by E. E. Knight
"My men .. . have pity . . . wounded . . . ain't. . ." He faded away.
The deacon checked his pulse. "Not dead yet, but soon," he decided. "God have mercy on you, Wagonmaster," he said, taking his Bible back from the relaxing fingers and mumbling a prayer.
Lawson gave a faint gurgle, and Valentine waited for the deacon to finish. When the deacon's hat was back on, Valentine picked up Lawson's pistol and handed it to Josh. "Souvenir for you, Josh." Valentine turned back to the preacher.
"Deacon, get me Waldron."
Mrs. Hendricks looked out over the slaughtered men and horses, shaking her head and patting down her hair, as the bodies began to be dragged away and lined up. Valentine didn't need his Wolf's nose to tell she smelled like gun-smoke.
"Wagonmaster," Valentine said. 'This may work to our advantage. They were supposed to send up a flare when they seized the camp. If we send it up, the General's men might come in. I expect they'll be careful about it, but they'll still get close enough to have a look. I think if we can hit them then with some of Waldron's one-shot wonders, we can shorten the odds."
Waldron joined Valentine and the deacon. The four hashed out a plan, and then gave it to the leaders to pass among the Eagles. They would fire the flare, and the gates would be opened. When the Twisted Cross, or the Troopers, or whatever walked or rode in, they would fire every one of Waldron's cannons on command. Valentine described the main targets: 'Tall humans, probably in body armor or at least heavy robes. They'll also have some serious hardware, battle rifles with curved magazines. Don't waste your cannon on the Troopers if they come in—just try to get the Reapers."
Mrs. Hendricks fired the flare herself, which arced up into the mist and bathed the camp in its red light, glowing as it descended from the heavens like the Star Wormwood.
"Remember, cheer as they approach the gate," Valentine said to the men, some standing and some hiding in the battle-wagons flanking the gate. Every cannon Waldron could load was clustered around the gate, and the wooden mine versions were hidden behind dead horses and in front of the wagon wall. They would explode in a hail of splinters and scrap metal. Valentine crouched in the cold waters of the spring, waiting.
He heard an engine approach, filling the night with the rattling, wheezy sound of a big diesel.
"What the hell?" one of the men on the wall said, peering into the mist.
"Cheer, yell your heads off!" Valentine called up at them.
"Would you look at that Goliath," the deacon said, crouching behind a dead horse. His cigar tip glowed above the cannon fuse.
"Let it in, let it in," Valentine called over the increasing noise of the engine. "The troops are coming in behind it." He half closed his eyes.
Quiet.
Centered.
Valentine pictured his consciousness as a large blue ball filling the horizon, and breathing deeply, he shrank it and shrank it, all the while inhaling and exhaling from a point at the bottom of his rib cage. He felt his heart slow, felt the whole world slow. The people around started to look like mannequins, dummies like he'd seen turning round and round in shop windows in Chicago. With his mind faint and open, he felt the presence of Reapers. A lot of them, terribly near. And coming closer, cold will-o'-wisps of death drifting toward him out of the fog.
Valentine's first view of the Twisted Cross, coming straight at him out of the midnight fog, froze him in place. A tracked vehicle, like a bulldozer with armored plate on its arms and front instead of a blade, towed a tanker-trailer that someone had torch-cut and welded into a mobile fortress. Crew-served machine guns pointed out of each side of the trailer and the windows and doors of the tractor were covered with slitted armored plating.
Behind them, in two columns, came the Reapers of the Twisted Cross. More like insects than men, they wore carapaces of heavy body armor, topped by visor-covered helmets that hung down at the sides and back like old samurai versions. The battle-Reapers held assault weapons at the ready and bulb-headed tubes in a harness on their backs.
The Eagle men cheered, some of them almost hysterically, others tentatively. A few inched away, ready to run for cover at the first shot.
Valentine crawled and flattened himself into the depression cut by the stream of water as the battle-rig rolled overhead, its bulk straddling the little spring with ease.
C'mon, Waldron. Now!
