by E. E. Knight
Valentine started up the slope, Stafford's hot, sticky blood running down his back. Nothing mattered but getting the sergeant to the top of that hill. Valentine forgot the Grogs, the other Wolves still hurrying beside him, covering him as best they could. The flaming agony in his legs, the thick, coppery-tasting burn in his chest—they were the here and now, all else faded into the noise and confusion of the running fight. He felt Stafford go limp.... Please God let it be unconsciousness.
"Get. . . to . . . the . . . wagon," Valentine gasped. The Wolves would be up the hill already, if they would only quit covering him and Stafford.
One worked the lever of his rifle. "After you, sir," he said, kneeling to shoot back down the hill. Valentine heard an inhuman scream of pain.
He found the strength and breath to keep moving.
"Lieutenant, get down!" Sergeant Petrie called from somewhere above.
Valentine sank to his knees, dropping one arm from Stafford to hold himself up.
A volley crashed out from the breastworks. A second ragged one followed as the Wolves worked the actions on their rifles.
"Now, sir!" Petrie called out. A tiny red dot, the fuse on a grenade, flew overhead.
The seconds of respite worked wonders on his legs. He struggled to his feet, still burdened by Stafford, and reached the breastworks at a run. Wolves squeezed off shots from a twenty-yard stretch of the breastworks.
"The rear guard should be off this hill already, Petrie," Valentine admonished his savior. "But I'm damn glad to see you."
"The feeling is mutual, sir. Shall I light the fuses?" the sergeant asked.
"Be my guest."
The second wagon, like the first, was lined up in the ruts leading down the hill. Only this one was filled with tinder, ammunition, black powder, and grenades, and manned by four smiley-face scarecrows pulled from the hill. Petrie nodded to a pair of Wolves who kicked out the rocks bracing up the wheels, and as the wagon began to roll, Petrie lit a spaghetti tangle of black fuse cord dangling off the end. Six individual threads hissed as they burned down toward the explosives.
The cart picked up speed.
"Let's not stay for the fireworks. Gavin, Richards, help Sergeant Stafford. Put him in that stretcher. I've got another man hit in the arm. Where's Holbrooke?"
"He didn't make it," one of the volunteers said. "He fell on the trail."
Valentine pushed Holbrooke, a newly invoked Wolf with the makings of a good officer, out of his mind. "Let's catch up to the others."
The Wolves fell back as explosions rumbled from the base of the hill. The small-arms ammunition and grenades cooked off, as well, adding their own notes to the destructive symphony.
The escape route Smoke scouted wound through the deep ravine on the south side of Little Timber Hill. Valentine and his weary men moved as quickly as they could along the crown of the hill to the Wolf posted at the point in the breastworks where the line of retreat began.
"Lieutenant Valentine," said the soldier, tears of relief in his eyes, "I'm to get you caught up with the rear of the column. That Cat sure knows her stuff, sir. We found two dead Grogs at the break in the ravine. Two others farther up, too. Did it without firing a shot."
With four men on Stafford's stretcher, they caught up to the rear guard in a matter of minutes. The Cat lingered at the back of the column, waiting for them.
"And they say we have nine lives," she said, eyes sparkling in the darkness. She twitched and turned at tiny sounds, pure nervous energy beneath her freckled skin. Her face was coated with black greasepaint, and she had turned her overcoat inside out to reveal a black shell on the reverse side. "Good to see you made it, Lieutenant. That was some stunt."
"Thank you, thank you for finding us a bolt-hole, that is. From everyone in Foxtrot Company." Valentine favored her with a little bow. "If there's anything the Wolves can do—"
"Sure. I'll take a carbine like the one I saw you with and a scattergun. A revolver would come in handy, too."
"Of course. Tomorrow morning you can have your pick."
"No, sir—now, if you don't mind. I'm going back to the hill."
Valentine stopped in his tracks, causing the Wolf behind to plow into him. Other men swore as the file sorted itself out. "What's that?" he asked, stepping aside and gesturing to the Wolf to keep moving.
