Winter Duty (Vampire Earth #8)

Winter Duty (Vampire Earth #8) Page 4

Fort Seng: Javelin landed and set up housekeeping within earshot of its victory against the Moondaggers on the banks of the Ohio.

In the hills just outside of Henderson, which is now mostly a ghost town, a thickly wooded old state park is now more state than park. Named after the naturalist, the Audubon State Park has changed hands several times in the past year.

Briefly used as a headquarters by the Moondaggers, the park was captured by Javelin almost intact, complete with supply depots and communications gear.

They were attracted by the clean water, space, cabins, and utility buildings. Just off the highway, near the entrance of the camp, is a set of impressive stone buildings constructed from the plentiful limestone of the area's land.

The biggest building is reminiscent of a French chateau, a former museum complete with turret and gardens, broad patios all around, and decorative walls. Though long since stripped of its valuable Audubon prints, it still has pleasant, sun-filled rooms. The Moondaggers, hurrying up from Bowling Green to cut Southern Command off from its escape into Illinois, used its comfortable rooms as a headquarters and relocated the powerful Evansville Quisling who'd occupied the place to one of the two guest homes behind the pool patio. He and his family fled to the Northwest Ordnance as Colonel Bloom's columns approached.

Southern Command occupied the building with very little alteration. Of course the prayer mats and Kurian iconography had to go-unless the former were clean sheepskin or made of precious metals in the case of the latter. Southern Command set up a permanent hospital in the old staff quarters: The cooking area and numerous small rooms fitted for two were ideal for the purpose.

The flagpole now bears Southern Command's five-pointed star and the stylized white-and-red handshake of the Kentucky Alliance-UNITED WE STAND.

Behind the estate house is a parking lot with an oversized limestone gatehouse. That became the unofficial duty office and clearing center as Javelin reorganized itself after their losses on the long retreat across Kentucky and the battles with the Moondaggers. The rich Quisling's driver and mechanics once lived at the gatehouse, and he expanded the place to add overnight accommodations for his friends' drivers and a small canteen for staff. Javelin turned the canteen into a recreation club and also a grill where any soldier could get a quick bite, on duty or off.

Valentine noticed the improvements to the camp as soon as he led his party up past the small organized mountains of debarked supplies on Henderson Landing. He checked in Lambert, his hatchet men and medical staff, and Pencil Boelnitz under the watchful eyes of the sentries on the western side of the main highway's pared-down bridges into Evansville. They walked up past artillery positions shielded by hill from direct fire from the river, and communication lines strung to observers ready to order fire down on river traffic, but the Ohio was empty that day.

As there was plenty of daylight left, Valentine sent the hatchet men and medicos under gate-guide to their appropriate headquarters and borrowed some horses to take Lambert and Pencil Boelnitz on a tour of the battlefield where they'd attacked the Moondaggers. He showed them were the guns were sighted, where the Jones boy had swum the river, the spot where Rand had fallen.

Rand had to be remembered somewhere. Valentine described him in detail to Boelnitz. Such promise, lost.

From the site of Rand's death Valentine could still see in his mind's eye his old company's heavy weapons Grogs, Ford and Chevy, gamboling forward with one long arm to add speed to what looked like an unbalanced canter, the other carrying their support weapons the way regular soldiers tote automatic rifles.

"We saw them run," Valentine said, pointing out the final Moondagger line. "After all the tough talk about reprisals, roads lined with crucified, blinded, tongueless prisoners, men who'd be burned alive in cages, they ran. They wept when they surrendered too, begged, wiped our muddy boots with their beards."

"What did you do with the prisoners?" Boelnitz asked.

Valentine smiled. Perhaps his reputation had preceded him again. "Exchanged the foot soldiers for some of ours. The Moondaggers lied in some cases and handed over dead men-one or two still warm-in exchange for theirs. According to their philosophy, we're a 'gutter people' who can be lied to if it'll help defeat us. I think they forgot how much we gutter people enjoy kicking the asses of those who label us gutter people. Evansville is keeping a few more in their county lockup for trial. There are a lot of murders and rapes in Kentucky to be answered for. Still, wish we'd bagged a colonel or two. No offense, Colonel Lambert."

Lambert just turned up the corner of her mouth, lost in the hazy sunshine. Her eyes weren't interested, her questions perfunc tory and polite.

The trees were as brown and bare as a tanned stripper gearing up for her big reveal.

"The big bugs got away, as usual," Valentine finished. He noticed that even the husks of the dead Moondagger vehicles had been hauled away. Probably melted down for scrap after every ounce of conductive metal had been torn out.

Valentine led them over to the old highway running south out of Evansville. Some of the buildings on the double-laned highway showed signs of occupation. A grease pit and a bar had opened up, and some mule wagons were parked in front of an old store. Valentine's ears picked up sounds of construction from within.

He wondered what the soldiers of Javelin were using for money. They'd probably picked up a lot of odds and ends on the retreat across Kentucky, or had looted watches and rings from dead Moondaggers-Southern Command turned a blind eye to some of the more ghoulish habits of her soldiers, especially after a victory. Valentine had seen ashtrays made out of Grog hands and rocking chairs with stretched, gray, fuzzy skin stapled to the supports, date and place of the former wearer's death inked discreetly into a corner of the leather.

After the tour of the battlefield, they turned east of the road and into the shadow of tall trees. Just outside the roadblock at the sentry post, with a fresh-painted sign identifying everything behind the gate as belonging to Southern Command and notifying all that trespassers may be treated as spies, a curious little vehicle stood. It was a cross between a chariot and a station wagon. The odd sort of tandem motorbike had a stiff bar leading back to a hollowed-out shell of a station wagon, its engine compartment hoodless and filled only with cargo netting.

