Fall with Honor (Vampire Earth #7)

Fall with Honor (Vampire Earth #7) Page 13

The banks of the Ohio, October, the fifty-fifth year of the Kurian Order: The long retreat ended somewhere southeast of Evansville.

The events of the first week of October 2077 are still a matter of dispute among historians.

Clever shift or desperate flight? The Moondaggers juggled their forces with the energy and ferocity for which they were famous, cutting off each sidle by the spent Javelin brigade, shifting troops down the Ohio or up the Tennessee until the retreat ground to a halt near a small heartland city that seemed to grow more by virtue of nothing else within an easy distance than any particular advantage of situation or resource.

The Moondaggers accomplished all this even with their supply lines snipped and chewed, responding with harshness that to this day leads to a fall blood-moon being called a "Daggers moon" all across Kentucky.

In a last gambit, the column turned almost due north, hoping they Moondaggers would not expect a movement toward Illinois. But the ploy failed and the Moondaggers found the brigade trapped on the south bank of the Ohio. Both sides dug in and prepared for the inevitable.

The camp is not well-ordered. Sandwiched in a fold of ground hiding them from both eyes in Evansville and the Kentucky hills, the only advantage to the position is that both flanks are more-or-less guarded by the river, and the rear is a long stretch of muddy ground pointed like an extended tongue toward Evansville between the loops of the Ohio.

A pair of the city's dairy farms are now under occupation. One serves as headquarters and the other as a field hospital. The previous night the brigade was lucky enough to catch a barge heading upriver. A quick canoe raid by the Wolves later, the barges engine was in their possession, along with the cargo. The raiders were hoping for corn and meat; instead they found a load of sorghum, sugar, and coffee.

So the morning camp now smells of fresh coffee, well-sweetened and creamy, thanks to the dairy cows. The chance to get the brigade across in the darkt and confusion of their arrival evaporated as Evansville's tiny brown-water navy took up positions and shot up the tug. So the men went through the tiresome task of building breastworks and digging ditches. Each man wondering if the long chase is done, if this is the last entrenchment.

Not enough are in any condition to care.

The men joked that they weren't in the last ditch, simply because the last ditch was full of muddy Ohio river water and collapsed every time they tried to deepen it.

This bit of river had one advantage, however. The Kurians who ran Evansville evidently feared attack from their neighbors up the Ohio or across the river in Kentucky, for the river loops in front of the city and the waterfront were a network of mines, obstacles, booms, and floating guard platforms that constantly shifted place. Only Evansville pilots knew the route that would take watercraft safely through the maze.

According to Valentine's Kentucky scouts, this was the one stretch of river where they wouldn't encounter artillery boats and patrol craft. The Kurians of Evansville clung tenaciously to their ownership of these river bends, squeezing every advantage they could from their control of the loops by exacting small tolls for passage up to the Ord-nance or down to the Mississippi.

He thought it might just be possible to slip across the river and disappear into the woods and hills and swamps of poorly controlled southern Illinois, where at least he and the Moondaggers would be met by equally hostile Grogs in the form of the Doublebloods. But Evansville's flotilla of tiny gunboats and the news that more craft of the river patrol waited on the far bank downriver stifled that hope.

Touring the defensive positions with Colonel Bloom, exhausted and bloodless in the passenger seat of her command car and able to do little more than nod, he found himself giving in to despair. Their situ-ation grew worse, practically by the hour.

The Moondaggers had reinforced their left, ready to defend his most likely breakout alley, and the Wolves reported sounds of troops being gathered for a knockout blow from the right.

A boxer's stance, poking him from the left as the right readied to lash out.

Valentine was woken from a sleep that wasn't amounting to much and requested to report to the command tent.

He entered, still buttoning his uniform coat thrown over his leg-worm leathers.

Several Guard officers had already gathered, and more were com-ing. Tikka and another grizzled legworm rider were taking turns slicing hunks of cheese with a knife and alternating bites of the cheese and hard biscuit.

All eyes were on a boy of thirteen or fourteen, stripped down to his underwear, who stood drinking a steaming beverage and shivering, with blankets wrapped around his bony shoulders and feet.

"Thought you'd like to hear this kid's story," Rand said. "We pulled him out of the river when we were setting fish traps."

"Pulled nothing," the boy said. "I swam the whole way."

"Story time," someone guffawed.

"When are you boys comin'?" the wet and muddy boy asked. He'd slicked his body with Vaseline or something similar to ease the swim.

"Coming?" Bloom asked.

