Turbulent Waters’ gator tail went still. “It’s that bad? It can’t be that bad.” Then his eyes brightened. “You’re the General, General Enkidu. You’re going to have to figure out a way to exploit their weakness.”
I looked around the room. Thunder nodded, also thinking we were doomed unless I coughed up a miracle hairball. The old lizard was missing half a ribcage and a bunch of his armored skin, and the healers were stuck sewing in random Gal parts for him to use and reshape into his normal tubby lizard self. Turbulent Waters was down an eye and an ear, and wobbled enough for me to wonder if he took a bullet through the eye socket as well. Montana Winter was recovering from burns from incendiary grenades. When he wasn’t charred, he was the most impressive Hunter in the Hunter Empire by looks, with his huge white furred otter combat form with the black death’s head emblazoned on his chest fur. Quiet Creeper was down to zero of his original limbs…or tail. If I remembered correctly, my chief of staff was on his third tail. Or his fourth. We all agreed with Turbulent Waters’ assessment.
I padded the width of the barn and back, the claws of my pony-sized beast form cutting holes in the dirt floor underneath me. “I’m not even sure we have the élan for a major sortie.” I paused and turned away. “I’ll give this some thought,” I said, and left the barn.
I climbed up on top of the Golfmore’s sorry excuse for a clubhouse, the building nothing more than a double-wide with pretensions. The remains of the Hunter Empire lay below me, sprawling out across the golf course. Or out on the front lines, such as they were. A bull rush by the enemy, if they had the nerve, would finish this in less than an hour. The Hunters would lose, but Turbulent Waters was correct. The enemy couldn’t and wouldn’t pay the cost necessary for a decisive victory.
I watched Kenzie, one of my Gals, pad over to a sand trap near the 18th green, scoop and then poop. We had scattered the golfers when we arrived, and they left nineteen cars and trucks in the parking lot. Enough for perhaps a tenth of my people. The golf carts were no use. The farm across the road, despite its white clapboard siding and inappropriate mansard roof, housed several days of food. Dairy cows. Next door was a driving range and a four wheel drive contraption to pick up the golf balls. Useless.
Was I looking at everything wrong? My mind kept turning to physical tricks, such as rigging explosives to golf carts and rolling them toward the enemy. Silly things that would make no difference. The Law made me worry mostly about supplies, logistics, and combatant numbers.
Only…
Only the Hunters’ biggest limitation was on how we fought. I bent this restriction as best I could, whenever I could, but the Gals only obeyed the Hunter who owned them. They only fought at the side of their Hunter, or by themselves, under their owner’s orders. Ownership was like breathing.
How long, though, could we hold our breath?
“We’re going to use their weakness against them,” I said, back in the infirmary. The stench of blood and rot and death was overwhelming. “We’re going to push out and force out their lines. Either they’ll offer us up combat and we’ll defeat them, or they’ll fall back and we’ll escape over the Mississippi.”
“General? They’ll just concentrate their forces on one or two points on our line, break through, and take us from inside our lager,” Montana Winter said.
I nodded. “Normally, you would be correct. But I have a plan. You won’t like it, as it goes against everything the Hunter Empire stands for, but we won’t need to go against our Hunter instincts for long. Only long enough to find a weak target along the enemy line, destroy it, and break out of this mess.”
I waited until they nerved themselves up to ask me what I planned.
When they did, I told them.
---
“Now, now! Move, move!” I found the shouting invigorating and exhilarating. Most of the time, if I believed in my heart I was correct, and I gave an order, the Law made my people obey and I didn’t need to shout. Now, I wasn’t just looking merely for my orders to be obeyed, I was looking for speed.
We ran across the golf course, Montana Winter and me, as if Hell nipped at our heels. With us were Charn, Ears, Libbet, Frog, Roxanne and Narnine, the six most powerful, skilled and healthy full-Monster Gals in all the Hunter Empire. Under Montana Winter and my command.
Yah, my Hunters had growled. We nearly got ourselves killed by waiting too long to implement my new strategy as we argued it out. Even my own cheating heart argued against my plan.