"Look, Lieutenant, someone should keep the campfires going there. Fire an occasional shot at the Grogs. Tie up the stock so the lifesign fools them—at a distance, anyway.
"We already used some wounded Grogs for that," Hart cut in.
She flashed a smile before turning back to Valentine. "Besides, I think those Reapers we spoke of are going to hit your camp sometime tonight. I want another look at them."
Valentine was startled into an unguarded comment: "You're crazy."
"Mmmm. I'm not trying to take heads. Just a look and a listen. I'm pretty slippery; they won't get their tongues into me. If I stay back there, it improves your chances of getting away about a hundred percent. When I do leave, I'll leave noisy. I'll try to lure the Grogs down toward Fort Smith."
"It's your aura. Take whatever you want with my gratitude."
She grabbed weapons from the astonished Wolves. She moved lightly, making no more sound on the forest floor than a breath of wind. "Thanks. Maybe we'll meet again, Lieutenant," she said, throwing her new carbine over one shoulder and cradling a shotgun.
"Hope so. Let me know what you find out. You can get in touch with me through the Miskatonic. I drop in there whenever I can."
"Those ghouls? They always want me to bring in Reaper blood bladders. Fresh ones. Like I walk around with ajar of formaldehyde."
"I've got friends there." He offered his hand, and the woman took it.
"You don't look like an egghead, Valentine. Until a better day."
"Better days," he agreed.
She disappeared into the darkness as quietly as she came, and Valentine was left with a grease-stained hand.
They buried Stafford at dawn the next day.
Foxtrot Company laid him to rest on a forested ridge overlooking a little ruined roadside town from the Old World.
The sound of the occasional shot from Little Timber Hill faded once they put the first ridge between themselves and the Grogs. With a couple of miles between him and the hill, Valentine relaxed into his after-action jitters, sticking his hands in his side pockets to keep them still. The news that Stafford had died barely registered through the worry and fatigue; he had been half expecting it. When he was told that Poulos, the handsome new bridegroom from his platoon, had succumbed to shrapnel wounds from the Grog mortars, he felt more of a shock. Poulos had been bleeding a little, but insisted on walking one of the litter horses instead of riding.
They paused to rest, eat, and bury the dead. Rain turned the dirt into wet lead for the diggers and as the little clusters of miserable people stood over the freshly covered mounds, saying the final good-byes of the graveside.
Good men and mediocre men, veterans and youths—all in all, Foxtrot Company had lost twenty-two Wolves, without counting Lieutenant Caltagirone and his short platoon. Adding in the wounded brought the casualty rate up and over 70 percent. A disaster. And he'd been in command.
Chapter Three
Fort Smith on the Arkansas River, March: hell on the border reads the sign hung just beneath the foot-tall stencils of the post's official marker. The slogan goes back to Fort Smith's days as a station at the edge of the Indian Territory, when prisoners brought in from the Nations waited in a dank series of cells for their turn before the Honorable Judge Parker, U. S. Grant's "hanging judge."
Now the buildings around the Reynolds Bell Tower—the bell still serves as the post's alarm system; it last rang in the fall of '66 during an air raid by harpies—still see their share of prisoners. Runaways from the Gulag, deserters, captured Quislings, and troublemakers from the western half of the Free Territory are brought here to be interrogated, and either sent downriver into the Free Territ
ory or brought up before a military court.
Fort Smith is the responsibility of the Guards, the uniformed defenders of the Free Territory. It marks the end of the commercial line on the Arkansas River and four eastern roads. There is a civilian presence supporting the soldiery and schools and a hospital to accommodate them. It is a hard-duty station. Only the posts south of St. Louis on the Free Territory's border see more alerts and action. Hardly a month goes by without the departure of a regiment or two of Guard infantry with their supports to cover some portion of the border against a real or threatened attack out of the Kurian Zone. Lesser patrols depart and return at reports of everything from Reapers to horse thieves, downed telephone wires and hayloft arsonists.
The graveyard south of Belle Point is filled with the Guards who came back in the morgue wagons.