"You're with the liberation, right? Underground says that all of Kentucky's rising. We're listening on the AM radio. Some of us made crystal sets. They took the transmitter at Bowling Green and are talking about all those Moondagger throats that got cut at their supply depot south of Frankfort."

"How do we know you're telling the truth?" Duvalier said.

The boy looked shocked, as if his long swim across the river should be proof enough.

"There's street fighting in Evansville. Some of the OPs came over to our side. Hit the downtown armory. We burned a representative when it ran into the mayor's city house.

They're looking for its bones now."

"You say Kentucky is rising?"

"Of course. We thought you were part of that."

Valentine felt hope, real hope, for the first time since the catastrophe at Utrecht.

"Are we part of it?" Valentine asked Bloom.

"If we're not, we sure as hell will be by dawn," Bloom said.

"What else can you tell us?" Valentine asked the boy.

His eyes were so bright and white in the gloom of the headquarters tent, Valentine was almost hypnotized as the boy looked around. "Except for the river guard, there's not much in the way of troops in town, just some riot police holding the Kur Pinnacle. They called up most everyone they could trust from the area into the militia and sent them across the river.

Hospitals in Frankfort and Lexington and Louisville are bursting with wounded. The Ordnance is mobilizing; they're skeered legworms'll be crossing the Ohio and into their state. My chief says to tell you that he's got boats and a couple of old barges. We can rig lines from the bridge and get you across if your guns can clear the river."

He was an intelligent youth. Valentine could see why they sent him.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Jones, H. T. Youth Vanguard, but I'm only in it for the sports trips. Quit now, I hope.

Vanguard service is just a rotten apple, shiny on the outside."

Bloom studied the brigade's defensive positions on her map. A few of the companies had been bled down to little more than platoons. A careful assessment of the mortar readiness status sheet would bring either tears or laughter. "Valentine, can we get one more fight out of the brigade, do you think?"

"I'll ask them," Valentine said.

Duvalier shook her head. "It's another gaslighting. This greasy little squirt's eyeing up a brass ring."

"Hey," the boy said, but Valentine held up his hand.

Bloom thought it over.

"Valentine, take your old company and go across the river and offer assistance. If we can catch a break in the city, safely tuck away our wounded. We can make that dash into Illinios and get to the mighty Miss."

"Define assistance, sir." Valentine hated to sound like he was crabbing out from under orders. "If it's to be combat to clear the city, I'd like a Bear team at least. If they're holed up in the manner this boy describes, I'll need demolition gear too."

"Just get over there and make an assessment. Use your judgment. We've got those two big guns we captured. Might as well use them for something other than blind fire on crossroads behind us."

They came across in the dead of night in an unlit barge, downriver, and marched through a muddy, overgrown tangle of long-dead industry on the riverbank to the west side of town.

Evansville itself burned and rattled with the occasional pop of gunfire.

Bodies hung from the streetlamps. One torn-frocked churchman still clutched his Guidon in the grip of rigor mortis as he twirled in the fall breeze.

He made contact with the local resistance, a trio of a butcher, a teacher, and the man who ran the main telephone office. All introduced themselves first as belonging to the Evansville Resistance Lodge.

What was left of the Kurian Order, with their few troops pulled out to fill gaps in the Moondagger lines and their populace burning and score settling, had retreated to the bowl-like bulk of the civic center.

The resistance had power, water-Valentine even passed a hospital with big, spray-painted triage signs for illiterates bringing in wounded. Barrows full of farm produce crept along the sidewalks, distributing food to small patrols and sentry teams. Charcoal-fueled pickups brought in gear-scavenged or improvised weapon. There were workshops fixing up firefighting equipment with bullet shields so that an assault might advance under cover of water sprayed into windows.

Parts of the city might be burning, but Evansville appeared to be functioning with a good deal more organization and energy than he'd expected. He met men who worked in machine shops and fertilizer plants.

Fertilizer plants could be converted to the manufacture of high explosives. How long would it take some of Evansville's workshops to convert to the production of mortar shells?

"We cut off their water and juice," the telephone office manager named Jones said. "Of course, I think they got a reserve. Some kind of emergency plan is in effect. A cop prisoner told us they had three days of water. That's how long they're supposed to be able to hold out in an emergency until help arrives from Indianapolis or Louisville."

"Who's left in there?" Valentine asked as Rand set up the fire con-trol observation station and tested radio communications.

"Middle-management types who were in the militia," Jones said. "Local law enforcement.

The Youth Vanguard Paramilitary Auxiliary. Go ahead, blow them out of there. Won't nobody miss them."

He got the nod from Rand.

Valentine had shells from the guns march up Main Street toward the civic center. The last one impacted just inside the barricade. He'd made his point.