A man in a rather greasy black suit, his white dog collar frayed and holes at the knees and elbows, gave them a halloo. He had a pinched look to his face, like someone had grabbed him by the ears and given a good pull.

"Free doughnuts, fresh made today. Come right over-all are welcome."

Valentine glanced at the sentry pacing the gate barrier who'd pricked up his ears at the singsong greeting. The corporal shrugged.

Valentine's eyes picked up lettering on the side of the souped-up go-cart: NUCM-I.

"What do the letters stand for?" Valentine asked.

"I'll tell you as soon as you give your opinion of this batch. Ran out of my own flour so I'm using the local stuff."

The doughnut he offered on a piece of wax paper was tasty. He'd dipped it in honey.

Valentine had read somewhere or other that the Persians had given the Greeks honey specially made from plants with pharmacological effects. He hoped that wasn't the case here.

"It's delicious," Valentine said, swallowing.

"I have iced tea to wash it down. Sorry it's not sweetened-the honey's scarce enough-but a dunk or two will sweeten her up." Valentine noticed that the pastry giver addressed himself more to Boelnitz than either Valentine or Lambert, despite the insignia on the uniforms. In the Kurian Zone, it rarely hurt to favor the best looking, best fed, and best dressed.

Lambert and Boelnitz each accepted a doughnut as well.

"You going to tell me about those letters?" Valentine asked.

"I'm with the New Universal Church Missions-Independent."

Lambert made a coughing sound. Boelnitz eyed his doughnut, hand frozen as though the pastry had magically transformed into a scorpion.

"Don't worry, friend. I call all brother, whatever their affiliation or uniform. My dunkers are wholesome as fresh milk."

Valentine guessed that the man had been living off of doughnuts, fresh milk, and maybe a little rainwater and nutritious sun-and-moonshine for a little too long. His skin had a touch of yellow about it, and the greasy skin on his brow was blotchy. But it just made the eager stare in his eyes more authentic.

"I don't want to sound like I'm threatening you," Boelnitz said. "But aren't you afraid of, uh, street justice, so to speak? Some soldiers don't like Universal Church lectures."

"A missionary must be prepared to take a blow. Die, even, as an example of sacrifice."

"What, you give out pamphlets with the doughnuts?"

"No, though I have some literature if you'd like to read it. I have some good stories, written as entertainment, but they contain valuable lessons for today's questioner."

"Today's questioner is tomorrow's dinner, if he's not careful," Valentine said.

The missionary's face slid carefully into neutral. "Every potter's field has its share of broken shards. The just have nothing to fear. All this violence is wrong, wrong, brother. You Arkansas and Texas boys are a long way from home. Why not go back? The only land in Kentucky you'll ever claim is a grave if you continue down this path."

"Thanks for the doughnut," Valentine said. "It was delicious."

They checked in at the sentry post. Valentine nodded to the effusive "welcome backs" and signed in Boelnitz as an unarmed civilian. They issued the reporter a temporary ID. The men looked like they were willing to issue Lambert something else entirely. She was fresh and bright rather than thin and road-worn like the women of Javelin who'd made the long round-trip.

Lambert spoke up. "As a civilian you'll have to stay out of headquarters unless escorted. If you've written stories you need to transmit, just give them to me or the acting exec."

"I know security procedure," Boelnitz said. "All I need to be happy is a bed with a roof over my head. I hate tents."

"We'll see what we can do."

Lambert passed her reassignment orders to the corporal on duty to inspect.

"You have seniority on Colonel Bloom, sir," he said, tapping her months-in-rank line item.

"I'm not here to turn the camp upside down."

The pleasant walk through the woods to the headquarters building was fueled by a sugar rush from the honey and dough. Valentine's pack felt lighter than it had all day.

"Speaking of security," Boelnitz said, "that fellow outside the gate seems like a security risk. He's positioned to count everyone going in and coming out."

"The Kurians aren't usually that obvious," Valentine said. "I think he's just a nut, convinced that if he does something crazy enough long enough, the Kur will reward him with a brass ring."

"No harm treating him like a spy," Lambert said. "Best thing in the world is an agent with blown coverage who doesn't know he's unmasked. We can feed him all sorts of information. Low-grade stuff that's true for a while and then, when we really need it, false data to cover for a real operation."

"Voice of experience?" Boelnitz said. "Your operations in Kansas and the whole Javelin thing didn't work out that well."

"You don't know about the ones that were successful," Lambert said, shooting a wink Valentine's way.

The wink put a spring in Valentine's step. Lambert had been sullen and listless during the walk up. He'd been wondering at her state of mind, seeing herself cast into one of Southern Command's ash heaps. The river trip was just that, a trip. Now she must have felt like she'd washed up in a forgotten corner of the war against the Kur.

Seeing her energy and good humor return relieved him. Perhaps she'd just been anxious at having nothing to occupy her mind, the way a mother duck without any active ducklings to line up didn't quack or fuss.

A trio of soldiers on their way out of camp met them on the road. They straightened up and saluted in recognition of Lambert's eagle. Valentine could see that they had questions, but he waved them off at the first, "Excuse me, Major, is there any truth-"

"Can't talk in front of our new press representative," Valentine said.

"Battle Cry finally got around to sending a man over the river?"

"Not yet. Men, this is Mr. Boelnitz from the The Bulletin. You can call him Pencil if you like."

