Fall with Honor (Vampire Earth #7)

Fall with Honor (Vampire Earth #7) Page 6

Breakthrough, western Tennessee, March: Operation Javelin and Colonel (later General) Seng's march to the Virginias, later to studied and debated-turning point or footnote?-with good arguments on both sides, began with a masterstroke.

The thousand foot Kurian tower at Mississippi Point had stood for two generations. Every now and then Southern Command would bring some heavy artillery forward and shell it for an hour or so, just to see the light show as mysterious rippling bands of violet rose and detonated the shells a mile from target. The scientists from the Miskatonic attending these shows tried to study the effect with their poor collection of instruments but always left flummoxed.

The Kurian in that tower controlling the Mississippi between Memphis and Paducah is called "the Goobermaker." Even the best Hunter, sneaking into the woods around that tower, slowly becomes confused and disoriented. The more cautious, or maybe luckier, staggered away, underwear sometimes loaded like a sopping, sagging diaper, wondering what their name is. Most recover their sensibilities and memory eventually.

The Miskatonic consider the Goobermaker a powerful Kurian, feudal lord to sub-Kurians stretching from the outskirts of Nashville to Memphis and into southwestern Kentucky. He makes claim to the river as well, extracting tolls for water traffic, and ever more exorbitant fees in auras for cargo cutting across his territory to the Ohio or the Tennessee when Southern Commmand gets the upper hand against the gunboats of the river patrol.

David Valentine always chuckled and dismissed his participation in the assault as being

"on the bench-when I wasn't sitting in the bus with my helmet."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Glass said on his return from the ammo dump with the last boxes of brass, lead, and smokeless powder for the .50s.

"'Are you fucking kidding me, sir, Corporal,'" Valentine corrected. "You'll follow orders, just like me. No matter how ridiculous."

It was the last week of February and spring peeped through the twigs and breaks in the iron gray clouds as a bitterly cold storm blowing in from Canada exhausted itself somewhere over southern Missouri.

Their assault barge yawned before them at the end of a boarding plank. It was a Kurian transport for aura fodder, and someone had painted the inside a soothing pink. It looked like a giant mouth extending a sickly, rusted tongue held down by a twelve-foot depressor.

Valentine smelled of sandalwood. He'd treated himself to a long shower to relieve the jump-off tension.

He looked out at his company through the Halloween mask rubber-banded across his face.

The soldiers looked like a bunch of burned matches, with tinfoil wrapped around their head except for eyeholes.

Glass submitted to having tinfoil wrapped around his head and spray-painted dull black.

Patel helped him poke eyeholes and breathing apertures in it.

"At lest it's warm," Glass muttered. His heavy-weapons Grogs already had their masks on.

Some artiste in the company had formed tinfoil strands into horns on the Grogs' heads.

"Hey, Sergeant Major," a soldier called. "Shiny side out, remember? Glass's grouchy enough without getting brain bake."

"It doesn't matter," Patel said, securing Glass's headpiece with a rubber band at the forehead.

It wasn't a very good joke, but Valentine was relieved to hear it. The men smelled nervous, that sharp electric acid odor of anxiety.

Word had filtered up through the NCOs that some of the men were remembering what happened to Quislings caught fighting for Southern Command. The Kurians developed imaginative and painful manners of extracting auras from those guilty of such treasons.

Every Southern Command soldier knew that, if captured, they could probably expect to be shuttled to some work camp or other- they were young and fit, after all. Officers could expect a good deal of interrogation. Leading figures of the resistance, majors, colonels, and especially generals could expect a long period of wear and tear under drugs or blunter instruments before the inevitable show trial. Valentine could never find it in himself to condemn those captured in the Kurian Zone who confessed to plans ranging from blowing up hospitals to poisoning Youth Vanguard bake-sale cookies, because the confession was undoubtedly forced and false.

"We're ordered to load, sir," Preville said. Preville was a nearsighted company com tech with an old Motorola headset wired to the pack radio. He made do with some old round glass women's frames that didn't do much for his face. Valentine, through Rand, had insisted that he see a Southern Command doc and get some regulation glasses, but Preville liked how he looked in his lenses. The new ones hadn't shown up in time anyway.