Valentine examined the civic center and the pathetic assortment of cars piled up on the sidewalks around it, along with dropped bundles and half-unpacked trunks. Entire families had retreated to the security of the big building. In panic or by design, the Evansville Quislings had assembled a barricade out of the civilian and order-enforcement vehicles, stringing barbed wire through broken windows and between fenders.

Dead bodies hung here and there on the wire. Black birds shame-lessly feasted on the detritus of desperate valor.

He couldn't blow the remaining Quislings out without killing their kids with them.

He couldn't drop 155mm shells on a bunch of kids and fill the approaches to the civic center with a mixture of dead civilians and his company.

That left talking.

One of the mob behind him sneezed and wiped his nose with a onionskin page from a New Universal Church Guidon.

Valentine heard a metallic clang! A string of men emerged antlike from a utility hole mid-street and made a dash for the civic center. Gunfire swept the street. Poor shooting-they only got one. The others made it to the safety of the barbed wire and vehicle necklace around the building.

He lay, groaning.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!" Valentine shouted, hoping that energy would take the place of training and military discipline. The gunfire died down.

"Go on and get him," Valentine shouted at the civic center. "No-body's shooting. Just let us get to our people too."

"Really?" a voice from the dark maw of the main doors called.

"Absolutely, positively really," Valentine shouted back, feeling a little giddy at the absurdity of the question.

They dragged their man out of the street and the Evansville mob got their own. Some resistance men, pinned down beneath a school bus, took the opportunity to return to their own lines.

"Rand, I'm trusting you to keep things from getting out of hand. If someone takes a pot shot at me, I don't want a sniper duel. We'll be back to trading machine-gun fire in no time."

He unsheathed his sword and gave the blade to Rand. "If they drop me, give this to Smoke."

"Let me go, sir," Patel said.

"You're too slow a target. And Rand, it would be a tragedy if someone put a bullet through your double helping of brains. Colonel Bloom gave her orders to me."

Valentine walked out into the center of the street under a white flag tied to his sword scabbard.

"Could I speak to whoever's in charge in there? I represent the United Free Republics, Kentucky Military Assistance Expedition."

Valentine had been wondering what to call the forces across the river; the improvised name sprang from his lips without involving his brain, evidently.

They answered with a shot. The bullet whizzed by close enough for Valentine to hear it with his right ear and not his left. He was either lucky or the sniper was a bad shot. He forced himself to remain erect.

"Who shot?" a voice yelled from the darkness. "Tell that dumbshit to cut it out. He's got a white flag."

"Killing me won't give you another day of water and power in there," Valentine shouted, advancing toward the barricade. "It'll just start the fighting again. Don't see that's gotten you much so far, and there's artillery being set up across the river. How many shells is it going to take to collapse that big roof?"

Valentine wondered if there'd be an instant's realization of his folly if the marksman decided to put the next one between his eyes. Would that be better than having part of his face torn off, or a bullet through the neck?

The street hit him in the back hard and Valentine felt an ache in his chest. He never heard the shot.

Valentine felt busted ribs, burned a finger in the hot bullet embedded in the woven Reaper cloth on his vest.

It felt like someone had performed exploratory surgery with a jackhammer on his chest.

Valentine felt content to lay in the street for a moment, holding up the white flag like a dead man with a lily. He let his Wolf hearing play along the other side of the barricade.

"Quit firing. I'll shoot the next man who fires."

"That's treason talk, Vole," another answered. "Kill-or-die order, remember?"

"The man who gave that order quit on us two days ago, you've noticed."

Valentine rolled to his feet.

"I'm trying to save lives, here," he called. He tasted blood.

The next shot went between his legs, but he made it to the cover of the bus barricading the main entrance. Barbed wire hung off it like bunting.

"I'm right here if anyone wants to chat." It hurt like fire to shout. "Does that kill-or-die order apply to your kids? Maybe we can get them out of there, at least."

A bullet punched through the far side of the bus. Valentine slid to put the engine block between himself and the sniper.

The bus window above him broke and fell in stands. Luckily it was safety stuff. Valentine heard more shooting, a deeper blast of a shotgun.

"We got the gunman, Terry," Valentine heard.

Valentine looked through the rear doors of the bus. Someone had cut a hole in the other side, offering egress through the barricade. He lurched in, marked a claymore mine sitting under the driver's seat, and decided that maybe entering the bus wasn't such a good idea after all.

He sat on the bus's entry step.

"I'm still ready to talk."

"We're sending a party out to talk under a white flag."