One of the soldiers asked what The Bulletin was.

"It's a small paper, new," Boelnitz said, looking a little abashed. "Published out of Fayetteville."

"Speaking of pen and paper . . . good news, men. I've brought the first mail. I'm bringing it to the all-call at the canteen for the company clerks to distribute."

The younger soldier looked at the other two.

"I don't want to wait," the senior said.

They turned around and fell in behind Valentine.

The first thing he did was stop at the big gatehouse and hand off the mail. His oversized carrier held nothing now but official correspondence for Colonel Bloom and a few small presents for his own staff.

With the mail delivered, Valentine's first duty was to report to his commanding officer.

Lambert turned up her collar and lowered the flaps on the hat. "Give Colonel Bloom my compliments, Major. I'll pay a call on her shortly, but I'd like to walk the grounds in mufti for the afternoon."

Valentine saluted and left her to her solitary tour. He gave orders to see to Boelnitz's quartering, and left him with a promise for a dinner where the reporter could meet some of the other officers.

The main building hadn't changed much on the outside since he'd last seen it. The comfortable-looking former museum and educational center, later an estate house, was designed to look like a cross between a mountain lodge and a small chateau. But once through the doors, he noticed new details. There was proper sign-age everywhere, a new map and roster behind a glass case, a duty desk instead of an officer making do with a bench and an entryway table that had been more suited for hats and gloves, and a proper communications center, probably servicing the new high mast rigged to the decorative gazebo behind the mansion.

"What happened to the face, Valentine?" Bloom asked after Valentine was escorted to her office.

"A difference of opinion in a brothel," Valentine said.

"Over a girl, I take it."

"My favorite there was old enough for false teeth."

Bloom chuckled and took from him her envelope of orders. The good humor bled away from her face as she read.

Colonel Cleveland Bloom took the news with professional grace. Or maybe it was just her instincts for good sportsmanship.

"I'm being benched," she said.

"Not benched, recalled. Someone has to bring the men home. They followed you most of the way across Kentucky. Southern Command must have figured you were the one to see them home."

"You'll stay?"

"They're giving me permission to orchestrate a guerrilla war."

She flipped through her written orders, found an attachment, scanned it.

"With what? They're not leaving you much. A communications team and a few hospital personnel to care for the wounded and sick who can't be moved. That Quisling rabble of yours will need more than that to be anything more than glorified POWs."

They'd had this argument before. Like most officers in Southern Command, she had a low opinion of the kind of men who the Kurians used to fill out the bottom ranks of their security and military formations. Thugs, sycophants, thieves, and bullies, with a few out-and-out sadists peppering the mix.

Valentine reminded her, "The shit detail used to be Quisling rabble. They made the round-trip with the rest of us. I don't recall the column ever being ambushed with them acting as scouts, at least until we bivouacked in the Alleghenies outside Utrecht."

"I'll leave you what I can, in terms of gear."

"Can I have a favor? I'd like to ask for volunteers to stay. I need gunners, technical staff, engineers, and armorers especially."

Bloom, when faced with difficulty, usually got a look on her face that reminded him of a journalist's description of the old US Army General Grant-that he wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it. "Don't know how Southern Command will react to that. You're talking about prime skill sets."

"They'll list them as Insurgency Assist. They'll still draw in-country pay. One day counts as two toward pension."

Bloom's mouth writhed as though she were chuckling, but she didn't make a sound. "By volunteers, you mean . . ."

"Real volunteers, sir. No shanghais or arm-twisting."

"Then good luck to you."

"Will that be all, sir?"

She looked at her orders from Southern Command. "They leave it to my discretion over exactly when I turn over command of this post to Colonel Lambert, though I'll maintain operational command of the brigade even while it's based here until it returns across the Mississippi. Seems to me there's just enough wiggle room for me to keep the troops here until you're convinced the base is functioning properly, from hot water to cooking gas to master comm links."

"I'll have a list tomorrow, sir."

"Anything else for me, Valentine?"

He had to choose his words carefully. "I told the truth about what happened, sir. I argued that we won an important victory, even if it wasn't the victory they expected. Southern Command's looking for a scapegoat. I expect they'll make Colonel Lambert and General Lehman take most of the blame. Lehman's being sent to a quiet desk and Lambert's out here. Be ready to answer for us, and for yourself."

"Thanks for the warning."

"Anything else, sir?"

"Is Colonel Lambert in the headquarters?"

"She's walking around . . . incognito, I suppose you could call it. She wanted to get a feel for the men and the place unofficially, before she takes an official role."

"I understand. If you come across her, please ask her if she'd like to have dinner with me tonight."

"Yes, sir. I'll pass the word."

Bloom sat back down to reread her orders, saying a few more words about hoping Lambert wouldn't mind eating late.

As Valentine walked toward his new formation's billet, he saw his hatchet men inspecting the vehicles in the motor pool. Of the long column of vehicles that had started out with Javelin, only one battered old army truck had survived the entire journey out of the large vehicles. The rest had been cannibalized to keep others going or lost to wear, Moondagger rockets, artillery, and mines, or accident. A few civilian pickups, Hummers, and motorcycles remained, looking like candidates for a demolition derby thanks to the knocks and cracks.

"Master Sergeant Brage," Valentine said, pronouncing his name as Braggy.

"It's BRAY-zhe, Major," Brage said, as irritated as Valentine hoped he'd be.

"Sorry, Sergeant," Valentine said. "Why the interest in the motor pool?"