Duty at Fort Smith is not without its diversions. Traveling performers entertain at the Best Center—singing groups and acting companies inevitably called the "Worst Enters" by the sarcastic soldiers. The women at Miss Laura's, the most opulent of Fort Smith's brothels, provide assorted horizontal refreshments, but unlike the free Best Center, it takes a week's pay to enjoy a few hours of diversion. The local beer, Smith-Knoble, is well thought of throughout the Territory, and entrepreneurs who don't mind the occasional sound of artillery fire operate restaurants and pubs.
Hunters in from the KZ stick to a few boarding houses and pubs that welcome their kind. Neither civilians nor Guards, they are nominally subordinated to the Officer Commanding Fort Smith while within the broad boundaries of the post. But something about the Hunters, even in civilian dress, makes the civilians wary and Guard hackles rise. Perhaps it is the intense stares or the too-quick-for-the-eye flinches at unexpected movement or the tribal clannishness that sets them apart. But when word comes that a Reaper is on the border, Hell on the Border is glad to have them there.
* * *
The orders in Valentine's dispatch pouch that read "Survivors leave ending 9 MAY 2067" amounted to an epitaph to Foxtrot Company.
It meant the Second Wolf Regiment considered the company destroyed as a fighting force; even those still unwounded after Little Timber would be distributed to other units. If they decided to rebuild the company, he'd get a second set of orders soon enough. As the senior unwounded officer, he might even be selected for command. If so, he'd try to get a few of the veteran NCOs, perhaps arguing that "third time's the charm" for ill-fated Foxtrot, now decimated twice in three years.
After getting the flimsy, Valentine decided to spend his leave in Fort Smith. It would be easy for orders and mail to find him there; he could visit the library; perhaps he'd even be able to spend a few days fishing in the river or one of the lakes around the post if he could obtain a skiff, rod, and reel. He needed quiet and solitude to help the memories of Little Timber settle.
He'd thought about spending his leave in Weening. Molly had invited him to visit in her letter, but she was no doubt enmeshed in a celebration of her engagement or wedding plans—he'd seen in the spring issue of the Service Bulletin that her swain had been promoted. Molly didn't need Valentine hanging around like the proverbial skeleton at the feast. Her beau might even consider it an insult.
The part of him that wanted to get away was strong enough that he considered fleeing to Hal Steiner's enclave in the Arkansas bayou country. Frat had written that Steiner's unusual community of man and Grog had thrived since he'd first visited it years ago. But Steiner's independent land wasn't part of Southern Command's communication system. He'd have to journey to the nearest post to check for orders.
So he settled on Fort Smith. Besides, he had another report to make. This time he'd do it in person.
The afternoon he arrived he first went to the communications office on the old university grounds. There he reported his presence in person to the duty officer, and by phone to Second Wolf Regiment Headquarters. With that done, he drew a portion of his accumulated pay and was a free Wolf.
He asked about the town at the civilian liaison officer's station, but the sergeant behind the open, circular desk spoke with such enthusiasm about the food and beds at a particular boarding house that Valentine decided he was getting a kickback. He just picked up a mimeographed map and walked toward town.
Blue-steel storm clouds rolled in the distance, so he decided to look around town while the weather held. There were Guards in their charcoal-gray uniforms everywhere. Those on duty moved about under camouflage ponchos, rifles slung and helmets bumping from their hooks on their belts. As he got farther away from the fort, he met more off-duty soldiers, undershirts white in the spring overcast, thumbs hooked in their suspenders, hats pushed back to reveal close-cropped hair. The men and women of the Guards clustered about the pubs and markets in groups, laughing and talking with animated energy. Valentine with his dirty buckskins, mud-crusted ponytail, and meager possessions rolled in his hammock felt like a country hare wandering amongst hyperactive city squirrels.
Constant war had not been kind to Fort Smith. Every other lot was a reclaimed "rubble garden" with neat shelves of ruined masonry supporting wildflowers and surrounded by bushes. A few old homes were still standing in a section of town the map called the Grove. One of them, Donna's Den, was listed on the map as a boarding house. He'd heard the name from one of the Foxtrot Wolves. After getting his bearings off the Immaculate Conception Church, he found it.