Valentine looked at the advertisements running along the roof edge of the bus. Church fertility treatments, infant formula, exhortations to join the Youth Vanguard, warnings against black market deals ("Profit to the enemy, Poverty for your friends"), and invites for the sick and halt to enjoy a refreshing sojourn to the Carolinas and the "best medical care east of the Mississippi." A photo of a smiling silver-haired couple in beach wear lounging in chaises under an umbrella, he with a cast on his leg, her with a cannula and IV? hanging from a mount shaped like a flamingo, had a buxom nurse serving what looked like tropical drinks.

Visitors to Evansville were invited to see the Eternal Flame at Affirmation Park and add their names to the Wall of Hope for a small NUC donation.

The Kurian Order in microcosm.

Valentine heard movement from the other side of the bus. A trio of men, two in law-enforcement blue and one with a clean coat thrown over dirty collar and tie, entered one at a time. A cop went forward, yanked a wire from the mine, removed the detonator with a pocket screwdriver, and tucked the inert explosive under his arm. He had a huge nose that made his eyes look small and swinish in comparison. Valentine noticed numerous breaks in the greasy proboscis, a beak of scar tissue and whiskey veins.

"What do you have in mind, Rebel Rick?" the other cop said.

"Name's Valentine, major, Southern Command." Valentine said, learning to breathe with half his chest. He'd heal from this. He always healed, but always came back only to 90 percent.

He wondered how many 10 percents he'd lost over the years.

"Cloth from a robe. That's why he's still alive," the man with the tie muttered to the other cop.

"I'm Vole, senior captain, Evansville Security and Enforcement," Big Nose said.

"Emergency Militia Leader Albano, Temporary Mayor Bell."

"I was clerk of Resource Allocation," Bell said. "I never carried a gun or signed a retirement warrant my whole life."

"No separate deals!" Vole barked. "What's your offer?"

"No more fighting between you guys and the resistance," Valentine said. "That's my deal.

Come out without your guns. I'll put any dependents under supervision of Southern Command personnel. They'll come to no harm."

"What about us?" Vole asked.

"That's up to you and the Indiana boys."

Albano purpled but instead of turning on Valentine, he elbowed Vole. "I say we hang him, just like they did with Sewbish. No more flags of truce-just delays the inevitable."

Vole ignored him. "Understand, Valenwhatever, we've got nothing to lose and orders to kill any rebel we can get our hands on."

"A hard rain's going to fall here, just a couple more days," Albano added. "A HARD RAIN."

"I'm sick of that weather report, Albano," Bell said. "Where's that relief column out of Indy? Tommorow, tomorrow, always tomorrow."

"Shut up, you two," Vole said.

Bell ignored him. "Lindgren said the Moondaggers asked for it to cross the river into Kentucky to secure their lines for the retreat out of Kentucky. We're bloodpiped. Let's refugee north to Indy. Even if a new guide comes, he'll have his own people. Better to start at the bottom rung somewhere else than get caught up in a reorg here."

"You willing to let us just walk out of here?" Vole asked Valentine.

"I'm sure that could be arranged," Valentine said. "If you turn over your weapons and gear intact. I'll try to make the local resistance see the advantage of getting their hands on your guns. But are you sure of the reception you'll get in Indianapolis or wherever you end up? You might be surplus to requirements. Someone's got to take a fall for a debacle in a city the size of Evansville. Might just be you all."

He let that sink in.

"Seems to me you men have two alternatives. Stay here and fight it out, waiting for help that's not coming, or surrender yourselves to your fellow Hoosiers."

"Six of one . . .," Albano said.

Valentine coughed up a little more blood. "Fight or die, they told you. Take 'em up on it.

Fight them for a change."

They blinked at him like sunstruck owls.

"Rengade and get picked off on some Reaper's manhunt?" Vole said. "Or get a stake pounded up my ass by a vengeance team? Painful way to go."

"I'm wearing what's left of one of those Reapers you're so scared of," Valentine said. He might be called a liar. Valentine looked at it as shaving the truth. "Join the fight against the Kurians. I lead a bunch of fighting men that's nothing but former Order. I can always use more men. You might get killed, but if you fall, you'll fall on the right side and you won't get recycled into pig feed. Once you've proven in combat, you're a new man, so to speak. We'll give you a new identity if you like."

Valentine was exceeding his orders and knew it. But if it would spare a mutual slaughter-

Valentine noticed that both sides had advanced on the bus, scraps of white tied to tips of rifles or held aloft at the end of bits of pipe fashioned into spiked clubs, trying to hear what was transpiring inside.

The resistance was more numerous, the Kurian Order forces bet-ter armed, facing each other across abandoned vehicles and curlicue tangles of razor wire.. ..