"Orders, sir," Brage said, tapping his chest pocket. "We're to determine what's worth taking and what'll be left behind. My staff and I have final word. Our decisions are final and unalterable."

"I've seen my share of alterations to unalterable. May I see the orders, please?"

He handed them over with the air of a poker player laying down a straight flush.

Valentine read the first paragraph and then went to the next pages and checked the signatures, seals, and dates. He recognized the hand at the bottom.

"My old friend General Martinez. You're on his staff?"

"I have that honor, sir." With a wave, the rest of his hatchet men returned to work.

"Martinez has been honoring me for years now. I hardly feel it anymore," Valentine said.

"I'm sure you mean General Martinez, sir. Of course, whether I make the GHQ staff depends on my success with this assignment. I intend to leave no stone unturned."

"I wouldn't advise you to turn over too many stones in Martinez's staff garden. Not a pretty sight."

"I have to get back to work, Major. I'd advise you not to hinder me."

"Or what, Sergeant Bragg?"

"BRAY-zhe, sir. Anyone caught red-handed in the act of taking or keeping Southern Command property from its proper allocation, right down to sidearms, may be dealt with summarily," Brage said, sounding as though he were reciting. "That only applies in combat areas, of course."

"Of course. And if you want to see a combat area, Sergeant Bragg, I suggest you try to take a weapon from one of my men."

Javelin stood on parade, a great U of men. It reminded Valentine of his farewell to the Razorbacks in Texarkana, when they retired the tattered old flag that had waved over Big Rock Hill and been bomb-blasted at Love Field in Dallas.

Valentine read out the list of commendations and promotions. The men stepped forward to receive their medals and new patches and collar tabs from Bloom.

A delegation of civilians and officers of the new city militia from Evansville sat in chairs, watching. Valentine hoped they were impressed. All they'd seen of Southern Command's forces up to now had been files of tired, dirty, unshaven men lining up to receive donations of food, toiletries, and bedding from Evansville's factories, workshops, and small farmers.

Valentine had juggled with the schedule a little to get as many excused from duties as possible, but it was worth it.

He stepped forward to the microphone when she was done. "Colonel, with your permission I'd like to add one more name. If you'll indulge me, sir."

Bloom beamed. Her teeth might not have been as bright as Ladyfair's, but her smile was better. "With the greatest of pleasure."

Valentine spoke into the microphone, which put his voice out over the field amplifier, a device that turned your words into power-assisted speech that sounded a little like aluminum being worked. "Javelin Brigade, I have one more promotion. At this time I would like to recognize one of my oldest friends in the Cause.

"Top Sergeant Patel, would you step forward, please?"

Patel hesitated for a moment and then handed his cane to his corporal and marched out into the center of the U of formed ranks. Valentine couldn't tell if he was wincing or not. He marched without any sign of weakness in his old, worn-down knees.

"This man has been looking out for me since I was a shavetail lieutenant with his shoes tied like a civilian's. He helped me select and train my company, the shit detail."

The term was a badge of honor now, ever since their action at the railroad cut in Kentucky.

"Top Sergeant Patel performed above and beyond, crossing Kentucky and back on a pair of legs that are hardly fit for a trip to the latrine.

"I recommended, and Southern Command granted, a commission for Nilay Patel, elevating him to the rank of captain, with its attendant honors and benefits. He's been breveted over lieutenant so that our Captain Patel will never have to salute a sniveling little lieutenant with his laces half-undone ever again."

"You could have given me fair warning, sir," Patel said quietly. "Would have paid for a shave and haircut across the highway."

"Surprise," Valentine said out of the corner of his mouth. The amplified speaker popped out the p but nothing else. He spoke up again. "So be sure to save a seat for him on the barge home. He'll ride home in a comfortable deck chair, as befits a captain."

"Excuse me, sir," Patel said. "I'm not leaving before you and the company."

"We'll argue about it later, Captain." Valentine reached into his pocket. "These are some old insignia of mine. No branch on the reverse. They don't do that for Cats, or they put in a false one." He handed them to Patel, feeling paternal, even though his old sergeant major had almost twenty years on him. "Wear them in good health."

"Thank you, sir," Patel said, leaning over to speak into the microphone. Then, for Valentine's ears only, he continued: "It's good to feel useful again. Even if it comes with a little pain."

The fall weather turned colder and rainier. Through it all Southern Command's forces improved Fort Seng, rigging lighting and plumbing and communications throughout the fort. A double perimeter was laid out, though they didn't have the mines, lights, or listening posts to cover the entire length.

Valentine saw Boelnitz mostly around headquarters. He had a knack for finding something interesting going on and observing in the company of whoever was doing it, asking questions but keeping out of the way. The men felt flattered to be interviewed, as did some of the women-Valentine saw one long-service veteran giggling like a coquettish schoolgirl as they chatted. A couple of others looked at him with naked hunger, the way she-wolves might eye a dead buck strung up for dressing.

In the meantime, Valentine reintroduced himself to Bee, one of the three Grogs in camp. He'd rescued her and two others from the circus of D.C. Marvels before Javelin entered Kentucky, and he'd also known her years ago when she'd traveled as a bodyguard to a bounty hunter and trader named Hoffman Price. Big as a bull, she had arms long enough to go around him twice when she sniffed and touched and remembered who he was.

She'd apparently forgotten his existence but was equally delighted to reacquaint herself with him, and she soon fell into her old habit of trailing along somewhere in his wake with a shotgun and an assault rifle, both cut down to pistol grips, in holsters on her wide thighs, with plates of bulletproof vest serving as loincloth, vest, and mantle.