Patel had overheard, so all Valentine had to do was nod.

"Load up and board! Load up and board!" Patel bellowed.

Word had it that General Lehman was watching the embarkation, going from formation to formation giving a last few words of encouragement. He hadn't made it to Valentine's group.

Odd-looking and inhuman in the painted tinfoil that obscured hair and ears, they filed into the barge.

"Enjoy, guys," Valentine said. "This'll be the easiest part of the whole trip."

With Ediyak, the company clerk, and Preville trailing behind, Valentine boarded. "Last on gets to be first on the Kurian shore," he said.

The Skeeter Fleet and Logistics Commandos who'd arranged for the barges had chalked all sorts of helpful messages on the inside. Valentine could see two:

Thank you for choosing mudskipper cruise lines we accept responsibility for nothing but getting you over and hauling your body back.

Tetanus Shots Are Recommended For All Passengers.

When the recently constructed loading doors closed, Valentine saw another.

No point worrying about it now.

A single overworked tug, a temporary buoy, and various lines from smaller craft working together got them across, with some help from the Mississippi current. Someone discovered that knife hilts made decent drumsticks on the barge's side, and soon there were two dueling syncopations.

Bee stamped out a pretty good 4/4 base beat as she hung on to the drooping camouflage netting hanging across the open top of the barge.

Valentine wondered what the sentries on the other side of the river made of it all. A couple of sentries would get their sergeant, who would get an officer, who would probably call in an even higher officer, who would give the alarm.

This part of the operation was secret enough that even Valentine knew only the outline.

His only orders were to get in column with the rest of Jolla's command and move out to the northeast along an old highway.

They splashed ashore in darkness, fiddling and adjusting the tinfoil headdresses as they waded in the slough between two sandbars, heading for blue signal lights on the shore proper.

Upstream and down there were more boats and barges landing, and the riverbank echoed with the throbbing engine of the tug, the honking cries of outraged mules, and the low, firm voices of sergeants and corporals who could manage to make their softly spoken words carry through all the noise without shouting. Valentine saw lines of craft of all descriptions waiting to vomit out men and material.

Sailors and Logistics Commandos had set up lines, and netted bags full of gear came ashore like a parade of lumpy bats swinging in the wind. Someone had hung a portable radio from a tree, where it muttered out love songs in tribute to expectant and new mothers everywhere.

In between the songs were tips on prenatal health and nursing given by a woman with precise, softly hypnotic diction.

The Skeeter Fleet's ships weren't manned by pregnant women. The men liked the songs, and if the Kurians sounded some kind of civil defense alert for western Kentucky, they'd hear it over the broadcast.

"Make to route green," said Preville at the com set. "The colonel wants us to take over for the Wolf pathfinders."

Valentine relaxed a little. That was according to plan as well.

"Break open a box of green chemical lights," Valentine told Patel.

He heard a crump of artillery being fired downriver. Southern Command was supposed to be bringing a trio of big guns across. Rumor said they were Harry, Hermione, and Ron, three old 155mm behemoths. Hermione was famous for having fired the first shot of the Archangel counterattack.

Southern Command was sending them into the Kurian Zone with the same long-range blessing.

He instinctively checked the big-numeral watch looped through his top buttonholes. Oh five twenty-eight. The detail would be of interest to some historian or other. Valentine hoped it wouldn't be a New Universal Church archivist collecting notes for a paper on the suppression of the Cumberland insurgency.

Valentine formed his men into rather ragged lines, wishing he could find a high spot and see the light show. The Goobermaker's strange defense had been described to him, but he'd never seen the effect personally. All he saw was the occasional flicker of a shell heading east through breaks in the trees.

He didn't hear any counterbattery fire. One would think that the local Quislings would at least have mortars in place to harass the land-ing by now. Perhaps they were as wary of the Goobermaker's woods as the Wolves and Cats.

Pairs of Wolves marked the path to the old highway, looking even dumber than Valentine's company with painted tinfoil topping their weathered buckskins. A trail up from the riverbank gave over to a little road, which crossed a bridge and passed through a wood before jointing the old federal route. Valentine distributed his men in corporal-led units, supervising the placement of the glow sticks himself so that they'd be visible only to those coming up from the riverbank and following the trail.