Donna's Den was a white two-story house with an antique iron railing running around the roof. There was a chicken run and a garden in back. The front had a flower garden, with a pair of wooden sofas and a lounge chair sitting among the blossoms. The outdoor furniture supported domestic animals. Cats snoozed, and a dog twitched an ear as he passed. He smelled pies baking.
His knock on the screen door summoned a shirtless boy who thundered down the stairs. The boy had modified a laden tool belt with shoulder straps so it would go around his tiny waist. "Lieutenant Valentine, Second Regiment, Foxtrot Company," the boy said, looking at Valentine's collar tabs and sewn-in nameplate. "But the tunic is cut Zulu Company style, Lieutenant, sir. What's the story?" The boy sounded bored.
"David is fine, to a veteran like you." That got a brief smile out of him. "Do I speak to you about a room?"
"Mom!" the boy bellowed over his shoulder before vanishing back upstairs. "One of Dad's kind."
Donna Walbrook had flour in her hair and on her overalls. Valentine's nose picked up the scent of strawberries. She wiped her hands on a towel as she came to the door, showing more enthusiasm for Valentine's presence than the boy had.
"Brian has no manners," she apologized. She had a nice, though practiced, smile and a good deal of ragged beauty. "He's got his teeth into building armoires. Can I offer you a room?"
"Until the second week of May, if it's not inconvenient."
"No such thing for a boy in buckskin. Come into the parlor—just leave your bundle at the foot of the stairs."
It turned out the parlor had a small shrine to Hank Walbrook under a framed commendation letter. Valentine looked over a photograph; it showed a Wolf with an old United States Army beret set at a jaunty angle on his head. Walbrook's belt and parang lay in a case, a few rifles— Valentine noted that they smelled of gun oil and appeared well cared for—hung over the fireplace. She poured Valentine water out of a pitcher and presented him wim a glass.
"Your husband?" he asked, feeling he already knew all the answers.
"Yes. A sergeant, First Regiment. Captain Hollis was his commanding officer, but I understand he's retired."
Valentine had never heard of him.
"My husband was killed in February of '55."
"I'm sorry."
She saw him glance upstairs as he did the math. "Brian isn't from Hank, but he thinks he is. I'll explain it to him when he's old enough to work it out. We have two other Wolves staying at the moment, convalescent leave," she added, putting the smile back on. "I'm sure you'll be eager to meet them."
"I would, Mrs. Walbrook."
"First rule of this house is to call me Donna."
She went through the other rules. They were brief and clear, militarily precise, and covered visitors, mealtimes, the gun locker, and the necessity for stoking the boiler if there was to be enough hot water. After negotiation involving Valentine reducing some of her cordwood to kindling, they settled on twelve dollars Southern Command script a day for his room and two meals. If he did his own bedding and laundry. Lunch he could scrounge, buy, or have for free if he cared to walk all the way to the Guard canteen.
"Any questions? I've been here fifteen years. There's nothing about the town I don't know."
Valentine wondered how to phrase his request. She wasn't officially part of Southern Command, but—
"Out with it, young man. I've heard it all." She covered her ample deralletage with a hand. "You got a case of something you don't want down in your Q file? I won't scream and faint." Her eyes sparkled with interest.
"There's supposed to be a Command Intelligence Division office about somewhere. I've seen bulletins issued from them, and the Western Border ones are marked 'Fort Smith.' But I didn't see it on the guide at the Fort, or the town map." He held out his map. "You wouldn't know where it is?"
She looked disappointed. "It's hardly a secret. They just don't have enough people to staff an information desk for every Tom, Dick, and Jane off the riverboat who saw a strange footprint."
"I need to file a report, in person." He'd tried through channels once, and nothing came of it. "It's more than a footprint."
"They're in the old museum building. Three stories, red brick, curved windows at the top. There's still a nice little one-man museum on the first floor. Schoolkids and recruits spend some time there for lectures. CID has the rest. You go in through the museum."