Each morning, Valentine visited the headquarters bungalow for his Quisling battalion. He had to split his time between his Quisling recruits and the main headquarters building, where Lambert needed him as she oriented herself to western Kentucky and Evansville.

His ex-Quislings were losing their baby fat, or their paunches, under Patel's double-time training. During the day, the mixture of tenting and barrack that housed his ex-Quislings-the men were building their own accommodations as part of the shake-down training-lay empty in the field behind the bungalow.

He'd chosen the bungalow not for its size or plumbing or available furniture-he liked it because it had a huge social room, a sort of living room-dining room-kitchen combined. He lined the walls of the big room with couches and stuffed comfortable chairs. Judging from the remaining books, the house had belonged to a gardener or a gamekeeper who'd worked for the estate's owner.

Valentine liked to hold meetings comfortably, with everyone seated and relaxed, usually in the evening.

This particular morning he found it in the hands of Ediyak-once a lieutenant but now a captain thanks to Rand's death. When he'd returned to Fort Seng she'd been across the river attempting to wrangle more supplies out of the Evansville leadership. She was a delicate-looking young woman, doe-eyed and usually buzzing with energy, who'd defected from the Kurian Order. The defection had been harder for her than most; she'd been involved in communications and intelligence, so she'd lived on an access-restricted section of her former base. She'd played a Mata Hari trick and arranged to date a general, slipping away from a resort hotel as her aged paramour slept. I defected thanks to two bottles of wine and beef Wellington, she was fond of saying.

Valentine liked his former company clerk, who'd first come to his notice when she came up with the gray denim utility-worker uniforms that allowed his company to roam Tennessee and Kentucky without attracting notice. Some of his command he respected, some he dealt with as best as he could, but he liked her as a person and found her company rewarding beyond the necessities. She was a little weak on assertiveness-she'd risen from private to corporal to sergeant to lieutenant and now captain thanks to assorted emergencies in the trek across Kentucky, and handled the detail work of each station with ease, but she seemed in a permanent state of finding her feet thanks to the constant promotions. She needed decent NCOs under her or the men would get away with murder, but she was bright and-well, "creative" was the word, he supposed. She sensed what he wanted with very few words of explanation from him.

"How's the organization going?" he asked her.

There was something theatrical about Ediyak. Maybe it was the big eyes in the thin face or her size. She made up for her small physical presence by moving constantly and gesturing. "After cutting out the unfit and the idiots, we're down to a hair over three hundred fifty," Ediyak said, swiveling on her chair and taking the roster off the wall for Valentine to examine. "The brigade's artillery stole some of the best and brightest, by the way. The culls are in a labor pool."

She rose and pointed to the large-scale local map. "Right now they're working on getting a better ferry in place between Henderson and Evansville. As you directed, I broke up our old company and made them NCOs over the new formations, five men to a platoon. So if you add them in, you have the makings of a decent battalion."

"Now tell me what's happened in the interwhiles," Valentine said.

"For a start, we're broke," she said, making a gesture that gave Valentine a pang for his mother: the casse of French culture, a little motion like breaking a stick. "Evansville is a rat pile, and everyone's hoarding: food, fuel, everything from sewing thread to razor blades. Bloom asked, in her darling vigorous way, for the men to sacrifice 'valuables' or they'd have to do a thorough search of the camp to gather non-Basic Order Inventory that might be traded or sold. Of course the implied threat was that if they didn't contribute some gold and whatnot that they'd picked up on the marches, she'd search thoroughly for all of it.

"We had a few of our recruits go over to Evansville in search of a good time. Vole and a couple of his cronies. They never came back. I don't know if they deserted or the Evansville people quietly strung them up in some basement. I think the latter's more likely."

"Any good news?"

She slipped back to the desk. "Not much. Supplies are running short-food and dispensables anyway. The leg shavers among the women are sharing one razor between us."

"Opposition?"

"The Moondaggers are long gone. Kentucky doesn't have a Reaper east of Lexington, from what the Wolves tell us. Memphis sent up a couple of armored trains from the city, evacuated what's left of the Moondaggers and prominent Quislings in eastern Kentucky. The rest are holed up in the bluegrass region with what's left of the Coonskins. But anything that rides legworms is settling in for winter quarters, with the nights getting colder and their worms egging and piling up.

"Can I ask, sir, what's going to happen with us?"

"You're going home."

"We'll see about that."

"Just between you and me, Southern Command has written off Kentucky. They're sending some NCOs and transport to decide what's worth salvaging and what isn't."

"Lovely. There go our guns, sir."

"We'll see about that. By the way, Ediyak, where'd you pick up the tschk gesture?" Valentine asked, making the casse breaking motion with his hands.

Ediyak's eyes widened. "The . . . oh, that."

"You grew up in Alabama, right?"

"Yes, sir. I grew up poor as dirt in a little patch of kudzu called Hopper where a girl was expected to be married at fifteen and nursing her way through sweet sixteen," she said, her accent suddenly redolent of boll weevils and barbecue.

"So you picked that up after you got out?"

"Yes, sir. Why so interested?"

"How did you get out?"

