

"'I cannot say' isn't the same as 'I do not know.'"

"In the earlier war, before you wrote your histories, we tried a great many modifications to humans. Some we shouldn't have. Vestiges of those live on. It could be that."

Ryu let that sink in a moment before he continued. "Another possibility is that you could be a genetic wild card, a leap in natural selection brought on by the new stresses on your species. If I knew for certain, I would tell you."

Valentine felt like a bug under a light. The Lifeweavers were strange sort of leaders. They didn't inspire the Hunters to die for them, for all that they helped in their own secretive way. They just happened to be on the same side of a war-a very old one, in the case of the Lifeweavers. "You use us," Valentine said, and then thought that the fact had sounded like an accusation.

"Yes, we do. Do you know why? When we fell under the first onslaught of the Kur, we were in panic. We had no aptitude for fighting. We needed a weapon, something flexible and powerful, a species we could both use to attack with and hide amongst. A sword and a shield all in one. Your race fit the bill, as you say. In a span of nine planets, you were the material that best answered our need: cunning, savage, aggressive, and organized. You are a unique race. The deadliest hunter in the world is a tiger, but put five of them together and they still hunt no better than a single tiger. A beehive is a miracle of organization, but three beehives cannot cooperate. Army ants make warfare, plan campaigns, and make slaves of their captives, but do all this on group instinct and could never work together with an ant from a different queen. In microcosm, that is what we found on the worlds we explored: individual greatness or collective ability, but never both. You humans, you are tigers alone and army ants together, able to switch from one to the other with ease. You're the greatest warrior species we have ever encountered."

"Considering all that, the Kurians beat us pretty handily."

"They had surprise on their side. Had we known they were coming, we might have been able to warn you in time. Unlike Kur, we had no friends in your various governments; we did not wish to reveal ourselves to you. Perhaps it was a mistake, but we felt your society needed a chance to develop on its own. We had no idea Kur could organize such an effort, had bred such a variety of what you call Grogs, or that so many of your so-called leaders were willing to sell their species for some iteration of thirty pieces of silver. Ah, here is the dawn. Let us enjoy it."

The sun tinted the clouds above and trees below, renewing the world in its warmth. Its welcome touch restored him; Valentine felt ready for whatever challenge Ryu might put in his path.

They sat together in silence. When the shining orb separated from the horizon, Ryu turned and sat facing Valentine.

Valentine tried to pierce the psychic disguise, to see the J real shape of the Lifeweaver beneath-a grotesque mixture of octopus and bat-mrough sheer force of will, but Ryu did not change.

"David, you've proved yourself as a Wolf. It may not seem that way to you right now, but we mink well of you. Amu's Wolves succeed through hearing and smell, speed and endurance. My Cats are different. They depend on stealth and surprise, and a certain amount of pure daring that we cannot give but only encourage. To become a Cat, your body will undergo some difficult changes, and there is a risk. Perhaps you remember a Wolf or two who could not adapt."

"Yes," Valentine said, remembering a cabin mate who had thrown himself off a cliff in the confusion brought about by the Wolf invocation. After Val's own invocation, the tiniest noise and movement made him jump, before he learned to soften his new senses. It was too much for some.

"It is a hard, lonely life, often without even the comradeship of your fellow soldiers. You lived once in the Kurian Zone. Are you willing to go back? Perhaps to disappear, nameless and unavenged? Every year there are Cats who do not return."

"Ryu, I've heard enough stories about the Cats to know all this. The only time I ever knew I'd made a difference was when I got Molly and her family out. If there's any way I can help the people in the lost lands ... I'll take the risk."

"Good words. But are they enough? Is there another reason? A personal one? Forget about your father, your fellow men and women, the Carlson family, or the graceful Alessa. Forget all that's happened with your old captain. You don't have to prove anything to us. Are you going to do this because you want to?"

Valentine sat back a little, perplexed. "Ryu, if that's the case, you should count me out. My desires are at the bottom of my list of why I'd like to do this. Of course, I agree with her about what we need to hunt."

"Forget about the Twisted Cross for now. I want to know what's in you."

So do I. "It's because of my parents, and for my people, that I want to do this. You talk about what an amazing species we are, like we're some kind of work in progress. We're a species that's either headed for extinction or permanent branding as livestock. Whatever potential you saw in us is going to waste as long as the Kurians are here.

"Sir, given my druthers, I'd like a house with a lot of books in the woods on a lake where I could fish in peace. I volunteered for this life, and I've sought responsibility because somebody has to, or there's not going to be a future for any of us. So if you're looking for a samurai mentality, dedicated to its own perfection in deadly self-annihilation, it's not me."

"Nothing more? David, do you like to kill?"

Valentine's heart stopped for a moment, then restarted with a thud that bounced off his ribs. How far into his mind could Ryu see?

"The old Cat took your tongue?"

"I can't-," Valentine said.

"David, how did you feel when you knifed that sentry on the bridge, when you killed that policeman in Wisconsin, the one who disparaged you as an 'Injun.' What did you feel when you strangled that man in the Zoo?"

"How-?"

"Hows take too long. What was in your soul?"

"Guilt, but-"

Ryu waited.

"I felt guilty."

"Guilty because you chose one path over another, leading to their deaths? Or guilty because you reveled in it?"

Valentine shrank away. Ryu suddenly frightened him; he wasn't sure he wanted this conversation to continue. But he had to answer, and no answer would do but the truth.

"I don't know. I don't know myself well enough."

Ryu nodded. 'Then leave it at that. I like to know what is in my Cats' hearts. Once you've learned what's in you, I hope you'll share it with me someday. Very well, you'll have this opportunity to aid your people in their crisis. And perhaps one day learn why David Valentine feels guilty."

"Then I'm in?"

"You are in."

The ceremony could hardly have been simpler. Valentine was brought to a warm little room in the back of the Hall, escorted by Duvalier. He wore only a towel wrapped around his waist. "It's a waste to wear clothes for the Change," she said as butterflies began to beat their wings on the inside of his stomach.

It resembled a wedding in a way. Ryu entered, wearing a heavy robe with more cryptic designs woven into the lapels and cuffs of the garments. He had Valentine stand next to Duvalier.

"Alessa, are you ready to take on the responsibility of training this one?"

She nodded. "I am."

Ryu turned to Valentine. "David, are you ready to take on the responsibility of joining our ranks?"

Valentine nodded. "I am."

"May the bond between you meet with success."

The Lifeweaver emptied a small vial into a plain ceramic bowl of water and swirled it in his palm like brandy in a snifter.

"Drink this, and become a Cat," Ryu intoned.

Valentine drank it, as tasteless as water.

Ryu handed Duvalier a small knife. "Now share your blood."

With a quick slash, she opened a small cut across her right palm, then took Valentine's left hand and did the same. They then clasped hands tightly. Valentine felt the sticky warmth pressed between their palms.

Ryu looked at Duvalier. "Explain to your bloodshare what is coming."