A whistle trilled in the night, to immediate effect. The swivel guns began to go off in such quick succession that it sounded like one continuous roar; an avalanche of sound and air pressure washed over Valentine. From beneath the still-moving trailer, he saw armored figures knocked down, some never to rise again. Others seemed not to even feel the blasts, and they turned to fill the night with muzzle flashes like yellow flowers blossoming.
Valentine, deafened by swivel-gun blasts and the gunfire, crawled out from beneath the trailer.
A Reaper ran toward the back of the truck, trying to take cover from the cross fire streaming down from the battle-wagons.
He rose to his feet with his gun at his shoulder. It pulled up and stared, perhaps surprised by his sudden appearance. It brought up its gun but caught a chattering blast from Valentine's PPD through its visor and into its face.
He heard the machine guns in the armored trailer firing, stitching the side of the battle-wagons to either side. Men toppled and dived for cover.
Valentine turned. He took two steps toward the rear of the sawed-off tanker and leapt, vaulting into the air as if lifted by an invisible pole over the ten-foot moving wall. The Cat landed on a walkway that ran along the spine of the converted tanker. The top hatch was round like a manhole, locked tight. He found a fan mounting on one of the sloping sides, the exterior closed by wire designed to keep grenades out.
Quisling mechanics take no pride in their work. Quick and cheap does it every time.
He squatted next to it, ignoring bullets whistling all around. Balancing on the balls of his feet, he coiled his body, grabbed, strained, and tore the thin grating free. Then he kicked the plastic blades out of the way.
He tucked the gun and dropped inside.
Only one had time to even look in astonishment at the intruder who had appeared in the their midst as if conjured out of the fog before Valentine swept the forward half of the gun bay with a burst from the submachine gun. The PPD roared in the confined space of the platform, sending men sprawling.
Valentine sensed movement behind—ducked as a pistol shot ricocheted off the armored wall where his head had been. He put a burst up into the soldier, lifting the man clear from the deck. He squeezed a second blast into the other rear gunner as the Twisted Cross man struggled to put a new magazine in his rifle.
Eight dead or dying men lay inside the back of the truck. Valentine moved forward to the crew-served weapons, shooting one crawling soldier in the side of the head as he did so. The semi was turning, bringing its deadly sides to bear on the main gate, the drivers in the cab still unaware of the destruction wreaked in the rear.
He pulled the machine gun facing the wall of wagons out of its mount and looked in the box magazine at its side, half-empty of shells. He decided it was enough and climbed up to the firing position at the front of the old tanker, using a step that gave him a clear view out over the top of the tracked dozer. The driver and his companion traded shots with the Eagles on the wall from within their reinforced cockpit. Nothing but canvas and wire mesh stood between him and the two men in the cab. He shoved the gun tight into his shoulder and pressed the trigger, snarling down at the unsuspecting Troopers. The muzzle flash blinded him. When he lifted his finger and could see again, both men lay dead in the bullet-riddled cab.
He went to the other machine-gun slit in the tanker wall. It was a well-designed weapons bay: a slit cut in the armored side of the trailer, with the gun mounted on a tripod behind a second bulletproof shield. Through the slit, he could see a triangle of Reapers. They had made it past the gate, firing all around as bullets hit their body armor. They seemed invulne
rable. A grenade exploded amidst the three, causing one to drop to its knees. It righted itself and continued firing.
Valentine sighted the weapon and loosed a long burst, the tripod easing his aim. The weapon hardly shook as the bullets poured out of it, cartridge casings sounding in the gun's deafening chatter like faint bells as they tumbled to fall through the holes in the wire grid deck, where they wouldn't be tripped on before they could be collected from the belly of the tanker.
The first Reaper went down, broken in half by the machine gun. Another's head vanished when it turned to look at the first, and the grenade-wounded third tried to crawl away after he knocked it over with a blast. Valentine must have put a hundred rounds into it—in short bursts that alternated with mindless obscenities—before it finally lay still.
Get a hold of yourself. Use your brain as well as this gun.
