Tale of The Thunderbolt

by E. E. Knight

  Valentine trembled at the memories brought by her handwriting.

  Ahn-Kha withdrew and left him alone under a riverside sycamore. With rain running down the back of his neck and soaking his shirt, he could hear the creaks and groans of the ferry ropes in their wheels, the calls of the rivermen, and the wet pot-iron smell of the Red was in his nostrils. And he'd remember it all for the rest of his life.

  He opened the seal and took out the sheet of Captain Saunders's stationery.

  Dear David,

  If you're reading this letter it means you're home and safe. I wish I were there to congratulate you. You have two things to congratulate yourself about, actually. The first is the success of your journey. The second I kept a secret so the first would be completed. I'm sorry you have to find out about it this way, but the fact of the matter is you 're going to be a father.

  David, deep breath and keep your perspective. I'll be fine. I'm not the first woman to have a baby, and I'm in a better position than most. We have a wonderful hospital with all the equipment, and what passes for trained doctors these days. Jamaica will be a safe place for our child (and many others) thanks to you. I hope it's a boy with your hair and eyes, but I'll take whatever comes, knowing that he or she 'll be pointed out as the child of a brave man who helped my harbor.

  Right now, knowing you, you 're thinking about how soon you can get down here. Put this letter away and read the above again when you've had a few days. It would be good for me to have you here. It would also be very selfish. They wouldn 't have put you in charge of the quickwood if they didn't think a lot of you, and I doubt your Southern Command would be the better for you coming down here. Someone like that loudmouthed fool Hawthorne would probably replace you up there.

  If the war ends, come. If you are badly hurt, come. If you grow old, come, and we'll warm our bones together under the palms. But don't come out of duty to me. We're alike enough that I know you have a more important duty you must be true to, or you will never he happy.

  Love, Malia

  Valentine swallowed. His cold disappeared in a flood of emotion. He could leave the wagon train with Southern Command, take Post and Ahn-Kha and his Jamaicans, and go south with the Rangers. A boat wouldn't be that hard to get, they could sail with the prevailing winds-

  A rider trotted past the ferry and turned toward the sycamore. A Guard in an officer's uniform with captain's bars and murphy stitched above his shirt pocket peered out from under the cowl of his rain slicker and pulled back the hood. The rider had tight-curled brown hair that reminded Valentine of a dog he had once known in Minnesota. Eighty or so men on winter-fat, shaggy horses sat their mounts behind him at the wagons. Valentine carefully tucked the letter back in the envelope and thrust it in his shirt.

  The rider dismounted. "You must be this Ghost," Murphy said, offering his hand instead of a salute. "I'm Alan Murphy. They said you had the blackest hair this side of hell. It's an honor-I don't get to meet many Cats. Do I salute you, or what?" Murphy eyed the new snakeskin bandolier with its three quickwood stabbing-points across Valentine's chest.

  "In theory, I hold the rank of captain, but I don't use it much, Captain Murphy. I'm going to need escort either to Fort Smith or Arkadelphia, whichever works better for your men."

  "My company is at your disposal, Captain..."

  "Just Ghost will do, if you have to put anything on paper."

  Murphy explained he had already been in touch with Southern Command. He was expecting a delay while other troops could be brought up to escort the convoy. Southern Command couldn't pull troops away from a river crossing, even if it was the time of year when they did not expect action. Valentine made arrangements to have the Texans re-supplied, and he saw to it that bags of oats, sides of pork, and a generous quantity of beans returned to the south side of the Red with him on the ferry.

  As he moved through the Texans, saying good-bye, trying to forget what he had just read, he felt a tug at his sleeve. He turned to find Eve behind him.

  "Yes, Eve? Going to finally say something, are you?"

  "Mr. Valentine, the man who works the lines on this side, he's bad."

  Valentine groaned inside. He hoped the man hadn't done something reprehensible to the pubescent girl. "What did he do to you that's bad?"

  Her face contorted in adolescent exasperation. "No, he didn't do anything to me. I said he's a bad man. Bad inside."

  "How do you know a man can be bad inside?"

  She shrugged. "I'm not sure. When I touch your hand, I know you're good. I can feel caring. That you do things to help people. I touched him while we were moving horses onto the ferry, and I knew he wasn't like you. He's done bad things to people."