"David, the next few days are going to be a little difficult. Within a few hours, you're going to feel jumpy. I had trouble breathing, and it made me very panicky. Most people get very dizzy; people who've been on boats say it's like seasickness. Your heart will beat very fast. There's no real physical pain, but a whole new part of your body that you didn't know was there is going to be waking up. We'll keep you in this room for a couple days, safe and warm. Relax and ride it out. Try not to tear your hair out or gouge yourself."

Valentine stiffened. He'd been awkward and twitchy after his first invocation, but hadn't felt the desire for self-mutilation.

She continued: "If you have to bite something, we've got a leather-wrapped plastic tube in there for you; gnawing at the wood's no good, you'll just wreck your teeth. After the second day, I just did jumping jacks till I collapsed; then it was done. Maybe that will work for you, too."

Ryu shook his head. "David, she's making it sound worse than it is. If it helps to have a goal, keep this in mind. The first test of a Cat is how silently one goes through the Change. And you're lucky; the Wolves who've come into our caste adapt quickly. There will be someone outside the door at all times. We'll be keeping an eye on you."

The Lifeweaver clasped Valentine's blood-smeared hand between his palms in a gesture that was half-handshake and half-bow. Duvalier gave Valentine a tight hug, then showed him the old white scar across her left palm.

"You'll be fine. See you in three days."

They shut and locked the door to the little room. It reminded him of a sauna, right down to the little glass window in the rough cedar door. A single slatted bench was the extent of the furnishings, and a drain hole in the center of the wood-paneled room evidently served as the sanitary facility. There was a water spigot fixed into the wall, and Valentine gave it an experimental turn. Cold springwater cascaded onto the floor.

They left him the hunk of leather and plastic, like a dog's chew toy. He did not feel uncomfortable, at least not yet. He spread the towel on the unyielding boards of the bench and stretched out. The light shining into the little room illuminated one edge of the bench, and Valentine recognized human teeth marks.

The human psyche has a wonderful capacity to remember pleasant things: the taste of a superlative meal, the feel of a lover's lips, a refrain of inspiring music. It hurries to dispose of the unpleasant-. Valentine was always grateful for that ability later: the three days in that little room were among the worst in his life.

The first tremors hit within an hour, and by the afternoon, his muscles screamed for action. He wanted to run until he dropped. Sweat poured off his body, his ears pounded, the tiny amount of light coming in through the window hurt his eyes. He felt disoriented. The room seemed to be a tiny cork bobbing on a sea of five-story waves. He did not vomit-he would have loved to do so, but it was one long stretch of nausea absent the relief of vomiting. His stomach alternately cramped and spasmed, leaving him twitching and listening to his own overloud heartbeat. To keep his heart from exploding out of his chest, he curled into a fetal position and locked his arms around his body, at war with his own desire to climb the walls, pound down the door, then run and run until the maddening electricity coursing through his body left him.

He bit the leather loop to keep from screaming.

The second day was better. His wooden cell seemed oddly shaded, the red browns of the room became muted and faint, the shadows more sharply defined. The room no longer swooped and plunged around him; it rocked like a cradle moved to and fro by a cooing mother.

But he wanted out.

He did push-ups until he collapsed in exhaustion, drank a little water, and passed out into electric nightmares.

The third day was a hangover to end all hangovers. His empty stomach hurt, his head ached, his hands would not stop trembling. When Duvalier's face appeared in the little window, he threw himself at the glass, clawing at the door and leaving a smear of saliva where he'd tried to bite.

Then he slept.

When she came again, he was too drained to react.

She entered cautiously, a tray holding a shallow bowl with some kind of soup in her hand. "How do you feel, cousin?"

Valentine eased himself onto the bench, feeling lightheaded. "Weak as ... as a kitten?"

It turned out that the soup meant the general consensus was that his ordeal was over. While he ate, Duvalier went to get him some clothes, leaving the door open to air out the stuffy room. Forty-eight hours ago, he would have run howling into the hills, but now he was content to just sip at the soup and wait for her to return with something presentable. The blood-and-filfh-smeared towel deserved a decent burial; all four corners were gnawed to shreds.

He finished the meal and got dressed, still trembling a litde. When he followed Duvalier into the brighter light of the little honeycomb of rooms that composed the toilet and washing facilities at the rear of the Hall, he put a hand on her shoulder. She, and everything around her, didn't look quite right. There was little color in her skin, and the wooden walls were ashen, like bleached-out driftwood.

"Just a second," he said. "Why do you look different? The light is all odd."

"I know what you mean. It's not the light-it's your eyes. A Cat with some medical training explained it to me once. It has to do with the cells in your eyes. I guess there are two kinds; he called them rods and cones. The rods are good at picking up low light levels. You've got a whole lot more rods now. Your color vision will return once your eyes get used to it; right now your brain is just not processing it right. That was his theory. You'll adapt. In any kind of light short of pitch black, you're going to have no trouble seeing from here on out."

"Did the doctor explain the drunken feeling?"

"That was even more confusing, and it's got to do with your ears. We have these little bags of liquid in our ears that help us keep our balance. Some animals, cats in particular, have a whole different set of nerve fibers attached to them. You know how a cat always lands on its feet, or at least nearly always? It's from these nerves. Their balance corrects as involuntarily as your leg moving when your knee gets tapped. Right now you're oversensitized again."

She walked into the kitchen and picked up a sack of flour.

"Stand on one leg. Raise the other one like a dog marking a tree. Higher. Okay, keep it there," she ordered.

Valentine obliged, noticing that as he raised his leg he barely moved. Normally he would wobble a bit.

"Now catch," she said, tossing the ten-pound sack of flour with a shoving motion.

He caught it a few inches from his chest, causing little puffs of flour to shoot in the air. What's more, his leg was still raised.

"Interesting," he said, returning his leg to the floor. He shifted the bag of flour in his hands, and quick as a flash hurled it back at her.

Her reflexes were no less than his. She snatched the bag out of the air, but while she was strong enough to halt the ten pounds of flour aimed like a missile at her head, the bag wasn't quite up to the task. Its weakened fibers opened, and a white bomb detonated full in her face.

"Mother-!" she screamed, emerging from the cloud in kabuki makeup and fury.

Valentine let out the first squawk of a laugh and then read her expression. Their eyes locked for a second, like a gazelle and cheetah staring at each other on the veldt. He ran for his life.

"Dead meat, Valentine!" she shrieked, after him in a flash. Valentine went to the stairs up to his little flat, and jumped. To his astonishment, he made it up to the top of the flight in a single bound. With only one foot down, he changed direction and leapt onto the next platform over, a jump he normally would have needed a sprint to cover.

He slipped on the landing and sprawled. Duvalier was on his back in a moment-she must have equaled or exceeded the speed and power of his bounds. He tried to wriggle out, but as he turned over, she pinned him with legs that felt like a steel trap. She nailed his arms down in a full pin. He found the situation arousing: Duvalier in the classical position astride him, the flour liberally coating her from the waist up adding its own strange zest to the moment. But her eyes were lit only in triumph.

"Okay, gotcha," she said. "Let's have it."

