by EE Knight
“Time is fleeing,” Ahn-Kha said. “Perhaps we can bicker once we are on the waters of the Mississippi.”
Valentine was tempted to ask Duvalier if she’d stay. Of all of them, she could be relied on to press, but not extend her luck. She knew Missouri well, and could either make a fast break for the Mississippi, get to Saint Louis, or take the short route back to the Wolves in the hills to the south and then make her way back to Kentucky at leisure.
Provided her health held up. She’d been limping, and her stomach wasn’t keeping much down.
Then again, she didn’t know radio procedure, and there were few women in the Gray Baron’s command. Best to leave it to an experienced hand. But Valentine still wanted to give Stockard an out.
Valentine reached for a handful of nuts. His stomach was gurgling and suspiciously unhungry. “Nothing has to go down on paper about the circumstances of you rejoining Southern Command, Graf,” he said. “On the report you’ll be just another prisoner of the Grogs who was brought out with the Golden Ones.”
“My son thinks his father’s a hero,” Stockard said. “If I make it back to him, I’d like to do it being able to call myself that as well. I’ll stay. Leave me a bicycle?”
“Frat, scare him up some transport and fuel. Double- and triple-check it.”
“No, a bike’s fine,” Stockard said. “I was in the bike troops in the Guard, back in the day. I still do it for exercise. Motors get noticed by our Gray friends on both sides of the Missouri River.”
Ahn-Kha leaned over and whispered something in Stockard’s ear. His homely face took on a shy smile.
“I’ll stay as well. Two can travel more safely than one,” Frat said, trying various field jackets of the Baron’s troops. “I took a good look at your prisoner and heard a few words from him. Short of one of them showing up in person, I should be able to confuse the issue for those wandering into camp.” He pulled a slouch hat on low and stared into Valentine’s eyes. For just a second, he shimmered and Valentine saw the Baron’s eyes and Pancho Villa mustache.
“Neat trick,” Valentine said. “Teach me, sometime, when you get back.”
“I would, if I only knew how I did it,” Frat said.
By nightfall they were loading the trains with the riders. Supplies, weapons, and ammunition were distributed among the cars.
Valentine put the Baron in the first train. There were several grim, barred cars designed for transporting captives. Only one showed any sign of recent use, the rest were badly rusted. The Kurians were all too used to shuttling bodies around on rails in their aura-based economy, where humans served as currency.
It looked biblical, like something out of Exodus. The Grog elders organized their march so all the herders were on the outskirts, the craftspeople and food makers in the center, the very old, sick, pregnant, and very young on the train with their doctors and attendants, and the youths expending their energy running messages between the groupings.
Valentine wondered if Moses organized the Exodus with a headache and a mild case of cramps.
He suspected he picked up a nasty amoeba in the food or water. Both the Golden Ones and Gray Ones had good toilet habits—they dug shallow pits and buried, like cats—but their hand washing left much to be desired and the tufts of thicker hair at the knee and ankle joints would get befouled.
Had he been feeling better, he would have taken the scout glider up and tried the Missouri air. There was a fresh spring breeze the wide, nearly weightless wings could ride.
It was a fascinating device occupying its own flatbed on the command train. When the train was up to full speed, the glider could be launched into the wind at the end of a tether, rather like a kite, and rise and rise in altitude where a tiny ultra-lightweight electric motor could be turned on or off for extra power. The sailplane could easily scout for an hour or two then return to the train for recovery.
Valentine had done a good many hours while learning to fly with Pyp’s Flying Circus in the Southwest, where gliders were towed to an appropriate altitude by a larger plane so new pilots could be trained without risking a precious aircraft.
Well, it would be dangerous to fly at night, or, more accurately, land at night.
At last the Express pulled out, with Valentine giving himself a sponge bath in the caboose and grateful for the built-in toilet.