The Wolves were glad to be relieved and hurried off in the direction of the firing.

It was a strange sort of KZ. As far as Valentine could tell, the Goobermaker made no attempt to build farms or settlements. He kept the old federal highway clear enough, though as they came into town he saw brush growing out of broken windows of otherwise fine brick buildings. The town looked like a decrepit old man with untrimmed eyebrows, ear, and nostril hair.

Jolla arrived and set up temporary HQ in an old primary school. As the rest of the support battalion showed up, he distributed the units so they'd be ready to move north.

"There's quite a show, if you want to go up to the school roof, Valentine," Jolla said. He'd ripped open a big triangle from his mask so it only half-obscured his face, making him look a bit like the Phantom of the Opera. "Just follow the power cords from the mobile generator."

Easily done. Valentine left Rand at company HQ with Glass and the heavy weapons Grogs and headed into the school, Bee trailing dutifully behind. Valentine had long since given up trying to get her to do anything but watch over him. Evidently he'd replaced Hoffman Price in her life some manner.

He followed the cords up the stairs and to the roof, where the main signals team was working. Seng's chief of staff, Nowak, was throwing orders like hand grenades. She was a rather willowy woman with baby-soft skin, though that too was obscured by tinfoil.

Valentine brought up his binoculars, focused on the torchlike flicker six or seven miles away.

The Goobermaker's turret-snail tower, topped by what looked like a broken minaret, was aflame, sending a long spiral of smoke like a question mark into the sky.

Artillery shells landed somewhere in the hills well south of the tower, looking like distant lightning in the growing dawn, big horizon-shaping flashes punctuated by smaller bursts.

Someone was putting up a steel curtain between the Goobermaker's lands and Memphis.

Southern Command was apparently giving everything it had in the eastern approaches to start them off.

"They did it?" Valentine asked, astonishment making him ask self-evident questions.

"Really and truly," Nowak said. She told the person at the other end to stand by. "Chatter says they've captured a Kurian alive. It may be the old bastard himself. They've sealed him inside a glass fish tank, and a couple Cats and a Bear team are hauling ass back for the river."

"Has that ever happened before?"

"If it had, guys like us wouldn't have heard of it," Nowak said in a tone that indicated she was smiling. "Of course, they're yakking about it almost in the clear. Might be a diversion trying to sucker in a big effort to recapture him, catch the patrol under our guns."

The sun was visible.

Valentine smelled food cooking. He suspected that if they moved out again, his troops, in their uniforms designed to confuse identification, might have to lead the way again. Best see if they could be relieved and get them fed, to keep their strength up for the next lap.

Valentine organized the distribution of hot chicory coffee and sand-wiches for his strung-out platoons. Jolly had a quick meeting, showing the next route that they'd take as soon as a few more companies of Guards arrived, and set the next leg of the march to begin at noon in any case. Seng wanted everyone through the Goobermaker's lands and out the other end, heading for Kentucky, as soon as possible.

A tired-looking figure in black rode into camp on a lather-streaked mule. It was Brother Mark under a thick coat of dirt and dead twigs. He dismounted stiffly, handed his mount to groom, and tottered to the field kitchen.

Valentine found a folding camp stool and brought it to him.

"You have my profound gratitude, son," he said, seating himself. "You wouldn't know if my baggage has been unloaded?"

"You need a change of clothes?" Valentine asked. Brother Mark smelled of sweat and smoke.

"My goosedown pillow. I've been on my feet or in my saddle since ... is it Sunday already?

Since Friday morning. I feel as though I could sleep propped up against that wall over there."

"I thought only the Wolves went over before Saturday night."

"Oh, I was well ahead of them. Meetings to attend. You can remove that ridiculous tinfoil now, young man. Not that it ever provided anything but psychological comfort."

Valentine would have liked nothing better-his skin felt itchy and he had sweat in his eyes-but decided to wait for official orders.

"Meetings?" Valentine asked, since Brother Mark seemed in a mood to answer questions.