"Sorry," he panted. "Didn't mean to make you the monkey's uncle."

"What's that?

"A monkey's uncle!"

"Can't hear you, Valentine, speak up."

"Uncle!"

"That's better," she said, rolling off him.

He took a deep breath, still goosey with the half-drunken, half-hungover sensation.

"Ghost, how do they do it?"

"Do what?"

"Change us like that."

He shrugged. "I've wondered about that myself. Some of the Wolves used to say they were just awakening something already inside us. I was talking to a cabin mate named Pankow one time, and I remember he took a gas lamp that was barely on, just a flicker, and turned it all the way up. It hissed and roared and lit up the whole room. He said that's what the wizards do, they just 'turn up the heat.'"

Valentine wondered if he could share his fears with her, as well. He looked at the healing wound on his hand. "But the bigger the flame, the sooner the gas runs out. You swap heat and light for longevity. It worries me. I haven't met many elderly Hunters."

She shook her head, flour cascading off her face. "Gimme a break, Val. You know how long the average Cat lasts in the KZ? Two or three years. Ask Welles-she'll confirm it. Me, I'm already well past my 'lifespan.' I'd like to switch subjects.

"Now that you've been tuned up, it's time to start training. We'll be cutting a lot of corners. I'll try to fill in the holes on the road."

"Okay, Sarge, what's next on the agenda?"

She began to dust herself off. "Sarge? David, as a courtesy, Cats are treated as captains by the other ranks in Southern Command. So you got promoted after all. But rank doesn't mean much to us. As far as the agenda goes, you're going to get some food and sleep in you. Then we're going to run your ass ragged. When I drop, Welles will take over. So you take it easy while you can."

Over the next weeks, Valentine decide that Duvalier held an epic grudge against him for the flour bomb and wanted to see him lose life or limb if at all possible. When she was unavailable to personally torment him, Dix Welles made sure he sweated.

He had to carry the sword everywhere, to ridiculous extremes like the shower and the toilet. If Duvalier caught him exiting the head with a dog-eared copy of Reader's Digest instead of his sword, he got to spend the rest of the day running up and down the mountain. He learned a few basic stances, cuts, and thrusts from Duvalier the first day, then practiced them endlessly, first with a wooden replica until he got the motion right, and then with the naked blade. One day Welles took him outside and had him climb up the sharply slanted lodge roof, and draw, swing, and move with the sword back and forth across the narrow peak, carefully straddling the top as he fought wind and momentum.

He took bundles of twigs, wrapped them in old rags, soaked them, and then attached them to poles. The target was then placed on a gimbal-mounted teeter-totter. He tried to hit it while Duvalier, at the other end of the ten-foot plank, made it dodge his blows. She succeeded in knocking him over with it more than once. When she wasn't bashing him with straw men, she was doing it herself, in fencing duels with wooden swords. She struck like lightning, and more than once laid him out with stars in his eyes.

Even when he was off his feet, he had to read. Poisons, explosives, powders both natural and chemical that blinded or sickened. Acids and bases. A grizzled old Cat, toothless and bent, lectured him on how to sabotage everything from tank engines to hydraulic brakes to a backyard water pump.

He learned to climb and fight with his claws. Duvalier taught him to always keep them in the pockets of an old overcoat, so that all he had to do was slip his hands in to become armed. He clawed, climbed, and parried with them until they felt like old friends, but that wasn't good enough. Duvalier had him practice with them until they felt like a natural extension of his body. A couple of the other Cats-in-training shook their heads and privately made fun of Duvalier's fixation with them.

"Waste of time," one of them said at dinner. "You end up using them one fight out of a hundred, I've been told."

Welles overheard and stiffly turned on the other Aspirant. "That one time in a hundred he'll be alive. And you won't."

Ryu appeared now and then and took Valentine in order to work his mind. First Valentine had to reduce his aura at rest, and as the days progressed, he had to do the same while running or climbing, or even practicing with his sword. He'd learned the basics of hiding lifesign from an old Cat named Eveready the summer after he'd been invoked as a Wolf. Now he was learning from the Lifeweaver who had taught Eveready.

Valentine could satisfy Ryu at rest, but in action, the Lifeweaver upbraided him again and again. One afternoon, as he crossed a rock-strewn creek under the Lifeweaver's eye, Ryu lifted his arms, the signal to stop. "You're still in your own mind, David."

The obvious joke about "the perfect Cat is always out of his mind" had to be bitten back-again.

"You're not a Kurian. You don't need it to survive. How can you sense it?"

"Aura is a lot of things, David. Thought, emotion, sensitivities, fear. I am able to perceive these to an extent. So can you, by the way. There's more to intuition than guesswork. Sometimes I can read you as easily as you read printed words."

"Sorry. I saw a fish dart away."

"Forget about your empty stomach for a while."

Valentine stood in the shin-deep water and tried to reduce himself again, become a part of the stream and the rocks rather than a traveler over them.

"The energy they feed from, what we call lifesign, is as individual as a fingerprint," Ryu continued, "and you're putting out far too much into the world. You're the wind on the rocks, the water flowing on its natural course, a swarm of gnats over the dead log there."

Valentine imagined himself part of the stream. The fish he'd alarmed resumed its vigil, waiting for a meal to drop onto the surface of the slow-flowing pool. Just water and rock, trout. ..

"Quit thinking, David. Just float across."

Valentine followed the water, ignoring the fish and the gnats until he stood beside Ryu.

"Better. Look back at the stones. Try to trace your path."

He squatted and looked for marks of his field boots on the stones. He'd come up and out of the stream without overturning a stone or leaving a telltale track of mud.

He didn't say anything, just felt the breeze.

"Now be that wind and let's talk again at the top of that hill," Ryu said, pointing to a limestone-scarred slope.

He worked inside the lodge, as well, leaping from rafter to rafter with his arms tied behind his back.

"Everything is balance, Valentine," Duvalier shouted up at him from the floor, a long hard fall below him, as he teetered for a split-second after a jump. "It keeps you from being hit in a fight, lets you hold your rifle steady, and makes you silent when you walk."

A Cat named Cymbeline-a tattooed woman with a milky eye and hairless even to her eyebrows--taught him unarmed combat. Her philosophy for unarmed combat was to arm yourself as quickly as possible with anything handy, even a piece of chain or a good solid stick. From her, Valentine learned to use everything from his instep to his skull-Cymbeline called it a readily available, ten-pound brick-to disable an opponent.

His spare locker from the Second Regiment depot found him after five weeks at the Lodge, along with another padlocked case of back-straining weight. A note and a small key came in an envelope forwarded with his other mail. He looked at the unfamiliar handwriting and opened the letter. Written in heavy block printing was

Dear David,

This better make it intact, or I'll have something to say to the Territorial Post. I've become good friends with Molly and her family. They told me what happened and what you did for them in Wisconsin. We're glad to have people like the Carlsons in Weening.