The company of Gray Ones, the new Headring Clan, whined for action like hounds waiting to be shipped. Valentine did not know if they enjoyed fighting or were eager to prove themselves to their new master, but as the Express pulled out they hooted and yowled out their eagerness for action.
Bee, always eager to be of use, ululated her excitement with the rest.
“Rest now. Eat now. Fight later,” Valentine told them as the train lurched into motion behind the armored diesels.
Everything depended on seizing control of the two strongpoints between the Baron’s monuments and the Mississippi. There was a third strongpoint at the terminus on the river, occupied jointly by the Grogs and the Iowa Guard.
The strategic plan reminded Valentine, far too closely for comfort, of an allied disaster from the Second World War.
Valentine had studied the Market Garden—called by some of the soldiers “Hell’s Highway”—operation at the War College. The plan, unfortunately, resembled his own in that everything depended on maintaining control of the rail line and seizing the strongpoints, rather than bridges, along the line.
The Allied Forces had managed to take the first fairly easily, had a bitter fight for the second, and never made it to the third, where the British Paratroopers lost eighty percent of their forces by the time their withdrawal was completed.
Valentine would have to do much the same thing, only without benefit of paratroops.
One predictable, but unplanned for, consequence of the Train March amused Valentine as mile after mile of train track twisted and burned behind his rear guard. With the Gray Baron’s army decapitated and divided, every tribal chief called on his cousins to hurry and raid into the rich Iowa estates before control of Northern Missouri could be reestablished.
Valentine would sit and listen on the Iowa Guard shortwave channel and the AM stations in the larger cities, sending out muster orders for emergency home-county defenses.
Valentine stopped the car twice to run assault debarkation drills, once with unloaded weapons and then again with bullets in their guns.
When he was satisfied with the performance, he let the Grogs have the fun of knocking some cans off sticks with their weapons on fully automatic.
“The Baron didn’t trust Groggies with full auto. Too much ammo for too few hits.”
“Are you always this cool and collected?” Pellwell asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Bullets flying, Grogs running everywhere, and you’re in the toilet shaving.”
“I thought I should make an appearance,” Valentine said.
Word passed around. Valentine heard two Wolves muttering to each other that he’d been so confident of victory he’d stepped into the bathroom so he could change his shirt and shave in order to tour the scene.
The second strongpoint was found abandoned. A halfhearted attempt to blow up the tracks had been attempted, but the railroad-working Grogs knew their business. An entire train car was devoted to railroad equipment, and they simply took rails and ties from a siding and transferred them to the main line.
They found a looted warehouse with a pair of fresh Grog cairns behind.
“Looks like word is spreading, my David,” Ahn-Kha said. “I think those are Missouri Valley clans.”
They found Grog Point defended, but not by Grogs. A hasty line of defenses was drawn up in a hummock between two hills that might charitably be called a pass, but it was hardly Thermopylae.
They backed the train out of sight and Valentine dropped out of the armed flatbed, field glasses in hand to take a closer look.
Valentine could make out red caps among the hastily constructed head
logs and machine gun positions.
He deployed his Grogs and set up the light artillery. He sent a screening force forward to probe, with instructions to fight, then return and report what kind of troops they faced. His real infantry strength he kept back with the train and guns.
Pellwell tried to convince him to wait and let her ratbits explore the lines—they could get an exact count of men and machine guns—but Valentine wanted to probe and attack before they could be reinforced. They were so close to the Mississippi they could practically smell it, and the flotilla was waiting downriver for him to radio that the town had been cleared.
Firing broke out all along the line of fortifications. Sustained, panicky firing.
His probe pulled back as though they’d touched an unexpected flame, without firing. No need to reveal positions to the wildly firing machine guns. A grenade detonated somewhere in the middle and Valentine saw a rabbit run for the hills.
High-pitched cheering broke out along the defensive line. They went up and over their fortifications, some calling the others forward, others waving them back. They had camouflage ponchos, so oversized they looked like caftans, pulled over black uniforms.
“They’re advancing?”