He dipped a doughnut in his coffee and ate half of it. "Yes, concerning the settlement of the estate of the late Ri-Icraktisus. I beg your understanding-the Goobermaker, you boys call her. The Goobermaker's estate."

Valentine felt the ground beneath his feet tilt. "Who attended this meeting?"

"Some of the local Kurians," Brother Mark said, pulling off his boots and socks. "He was quite unpopular with the Nashville clan, and Memphis only just tolerated him because of his military acumen. When she switched over to female and started budding off her own clan, that was the last straw. The feel went out that Memphis was willing to withdraw her support...."

He rubbed a finger between his toes, sniffed, and made a face. "If I were in the old bishop's palace, after a night like that I'd take a steam with pair of flexible fourteen-year-olds scrubbing me down. I'm reduced to cleaning my own feet. I wish I could indulge my humanist patriotism in a more comfortable manner."

"You're saying the Kurians ganged up on one of their own?" Valentine wasn't sure what he had a harder time believing: Southern Command helping other Kurians bring down the Goobermaker or Brother Mark, ostensibly a high Church renegade, meeting with other Kurians and returning alive to tell.

"Not so much ganged up as withdrew their minds from her contact, leaving her rather alone at a key moment. Once the conspiracy started, everyone wanted to join. There's an old proverb from the Silk Road: A falling camel attracts many knives."

"So the tinfoil was pointless?"

"Not pointless. Useless, maybe, but it did its job. Everyone was afraid to set foot on this side of the river near that great tower. It gave the troops confidence. I understand the Bears were quite a sight, blowing open holes in the bottom of the tower with turbans of glittering foil wrapped around their heads."

"Those Kurians are not going to be happy when we march into Kentucky," Valentine said.

"Memphis or Nashville don't give two figs about the legworm ranchers. The only ones who claim control over central Kentucky is the Ordnance up in Ohio, and they're happy to cause trouble for them. They see it as removing two turds with one flush. Is that how you say it? I'm still not used to all this colorful cracker-barrel talk you fighting men use down here."

"There's a rumor that she was captured."

"No, one of her detached buds. Developed enough to inherit much of her mind. He may prove useful."

Valentine tried to digest that. "How do you meet-"

Patel walked up, using the help of his metal-tipped hickory cane. When in front of the men, he mostly used it as a pointer or to scratch maps in the dirt.

"Colonel Jolla's called for all the staff-level officers, sir," Patel said. "The route's been changed. Moytana's Wolves have captured a motor pool and fueling station. We're to move there at once."

Brother Mark finished his coffee. "Go and line your men up neatly, Major. I think I shall despair of my pillow and just sleep on my coat for whatever length of time God and Colonel Seng allow. Oh dear, it looks like rain. As if I'm not uncomfortable enough."

By nightfall they were almost out of the Goobermaker's territory, camped at the captured garage that reminded Valentine of the rig yard he'd briefly siezed back in his days as a Wolf lieutenant. This one had no organic labor force, however, just a few mechanics and relief drivers who took a motorbus in from Memphis every day.

Just before setting off on the hard march for the garage, Jolla had ordered the men to discard their tinfoil and officially announced the destruction of the Goobermaker's tower.

Valentine wasn't able to determine which bit of news made the men cheer harder. But he was glad to feel air on his skin again.

The march out of the Mississippi camp marked the last time the Valentine's company stepped in ranks and files together for weeks.

Once out of sight of the river valley, they were put to work, scattered into details and squads gathering news and sustenance, watching road crossings, finding fords or paths, siphoning gasoline and warning off wandering locals.

Two days later they crossed into Kentucky, following old Route 79. Patel and a platoon rode scout, traveling ahead or around the flanks to major intersections where they could idle beside a utility pole or beneath a bridge, quietly keeping watch. Glass and Rand stayed with the main body at company headquarters. Valentine switched between the scouts and the men riding with the Logistics Commandos gathering supplies.

Valentine was happy to quit Tennessee, mostly because it meant he wouldn't have to deal with Papa Reisling any more.

Reisling was an unpleasant individual, a former Logistics Commando who'd married and settled on the fringe of the Goobermaker's grounds north of Clarksville. He was a strange figure of a man, old yet hale, thick-haired but gray flecked with white.