I don't have any family worth speaking about. I never served with your father but I know he'd want me to help you along if I could. I'm enclosing a very dear friend of mine, one of my favorite guns from my days in Jorgensen's Bears. It's over a hundred years old now, and been rebuilt a time or two, but it's a damned murderous weapon and I want it in your hands. It's an old Soviet PPD-40. Reliable in any weather and dirt. I've enclosed a thousand rounds I loaded myself, plus tools and casts to make reloads. I've also sent a little manual on it I wrote myself. I suppose it was captured by the Germans when they invaded Russia. The German Army loved this gun and grabbed every one they could. It got captured again by our troops and brought back here. I got it . from a collector in Missouri who was handing out his guns left and right in the Bad Old Days of '22. Later taught me to take care of it.

Hope it takes care of you as well as it did me. Watch the full auto-you'll empty that big drum in less than eight seconds if you hold the trigger down. You can get shells for it at Red's in Ft. Smith, or the Armory in Pine Bluff, or go see Sharky at Gunworks in Mountain Home. Just tell them you need 7.62 X 25 or .30 Mauser. Better yet, learn to do your own reloads. More reliable that way. READ THE DAMN INSTRUCTIONS, kid.

Always liked you when you spent that season in Weening. I respected the way you went after them Harpies and took that Hood that got the Helm boy and your Labor Regiment pals. Stop by anytime, there's always a bed and a beer waiting for you at my place.

Your friend, Bob Bourne

Valentine remembered the man named Tank from four years ago and the firelit night when Gabriella Cho, the closest thing Val had had to a childhood sweetheart, died.

He put the memories away.

So the gun was the mystery mentioned in Molly's last letter. He took the key from the letter and opened the case. The gun was smaller than a carbine, but solidly built, with a thick wooden stock. The barrel was encased in a larger, vented handle. Amongst the little reloading tools and instructions were three heavy ammunition boxes. He picked up the gun, ruggedly manufactured from heavy steel. Cyrillic characters were printed above the trigger.

"Thanks, Tank."

Tank had enclosed three drums and a banana magazine. The fully loaded drums held seventy-one rounds. Valentine hastily referred to the manual, a mixture of weapons jargon and how-to hints, like instructions for replacing a worn spring in the drum and using a piece of leather to cushioning a part in the gun's simple action. He stripped the weapon experimentally, an operation that involved simply opening the hinged receiver to expose the bolt and spring, and found that it broke down as easily as it went back together. Valentine, who had some experience with various guns used by both the Free Territory and their enemies, was all in favor of simplicity, but he had his doubts about using exotic ammunition. The stock was clearly new; perhaps that was what Molly was referring to when she said Tank was working on something for him that winter. Gleaming with rich stain and polish, the stock had been fashioned out of a beautifully grained piece of ash.

Duvalier joined him on his little platform. "Heard a Logistics wagon was by with some stuff for you. Did your locker arrive?"

Valentine replaced the gun in the case.

"Yes. Even better, an old Bear came through."

The next night they ate dinner alone. Dix had led the rest of the Cats to the nearest Southern Command trading post for supplies. Valentine was grateful for the quiet-he'd spent the day running pursuits on Duvalier. If he was unlucky enough not to catch her after an hour, they'd turn around and she'd chase him. He hoped he'd get time for a long shower and then a sweat in the steam room.

Ryu emerged from his refuge, a beautiful woman accompanying him. In fact, she was so striking, Valentine assumed she had to be another Lifeweaver. Such beauty had to be illusion, the stock-in-trade of all Lifeweaver interactions with humanity.

The Cats greeted the stranger with short bows.

"My courageous ones, please greet my sister from the East, Ura," Ryu said, standing aside so she could come forward. Radiant in a simple teal gown with a roped belt of gold, she walked without bending blades of grass beneath delicate feet. Valentine thought she looked like a princess out of a storybook.

"A little rough around the edges, like everything here, but you seem capable," she said, smiling. She shook each of their hands with a cool, firm grip.

"Ura, Alessa Duvalier and David Valentine are also concerned with the Twisted Cross. Could it be that the evil has been reawakened, like so many others?"

"I fear so. Certainly they have unfurled the old standard. Perhaps they march again."

"What's this, Ryu?" Duvalier said. "When you tasked me with this, you didn't tell me you knew anything."

"I thought it might be coincidence. Many things appear to be different now. Certainly they never used Reapers before."

"Maybe you should start from the beginning." Valentine mined his memory, trying to bring back every detail, every word of the brief encounter he had with a member of the Twisted Cross in Chicago. All he could remember was the unknown man's kill in the grotty Zoo basement, the sight of the gaunt figure's blood-smeared face, the ripped-out throat of that poor condemned girl.

"Come and sit then," Ryu said, leading them to one of the long tables. "Ura, would you care for food or drink? No? David, to start from the beginning would take years. As you should well know, you've learned more of these matters in your youth than many of your elders, even ones who should know better.

"The Twisted Cross go back to the first onslaught, when the Kurians came across the Interworld Tree as the great schism turned to war. On Earth and six other planets, they attacked us without warning. Their first human allies were a group known as the Aryans, originally from the middle of Asia.

"Because of their favored status with the Kur, the Aryans considered themselves superior to other men. The baubles the Kurians gave them made them able to convince others of this, and soon the Aryans led armies that would do the bidding of Kur."

Ura held up her hand. "It is worth remembering that the Kurians failed in their first invasion, and the Aryans' power was broken."

"So what does the Twisted Cross mean?" Valentine asked.

"I do not know," Ryu said. "Some have interpreted that glyph to mean 'life.' As an extreme example, there is no physiological reason that a human couldn't live off vital aura and gain what amounts to immortality. It requires not much more of a Change than the one that you recently experienced, David. Your body already generates and uses vital aura; it is the loss of this in the declining years that causes you to age. It is just a matter of being able to acquire and utilize another's aura."

Valentine took a moment to consider this. Perhaps that was the carrot dangled before humans who betrayed their own species. If offered eternal life, what would his answer be? How different was it, truly, from eating a steak or a slice of ham?

"Alessa, David, do what you can to learn about this new threat. In the mountains of the Eastern seaboard, my sister tells me, we suffered a mysterious loss two summers ago. One day there was a thriving freehold in a guarded valley. Ten thousand of your people. And the next, a wasteland. Last summer we lost all contact with some allies on the Gulf Coast at the Florida peninsula. We fear the Ozarks may be next. I've sent out other teams with the same orders I'm giving you: Find out all you can about this General and those who follow his banner."

"Of course we'll learn what we can," Duvalier responded. "I've got an idea of where to start. But the trail's already cold. We may be back soon."

"You're not ready yet, but then neither am I," Duvalier told Valentine a few days later. "Doesn't matter, though. We're leaving."

The lodge echoed emptily. Aside from Valentine, the lone remaining Cat was Duvalier, and even the other Aspirants had left to join their tutors for the summer. Of course the ubiquitous Welles still lingered, but she was a permanent resident. They busied themselves with last-minute preparations: putting together an assortment of photographs-Welles had a pair of cameras and a darkroom- that could be used on identification papers, collecting blank forms they might need in the Gulag, going over the latest news summaries so they understood conditions in their operational area.