"Church testing. They had this extraordinary idea of putting me on the public broadcasts," she explained, her hand fluttering about her breast like a dove looking for a perch. "A sagging old Archon with my picture said I had the perfected look. If by 'perfected' they meant half-starved and iron-deficient, I'm guessing they were right. I went to school for two years learning about lapel microphones and makeup and phonetic pronunciation, a dusty duckling among graceful swans, learning to dress and talk and give the appearance of being cultured even if I was to the outhouse born. Then they decided I didn't look right next to the other news broadcasters because I was too small. I tried out for Noonside Passions, rehearsed with a few of the principals, but didn't get a continuing role. I did six episodes before they had me die in childbirth, giving my poor daughter to sweet little Billy, who'd only just learned to shave himself. They told me she'd grow up in no time and fall in love with him. They do get a little ripe on that show, don't they? But I'm getting away from the story of my brush with fame. I left the show and let myself be recruited into military communications."

"Is that where you saw the gesture? On the show?"

"I believe it was from a friend, a very good friend I made on Noonside Passions: one of the writers, a Frenchman. He'd gone to an ecole something-or-other and was in New York picking up some tips for the French version of the show."

Relief washed down Valentine's spine like cool water. Ediyak didn't seem like the Kurian-agent type, but then Kurian agents that penetrated Southern Command spent years working at not being the Kurian agent type.

She had seemed discomfited about the mention of the show, though. Or the gesture.

At their first evening meeting after Patel's promotion that had leaped him all the way over lieutenant in a single, overdue bound, they held an informal party. Congratulations flowed along with some bottles of bourbon of mysterious provenance.

Alessa Duvalier appeared in the middle of the chatter and pours.

She didn't look agitated, just tired and with that pained look she wore when her stomach was bothering her. Valentine took her long coat anyway, noting the mud smears and the river smell on her. The waters of the Ohio didn't need a Wolf-nose to detect.

"Where have you been?"

"Bloomington," she said.

"All that way. By yourself?"

"I hitched a ride with a good old boy who trains fighting dogs. He was on the way to a match in Indianapolis. His truck got me there and back."

"You went to a dogfight?" Valentine asked.

"No, I skipped it. So did the dogs. But they weren't in fighting shape anyway. They'd just eaten about two hundred sixty pounds of asshole after I took the wheel."

"Why Bloomington?"

"We received an underground report that the Northwest Ordnance moved into a new headquarters, and I went to check it out."

"How did it go?"

"Maybe nothing; maybe not. Headquarters was for the Grand Guard Corps' Spearhead Brigade from Striker Division. From what my old Ohio boyfriend told me, that's the best of their best, unless you count their marine raiders on the Great Lakes. Armored stuff that usually is deployed at the Turnpike Gap in Pennsylvania against the East Coast Kurians. They may just be training, from what I could pick up in the bars. It may just be exercises to impress the Illinois Kurians and the Grogs."

"Where did you get the idea to go up there?"

"Brother Mark," she said, referring to the ex-New Universal churchman who was the UFR's main diplomat, more or less, east of the Mississippi. "The underground got word to him, Kur knows how."

"Where is he now?"

"Oh, back at Elizabethtown. The wintering clans are all sending delegates to this big conference to decide what to do next. There's talk that they might declare against the Kurians; others say they're listening to a peace delegation."

Valentine retrieved his mailbag and passed out a few precious gifts he'd picked up in the UFR for his officers and senior NCOs. He couldn't bring much, considering all the personal mail he'd had to carry for Javelin's survivors, but he had a new lipstick for Ediyak, aspirin for Patel, a clever chessboard with folding cardboard pieces for one of his corporals who was a chess enthusiast, and matching Grog scar-pins for Glass and his two gunners, Ford and Chevy. And, of course, the tin of talcum powder for Duvalier and her boot-sore feet.

"Where'd you pick up the diaper bag?" Duvalier asked.

"This?" Valentine asked, looking down at the bag as though he'd never seen it before. "They said it was a mail pouch."

"It is, but even Southern Command doesn't take nine months to deliver," Patel said.

"Val, that's a diaper bag. I've seen plenty of them," Ediyak said.

"Diaper bag?"

"Southern Command, for use of," Duvalier said. "They gave one to Jules when she got out of the hospital after you inflated her."

"It's a messenger bag, Ali."

"No, sir, she's right," Ediyak said. "I saw plenty of them back at Liberty. It's a diaper bag. They came in cute pink and baby blue. You got green if you had twins."

"Doesn't say anything on the inside about diapers," Valentine said stubbornly. "Just a pattern number."

"Well, look it up in a supply catalog. It's a diaper bag."

"It's not a diaper bag," Valentine grumbled.

The women exchanged a glance and a smile.

Valentine continued to see Fort Seng's fixtures and equipment dribble away, allocated for return to Southern Command by the hatchet men, who were loading up the trucks as though they were Vikings loading their ships on an English beach for the trip back to the fjords.

He decided to make his stand at the artillery park when a little redheaded bird he'd put in charge of keeping track of their activities told him that was on the agenda for the next day. Valentine dressed in a mixture of military uniform and legworm leathers, complete with Cat claws, sidearm, and sword.

Bee, seeing how he dressed, took the precaution of adding a trio of double-barreled sawed-off shotguns to her array, thrust through her belt like a brace of pirate pistols.

With that, he headed over to the artillery park. Duvalier, who'd been lounging around headquarters on an old club chair in a warm, quiet corner, threw on her overcoat and followed him out the door.

Valentine fought yawns. He'd had a long night.

A copper fall day greeted him as he followed the marking stones and path logs serving as steps to the north side of the former park, where the emplaced guns squatted in a quarrylike dugouts area tearing up the ground around a trio of chicken-track-like communicating trenches linking the guns to their magazines.

Duvalier fell out of the procession as Valentine descended into the dimple in the natural terrain that served for the artillery positions.