He didn't like Valentine from the moment he first set eyes on him, when a local underground contact arranged a meeting. Perhaps it was due to Bee, who didn't like the look of the old Dairy Queen garbage nook where they met while Reisling's brother-in-law kept watch from the roof.

Reisling considered the entire Southern Command invasion of Kentucky-the first true offensive across the Mississippi in the history of that Freehold-a deep-seated plot to make his life difficult and bring the Reapers down on him.

"I can make a pork loin disappear, or ten pounds of flour and molasses," Reisling complained, showing Valentine a flyleaf from an old book scrawled with requirements. "But this. Two thousand eggs, powdered or fresh. Thirty pounds of salt. Six hundred chickens at the very least, and 'as many more as I can provide.' Fruit juice or dried fruit. Where am I supposed to get dried fruit by the goddamned barrel, you?"

"Nobody's going to die if you miss a few line items," Valentine said. "It's a great help to us to get anything. Every mouthful you provide means less that comes out of stores that we carry along for emergencies."

"Three weeks ago I was told to start setting aside food for a big operation. I thought it would be a company of Wolves. Got a pen of year-old pigs and two fifty-pound bags of beans the local production officer doesn't know exist. Thought I'd done my job and done it well.

Then half of the goddamned Southern Command crosses over the river and stands here, mouths open like baby birds expecting me to stuff'em."

Reisling's voice reminded Valentine of a transmission giving out, all grind and whine.

"Old tricks are usually the best," Valentine said. "Find a Church relief warehouse, loot it, and set it on fire."

"And have Church inquisitors questioning half of Clarksville? No thank you, Lieutenant."

"Major," Valentine said.

"That's why we're in the state we're in. Kids with momma's milk still on their lips throwing rank around."

It had been a while since anyone called Valentine "kid"-Brother Mark's "my son's" hardly counted; churchmen of his rank called everyone obviously beneath their age son or daughter.

"Just give us what you can. Even if it's just those yearling pigs and the beans."

"Harebrained operation you're on, Lieutenant-Major," Reisling said. "You want to fool the Kurians, you gotta go one tippy-toe. You boys are stomping into the KZ in clown shoes.

They're going to slap down on you, hard."

"Just get us what you can. We'll be back tonight with a truck."

The supplies showed up, including a surprising quantity of eggs. The underground men who helped them load it said practically every family in Clarksville had given up little reserves of food they kept in case of shortages. Word had gone out that eggs were needed, and they came in straw-packed, ribboned baskets. Many of the eggs had been decorated using vinegar dyes, red and blue mostly, with gold stars stuck on.

God bless you, read the tiny, cursive ink letters on one.

But Reisling just stood with arms crossed in an old overcoat, watching them load.

"You'll get your food. The people here are going to pay for every bit. Mark my words."

Valentine could taste his grudge in every mouthful.

At the first camp in Kentucky, Seng had a ceremony inviting members of all the companies in his command to see him hand out commendations and medals. Most were going to the Bear and Wolf teams who destroyed the Kurian tower.

Valentine and Patel decided to send Glass and his Grogs under the supervision of Patel and Rand. Valentine wanted the rest of the brigade to get used to the sight of the Grogs, lest some nervous picket open up on them as they brought a cartload of pork back. He called Glass into the company headquarters tent.

"Send someone else, sir," Glass said. "That crap doesn't impress me."

"Glass," Patel said.

"Oh, he's free to talk," Valentine said. "You've got something against medals, Glass?"

"The right guys never get 'em, that's my problem."

Valentine felt he should reprimand Glass, but he wasn't speaking contemptuously of any particular person, just the practice in general. Valentine could hardly upbraid him for having an opinion and expressing it when asked. "Don't tell me you think that way about Colonel Seng too. He's got too many medals to wear, and probably deserves twice that."

"Only medal that means much to me is the combat badge. If you've faced fire, you've proved all you ever have to prove in my book. The valor medals look pretty, but valor's just another word for something getting screwing up. A well-run fight's where you throw so much shit on target what's left of the enemy crawls out begging you to stop."