Valentine had grown into his new senses and skills. He handled his sword with the same confidence he once felt in his rifle and parang. He practiced with the gun Bourne sent him-it wasn't any use at all over two hundred yards, but in the rough and tumble of close-quarters action, it would be a deadly asset.

His night vision rivaled that of daytime except at the most extreme distances, and he could play follow-my-leader with Duvalier over a single-strand rope footbridge without thinking twice. As he did it, he concentrated on "quieting his mind," obliterating his higher consciousness as Ryu instructed. He needed no training in moving quietly; his skill at that had earned him the nickname "Ghost" long ago from his Wolf teammates.

Even Duvalier found his ability to move silently a little eerie. He overheard her discussing it with Welles one evening when they assumed he was asleep. Duvalier explained that she was resting against a tree one afternoon and knew he was next to her only when he touched her shoulder.

"Hmmph, maybe it's the Indian blood. He got the hair, anyway."

"His mother was Sioux. Listen, there's more. I read this in his Q-file: he can sense Reapers. It happened on a couple of occasions, and there are witnesses. But only if they're active. He picks up on them when they're moving around, but if they're asleep ... nothing. He can almost locate them with it. It's like their reading of our lifesign, only reversed."

Welles paused, perhaps thinking it through in her mind. "Weird shit. Maybe he's sensitive to the connection they have with their Masters, do you think?"

"Could be. I've heard of people being able to ping off them; never met one, though. I'll feel a lot more comfortable sleeping at night knowing he's right there."

"I bet he could make you a lot more comfortable at night," Welles said with a very uncharacteristic giggle. "Get off, Dix. My interest in him is purely professional." "Mmmmm-hmmmm. Good thing I just fell off a turnip truck, otherwise I might not believe you. I will miss the fresh bread and biscuits, though. He worked that cute ass of his off in the kitchen. Never mind the firewood to last until next spring."

The Hall echoed with the sounds of their packing. Valentine looked up at the glow bulbs, tempted to take one. It would be a useful souvenir.

"Feel free to store your gear here," Duvalier said. "We all do. This is the closest thing to a home you're going to have for a while."

Welles appeared, a bundle tucked under her arm.

"Made this for you, young Ghost. In return for a lot of tasty bread and some great fireside stories. Who ever thought I'd like hearing about Roman emperors and moldy old English plays? Here you go," she said, handing it over. "I can't move around so good anymore, but I still sew like the wind."

"I don't know if I'd call Richard the Third a moldy English play, but you're welcome," he said, taking the folded green cloth. He untied the twine around it and unfolded a long riding overcoat.

"Sorry some of the buttons don't match, but you know how it is. I used wooden pegs at the stress points-they hold up a little better."

Valentine held it up and then tried it on. It was a faded, slate-colored green, reversible to black like Duvalier's natty relic. It hung to just above his ankles, and was split up the back for saddle use, including loops for his legs to go through. There were pockets galore, and a built-in muffler that could strap around his throat and closing heavy collar. A hood hung neatly down the back, cut so skillfully it looked like decoration. "So you weren't taking my measurements for 'statistical reasons' a month ago, huh?"

"Guilty. Keep out of sight, would you, Valentine? It'll keep out the wind, but not bullets. The damn Bears grab all the Reaper cloaks, you know."

"You going to cry or thank her, Val?" Duvalier asked.

"Thanks, Dix. I really appreciate this."

"You'll appreciate it even more the first rainstorm you walk through. Wear it in good health, Ghost."

They opened the heavy front door and stepped out into the morning light. A pair of roan horses browsed amongst the grass and weeds of the front lawn. As Ryu followed the Cats out the door, the horses raised their heads and nickered.

"A farewell gift," Ryu explained. "This pair is out of a very wily herd of wild horses that runs the mountains. I called and they came."

"They won't do us much good, then," Valentine said. He had spent some time training wild horses to pull timber in Minnesota. "It'll take days to break them properly."

Ryu patted Valentine on me shoulder. "That will not be necessary, David. I imprinted the two of you on them, if that is the proper expression. They should take to you quite readily. Try it."

The horses, as if listening to Ryu's words, walked up to the pair.

"I'll go grab some oats out of the kitchen," Dix said. "That'll last you until you reach a border fort for supplies."

Valentine looked at the mare a trifle dubiously, but she looked calmly back at Valentine from her white-freckled face as if she had known him her whole life. She gave the collar of his new overcoat an experimental nibble. He grabbed a handful of mane and slipped onto the horse's bare back. He pressed against the horse's side with his calf, and it sidestepped to face Ryu and his ethereal companion.

"We have some saddles and blankets in the outside shed, do we not?" Ryu asked.

Duvalier looked over at the little outbuilding next to the smokehouse. "Yes, I think we can rig something up. Thank you, sir-this means a lot to us."

Ryu turned his piercing eyes to Valentine. "Seventy-one days ago, you accused us of using you. At times I think my people take you humans for granted. We share the same war, but you do most of the dying. Some hold that if we do too much for you, you will become dependent on us and cease growing. I sympathize with that belief, but arguments over not interfering with a civilization become moot when the Kurians have already reordered your world to suit their purposes. So if I can help my children with a simple trick, I do it.

"Speaking of simple tricks, I have one for you, David. A small gift," he said, holding out his hand. In it a tiny, triangular glow bulb glimmered faintly in the daylight. " 'May it be a light to guide you in dark places, when all others lights go out,' " he said. Or did he? The quotation seemed to drop into Valentine's brain, a windfall from the abundant orchard of his reading, without benefit of the Lifeweaver's lips moving.

"You know how to charge it, I believe," he said, again speaking with his voice.

"Leave it in the light," Valentine said, taking the little pyramid-shaped object.

"In the Old Days, we had ones that generated heat, as well, which would be far more useful. But that Art, like so many others, is lost to us in the here and now."

Ryu and Ura exchanged a long look, making Valentine wonder if in that time they shared the mental equivalent of an evening's discussion.

"Alessa, follow your spirit when your mind falters. David, if you keep an open mind, you will find friends un-looked for," Ryu said. He drifted up off the ground, touching their foreheads, first Duvalier's and then his, with his fingertips and spreading his arms before them as if in benediction.

"Go, the two of you," Ura added, imitating the gesture. "Turn away this old evil, and in doing so, change evil fate into good fortune for our Cause."

While you are at it, find King Solomon's mines and a splinter of the True Cross, the contrarian part of Valentine's mind added. He looked over at Duvalier, standing next to her newly appointed horse with a rapt expression on her face. She looked hypnotized. Did she know more than he, or was she just more gullible? Evidence of the Lifeweavers' special abilities stood quietly between his legs at that moment, or were the magically appearing horses some kind of elaborate put-on?

He could not argue with his enhanced senses, from vision to balance. He could spend most of the day running, but not be exhausted. There was no question that they had awakened something inside him, but did they create it, or just ring the alarm clock?

Duvalier and Valentine bowed in thanks and left their horses to see if they could find bridle and saddle in the jumble of odds and ends housed in the outbuilding.