Hunter Gals belonged to their Hunter. Nobody else could legally order them around. And my flying squad wasn’t the only temporary redivision of the Gals. My strategy wouldn’t work unless we set up a better division of firearms strength, and Quiet Creeper and my arm-possessing Gals were by far the best. It hurt to break up our packs, but Responsibility prevailed.
“Zone five, they’re hitting zone five,” Thunder said in the walkie. The damned thing was strapped around my neck, and I kept spares ready, carried by Captain Calgary’s men. Captain Calgary’s men were the best in the Hunter Empire, and we were all attempting to duplicate his tricks. He didn’t use them as fighters but as auxiliaries, and they were full pack members, what he termed his Guys. Uh huh, male Transforms, and well trained and loyal, deep within the Law. I wasn’t sure I appreciated them – they were well above the human norm in intelligence, but their emotions seemed shuttered and scraped down to the minimum. Not a one of them knew how to laugh, and they possessed dead eyes that seemed to see right through you.
They followed us on stolen motorcycles, chunks of manicured fairway flying in the air behind them.
I didn’t respond to Thunder’s comment; I couldn’t, unable to do something as dexterous as hitting the send button on a walkie in my beast form. Montana Winter and I sprinted as only mature Hunters can sprint, and we arrived just as Kali, the Commander and the as yet unnamed yearling Arm we all hated finished organizing TB’s slaves and mercs into an impromptu squad. They intended to break our advance by driving a wedge between Red Lake and Mankato’s assigned sectors. Love those interior lines. It took the always-deluded Arms longer to get where they were going than Montana Winter and me. The enemy had already hit the two junior officers who held the line, under Captain Calgary’s command, twice in the last five hours.
Five hours of victory after victory for us.
I would have to honor Thunder somehow for this, not with a formal promotion (because I couldn’t stand the ornery lizard) but with a higher Responsibility, perhaps also making him our Captain of Research, a much needed post. Thunder was the one who found a way to reach the other senior officers and cut through their Law-based resistance.
“It’s implied in all the upper reaches of the Law, but not stated,” Thunder had said, finally able to piece his scattered thoughts into real words. “The Law itself is meaningless if the Hunter Empire falls. Preserving the Empire is our highest Law, our greatest Responsibility. In true battle, all other Laws must be subordinate to that fact.” Well, truthfully, he hadn’t said his piece so coherently, so if you must, add in the necessary hisses, gulps and Texas colloquialisms.
His argument won the day.
Montana Winter and I bowled over their thin skirmish line of mercs and howled Terror. Libbet and Narnine concentrated on one vulnerable Transform shooter, bit through his throat and abdomen respectively, then on my order, raced back to find cover in the trees between the 8th and 15th holes.
The three Arms were on us before we could howl another Terror, but five hours of my plan had taken its toll. As usual for this afternoon, I drew the Commander. She charged in to knife me, and I let her, giving me a chance to get in a bite.
“Don’t you ever bathe?” she asked, as we separated. I shook her knife out of my abdomen and chuckled at her comment. After four afternoon pit stops, I reeked of sex, likely nearly as bad as the stench of blood and gore.
I swallowed and licked my lips. “I love me the taste of Commander in the afternoon,” I said. Too bad I hadn’t gotten a big en
ough bite of her to do real damage. “Don’t you need to go find some Transform to juice suck? You’re looking a bit peaked.”
“What you need is a trip to the car wash a couple miles south of here in Moline,” she said. “And a new box of horse condoms.” Her weakness showed; she normally put enough Arm charisma in her insults to goad me into an anger display, but not this time.
“I have some back at the Golfmore clubhouse,” I said. “Want to come join me?”
“Sure,” she said, pulling a pistol out of nowhere and emptying the magazine into me. I made sure she missed my head. “If you’re willing to donate a wolf pelt to the cause, I’ve got the time.” Ah, our dance, much the same in every fight.
The silent battle between Montana Winter and the other two Arms forced my mate to retreat, so I retreated with them. The Commander didn’t follow.
“Perhaps next time, my sweet,” I said, with another showy lick of my lips. I howled Terror at Kali and the other one, the one who stank of the blood and feces of her allies. Kali barely flinched, but the yearling Arm ran. Kali retreated with her, and I helped Montana Winter back to the relative safety of Mankato’s depleted pack, down in the farmlands near the Mississippi.