Fighting the madness still heating his blood, Valentine dropped two more Twisted Cross off the wall. Another team vaulted into one of the battle-wagons. One removed the head of the defender in the wagon with a single hand-thrust up and under the Eagle's chin; its companion fired a weapon that looked like a plunger with a football glued to the end of it. The warhead took off in a whoosh of rocket-sparks and exploded under a battle-wagon, tossing men and debris into me air.
Valentine emptied the weapon into that pair, knocking one—its midsection torn to a pulp of black goo—into the bullet-riddled wall and blowing the other off the parapet. It fled, swinging over the wagons and into the trench minus an arm and a leg.
Working as though possessed, he lifted a new ammunition belt from the locker at the base of the weapon and opened the feeder at the top. As he placed the first round in the gun, a Twisted Cross rushed out of the darkness. In two seconds, it covered the distance to the truck.
When Valentine saw it leap, he drew his sword, and by the time it ripped through the top hatch, he had the blade held ready.
It came through headfirst.
His first slash removed the thing's arm at the elbow; it just dodged his backswing designed to take off its head. Had it immediately dropped in clawing fury on Valentine, it might have ended the fight there, but whoever was animating the Reaper decided to use its gun.
It dropped and spun to land on its feet; as it fell, it brought up the Kalashnikov, giving Valentine the instant he needed to roll forward under the burst of bullets. He opened its stomach just beneath its vest, where the groin-guard joined the armor above, then used the return thrust and skewered it under the armpit.
It turned, plucking the sword out of Valentine's hand like a wounded bull taking off with a banderilla. It staggered a step away as Valentine reached for his parang, drawing the machete-like knife and striking the back of its neck with one fluid motion. The body took one more step with its spinal cord severed before crashing to the deck, smearing a tarry black substance on the wire flooring as it rolled and flopped.
The men at the walls and figures outside the gate were still exchanging shots. Valentine heard a great deal of fire on the hillside at the north end of camp, not the chatter of the Kalashnikovs but the pop-pop-pop of aimed rifle fire. An occasional heavier whump sounded as one of the swivel guns discharged, joined by sharper explosions Valentine knew now to be rocket-propelled grenades.
Feeling thick-limbed and dull-eared, he retrieved his PPD and replaced the drum. Shaking himself back to coherence, back sore from adrenaline-burn, he readied the mounted machine gun and trained it on the gap at the gate, but even the muzzle flashes of the Twisted Cross guns had ceased. The gunfire around the camp faded into a moaning chorus of the wounded calling for help or screaming out their pain.
There was nothing left to kill.
Valentine sagged against the butt of the gun, aware of nothing but the smells of cordite and hot metal; he waited for someone else to make the decisions.
As the Twisted Cross Reapers withdrew, the barrage started, a fall of mortar shells blasting man, animal, and wagon into pieces. Valentine had never experienced anything like it. Though they fell all around the wagons, each explosion seemed aimed at him.
Thirty minutes later, it stopped. Then the cleanup began.
"If this is victory, I'd hate to see a defeat." The outrider leader, Danvers, looked across the smoldering ruin of the campsite as dawn burned away the fog. Valentine had joined him in the survey, asking that he might also employ the outriders in looking for a "pile of four" message from Duvalier.
The Eagle's Wings Brand dead lay in a long row, blanket-covered bodies with feet, at least in the cases where the deceased had both legs, protruding from beneath the earth-toned shrouds. Among them was the Camp Engineer Waldron, killed by a Reaper while reloading a swivel gun.
As they waited for the dawn and organized what was left of the defense, Danvers told Valentine about his outriders' fortunes on the hill above the north wall. During the Twisted Cross retreat, they discovered insectoid Grogs they called "Sandbugs" scattered on the hill above the camp.
"Sandbugs we can handle. They're out of the Dakotas— they live mostly in the unoccupied prairie and Badlands area," Danvers explained. "They look kind of like big sow bugs—they grab you in their front choppers and stick a needle with some kind of venom into you. If you're lucky, it kills you; if you're not, you get paralyzed. Either way, they throw you in a hole with a bunch of their eggs."
"Weaknesses?" Valentine asked mechanically, watching a widely spaced line of men on horses checking the grounds around the camp.