Valentine looked at the Hall one more time. He remembered something his mother used to tell him: There are two kinds of people in the world-those who look back and those who look forward. She also said that most people in their youth look forward, and a sign of advancing age was looking back. Always look forward, David, she'd told him.

Being atop fresh horses and under the summer sun felt fine. The Kurian Zone was far away; if it were not for the July humidity, the day would have been ideal. After an easy stretch to warm them to travel again, the well-shaded old highways of the Ozarks guided them back up to the Missouri borderlands in a second hard day's ride. Duvalier showed her usual flair for finding discreet shelter in a pre-Overthrow ruin.

Valentine always bedded down in the old homes and businesses with a certain amount of trepidation. He would sometimes find an old weather-stained family picture and stare at the carefully combed and braided hair on the children and wonder what the fate of this or that family member was. The Ravies plague that swept the world in 2022 took the majority; war and upheaval claimed the rest. He had seen enough death at close hand to wonder how any of the old-timers had come through it with sanity intact. The population in the first years of the Kurian rule was thought to be somewhere around 10 to 15 percent of its pre-2022 height, with the urban areas suffering the worst losses. Valentine once passed through the nuclear blast site in Little Rock on a trip up the Arkansas River, where nature had returned but not man. Trees now grew amongst the naked girders and piles of rubble, but people shunned the site as if it lay under a curse.

"What's on the agenda for tomorrow?" Valentine asked after they had seen to the horses.

"We're a team now, Valentine," she said, lugging her saddle indoors. "We both share the decisions. You're sensible enough."

"That sounded an awful lot like a compliment."

"You cut me off before I could say 'most of the time.' I was thinking we should stop tomorrow at Fort Springfield. That's the last stop before we hit no-man's-land. That old man from the Oklahoma City rail yard, he said the 'Nazis' traveled by train, right?"

"Yes. He also mentioned that new lines were going in west of here."

She set down the saddle and dug out a tin of some kind of tallow from her pack. She worked the tallow into a rag and then used the rag to clean the summer dust off the saddle. Valentine began to put some dinner together using the fresh food they brought with them from Ryu's Hall. The best of the summer vegetables had come in, and he began to peel and pare into a pot of chicken stock.

"There's three sides to a job, Valentine," she said, drawing a triangle in the dirt. She put three letters at the corners. "Fast, safe, and right. You get to pick any two when you're out in the KZ. You can do something fast and right, but you sacrifice safe. Or safe and right, but you won't get it done fast."

"Then there's fast and safe."

"That's how most Cats operate. In and out quick. Me, I like to live around my objective for a while. Then when it comes time to act, I know what I'm doing. Your lead from the old nutcase is the only trail we have, at least in this part of the country. I'd just as soon not go stumbling around in the Smoky Mountains, where I don't know anybody."

"Then you know people in the plains?"

"How does that old song go? 7 got friends in low places...' Sure, Valentine, not everyone in the Gulag is a Quisling."

Valentine covered the little pot hanging over the fire burning in an old stainless-steel sink they had propped up on two cinder blocks.

Duvalier unfolded a map Of the Old United States. "We know the General moves by train, right? They didn't raid into the Free Territory, which I kind of suspected they might do. Could be he doesn't have the muscle for that job yet. They were heading north out of Oklahoma City. The Kur don't have a reliable east-west rail line south of Iowa and Nebraska-your old buddies the Wolves raise too much hell between Kansas City and St. Louis-they don't even try to keep that line repaired anymore. In Kansas or Nebraska, they could have turned west, to hit Denver or one of the Freeholds in the Rockies. I can't believe they turned back east. Why come west in the first place?"

Valentine looked at the map. "North out of Oklahoma, they might have turned west at Wichita, Junction City, or maybe even Lincoln. Lincoln seems like a long shot, but if I were trying to recruit, Iowa might be the place to do it. It sounded like a long time ago, there was a pretty big army under that Twisted Cross banner. Maybe they're trying to do the same thing again. A lot of loyal Quislings have land in Iowa granted to them in exchange for services rendered. We used to draw a two-hundred-mile circle around Des Moines and call it Brass Ringland. I imagine these Quislings are raising families. Could be they want some sons and daughters to join up."

Duvalier looked at the map for a moment and thought. "Funny, I'm just not picturing these guys as leaders of a huge army. They seem secretive, more like a tight elite unit. In a way, if they had a huge army, it would be better for us. We could track-hell, even infiltrate. I feel like they're more the Kur's answer to our Bears: small teams of very serious badasses who crack nuts the Kur don't want to risk their own Reapers on."

"Reaper mercenaries? Okay, you've seen Reapers, I've seen men. Maybe it's their version of a tag team. The men guard the Reapers when they sleep away the day, and the Reapers do the killing at night."

"That system's in place already, Valentine."

"Perhaps they're just perfecting it."

"I still heard Reapers talking on the hill where we met. That means they weren't being operated by the same Master."

A Kurian Lord animated his Reapers through a psychic bond, the same bond that fed him the vital aura of humans killed by the Reaper.

Nothing made sense to Valentine. "How about if a group of Kurian Lords decided to spread the risk in destroying common enemies. They each contribute one Reaper, a flying strike force to .. . No ... damn, that makes no sense. A Kurian's hold gets weaker the farther the Reaper is from him."

Duvalier nodded. "That would mean the Kurians had to travel around the country. To much risk. Nothing, but nothing, gets them out of their little fortresses once they are established. They're the biggest cowards in creation."

"Yes, you're right. Doesn't make sense." His stomach rumbled at the smell of cooking food. "But I can understand my insides. Let's eat."

They turned to their bread and soup and concentrated on the hot food. For dessert they shared a bag of summer plums, seeing who could spit the pit most accurately. Valentine won on distance, but Duvalier expelled hers with bull's-eye control. They laughed at the wine-colored stains left on their faces and turned in, giggling like kids.

"How'd you get to be a Cat? Were you always a troublemaker, or is it just the training?"

"Both, in a way. I grew up under the Kur in Emporia, Kansas. It's a town about halfway between what's left of Topeka and Wichita. My daddy had been shipped off to some work camp God-knows-where. My mom made clothes, mostly for the labor. We call that part of the country the Great Plains Gulag. Gulag: I thought it was some kind of hot dish until someone told me it means concentration camps. My mom was a little too young and pretty, though. Some of the Society used to visit her. Society is what we called the Quislings. She got extra food and stuff out of it, but I hated Society calls."

"You don't have to elaborate."

"I have the high ground on you, Valentine. I've read your Q-file. But you don't know much about me, other than that I saved your ass, then recruited you.

"I started causing trouble, sneaking around, spying on the Society guys. They lorded it over the rest of the Labor, driving around in their cars. God, I hated them. I started lighting fires. A real dynomaniac."

"Pyromaniac," Valentine corrected and instantly regretted it. The habits of growing up in the Padre's schoolroom, where he helped teach the grade-schoolers, died hard.