Valentine saw Southern Command's artillerymen lounging around the fire control dugout.

Brage clearly wasn't the expert here; he stood apart while one of his hatchet men went over the guns.

"Good morning, Sergeant Bragg," Valentine said.

"That joke never gets old, does it?" Brage said. "What kind of getup is that?"

"New model Kentucky uniform."

Brage ignored him and looked over the guns. The three big howitzers were Moondagger heavy artillery that had been captured at what was now being called the Battle of Evansville Landing. The old Moondagger iconography had been filled in and modified with black marker to make a winking happy face-the dagger made a great knowing eyebrow.

Someone with fairy-tale tastes had named the big guns by painting the barrels: Morganna, Igraine, and Guinevere. None of the knights were present. Perhaps Arthur had led them off searching for the Holy Grail.

The squinty hatchet man artillery expert tut-tutted as he inspected the guns.

"Can't use these howitzers," decided the sergeant, whose name tag read McClorin. He gave Igraine a contemptuous pat. "Half the lug nuts are missing. Tires are in terrible shape. You'd swear someone had been at them with a knife. Can't have the wheels falling off. What are we going to do: drag them home, put furrows in this beautiful Kentucky grass? The state of these guns . . . You should be ashamed of yourself, Major-beg your pardon, sir. Those soldiers of yours playing cards all day?"

The grinning gunners looked abashed.

Valentine's oversized satchel pulled hard on his shoulder. Naturally enough, it was full of lug nuts and sights. They didn't clink, though. He had taken care to wrap them in pages torn out from the New Universal Church Guidon.

"Thank you, Sergeant McClorin. Thank you very much," Valentine said. "I will remember your name."

"Big-caliber guns are more trouble than they're worth. Need special trucks to haul them and a logistics train a mile deep thanks to those shells. Our factories would do better to crank out more sixty mortars instead of trying to hit these tolerances. A good reliable sixty's what you need to hit-and-run in the field, or an eighty-one if you're looking to make life miserable for the redlegs in some Kurian post.

"Besides, it never fails: We just set them up to cover the highway coming down out of Memphis and the Kurians get word, and next thing you know harpies as Hoods are coming out of the night like mosquitoes. No, sir. Fixed fortification guns are plain stupid."

Brage made a note on his clipboard. "Think you've put one over on us, Major? Southern Command needs shells just as much as it needs tubes."

You petty, petty bastard, Valentine thought. Good thing he hadn't brought Chieftain or one of the other Bears along. Brage would be tied into a decorative bow right about now.

Valentine pointed to Bee, who was digging for fat, winter-sluggish worms in the wet soil at the top of the wood steps leading down to the ready magazine.

"We keep the magazine under lock and key. All that work with concrete and reinforcing rods-we don't want it wasted with carelessness. She's in charge of the key. Hate to think where she hides it."

"I can see the stories about you are true, Major," Brage said. "You'd start a pissing match with a camel."

Duvalier was suddenly in the gun pit. She'd swung in on one of the barrels like a gymnast and landed so lightly nobody noticed her.

The master sergeant reached for his pistol.

"Keep that weapon in its holster, Sergeant Bragg!" Valentine growled.

Brage lifted the gun anyway and Valentine slipped in and grabbed his wrist, getting his body between Brage and the butt of the gun. The master sergeant was stronger than he looked and put a leg behind Valentine, but as Valentine went down he twisted, getting his hip under Brage's waist so the two touched earth together, still fighting for the gun. Valentine somehow kept the barrel pointed at dirt.

Another hatchet man drew his gun. And watched it fall to the dirt, his nerveless hand dropping beside him, twitching not from muscle action but from blood emptying from the severed wrist. Duvalier's sword continued its graceful wheel as she pinned the next sergeant with the point of her knotty walking stick. She brought the sword up, edge crossing the wooden scabbard with Brage trapped between as though his neck were lard ready to be worked into biscuit batter.

Sergeant McClorin put his back to the gun he'd condemned, aghast.

"This is-" another hatchet man said.

The gun crews were on their feet.

"Shut up, Dell," the man with his neck scissored between Duvalier's scabbard and razor-edged sword blade said.

The sergeant who'd lost his hand had gone down to his knees and had picked up his appendage. He pressed the severed end to his bleeding stump, pale and growing paler.

Valentine put his knee into Brage's kidneys. "Call off your dogs and I'll take care of my Cat."

"Fuckin' trannies!" one of the hatchet men said. "Save it for the enemy."

Bee loomed from the top of the sand-and-slat wall, assault rifle pointed into the trench.

"Graaaawg?" she asked.

Depending on circumstance, the word might mean help, need, or distress. Bee put the barrel between the two unengaged hatchet men.

"Good, Bee. Safe," Valentine said, releasing Brage. "Medic! Call a medic," he shouted toward the fire control dugout. One of the audience ducked back inside.

"Beeeeee!" Bee agreed.

"I'll have you both on charges," Brage began.

"You drew first, Sergeant. I was defending a member of my command who posed no threat to anyone."

Duvalier looked Brage in the eye. "Just try it. Throw your weight around. Someone else'll be carrying that clipboard by the time a Jagger gets here, and you'll be scattered across the country-side in easy-to-carry pieces.

"You all heard me," Brage said, looking around for support. "She threatened me."

"Let it go, Brage," McClorin said. "Goebler's about to go into shock."

"I'm fine," the one-handed man said. "Should I put my hand in ice or what?"