As they camped in the quiet, greening hills of Kentucky the first day of April, Rand brought him the front page of the Nashville Community Spirit ("Giving a little good for the betterment of all" read the motto just under the rather imposing looking font of the newspaper's logo).

Rand pointed to an article at the bottom of page one.

Mississippi

Secure Again

Guerrilla WRECKERS STRIKE OUT! A full-scale raid on rail and river routes north of ENDED WITH A WHIMPER

Monday. The last elements of the bandit incursion gave up or swam for their lives as LOCAL VOLUNTEER HEROES

restored ORDER AND SAFETY to north GREATER MEMPHIS.

Security spokesmen affirmed that there had been unusually DESPERATE WINTER SHORTAGES IN

TRANS-MISSISSIPPI. The attack failed utterly as a heavy barrage pinned them against the river. The barrage, which ALARMED PEACE-LOVING MEMPHIS FAMILIES, lasted only long enough to organize the COUNTERATTACK

which SWEPT TO VICTORY against the banks of the Mississippi.

This paper is one of many voices happy to see GREATER COOPERATION BETWEEN MEMPHIS AND

NASHVILLE SECURITY ZONES and looks forward to further SUPPRESSION OF TERRORISM.

The paper had helpfully printed a few blurry pictures on the second page of bodies lying along the edge of a dirt road and a group of men sitting cross-legged, with arms tied behind their backs.

"Skinny Pete showed up again. That boy makes a good living," Ediyak said, glancing at the pictures but not bothering to read the rest.

"Skinny Pete?" Valentine asked.

"That's what we used to call him. He's a little wisp of a thing from Alabama; looks like he's never had more than two mouthfuls of soup at one time in his whole life. He's always sitting there with his collar pulled up around his ears in the prisoner mock-ups, since he looks hungry as sin."

"Doesn't anyone else notice him?"

Ediyak shrugged. "I had to have it pointed out to me. It's not like you'd recognize him unless you're close. Sometimes he's grown in a scruff of beard, sometimes they shave him bald, sometimes he's in a wool watch cap. Anyway, that's his job. Go sit beneath a sign that says

'Clarksville, thirty klicks' and look like you got taken prisoner that morning."

Valentine had to chuckle. "They got the big story right. Just left out a few details."

"KZ papers don't print unpleasant facts. They disappear, like dust swept into a cement crack," Ediyak said.

"Civilizations are won and lost in such cracks," Rand observed.

Kentucky's hills exploded into spring colors, fireworks displays of wildflower and dogwood blossoms. Valentine took parties out to show them trees bearing wild legworms. The crawlers would stay in the branches, devouring bark, twig, and leaf alike, until they became so heavy they either snapped the branches or bent them until they were lowered gently to earth.

Then they commenced grazing in their long, crooked furrows.

Valentine changed back into his legworm leathers, adding Velcro strips for Southern Command insignia. He had been dreading the Kurian reaction to their march with every step into Kentucky, waiting to see what shape the reaction would take. But the march covered miles with not much more difficulty than they'd experienced on the practice marches in northern Arkansas and the Missouri bootheel.

Every time he topped a rise, every time they took a bend, every time they broke out of forest or heavy brush and into pasture, Valentine expected to see them, campfires and tents and columns of motor vehicles. But the landscape remained as empty as it had when he followed Hoffman Price across the Tennessee and into Kentucky.

Bee seemed happy to be back. When they cut legworm trails, little rises of plant growth and dirt that looked like planted furrows cut by a drunk plowing farmer, Bee urged him to follow. Some sense of hers allowed her to tell which way the legworm had gone, though unless the marks were very fresh Valentine couldn't make head from tail.

The legworm ranchers were a clannish bunch. Some sat you down and offered pie; others would chase you off with bird shot.

And that was just for a few wanderers crossing their grazing lands. Valentine wondered how they'd react to the appearance of better than two thousand Southern Command soldiers.

South of Bowling Green Valentine and a team of his men idled on a running pickup at dawn, keeping warm by sitting either in the cab or atop the engine-warmed hood. They'd been tasked with meeting a pair of Cats who were supposed to guide them into the legworm bluegrass.