“Send the Grogs forward. Bring the train up for cannon support,” Valentine told Chieftain.
Chieftain was getting along like a house aflame with the Grog Warriors. He pushed and shoved, showed his blades to get the toughs to back down, and head-butted others to laugh off a mistake.
The main force of Grogs went forward and a few confused seconds of shooting broke out. The ponchos didn’t retreat, they ran. The armored train came forward and the cannons opened up on the fortifications. Explosions and black plumes rose from the machine gun positions.
They went forward cautiously. There were still a few sporadic shots from the head logs, but careful Gray One fire silenced the snipers.
They advanced into horror. They’d been fighting children, in neat, unblemished black school uniforms and red kepis. They lay in windrows, a fragile, fallen fence.
“Poor kids,” the Wolf communications tech said.
Chieftain took the hat off one, ran a gentle hand through a boy’s sun-white hair. “We just killed the local choir,” Chieftain said.
There were a few disarmingly sweet, freckled female faces among the dead.
“What the hell are those?”
“Now what was the point of that?”
“Who are they?” Pellwell asked.
“Youth Vanguard. Jesus.”
Two had survived their wounds. They were all nine- to fourteen-year-olds, the next generation out of the Ringwinners and Quislings in Iowa, proving their worth to the Kurian Order.
“Patch ’em up and take them along,” Valentine said, taking his youngest POWs, ever.
Grog Point was theirs.
Valentine learned from the wounded that a military school in southeastern Iowa had turned out, and been rushed to Grog Point to keep order. They were supposed to be joined by Illinois troops and some artillery coming across the river, but the Illinois men never showed up. The school had either been sacrificed uselessly with lies, in the hope that they’d hold long enough for men to come downriver, or been caught up in a Kurian Zone double cross between rival Iowa and Illinois factions.
It took all the sweetness out of seeing the rest of his charges arrive and start to board the river barges. Valentine spent the next thirty-six hours with a bilious taste in his mouth, working like a fury to get the population organized and into the boats.
They’d put together quite a river fleet. Three huge, multibarge tugs under Captain Mantilla protected by six armed craft, plus the firefighting tug rigged out with a few guns, to do double duty as a close-in armed boat and emergency tug, if the need arose. The flotilla was under overall command of Captain Coalfield, a veteran Mosquito Fleet boatman whom Mantilla tempted out of retirement with the prospect of the biggest riverine operation Southern Command had ever launched.
Valentine was astonished to see Gray Ones taking precedence over the Golden Ones in space in the barges, tentage, and bedding. They even ate and drank first.
“None understand the Golden Ones,” Ahn-Kha said. “We are peaceful looking—even our sports and games have none of the knockabout, violent energy of human and Gray Ones contests. We don’t roar out our accomplishments in battle. When the hot blood comes, it comes fast and hard and fades again, like a flash flood.”
Still, the Gray Ones weren’t behaving as he would have liked. Clearly, he’d gotten the outcasts, all but the most ambitious or the outcasts had stayed with Danger Close. He’d try the Baron again, in the hopes that he’d take charge of the lot.
The Baron smelled. He hadn’t shaved or washed himself.
“We’re getting on the boats, Baron,” Valentine said. “Nice easy trip on the water. You might avail yourself of it.
“A few days ago—was that all it was?—you told me you thought I had potential,” Valentine said. “I see the same in you. I could use a man like you in Kentucky.
“What is your real name, anyway?”
“Ricard Anthony Alido, but my father’s last name was Mairpault, of the Ithaca Mairpaults.”
“I take it the Mairpaults were important,” Valentine said.
“My father’s brother chaired the Council of Archons for North America. Church politics. I was an embarrassment, so they sent me to a military college in Wisconsin. Always wanted a title, the Maripaults were always dropping titles like trump cards in bridge. Bridge is very popular with the churchmen. They sip their white tea and play bridge and eat sandwiches made of cucumbers and bread that’s mostly air.”