  "Sometimes soldiers have to do bad tilings. Sometimes they don't have a choice."

  "Maybe," she said, as if turning the idea over in her mind. "But I do know I can tell who is good and who is bad in his secret heart. He's a bad man."

  "Thanks for telling me, Eve. I'll watch myself. Just in case, take this," he said, reaching into the leather tobacco pouch he wore around his neck. "Here's a quickwood seed. You know what it can do, right? Plant your tree somewhere safe, where you can take care of it. Where only you know about it. Your people in Texas may need it. I need to talk to your aunt now before I go over the river again. Let's find her."

  Baltz stood with Zacharias underneath a thick-limbed riverbank willow, eating plums from a jar of syrup. Valentine interrupted a conversation about the best route south.

  "I'd feel better if we'd of run into some local Rangers. I don't want to be riding through the country blind," Zacharias was saying.

  "They stay more to the south," Baltz said. "This patch is close enough to the Ozarks that they don't need to waste their time here."

  "The wagons are getting across, slow but sure," Valentine said. "It's time for a last thank-you." He sneezed. Between the cold and Malia's letter-he was already desperate to reread it-he could barely stand to go about the formalities. He wanted the good-byes over with so he could think.

  'Too bad all that rum's gone," Baltz said. "Sounds like you could use it."

  "You have a supply of quickwood for the East Texans, right?" Valentine said, wiping his nose.

  "Wish it were more," Zacharias said. "But this is good tree country. In twenty years, they'll have lots."

  "Watch yourselves. None of the Free Territory boys are mixing with ours like they usually would. Maybe the Jamaican accents are making them skittish ... but I get the feeling there's something wrong."

  "Maybe Southern Command's had a setback," Zacharias said. "Or the Quislings have tried ambushes by posing as incoming Logistics Commandos."

  "Wouldn't be the first time," Baltz said.

  Valentine wiped his nose. "Losses in battle somewhere else, possibly. That might be why we didn't run into any Wolves. Without their patrols here, you're going to have to be careful. Could explain why these Guards were so quick to hightail it."

  "You worry about yourself, Mr. Valentine," Baltz said. "We'll be fine."

  Valentine shook hands all around. Texas style.

  The sign outside town said BERN woods. Their destination stood in a farmland clearing a few miles from the river.

  It was a widening-of-the-road town: two lines of buildings facing each other with a few houses scattered along the side streets. Like many old towns, the uninhabited buildings provided spare fixtures, glass, and shingles for the others.

  The outbuildings had a pulled-apart look where they had not been demolished entirely.

  This close to the borderlands, the towns were walled, and Bern Woods was no exception. The plentiful pine provided makings for a tall stockade. Gaps between the brick buildings were filled with sharpened tree trunks and earth, with corrugated aluminum adding a fireproof layer to the outside. A tower stood at each end of town at the gates, looking out over scratch farmland and pasture.

  Murphy waved to the guards in the tower, and the gate swung open. They passed one of the last outbu
ildings, a house with a faint piggy smell coming from it. Wire at the open doors and window showed that the old house was being used as barn.

  Valentine hardened his ears and nose. His now-raging cold interfered with his sense of smell and hearing, but he could still tell an occupied pigpen from an abandoned one. This one was empty. It was hog-killing time, but why slaughter all the livestock? Did a family pull up and move? Were logistics punishing the town for hiding supplies?

  He looked back at his men. Post, curious to see what Free Territory looked like, walked at the head of files of former Jamaicans and Thunderbolt marines, at least those who hadn't taken the Texas teamsters' places at the wagons, to either side of the transport. The men shivered in the winter wind. The men had a good chance of seeing their first snowfall that night if the temperature continued to drop.

  The gates came to a rest with a thump.

  A gallows. The sight of it froze him before his brain processed the structure. It stood in an open spot, like a broken tooth, between two buildings on the left side of the main street. Hangings were rare in the Free Territory, and only a few capital crimes merited them. Even Quisling officers faced the firing squad rather than the noose; the hangings that did take place went on in a prison, not a town square. The sight of a gallows was all too common in the Kurian Zone, however. Valentine's memory raced back to a story his first captain had told him, of a town secretly seized by the Kurians to trap the Wolves in his command.