The pickup sat beneath a power pylon. Birds, with their usual good judgment, had transformed it into a high-rise condominium.

The men passed around thermoses of sage tea and talked about legworms. Valentine told his story of a battle between two legworm clans he'd witnessed, with the gunmen on each side using their beasts as a cross between World War I entrenchments and eighteenth-century fighting sail.

Valentine left to take a leak. As zipped up and turned from the back of the pickup, he tripped. As he fell, he noticed a binding-twine lasso attaching his ankle to the mufflerless exhaust system on the truck.

He fell face-first into spiky dandelion.

Two men jumped off the front of the truck, coming to his aid.

"You okay, Major?"

A shadow unfolded from the beneath the truck. "He deserves it for splattering me with pee," Alessa Duvalier said. "I taped two grenades under your truck and pegged the pins to come out when you drove away. You clowns are lucky I recognized him."

"It got a distinctive left hook or what, sir?" one of the men laughed.

"I meant his leathers," Duvalier said.

Valentine cut himself free from the twine. "They pulled you into this operation?

Gentlemen, this is Smoke, one of Southern Command's best Cats. I've covered more miles with her than any living thing."

"Thanks to you, I'm rated as one of Southern Command's expert Cats on the bluegrass,"

Duvalier said. "I've been working Kentucky since the fall, escorting that churchman around."

uHe's cheery company."

"Never more so than when he's trying to stick a spitty finger inside you. Horny old goat."

She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, up-down-up.

Another woman, hair knife-cut high and tight into a cross between a mohavvk and a mullet, rose from the ditch running along the road. She had legworm leather trousers and a poncho concealing what looked to be a military carbine. A camouflage bandanna added a festive touch to her neck.

"This is Vette, Val. She was blooded in Missouri. It's quieter there now, so Southern Command retasked her here because she was born in Bowling Green. Vette, this is Ghost. I went to Colorado and across Nebraska and Kansas with him."

Vette extended hands in fingerless gloves and gave a strong handshake. "Pleased to see you're still alive."

"If you watch him close when he walks, you'll see that he's had some near misses,"

Duvalier said.

"Hope you learn as much from her as I did," Valentine said.

"She's smarter than you when it comes to picking a fight," Duva-lier said, running a knuckle down the scar on his cheek.

"So, what have you got for us?" Valentine asked.

"You guys have moved fast and hard. We're going to take you to sort of a feudal lord. He's got several tribes united under him."

"Including the old crew you ran with, the Bulletproof," Vette said. "I recognize the cut of your leathers."

"No other hints, Smoke?"

"You'll be relieved to know you're about to be reinforced," Duva-lier said. "A third of Kentucky is mounting worm to fight."

One of the soldiers snorted. "Worm ranchers fight?"

"On our side, is what he means," another added.

Duvalier glared at the doubters. The fire in her eyes reminded Valentine of how pretty she was, when her real self peeped through the scruffy exterior.

"Six clans have come together," Duvalier said, nodding to Valentine's detail and shaking any proffered hand. "That churchman may like playing stinkfinger with the female help, but he's one hell of a diplomat. Every time things heated up, he calmed them down and got them talking again. It's as much his triumph as it is Karas's."

"Who's Karas?" Valentine asked.

Vette also shook hands all around. "He's a Bowling Green boy too. He's just what the Cause needs. A visionary."

The men of the brigade waited. With some fresh bread and Kentucky honey in them, they were in good spirits and chattering like meadow-larks. They lounged on a gentle hillside forming a natural amphitheater, warm in April sunshine that promised summer on the way.

During Valentine's training and time in the Bear caves of Pacific Command, he sometimes spent a few hours at night in the rec room. They had a LCD TV rigged there, and he watched old movies on disk. One Bear favorite was an old movie called Highlander.

While Valentine found it interesting enough, especially the sweeping images of scenery, he'd forgotten the movie until he saw Karas emerge from his vast tent. He immediately thought, that's the Highlander!