The Quislings looked a rough lot. Of course there would be the bullies, the cowards, and the lickspittles-the Kurian Order attracted such-but he had a tough, experienced bunch of officers now. They'd keep them in line.

The battered, big-nosed leader looked at Valentine with suspicious eyes.

"Trust comes hard, I know. I spent time under the Kurians myself. Don't they always garland their deals with a bunch of roses? What did they tell you before you joined Enforcement? Quick path to a cushy office and a luxury card? Any of that come true? I'm telling you you'll have it hard, but you'll be able to look yourselves in the mirror. No more bundling neighbors off into collection vans."

Valentine had no more words in him. He caught his breath, waited. The three exchanged looks.

"I want all this written up on paper with some signatures," Vole said. "And I want us to keep all our light weapons and sidearms. It's got to say that too. Every man gets a choice: join you, surrender, or walk out."

"Save us the effort of finding guns for you," Valentine said.

Valentine left a platoon of his company under Ediyak and Patel to organize the surrendered Quislings and returned across the river in a small boat, heartened. A barge would follow, laden with food, mostly preserved legworm meat rations marked "WHAM!-hi protein" in cheery yellow lettering. The barge would bring the wounded back, where the Evansville hospital could give them a bed and rest at last.

"That Last Chance feller payed us another call while you were across the river," Tiddle told him outside the headquarters tent as Valentine scraped riverbank mud from his boots.

"Said he was giving us one more chance to give up before turning us into charcoal briquettes."

He called a staff conference and gave the good news to Bloom, trying to stay awake and alert. When it was done, he felt as tired as Bloom looked. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. "We can get home."

He took a breath. Decisions like these were always easy, when, as Churchill said, honor and events both pointed in the same direction. "Hell with that. We've got a secure base in this country and they don't. Let's go on the offensive."

"With the brigade worn to pieces?" Bloom asked, looking as though Valentine had reopened her incisions.

"Now's our best shot. Colonel. If we can buy some peace and quiet to get things organized to support us in Evansville, we can cut river traffic or the Ohio and give some real help to the uprising in Kentucky."

"What happened to going home?" a Guard captain asked.

"Every time we've had a chance to run, we've run, and where's it got us? Javelin ends with a whimper as the men pile onto barges and motorboats under shell fire. If Javelin's going to die, I want it to die hard, trying to do what it was designed for: to establish a new Freehold. If we can take the Moondagger main body with us, Kentucky has a chance. We've got the technical people, even if they've lost a lot of their gear on the retreat. We've got the Wolves and Bears, even Smoke and a Cat or two."

"I wouldn't want to be up against this brigade," Gamecock said.

"Fingers around the enemy's throat and teeth locked on hide," Bloom said. "God grant me the strength to get out of this chair one more time. Valentine, will you help me draw up a plan for your clutch hit?"

"In this situation it'll be a simple one, sir," Valentine said. It was hard to say which emotion dominated, relief that they were turning at bay like a wounded lion, or anxiety over this last throw of the dice.

"If you do this, what's left of the Kentucky Alliance will be with you," Brother Mark said.

"Believe it or not, we've still got riders from all the five tribes. Most are either Bulletproof or Gunslingers. Tikka's worked out some kind of command structure. Bitter-enders all. They want their ton of flesh from the Moondaggers."

I shot a javelin into the air, it fell to earth, I knew not here....

Valentine kept the doggerel to himself. They could hardly move any more, so they might as well fight. Where Javelin finally landed would-must!-be remembered. One way or another.

Javelin's camp was buzzing with rumor.

"I've got a message from Colonel Bloom, men," Valentine said, breaking in on breakfast.

The men sat on their sleeping mats in neat rows, eating. He nodded to the commissary boy, and some of the kitchen boys brought out fresh hot coffee.

A few heads turned. Some in groups at the back kept eating. Others held out mugs for more coffee.

He climbed up onto the roof of cranky Old Comanche, the sole remaining truck. "We crossed the Mississippi to help the locals create a new Freehold," Valentine said.

"I don't know how you feel about it, but we came here to do a job. We ran hard across Kentucky on the way there, and then fought our way back. Our trail is marked by graves-some of ours, lots of theirs.

"Headquarters just received some startling news. Evansville's been taken by the local resistance. They've got barges full of grain, pork, medical supplies-everything we're short of.

They're short of training and guns.

"On this side of the river Kentucky's as sick of the Moondaggers as we are. The legworm clans between Bowling Green and the Appalachians are fighting, hard. Not raiding, not burning a few bridges to give them some negotiating leverage with the Kurians. They're in it for keeps."