  "Kenso," Valentine said to Ahn-Kha. The word for "danger" was one of the few in the Golden One's vocabulary that he knew. Ahn-Kha's ears shot up in surprise, then flattened against his bullet-head.

  Valentine held up his right hand. "Ho," he called, keeping the horse moving to allow the wagon train to come to a stop without collisions, even as his feverish mind raced.

  "What's the matter?" Murphy said. If it was an act, it was a superb one.

  "We can't outspan in town. You want all these oxen milling around people's porches? Could get smelly," Valentine asked.

  "I'm headquartered at this town. There's two corrals and a barn or two. They'll fit."

  Post approached, ready as always for orders.

  Valentine ignored Murphy. "Mr. Post, we'll circle the wagons in that clearing there, if you please. Downwind from the town, as a gesture to the civilians. Thank you." Post stiffened at the formal tone and elaborate pleasantries. "That is, if you have no objections, Captain Murphy?"

  Murphy looked around at his men, then up the road to the town. "Well... no, of course not. Why would I?"

  Valentine got off his horse and led it to Post. "Mr. Post, let's snap to it," he said, and then lowered his voice, tilting toward Post with his chin jutting out, as if upbraiding him privately. "I can't explain, but I don't like the look of this. Keep your gun handy, and alert the men. I hope it's nothing."

  Post nodded and turned to give orders to the sergeants in the wagons. If the lieutenant looked upset to Murphy, he hoped that the feigned reprimand would explain the startled eyes and stiff backbone. Valentine turned on his heel and led his horse toward the clearing, Ahn-Kha falling in behind like an obedient dog. Ahn-Kha made as if to loosen the saddle on the horse and instead loosened Valentine's submachine gun in its sheath.

  The wagon wheels resumed their noisy journey, squealing their axle-joints as the teams turned off the road and bumped to the clearing.

  The captain came to some kind of decision. Murphy herded his men to the rear of the column. When he turned them one more time, to face the tired men bringing up the rear, he extracted a wide-mouthed pistol and pointed it at the center of the column. Across the distance, the Cat met the mounted man's eyes and read his fixed expression.

  'To arms!" Valentine bellowed.

  The hammer fell on Murphy's gun, and a flare arced out, sputtering through the sky in slow motion. The former Thunderbolt men threw themselves down from the wagons, pulling rifles and pistols. Post vaulted into the bed of the front wagon, where men were already loading a machine gun. Ahn-Kha brought up his long rifle, swinging the mouth toward Murphy, but the turncoat came off his saddle in a blur of horseflesh as his men dismounted and let their horses run.

  The flare hit in the center of the column of wagons, and lay there, sparking. It spat out a chemical cough.

  A wave of gunfire ripped across the convoy. Valentine saw heads appear at the walls of Bern Woods. The gate towers sprouted men as if someone had touched a wand to the platforms. He pulled out his PPD as a bullet smacked into the horse's flank. The wounded beast leapt sideways, knocking him to the ground even as it lurched, hind legs collapsing.

  Smoke began to pour out of the flare, as if in landing it had opened some underground reservoir of purple steam.

  The sound of shooting grew like the roar of an approaching wave. Machine guns added their deadly mechanical drum roll to the air-rending sound of gunfire. Panicked oxen bellowed and died. Other teams of horses ran from the explosions, throwing drivers from the runaway wagons.

  Valentine smelled his horse's blood even as he tried to shut out the high, whinnying screams. Ahn-Kha swung the barrel, and his gun cracked. The Grog didn't shoot the horse; he dropped a figure in the gate tower firing an assault rifle. Valentine saw a Jamaican fall to earth, dying in a pose eerily like a Muslim praying.

  The flare, after its brief fireworks, sputtered out.

  Valentine sent a bullet into his wounded horse's head, then took cover behind the body. Ahn-Kha rolled to his side.

  A hissing sound, and something exploded among the wagons. The blast threw a severed hand into the air, spinning it like a tossed daisy. Valentine squeezed off burst after burst into Murphy's men, emptying the drum on his gun. The turncoats were firing shotguns and lobbing grenades into the rear wagons; confused men got up to run, and died.