The Arms’ charge allowed the mercs and the Philly Focus’s people to retreat. A tactical victory for them, but a strategic one for us, as my arrival thwarted yet another attempt by the Amazon army to cut through our advancing lines and achieve a breakthrough.
I motioned for Red Lake and Mankato to advance their packs. “Reserve group nine, get me reserve group nine!” Juice zombies. This time the enemy had probed the loose line along the boundary of the Mississippi Rapids rest stop. Time to push into the rest stop, and if the Amazons continued to retreat, to secure the I-80 bridge over the Mississippi.
Three hundred juice zombies would see to that. The police would wish they had never been born.
---
“General!” Thunder said, as I entered the tent. He and his Pack Mistress remained in charge of the information gathering and distribution, closeted in the communication tent with all the gear we didn’t dare expose to the weather. He looked ridiculous with his huge green bulk perched on the tiny wooden folding chair. “No new movementsss by the enemy.” Snap, hiss. “Sssir. Isn’t this what we’ve been waiting for? We’ve gigged’m nisssely, and we’ve now got the bridge and the way out of the trap.”
Thunder, my lad, you wouldn’t understand strategy if someone spelled the word out for you in capital letters and tattooed it on your forehead. “We’re just as safe here as anywhere else. They can’t take back the bridge because I’ve moved the center of our concentration into the rest stop,” I said. “We’re not moving until they force us, or the National Guard arrives.” According to Crow Rigel, the Guard still loitered around Springfield and Des Moines. Yah, a couple of choppers worth of their troops were already here, but twenty soldiers were barely enough to cover for the losses we had inflicted on the Amazon army. And they weren’t coordinating with the Amazons. If Shaman Tone Deaf was correct, the Guard officer in charge was being enough of a pest to take the entire time and concentration of the top Amazon Focus, the faux military officer who led the Focus Council.
“I concur,” Delilah, Thunder’s Pack Mistress said, turning away from the machinery to face me.
“Pack Mistress?” I said. She rarely said anything to me or around me, both terrified of me and despising me. Strangely, she was proud of me today, as well as pleased about the pain we were causing to some of her old political enemies.
Thunder didn’t, or wouldn’t, stifle his Pack Mistress’s voice. He had come to love her in his own cold lizard-like way.
“Break them, General.” She cracked her knuckles and hissed, nearly as good a hiss as one of Thunder’s. “Their repeated failures to crack your lines today have gotten them angrier at each other than at us. I can sense their resolve slipping away into the air with every passing moment. Their howls of despair will fill the Dreaming tonight.”
“I can’t break them unless we attack, and if we attack, that would doom us,” I said. “Is that what you’re proposing, Pack Mistress?”
“No, General. Sir, break them by exposing their greatest weakness, their lack of true central leadership. They fail not because of individual weakness – the Focuses and their households are far stronger than you give them credit for – but because they can’t coordinate as well as your senior officers can normally.”
Today’s extraordinary coordination was destroying the Enemy.
“Consider them broken, Pack Mistress,” I said. “Where are they going to probe next?” Her metasense tricks, with her mind half in the Dreaming and half outside, and sharing Thunder’s metasense, gave her awesomely accurate information.
“The Arms, if I read Thunder’s metasense correctly, are about to commandeer a dozen speedboats from the Moline marina.” I found the thought of sharing metasenses disquieting. Best I leave that for my underlings. “My suggestion is that you prepare to shadow their movements, General.”
I nodded. “Do I have time for another pit stop?” With enough élan, I could hide Montana Winter and my flying squad from even the enemy Crows.
Delilah pursed her lips in distaste. “Yes,” she said, back to her quiet, beaten, voice.
I turned to Thunder. “Procure me half of our remaining juice zombies and as many canvas bags and grenades as you can.” The Arms were going to try a massed Arm attack, likely to try to cause panic. Dart in by boat, charge, and then flee once they got us panicking. Likely timed to happen at the same time as a stab by one of the stronger Focus households. “When the inevitable push by some damned Focus happens, reinforce with the remaining juice zombies. Expend them.” Thunder nodded. I exited the tent. “Runner! Get me a runner! I want Clouds, Red Lake, Iron, and Tahquamenon here, now!”