“I could use a good officer for these Gray Ones. Pick any or all of those names, and swear under it. From then on out, you’re a new man. Like the Baptists pulling you out of a river.”
“I told you I don’t think too much of your definition of freedom. I was scratching-poor at the school and didn’t care for it.”
“Better than a POW camp in Arkansas.”
“You’d hand me over to Southern Command’s inquisitors? I’ve heard some funny things about you, too. Would your record survive that close a look?”
Valentine looked him in the eye. “No.” He reached into his pocket and took out a key, knelt and undid the leg irons, unthreaded the chain to the wrist restraints, then undid those.
Quick as one of Snake Arms’s serpents, he whipped the chain around Valentine’s throat. Valentine felt a hand fumbling for his holstered gun.
Valentine let him get it. The gun came out of the holster and the Baron released the chain around his throat and backpedaled.
“Now you’re—fuck!” the Baron said, fumbling with the plastic trigger lock Valentine had put on it. Quite an ordinary precaution before entering a prisoner’s cell with a firearm.
Valentine drove a solid chain-wrapped right into the Baron’s jaw, followed it with a roundhouse left. The gun fell, and Valentine kicked it back behind him.
“Can we stop this nonsense?” Valentine said, rubbing his chafed throat under his chin.
He quieted the soldiers calling from outside. “Stand down, we’re fine in here. Coffee!”
They shared a cup—coffee was almost always decent near the river where traders and smuggling boats could come and go at will.
“We’re boarding the barges. Next stop is Southern Command,” Valentine said. Technically, the next stop would be Saint Louis, but no point revealing too much. He grabbed a small rucksack from one of the men standing guard on the car.
As they walked along the ticking, waiting train, Valentine took an extra step away from the Baron and removed the trigger lock from his pistol.
“Kind of you, Valentine,” the Baron said. “I’d prefer the back of the head, if you’d oblige.”
Valentine said nothing, but nodded to the man on the scout-plane car.
“Won’t be the first ragged-ass general to wind up shot in a ditch. I’m in distinguished company.�
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“Not my style, Baron. We’re saying good-bye now, but not the way you think.”
He climbed up onto the flatbed with the glider. It sat on a little platform with a heavy spring. A line was attached just behind the landing wheel tucked into the bulbous canopy.
“You checked out on this thing?”
“I practically invented it,” the Baron said, testing the air with a wetted finger. “We used to screw around with these as cadets in the kettles of Wisconsin. Just tell the engineers that in this light wind we’ve got to be doing over forty, or I might end up in the treetops.”
Valentine tossed a gun belt containing one of the engineer’s .357 revolvers into the Baron’s lap and followed it with a box of shells. “There’s a survival kit and dried food and water under your seat.”
He gave a wave of the arm, and the engineer put the train in motion, taking it back to Missouri, or at least a siding where it would be derailed and have the driving wheels blown off.
Valentine watched the train pick up speed. The train had shrunk to the size of a dime held at arm’s length when he saw the winged dot rise perfectly. It altered course to better catch the light wind and rose.
He felt a little jealous.
After turning a few lazy circles, the glider turned and headed back for its launching platform. For a brief moment, Valentine feared the Baron would end his flight in a suicidal crash dive into the engine, but he simply swooped low over the train to land in the clear of the siding.
The glider came to rest in the crackling rush of grasses passing under its smooth, glossy belly.
Valentine hurried to the cockpit, but the Gray Baron was already climbing out
“You called my bluff, Valentine. Always had this weird feeling we were going to end up working together, from the first I laid eyes on you.”
He handed Valentine the gun belt. “I appreciate the gesture of letting me go, though I’m guessing you know I couldn’t go back to the KZ, and scratching a living in the sticks isn’t my style. Truth is, I love commanding those big brave bastards, and if there aren’t perks that go with the job already, I’ll earn some. How do I swear into this chicken run you call an army, anyway?”