They stopped eating the keyed tins of legworm meat marked WHAM. That was something.

"The reason the city there fell that is that most of their militia's been impressed by the Moondaggers. What's left is willing to come over to the Cause.

"You've had some hard fights. You all know you've given it to the Moondaggers even harder. They're filling out those positions opposite with militia ordered to kill or die. Their division isn't even able to hold an entire line at our front."

A few of the men stood up, as though trying to see through the hill toward the enemy positions. That was something else.

"I think we can guess what they mean to do. Hold our beat-down brigade here until they can reestablish their lines of communication and supply, keeping their fingers crossed that we'll surrender. It's been three days. The Wolves keep hearing activity on the other side of their hills-why haven't they attacked? Last Chance told us that we'll die tomorrow. Let's shut him up for good. They're the ones worried about how much worse it'll get tomorrow, not us.

"I know what you're thinking: You've heard this story before. A populace rising, all we have to do is go help them, mid wives to a new Freehold. I'm telling you what I've heard from the resistance. Maybe it's wrong, maybe it's lies, maybe they're trying to get us out of our ditches and into the open. "

"Let's take them up on it. Put their money where Last Chance's mouth is. I wonder how often, in the history of the Moondaggers, they've been on the receiving end of an assault. Bears in the spearhead, Wolves snapping at their flanks, and a real assault by trained men coming in behind mortar fire. "

"And a Cat opening up that asshole in the swinging chair," Duvalier said, suddenly beside him. "If you boys will loan me a couple of claymores from the front of your positions, I'll see if I can't plant a couple around the Moondaggers' headquarters."

"Whar's a little thing like you gonna hide claymores?" Rollings called. He'd come up with some lovely new boots, probably taken from a Moondagger officer.

Duvalier opened her coat, flasher style, showing her improvised harness with clips and holsters and knife sheaths, but the men whistled at what was under her tattered old T-shirt.

Valentine spoke again. "I've told you what I know. Maybe they're setting us up for another sucker punch, with everything, including the bodies hanging from lampposts in Evansville's, a sham. Fine. I'm tired of running anyway. But I don't think it's another trick. I've got a feeling this is the day. This is the day when the tide turns. I'm asking you all to turn and fight with me. Our retreat's over." He considered his words to the Quislings across the river, decided they could be improved on. "From now on, it's forward. If we fall, we'll fall with honor."

Valentine stifled a few cheers before it became general by holding out his hands.

"Quiet, Javelin Brigade. Let's not do anything to spoil the surprise."

During the day they came under some distracting shellfire. They were 120mm mortars, Valentine knew, having become intimately familiar with the sound of mortar calibers on Big Rock Hill. If anything, it helped settle Valentine's mind. An army baiting them to attack by feigning weakness wouldn't waste resources on random harassing fire. Duvalier made a quick scout of the enemy right that night. Valentine heard her report in the new assault headquarters, far forward, masquerading as an artillery observation post. They were close enough forward to draw sniper fire, so they had to keep their heads behind logs and brush.

"That greased-up kid is right about one thing. There's nothing but some nervous farmers and shopkeepers in front of you here, stiffened by Moondagger units behind. They pulled the best of them back to help with the disorder in their rear."

"How do you know that?" a lieutenant asked.

"I was close enough to taste splatter when one of them took a piss. I was able to pick up a couple of conversations."

Valentine could smell blood on her. "That's not all you did."

She wetted her lips. "They had a big machine gun backing up their line with a couple of our Moondagger friends manning it. Don't know if it was there to keep the men up front from running or not, but the loader was asleep and the gunner was jacking off. Couldn't resist a target of opportunity."

Valentine communicated her report, leaving out the story about the dead onanist, over the field phone. Bloom decided to put into effect the assault they'd begun planning after dismissing the boy for a meal and a return swim. They'd leave a skeleton line on the right opposite the Moondaggers and gather for the last effort on the left.

Duvalier shoved some legworm jerky in her mouth and had a cup of real coffee. "I'll take those claymores now, if you've got them," she said.

"Going to be a hero at last?" Valentine asked.

"No. I just like the odds. Their sentry positions out there are about as much use as a screen door in a flood. I'll plant the claymores in their headquarters dugout and wait for a full house.

Just hope your guns don't drop a shell on me."

Valentine chuckled. "No ammo reserve. It'll be the shortest barrage in history."

She disappeared and he walked the positions, anxious. Especially after an illumination flare fired. Maybe Duvalier flushed a deer or threw a rock to get the Quisling militia looking in the wrong direction for her final wiggle through the lines.