Oh, I loved being able to bellow. Their Gals would do just fine without them for an hour or so, and the Arms were going to be ever so surprised when my flying squad arrived with four extra Hunters in tow.
Too bad the National Guard would eventually show up and force the Hunters to vanish into the night. I was winning the attrition battle quite nicely.
I would either break the Amazons and make them retreat, or make them pay for staying and fighting.
I howled Terror at the sky just for the pleasure of doing so, and trotted over to the necessary élan pit stop, thinking about how far I could toss a bag of grenades with all their pins pulled.
I hadn’t done so well in the previous four days, and I might fall on my face tomorrow, but today I ruled.
Iowa (May 4, 1971)
“General!” Quiet Creeper said. He bowed deeply, difficult in his tiger-ish half-form.
I looked up from my paperwork spread out all over the two-leaf dining room table in the commandeered farmhouse I currently used as the headquarters of the Hunter Empire. I blinked rapidly, and focused a little of my internal juice on my eyes, nearsighted from dealing with today’s figuratively blood-soaked paperwork. “Yes?”
“The Amazons are pulling out of the Quad Cities, sir,” Quiet Creeper said.
I sat back on my haunches and growled. I remained in my full beast form, the giant piebald wolf, which made paperwork difficult. However, that was what slaves were for. Two of them, both women, cowered uselessly in the corner of the dining room, terrified by Quiet Creeper’s entrance. Tone Deaf cowered as well, from his spot at the telephone desk. Cowering was contagious if you were a quivering Crow. Tone Deaf was a Shaman, a Crow member of the Hunter civilization, and he was completely loyal. Bonded to the Law, though with a Shaman, that wasn’t saying much. Good with numbers, as well.
Cleo rumbled thoughtfully too, from the corner by the door. Quiet Creeper glanced at her with a frown, and she nodded back, as proper and respectful as a Hunter could ask for. He didn’t look like he believed it. She watched Quiet Creeper the way an old sergeant watched a young lieutenant. He outranked her, but that didn’t mean he knew what he was doing.
“A half-hour, no more,” Quiet Creeper said.
So, was this the retreat Pack Mistress Delilah promised, or was this the first motions toward another flanking attack? I expected another attack, as I hadn’t broken the Amazon bitches as thoroughly as I wanted to before the National Guard forced us to leave the Quad Cities area.
If the Amazons found reinforcements, that would be bad. The Hunter Empire had lost too many in the Quad Cities ‘victory’, and we didn’t have reinforcements to draw on. I expected the enemy to reinforce; the battle leader of the Amazons, the Commander, was too damned good not to have extras.
I visualized the troop positions in my mind. “Are the Horuses able to follow our enemy’s movements this time?” The damned hireling Crow spies had better be able to, or I would feed them to the junior Hunters for their élan. The trick the Amazons used to flank me last week, in the Rock Falls area, without my Horuses giving us any warning, still rankled.
“Yes, sir. They’re moving east, back toward Chicago.”
“Hrrrh.” I stood on my four feet and paced back and forth across the dining room floor. From outside, I picked up on a set of hisses and yowls, loud enough to attract the enemy. The Pack Alphas were at it, again. Cleo, my Pack Alpha, grimaced. She expected better of her counterparts, but the fractiousness was fallout from the temporary pack reorganizations that won me the Quad Cities fight. I should discipline the Pack Alphas for the security breach, but larger problems weighed on my mind, and we were going to be abandoning this place soon, in any case.
Perhaps the Quad Cities fight had broken the enemy’s fighting spirit. Unfortunately, the Hunters were broken as well, not in fighting spirit, but in numbers. My forces were exhausted and our Gals were about tapped out of élan after a week of skirmishes, sorties, and battles. Fully a quarter of our people were missing, scattered due to our forced marches across Illinois and Iowa. Another ten percent were dead. The Amazons suffered from fewer than five percent casualties. An unbroken enemy would charge after us.
Beasts Ascendant: The Chronicles of the Cause, Parts One and Two Page 3