  Another hiss and another explosion among the wagons. Pieces of a team flew as their wagon reared up on its back wheels, falling to pieces even as it overturned. Valentine saw something like a stovepipe pointing out from the stone roof of the town's tallest building. A recoilless rifle? More men poured from the gates at both sides of the town.

  "Ahn-Kha!" he said, slapping his aiming friend on the shoulder. Valentine pointed. Heads appeared briefly over the barrel as the weapon was reloaded.

  Ahn-Kha slid a finger-length bullet into the receiver. An ear twitched on the Grog as he brought the gun up and sighted with a rose-colored eye. Sighting in the time it took to draw a breath, the gun snapped and shot. Valentine saw a hat, or perhaps part of a head, torn away by the bullet.

  The backblast of the recoilless flared in a gray cloud, and the shell exploded by Post's wagon. Old Handy Sixguns and the machine-gunners disappeared in the blast. Nothing but body parts remained. Valentine's marines were crawling out of the cross fire, or throwing away their weapons and sheltering among the stumps in the clearing.

  The precious quickwood was burning. Two wagons flamed, putting oily smoke into the colorless sky. Valentine clenched his teeth until his jaws screamed in agony, reloading and firing his gun with tears in his eyes. He saw a Quisling rider grasp Narcisse by the hair and jerk her from her saddle, ignoring the blows from the quirt fixed to her arm. Post gone, his Jamaicans cut to pieces. Nothing mattered now.

  "Away, David, away!" Ahn-Kha shouted, waving at the approaching troops.

  "The quickwood," Valentine said.

  "No choice! The smoke is blowing this way-it will cover us."

  A bullet hit the limp horse, its impact causing still-warm muscles to twitch. Horses dragging a wagon came around the shattered front of the column. A Jamaican lay in the bed of the wagon, working the reins from the shelter of the bed. Ahn-Kha dropped his gun. The Grog pulled Valentine to his feet-grabbing him by the collar like a disobedient child- and ran in pursuit of the wagon.

  Bullets zipped through the air all around: insects buzzing in their ears for a split second and then fleeing. Ahn-Kha caught the back of the wagon with one long arm as he hauled Valentine in tow with iron fin
gers. He swung up in an apish leap. A bullet caught the Grog at the apex of his jump. He dropped Valentine as he tumbled into the wagon. The wounding of his friend brought Valentine out of his mental maze.

  Valentine felt something pull at his sleeve. The bullet that cut through his clothing hit the back of the wagon with a splintering thwak. He locked eyes with Ahn-Kha as the Grog's ear flaps fell Ump. His friend toppled into the back of the wagon.

  He ran. He jumped into the wagon just as one of the team was cut down by gunfire. Ahn-Kha lay groaning in his native tongue, hand pressed against his buttock.

  "Sir! Sir!" the wounded Jamaican said, pushing a machine gun lying at the bottom of the wagon at Valentine with a bloody foot. "It's still got bullets."

  Valentine took up the weapon. He rested it on the side of the wagon and turned it against Murphy's turncoats still burning and killing among the other wagons. The chatter of the weapon attracted bullets from all directions. Valentine waited for the inevitable impact. He would die with his mission, with the men he'd misled. Another flare landed by the wagon, spewing more purple mist. Mortar shells dropped, seeking his position.

  Valentine heard hooves approach through the smoke, and turned the gun. Only a short length of bullets dangled from the belt.

  "David!" Valentine heard a familiar voice call. "Captain Valentine! Men, find Captain Valentine."

  Post came out of the purple haze, leading two horses. His clothes were in rags, and his eyes were bright in bruised sockets. Blood ran from a cut on his thigh. Another mortar shell exploded and the horses danced in terror, but Post dragged them on.

  'Take Ahn-Kha with the other horse. He's hurt. I'm staying with the men."

  "No use!" Post said, bringing the animals beside the wagon.

  "Can't-," Valentine began, but Ahn-Kha's bloody fingers wrapped themselves around the snakeskin bandolier and pulled him bodily out of the wagon.

  "My David, we go. I shall run. There's nothing else to do."