He inspected the Bears. Gamecock had them in three circles. Chieftain already had his warpaint on. Silvertip was tightening the spiked leather dogskin gloves he liked to wear in a fight.

The Wolves had already left, half of Moytana's under his lieutenant command to reinforce the right-just in case-and the other half to move along the riverbank and see if they could slip around between the Ohio and the Quisling positions on the left. Valentine authorized Moytana to start the action. The rest of Javelin would follow them in, with Gamecock's Bears leading the way.

Valentine's company was at the forefront. They'd creep forward and provide covering fire for the Bears.

"Thanks for the chance, sir," Rand said, squinting. One of the lenses of his glasses had been blown out and he'd filled the pane with a bandage. It was easier than keeping one eye closed all the time. "I won't let you down."

"Another dirty job," Valentine said to the men as they filed up.

Valentine gaped at Glass. His uniform was carefully pressed and he had a barbershop shave. More important, Ford and Chevy had fresh belts for the .50s.

"Where did you find .50 ammo?"

"That little redhead of yours dropped a couple of boxes off after her last scout. She's stronger than she looks."

"Nice of her."

"She said I was to kiss you when the attack started, sir."

"I see you shaved for it."

"Turns out Chevy here was some kind of trained servant for an officer. I started shaving and he got all excited, so I let him do it. Wasn't much of a beard anyway."

"Someone might mistake you for a soldier and shoot at you," Valentine said.

"Just want this war to be over one way or another. If we're hitting the Moondaggers with not much more than guts and bayonets, I thought I might as well look nice, just in case. And it won't end until we quit playing defense and start digging these ticks out of our hide. I caught a little of that speech of yours. I've heard the same before. Hope you mean it."

"I do," Valentine said. "But I'm just one major."

"With a death sentence, I heard. Stuff like that happens to a lot of the good officers.

Cocker, who organized Archangel. We lost Seng in Virginia."

"Think there's a reason for that, Glass?"

He shrugged. "Troublesome animals in a herd get culled first. That's all I'm saying. Watch yourself, sir."

Ford and Chevy started blowing air through their cheeks because they were falling behind the other men. Red Dog gamboled, too excited, or stupid, to tell a battle was in progress.

"Take care of them, Glass," Valentine said.

Patel brought up the rear, walking with the help of his canes again. He nodded to Valentine, as though too busy to pause and chat.

Valentine trotted over to him. "I thought I left you safe over on the other side of the river."

"A lieutenant with a full company of Guard walking wounded is helping in Evansville now. They said there was to be a battle. This is my place"

"Not with those knees, Sergeant Major." Valentine said.

"Cool night," Patel said. "Fall's well on the way now. They're always bad when the weather turns."

"Don't go forward with the rest. I want the company on our flank, just in case the Moondaggers launch a counterattack from their positions." Valentine had written the same to Rand, but he'd seen young officers get carried away with excitement before. "Find some good ground where you can hold them up."

"Yes, sir."

"That's all, except be careful."

"When am I not careful?"

"When you're throwing yourself on top of Reapers, for a start," Valentine said.

Patel shrugged, his eternal half smile on.

"Thanks, my friend," Valentine said. "For all you've done on this trip."

"Just doing what I always do," Patel said. "Seeing to it that young soldiers get to be old soldiers."

Moytana must have found a good target of opportunity, because Valentine, manning the forward post, heard firing from the riverbank. Well behind the titular Quisling line.

Valentine picked up the field phone.

"General Seng. Repeat. General Seng," he told command.

Valentine made a note of the time: 4:16.

Within a minute the brigade's last few shells came crashing down on the Quisling positions. He wondered if that militia had ever faced artillery fire before. Valentine remembered his first hard barrage on that hill overlooking the Arkansas and Little Rock. It made one frightfully aware of just how hard the enemy was trying to kill you, felt almost like a personal grudge.

Whistles sounded all along the brigade's right as the fire slackened-not by design but by lack of ammunition.

Valentine heard the bark of Ford and Chevy's .50s and watched Javelin go forward, Bears in the lead, the dirt and dust of the artillery falling on them like snow as three hard-fighting wedges pierced the militia positions.

He felt for the Quislings. Indiana stockholders who wanted more land for their herds, men who wanted to own a trucking company, boys told by their Church officiates that militia service was the path to security for their parents and siblings, a good mark for the family record. Rousted out of their beds, told to put on uniforms they wore six weeks a year, picking up unwieldy bolt-action rifles fit more for intimidating a mob than turning back Gamecock's raging Bears.

The odds and ends of the Kentucky Alliance urged their mobile fortifications into action.