"Keep pressure on the stump and put it above your head," Valentine said, ripping the field dressing he had taped to his weapon belt off. He picked up Brage's dropped pistol and tossed it up and out of the trench and then moved to help the wounded man.

Duvalier released her captive. He had a sizable stain running down his right leg. "You," she said, taking a quick step forward and holding her blade pointed like a spear. "The one who called us trannies. Come over here and lick your friend clean."

"Stop it, Ali," Valentine said. He turned his attention back to Brage. "I think you all might want to return to Southern Command now," Valentine said. "Colonel Bloom is perfectly capable of organizing a retreat."

"Not a retreat," Brage said. "A reallocation of assets."

As it turned out, there was no immediate fallout from the blood shed in the dirt next to Igraine. Valentine had a half-dozen witnesses ready to swear Brage threatened Valentine and pulled his gun first. All the rest that followed was necessary to prevent the death or injury of Southern Command personnel.

Only Pencil Boelnitz, who'd heard about the scene one way or another and regretted missing it, brought it up after Colonel Bloom's query was closed. Lambert shrugged and told him: Service with David Valentine gives no end of future anecdotes-but rest assured he's even tougher on the enemy.

Valentine kicked Duvalier's information about the new Northwest Ordnance movements up to headquarters at the next, and what turned out to be final, staff meeting.

"Not my problem anymore," Bloom said. "We'll be gone in a few days."

"Thank you for seeing the work to the fort through," Valentine said. The brigade had worked hard at finishing setting up Fort Seng as a working base-and, in a typical military irony, wouldn't be around to take advantage of the comforts they'd installed.

"Now that word's got out that we're doing a last dash home, everyone wants to get going as soon as possible," Bloom said. "You sure you don't want us to bury half that Angel Food around the joint, just in case you have to blow it up quickly?"

"We'll be able to handle that. Did I get any volunteers to stay?"

"Aside from your devoted shit detail, you have a couple skutty types who know they'll do time in the brig as soon as we get back to the Jaggers. Wouldn't trust them any farther than I could smell 'em."

"The Bears are staying, suh," Gamecock, the officer in charge of the three four-man Bear teams, said. "I took it up with the boys. Consensus is the Kurians are going to hit you as soon as the rest of the brigade leaves. They figure it's the quickest way to get back to fighting."

"How about the Wolves?" Valentine asked Moytana, the captain in charge of the Wolf company that had scouted for Javelin.

"I'm under direct orders to return," Moytana said. He had the slow, assured drawl of a long-service cowhand.

"What can you leave us?"

"That's up to the bone pickers," Bloom said, referring to Valentine's grim-faced hatchet men who'd been inspecting captured vehicles and gear since they arrived, sorting the salvageable wheat from the chaff that would be left to Valentine to make of what he would.

Valentine rubbed his fresh-shaven chin. "Since this is the last meeting of this particular staff, I feel like we should have something."

"A cake?" Bloom asked.

"I was thinking some of our friend's doughnuts."

"The nut at the gate?" Bloom's clerk asked. "They're good doughnuts, but you have to hear his sermonizing about Kur and the elevation of mankind."

"Might want to roust him for a few days, so he can't count us walking out," Moytana said.

Valentine and a corporal went to get doughnuts. They took bicycles down to the entrance to the base. Bee loped along behind. Some idlers were watching the Kentuckians build small, heat-conserving homes on the other side of the old Evansville highway running west of the base.

"Mind if we take a sack?" Valentine asked the missionary.

"One to a customer, sir. Did you read that literature I gave you?"

"Fascinating stuff," Valentine said. "I have eight friends. One to a customer means I need eight doughnuts."

"Oh, that makes sense," the missionary said, reaching into a shelf in his bakery van. "Did you get to the part about the select gene rescue and propagation?"

"No."

"A well-formed man like you would do well to try out. And don't worry. Less than three percent end up castrated."

"That must have been in the fine print."

"You know, this is an evil land. Best leave it to escape what is coming. The punishment."

"Punishment?"

"I take no joy in it. It's heartbreaking. But the fools will persist in their folly."

"True enough. How long will you keep handing out doughnuts?"

"Until it begins. There will be a sign, a sign from the sky. Beware the evil star! Take it to head and heart, friend and brother. There's a shadow of death over this land. It's flying closer and closer." He handed Valentine a bag so greasy that the paper was next to transparent and went back to scanning the sky.

"I don't suppose you know what direction the danger is coming from."

"The worst dangers blossom in one's own bosom. Look to your heart, friend and brother. Watch the skies, my friend and brother. Watch the skies!"

Lost in the sleep of the exhausted that night, Valentine dreamed he was back in Weening.

The last time Valentine had stopped in Weening, they were using the Quickwood tree he'd planted as a maypole, dancing around it every spring. One of the local preachers accused the family who organized the event of being druids.

Valentine had placed the seed there years ago. What Valentine wanted were some specimens of Quickwood tucked away here and there throughout the Ozarks, just in case-a Johnny Appleseed of resistance to the Kurians.

The tree he'd planted in Weening would be mature in another year or two, if what Papa Legba had told him on Hispaniola about the tree's life cycle was correct. It would be producing seeds for others to distribute.

That was the essence of his dream. The young coffee bean- like Quickwood seeds were dropping off the tree and rolling into the brush while he and Gabby Cho stood waist deep in the nearby stream. The seeds turned into scarecrows, and the scarecrows divided and turned into more scarecrows, all of whom stood in the fields and woods around Weening, all subtly turned toward himself and Cho as they shivered, naked and exposed in the river.