Duvalier didn't seem to mind. "Pyro-maniac. It started with the uniform of one of the Society. I swiped it while he was with Mother and torched it in a culvert. I used to watch them burn off fields when I was little, and after a fire everything was clean and new for the spring, and the bean sprouts coming up were always so bright green against the black. The uniform just started me. Ever afterwards I liked to see things go up in flames, especially if they belonged to Society. One time I burned up a police van that had a bunch of equipment in it. They hauled twelve people off to the Reaper, one every twelve hours, waiting for a confession. I knew old Mrs. Finey saw me do it, too, but she didn't turn me in. I've always wondered why not. I felt so bad about it, I told my mom.... I mean, people were being taken off to be killed because of something I did. My mom about died on the spot. She sat down and put her head between her knees and started crying. She had been sick a lot that year-I think now she had syphilis. She grabbed my baby brother and went to the phone-the phones worked in that part of Kansas. I figured she was going to call one of the Society guys and turn me in. I ran out of the house with just the clothes on my back.

"I lived for nearly a year on my own. I got picked up by the law once, pretty early on. An old guy and a young guy in a car." Her voice got low and monotone. "The young one convinced the older one to pull off the road so he could haul me into the woods and rape me. The old one just opened a bottle of beer and said, 'You have ten minutes.'

"He took me into the woods, I can't imagine why-I was dirty and thin, didn't look much different from a boy at that time. My boobs had shrunk from not eating to practically nothing. I had handcuffs on. He bent me over and got my pants off, then threw me down on my back. He was getting set on entering me, fumbling around with his prick, I think. I got my teeth around his Adam's apple and bit for all I was worth. Then blood was everywhere, and he was making this weird wheezy sound. He tried to get up and was drawing his gun when he tripped over his own pants. I stood up and started just kicking into him, right in the face, with my heel. He was stunned and about half bled to death, and I jumped in the air and landed with both feet right on the side of his head. His jaw broke, but he might have been dead already, I couldn't tell.

"I knew what a handcuff key looked like, but it took me forever to find it and then get it into the cuffs. I was doing everything by touch behind my back, and I was shaking so bad, I kept dropping the key. It seemed like it took hours and I kept thinking his partner was going to show up and kill me.

"I got the cuffs off finally and picked up the gun. It was a revolver with this really nice white handle and scrollwork on the barrel plating. He had probably stolen it somewhere. It had bullets in it. I sat there for five minutes, hiding in the bushes with the hammer of the gun pulled back, waiting for the partner to show up. Finally I hear him honking his horn on the car.

"I got up and left my pants off, and wiped the blood off my face mostly. I pretended I still had my handcuffs on and came running out of the woods up onto the road with my hands behind my back holding the pistol. I was screaming and crying, which wasn't too hard to do given what had just happened.

The old guy was looking at my crotch when I ran up to the car, and he said something like 'Where the hell's-' or 'What the hell's-' and I never heard the deputy's name because I shot him right in the face from three feet away. I shot him twice more just in case through the window of the car, even though his brains were all over the place.

"I got a nice leather jacket, some food, blankets, a compass, camping stuff-all kinds of things I needed from the car and the dead Society men. Guns-pistols, a shotgun and a rifle, too, but I threw the rifle away after the first day because it was so heavy to carry all the shooters and my other stuff, too. I burnt the car with them in it, which was a dumb idea because it attracted a lot of attention and I only just got away by crawling through a swamp. I knew from when I was little that there was a place in the mountains to the southeast where they didn't have to live like us, and I decided to go. I made it just as winter was setting in. A nice family named the Duvaliers took me in. They didn't know what to make of me: I talked almost nonstop. You'd think I would have been quiet, but no. The poor bastard who had to take my statement had a lot of writing to do. I had a good eye, noticed a lot of things: where there was militia, what kind of vehicles they had.

"So the next spring they had this raid planned into Leavenworth. There are all these prisons there that the Reapers use. They needed scouts and guides, and my name came up. I was young, but they put me out ahead of the column. I got pretty chummy with the other scouts; one was a Cat named Rourke. He liked what I did, and before I knew it, I was his disciple. I've been back to the Free Territory only four times in the eight years since then. Five now, if I count this time with you."

Valentine woke early with a plan. While Duvalier slept, he turned it over in his mind.

"We ride the rails," he said as they split what was left of the fresh bread for breakfast.

"Hmmm?" Duvalier said. Valentine had learned that she was something of a bedbug; it took her a while to wake up.

"Have you ever bummed a ride on a train? Not a military train, just one hauling corn or potatoes?"

"Not too often. Being on a train means pulling into train yards. They're well guarded."

"I did it in Wisconsin. It wasn't without risk, but it's doable. In fact, it seems to be a pretty common way for the people in the KZ to get from A to B. I think it's kind of winked at. But you have to be somebody."

"You mean a Quisling?"

Valentine nodded. "In this Gulag, what do the Quisling militia wear?"

She thought for a moment. "Generally they're called the Society in most of Kansas. They wear kind of a khaki police uniform with epaulet. From Nebraska on north, they're a little more anything-goes. They're generally called Marshals for basic law enforcement, but since it is a borderland, there's a military unit called the Troop. Individually, they're 'Troopers.' The Marshals wear this black uniform, usually with a tie and everything. The Troopers wear any old thing, but they almost always have old police bulletproof vests with insignia patches on them and their name stenciled across the back."

His mind gaining momentum; he put down his tin. "Okay, we go up into Nebraska and get our hands on a uniform and some papers."

"I've got a few forgeries for us. I worked on them while Welles was giving you a hard time. Or I can make them as we go. It's a talent you should learn, Valentine."

"We just pose as a couple of travelers. Better if one of us could be a Somebody, or at least military. Everyone in the KZ lives in fear of offending a big shot and winding up in the hands of a Reaper."

"Pretty nervy. I like keeping away from towns and stuff. Too easy for something to go wrong."

He turned the thought over in his mind, looking for holes. "We could pull it off, I've met a few Quislings. Having you along would add a little realism."

"How's that?" she asked.

"Anyone who is anyone in the KZ travels with a woman.

You're attractive, just the kind of pretty young thing a Quisling officer might have hanging on his arm."

"Dream on, Valentine!"

"Just a suggestion. Even if you're in uniform, too, we're just a pair, traveling to see relatives in Kansas, or an old friend in Omaha."

"Omaha ain't ours no more, Valentine. It's a ruin on the Missouri River. Hip deep in Grogs. Harpies, Tunnel-Snakes, Bigmouths-"

"Sorry, I forgot. Anyway, we can crisscross the Gulag and try to pick up the scent. Maybe your sister ran off with a Twisted Cross guy and I'm helping you look for her. Are there a lot of checkpoints-say at the Kansas-Nebraska border or something?"

"No, the Gulag runs from northern Oklahoma to the Dakotas, from the Rockies to the Missouri River. Just little princedoms, you might say, with Satan's own on the thrones. Something for bribe and barter would be handy. I've found tobacco pretty useful."