Karas had the same strong face, long hair, and impressive build, though the hair was stringier and the build wasn't enhanced by camera angle. He wore a big-pocketed waxed canvas coat that hung to midthigh and rather striking pants that were legworm leather on the inside and what looked like corduroy on the outside. His soft brown boots, with just a hint of felt showing at the top, made Valentine rather jealous. They looked durable and comfortable.

Followed by deputations from the six clans supporting him and by Brother Mark, who looked pleased for the first time since Valentine had known him, Karas approached an old pasture tree that had been butchered just that morning for firewood. Earlier in the morning Valentine had watched two men working a long saw cutting it off, but had wondered at why they went up the tree and sawed off limbs instead of simply felling it in the first place.

Valentine recognized the honey-colored hair of Tikka among the tribal dignitaries. She'd apparently assumed some role of importance within the Bulletproof.

Karas mounted the stump with the aid of a ladder. Valentine wondered how he'd look to the men in the pasture or on the lower slopes of the hill-a statue atop a column?

The breeze died down as if by command.

A leathery worm rider stepped forward. "Let the Kentucky Alliance take heed," he called in a formidable bass baritone. "Our chief is about to speak."

"This is a sight I've dreamed of for a long time. You all don't know how happy you've made me, marching to these quiet hills. It's been a long time since the Stars and Stripes has been carried openly, pridefully, across these hills. Let me formally welcome you as friends. A mite more valuable: as allies."

Southern Command's troops cheered that.

"Some of you went to school. I only had one teacher my whole life. A simple man. A plumbing contractor, before 2022. That man was my father. He taught me to ride. He taught me to shoot. He taught me to tell the truth.

"One day I was looking at pictures of animals of the world. I liked big cats, lions and black panthers and tigers. He told me that one tiger needed to eat as many as three hundred deer in a year. Three hundred! Of course, the tiger must eat them one at a time. No tiger kills three hundred deer at once."

The spring breeze contested the voice again, but Karas could project, though the men upwind were cupping their ears to catch his words.

"Imagine, though, if those three hundred deer could talk as we do. If they could take the tiger's tally. If they could organize against this tiger. If three hundred deer together hunted the one tiger, threw themselves against it, biting and goring and kicking, I reckon that tiger would never hunt again.

"We have one great advantage over the Kurians. Human beings naturally come together, the way water droplets find their way to pools. The Kurians like to remain individual drops.

"Divided, all we can do is crawl to the Kurians and lick their boots, begging not to be killed. Their tigers are the master of any one of us. United, we will hunt the tigers."

"I'm going to ask you to follow me east into the mountains. There we'll start the biggest tiger hunt you've ever seen. Then with the forces that are meeting there, we'll come back and start taking over town after town, county after county here in Kentucky. Can I count on the men of Arkansas, of Texas, of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri? We're pledged to you, Wildcats and Gunslingers, Coonskins, Bulletproof and Mammoths, and of course my own Perseids."

Valentine cheered along with the rest of him. If he understood it right, Javelin was now the largest operation against the Kurians since Archangel.

Lambert and Brother Mark and the rest had told them they'd have support of some of the legworm ranchers in Kentucky. He thought they meant foodstuffs and fuel; he'd never dreamed they'd be fighting at their side.

Why had they kept so much secret from the officers involved? To avoid disappointment if Karas turned out to be a windbag, full of bluster and promises? Or did Lambert feel it necessary to keep this from Southern Command's own higher-ups?

Valentine laughed at himself as Bee thumped him on the chest, not really understanding the reason for the cheering but enjoying the mood. As the men and women roared their lungs out, thrilled that Kentucky wasn't just supporting their advance but coming to their side, he was considering the possibility of informants high up in Southern Command's officer list.

After the speech ended men and women of the Alliance handed out coins of brightly polished nickel, it looked like. They bore an imposing stamp of Karas in profile. The reverse had a five-pointed star with a 10 at the center and "TEN DOLLARS" written around the edge.

"The king's coin," the boy who handed Valentine his coin said. "Lot more where these came from."

"Long live the King of Kentucky, then," Ediyak said in reply. "What do you s'pose we can buy with it?"

Valentine examined the engraving. A faint halo had been etched around the profile. "A whole lot of trouble, if this man wants us calling him king."