"They're the dumbest damn things, they don't organize at all, just scuttle in to the attack whenever they spot motion. Of course, if they had made it to the walls, there would have been trouble, they can dig like hell and they would have just hit the trench and gone right into the sand, come up in camp. That wouldn't have been pretty. What's left of my men are trying to hunt them down. They'll be hiding from the sun now that it's coming up. All we need are Sandbug nests on top of everything else."
Valentine's business was with the Twisted Cross, not new Grog physiognomy. He hadn't seen Duvalier, or discovered any message from her.
He found the deacon overseeing the care of the wounded and preparations for interment of the dead.
"I can't find Mrs. Hendricks, Deacon, so I thought I'd say good-bye to you, and ask you to tell her I'm on my way."
"Hold on now, son. You need a break as much as everyone else. Mrs. Hendricks is riding with the outriders. Let them see what those people have found out. No point in you wandering off half-cocked. Besides, we still haven't found sign of your friend. Don't you at least want to see her given a decent burial?"
"I think she's alive, Deacon."
"Now look, here comes the Wagonmaster now. Talk it over with her."
Mrs. Hendricks rode in, bearing her exhaustion and loss with the same mild manner she used to order her camp. A man ran up to help her off her horse.
"Thanks, Brent," she said. Valentine and a few others approached her, anxious for news.
"Yes, they're gone—their camp is empty," she announced. "And no, we haven't found any of the missing people yet, except for Peter and Judith Reilly. They're down amongst the trees, shot. That should take care of most of your questions."
The crowd mostly turned away, but Mrs. Hendricks chose to speak to Valentine first. "No sign of Alice, young man. But no body, either."
"Wagonmaster, I don't think you have to worry about the Twisted Cross for the immediate future. They'll need time to regroup after this. I'd like to move on. Maybe I can follow them back to their hole. Seems like they're retreating."
"We've survived before; we will again. You'll always be welcome among our teams, David. I saw you with that mobile bunker," she said, looking at the battered tanker. It had been emptied of weapons; the automatic guns were now in the capable hands of the Eagles. "I didn't grow up in this area—I was born into the Freehold out in the Wind River in western Wyoming. I was a dispatch runner at one time, before I met my husband while he was scouting for the Eagle
Brand cattle drive. I know the Hunter's Arts when I see them. Back in those days, I used to use my ears and nose just as much as my eyes. I'm sure you know what I mean."
She turned to her son. "Josh, we'll need a good saddle horse and rig for our friend here. He has to be riding on. Put a couple of bags of feed for the horse and something to keep him going on the saddle, would you?"
"Yes, ma'am," Josh said briskly, despite the pain and fatigue in his eyes. The boy had changed from opinionated adolescent to dutiful outrider in a single night.
Danvers added, "It might take a while. The horses that had bolted during the mortar barrage are still being rounded up."
She smiled at her son's back. "I think they pulled out south." Her rosy features turned fierce. "We really gave them something to choke on. Oh, there was a pair of burned trucks, and one heavy tow-rig that looked like it plain blew up. Could be your Alice got in their camp when they were busy with us. Hope she didn't go up with their powder."
"She said she'd leave word if she could," Valentine said. "Did you see any markers, any piles of stones or wood?"
"No, but then the camp was a mess. She sure can cause a lot of trouble when she sets her mind."
"You could say that," Valentine agreed. "And now I need to find her."
"You've been up all night, son. Crossing the Dunes with Lord-knows-what still out there bleeding and angry isn't a job for someone who's half-asleep. You need two hot meals and some sleep in between before I let you walk out my gate."
He opened his mouth, but shut it again when Mrs. Hendricks planted hands on her hips. She jerked her chin down in a nod, putting the same authority in the gesture as a Chalmers tapping her gavel.
Valentine returned to the house-wagon, grateful to give in to the wisdom of her words. Jocelyn Hendricks sat on the wooden steps, a cup of something steaming in her hands that smelled faintly of whiskey.
"I put breakfast in there for you," she said. There were circles under her eyes. "There's so many dead. It felt... strange to make coffee and food with bodies laying in rows. I feel like everything should stop for a while, but the cows still needed to be milked."