Just the sight of charging worms might be enough to send most of the Quislings running: They resembled a yellow avalanche moving uncannily uphill.

Valentine saw Tikka in their midst, expertly hanging off the side of her mount and using her saddle as a rifle rest. Their affair still sparked and sputtered along, though they were both too dirty, tired, and hungry to do much but quickly rut and depart like wary rabbits in fox country. Valentine wasn't sure he could even put a name to what they had, but it was something as natural as the fall Kentucky rain, and just as cleansing.

He thought of the artistic swell of her buttocks. Mad thought, with shells and bullets Hying in at least three directions.

Bloom's command car bounced forward.

The Moondagger batteries joined the fray, but only a few shells fell, still heavies, hard to adjust to meet a fast-moving attack. Hope-fully the tubes would be in the brigade's hands within a few hours. In the hands of trained spotters, they'd be handy against river traffic, especially if they had some white phosphorous shells that could be set to air burst.

The first reports began to come back to headquarters. The militia had simply dissolved into little groups of men lying on their faces, spread-eagle in surrender. There were reports of the Moondaggers doing as much damage to the Quisling militia as Javelin. The Wolves were finding trails blocked with bodies, shot by their alleged allies as they retreated.

It was Glass' kind of operation. No heroism required.

Valentine looked around the forward command post.

"That's a nice-looking province there," he said, pointing to some ground occupied by his company where they had a good view of the Moondagger postions. "Let's move forward.

Signals, get ready to lay a new line. We're shifting operations forward."

He found Rand looking a little frazzled. "How's your first battle going?"

"It's a little more exciting than I'd like, sir," Rand said.

A wailing cry broke out from a shallow between the small hill of the observation post and the beginnings of Kentucky's rollers in the distance. A wave of Moondaggers poured up in a counterattack from the center. The phrase "gleam of bayonets" crossed Valentine's mental transom. The warrior poets were right-it is an unsettling sight when they're pointed at you.

Glass' machine guns cut into them but the Moondaggers ignored their losses, firing back wildly. They fell onto the outer edges of his platoon, fighting with curved dagger and rifle butt as grenades killed friend and foe alike. Bee was suddenly beside him, emptying her shotguns to deadly effect.

Then they were at the edge of the command post. Bee grabbed two bayoneted rifles thrust at her-Valentine heard her grunt as she seized the hot barrels-and poked the bearded men back, knocking them down like an angry mother snatching up dangerous toys. She reversed one rifle to have the long bayonet ready and used the other as a club to knock Moondaggers off their feet, sticking them like beetles on Styrofoam.

Rand fell without a cry, a bullet not caring that it cavitated one of the best brains Valentine had ever met.

Valentine, grenades bracketing him and vaguely bothered by the stickiness of Rand's blood on his face, did his best to cover Bee and Glass' gunners with his submachine gun. He reloaded, and only after emptying the gun again did he notice that he'd just wasted a full magazine of Quick wood bullets. Stupid!

Then a company of Guard engineers came forward, firing their light carbines, and it was over. Wounded Moondaggers, still lashing at their enemies with their knives, were shot and shot again until they quit crawling.

Bee poked at a loose flap of skin ragged from a bullet hole in her thigh like a child investigating a tick.

Valentine told Bee to put Rand in the shade of a beat-up medical pickup and get her wounds looked at, had Patel pull the company back together and see about ammunition supply, and then sent a bare report of the repulsed counterattack back to Bloom.

Javelin Headquarters was on the move to the old Moondagger positions.

"Sir, radio report coming in from the Wolves!" Preville relayed. "The Moondaggers are running. Running! They're quitting and running hard up the highway to Bowling Green. Their legworm supports are going with them."

A lieutenant checked their large-scale map. "They keep heading down that highway, and they'll be getting into Mammoth country."

"Wonder what the Mammoth thought about the little catechism from those men the

'Daggers sliced up," Valentine said. "I wouldn't want to have my truck break down there."

"Wouldn't surprise me if they built a wooden cage or two," Patel said. "It's the end for them."

"Not the end," Valentine said. "Not even the beginning of the end." As Churchill might have put it, it was just the end of the beginning.

With the Moondaggers broken across Kentucky and perhaps beaten at last, a fatal crack in the foundation of the Kurian Order had been opened. Like any fault in a structure's foundation, it might not be easily seen or the danger recognized at first. But that first crack would allow more to appear, branching out until the whole edifice crumbled.

Even such an awful pyramid as Valentine had spoken of back at Rally Base could be undermined and brought down, in time.

Valentine hoped he'd live to see the fall.