"We can pick up all the tobacco we need in Fort Springfield. They might have some whiskey that's hard to acquire in the KZ, too. Thank God we're still in Southern Command. Cash crop."

She smiled at him. "Okay, Valentine, you sold me. A-riding-the-rails we shall go. But I've got a few visits to make, so let me do the navigating once we get into the KZ."

They requisitioned feed for the horses at the Fort Springfield depot, the last post on borders of the Ozark Free Territory. Duvalier and Valentine turned in their Southern Command ID to the officer commanding; he'd hold it until they returned or a year passed, when the next-of-kin protocols would be put into effect.

Valentine found a healthy pack mule and did not even have to throw their weight as Cats to acquire the beast. The stable master handed over the pack and leads with a chuckle. "He's a damn thing. Fifty bucks says you'll be eating mule steak two days from now."

They also signed a chit for enough script to load up on cheap cigars, cigarette makings, and rolling paper, and a few bottles of labeled liquor. Some feed for the mule and provisions for themselves went onto the mule's pack.

At Duvalier's insistence, they went out of town and traveled a half day east back into the Ozarks.

"We aren't the only spies in Missouri. Kur has eyes in every border fort we have, without a doubt," Duvalier explained.

Valentine made sure they weren't being followed, dropping off the horse behind high points in the rolling ground and letting Duvalier lead his horse while he scouted. The pair turned north after a column of patrolling Guards jumbled their tracks.

"Nice work. You're shaping up, Valentine."

"How about you just shorten it to Vail" he asked. "It's what most of my friends use."

"Funny you should say that. Duvalier gets shortened to Val a lot, too. Can't say that I want to be the Val twins, though. You can use Alice or Ali if you want."

"Okay, Ali. I'll answer to David, then."

"We'll see. Every time I say David, I hear Ryu in my head using that fatherly tone of his. I like Val. But if you want to wake me up in a hurry, use Duvalier. That's what old Rourke used to bark in my ear when he wanted me on my feet."

They decided that for now they would stick to Missouri, keeping to the west side of the state in the hilly region east of Kansas City. Then they would cross the Missouri River somewhere north of St. Joseph, angle into Nebraska, and start hitching rides on westbound trains around Lincoln.

They switched over to night travel while still within the nebulous borderlands of Southern Command. If they were to encounter enemies, daytime was more dangerous than night, for the Grogs that lived along the Missouri Valley preferred to fight in daylight. After a long afternoon's rest, they turned up an old road at nightfall. The mule had its own ideas about nighttime travel, and took a good deal of convincing to get it in motion. It then showed a tendency to stop at every opportunity, leaving them with the task of getting it in motion all over again.

"No wonder that stable master parted with him so fast," Valentine said.

"Maybe we can tempt him with something," Duvalier suggested, pushing on the back end while Valentine hauled away at the front. "Do we have any plums left?"

"That would work, until we ran out of plums. Then he'd never move without one."

The quest seemed to be off to a mule-stalled start when Valentine finally solved the issue with what Duvalier laughingly called the "wugga-bugga dance." The mule bit Valentine, nearly clipping off his ear, as he tried to pull it by the throatlatch. With blood running down the side of his face, he ran into the woods, returning with the better part of a poplar sapling. He yelled gibberish at the mule, thrashing pack, ground, air, and mule with the noisy branches. The leaf-shaking spectacle sent the mule trotting down the road of its own accord. Any time thereafter that the mule balked, Valentine just brandished his leafy shillelagh, imprecating against it in the glottal nonsense that worked on the recalcitrant beast. The mule put itself into high gear to get away from nasty voice and noisy leaf.

"We'd better start taking turns scouting soon," Duvalier said later, after a break for a cold meal.

"Why's that?"

She pulled down a young sugar maple bough. "Stripped clean," she said. Something had torn off the leaves and bark, leaving the thin limb as naked as a rat's tail.

"Grogs?"

"Yeah. They don't digest much of it, if you've ever looked at the droppings close."

Valentine swept the woods with ears and nose and picked up only a distant owl. "Duty in the Wolves denied me the pleasure. I've never patrolled Missouri, just passed through it a few times. More east of here, though."

"Don't know if it aids their digestion, or they just put something in their stomach to fool themselves out of being hungry. Anyway, if you see stripped branches, you can tell they pass through. The evidence hangs there a lot longer than footprints. Or droppings."

"First point goes to-"

She tweaked his nose, held up to better catch the soft nighttime breeze. "Me. God knows I can't keep that mule moving."

Mule problems aside, Valentine found he enjoyed nighttime travel. With his cat's-eye vision, the color-muted landscape looked clearer than he remembered the brightest of moonlit nights. His ears worked to their best advantage, as well; the sounds of nighttime insects carried farther, though they made a good deal less noise than their daylight counterparts. The Cats bedded down after dawn with a hot meal and dozed away the heat of the day. Even the mule grew accustomed to the routine.

They cut a few trails of Wolf patrols, but these grew more and more rare as they approached the old Kansas City-St. Louis corridor. If there was a danger point on the first leg of their journey, this was it. They took turns leading the mule, with one of the pair on point a hundred yards ahead, looking and listening, and the other guiding the mule. As Valentine peered down onto the area around the old interstate that the Grogs frequented, the mule decided to bellow into the night. He swore he'd dine on a mule steak for breakfast. Either nothing heard the animal, or whatever did hear it did not want to bother to investigate the source. In any case, they crossed the corridor without seeing anything but tire tracks and footprints.

Valentine was on point when he scented them. Three Grogs, sleeping upright back to back like Buddhist statues, rested on a thickly forested knoll.

He drew his sword and waved Duvalier forward.

"Pistols or blades?" he whispered.

"Neither."

"They're snoring."

"Of course we could kill them. But ten would come looking for them. You're good; we would probably kill those, too. But then a hundred would close in from either side."

"In the Wolves-"

"Don't ever want to hear that again. You're a Cat now, and it's all about the mission. Killing a Grog patrol has nothing to do with that."

By dawn they were miles off the corridor and pushing northwest. The land began to flatten out with the beginning of the Great Plains. They supplemented their dwindling supplies with, and fed the animals on, the wild corn and beans common to the area. They set small game snares on likely ground, two or three every morning, and it was a rare day when they could not come away with at least one animal for the stew pot. Even if it was only a wild rat.

Valentine and Duvalier began to know each other's minds. They approached abandoned buildings communicating through hand gestures and learned to rely on each other more and more as the days passed. When Duvalier spent a day in the cramped agony of dysentery-she would devour meats the new Cat wouldn't even touch-Valentine gathered a shirt full of elm bark and poured boiling water over the strips, then picked out the floating parts once it had cooled. He made her drink the infusion three times over the course of a day, and the symptoms subsided.

They released the mule and horses at the Missouri River. Valentine gave the mule its freedom with a kind of sadness; he would miss their combative companion. Like parents with a rebellious child, dealing with the bloody-minded beast together cemented the relationship between the two Cats. They left the beasts grazing in a grassy field thick with white clover-heads, shouldered their newly heavy packs, and crossed into the Gulag.