by E. E. Knight
The sun was at the final landing in its descent of the staircase at the horizon. Valentine wondered at the simplicity of the age Eveready and his own father had been born into, when a red sunset meant only a beautiful end to another day rather than the beginning of eight hours of shadowed threat.
Valentine tried listening with “hard” ears as Eveready moved up the crest of the little hill at a level so just the Cat’s head could be seen from the reverse slope of the hill where the object of his attention lay. Eveready’s sure footfalls snapped no branch or twig detectable to Valentine’s senses, raised to atavistic acuity. Eveready stopped, having found the best vantage, and stood for a full quarter-hour, staring motionless into the lengthening shadows.
Burton, who had already acquired the veteran’s knack of sleeping at any opportunity, was softly snoring by the time Eveready returned. Alistar jostled him into wakefulness with a push of his moccasined foot.
“Is it that dogleg pond where we sunk the boat?”
“It’s a boat, all right,” Eveready said. “But not ours. Big wooden canoe, pulled up and overturned. There weren’t any leaves or twigs or anything on it, so I bet it’s just been there a day or two. And I’d just about bet Trudy against one of your Free Territory buckchits there’s oars sitting under it.”
The Wolves exchanged grins, but Valentine’s was forced, almost more of a grimace. Good boats didn’t just get left on their own, even if they were wooden canoes. A canoe would be an impractical boat for a long patrol, and a tiring one for a trip upriver. And he knew, without knowing how he knew, that his uneasiness came from something having to do with the canoe in the same way that a plague-sheet hanging on the door of a house meant death inside. Something cold and fearful tickled at his mind.
“I say we move quick, before the owners come back,” Alistar said, rubbing his palms against each other.
“It’s a risk, but I’d like to be across tonight,” Burton agreed. Hernandez just nodded, and the three turned to Valentine.
Eveready’s eyes met his. “It’s a gamble, David, but I think it’s okay. You feeling all right? You look like something you ate doesn’t agree with you.”
Trust the Cat, who lived by and for his stomach, to chalk up Valentine’s unease to indigestion.
“Just a feeling. Old Padre, the guy who raised me, used to call it a vibe. There were good ones and bad ones. I guess I’m getting a bad one. This place doesn’t feel right.”
Alistar made a sound that might be interpreted as clucking.
Eveready ignored it. “Son, when I used to have hair on my head, if it went up, I backed off. I wouldn’t be alive today if I didn’t pay attention to the part of me that was quivering like a bowl of Jell-O. Which reminds me. When the four of us are back at Newpost Arkansas, I’m going to do some trading at the butchers and make you all some apple Jell-O. My momma’s own recipe, with custard creme on top.”
“We’ll hold you to it,” Valentine said, steadiness returning to his voice. “Let’s have a look at this boat of ours.”
From Eveready’s little hillock, it looked easy enough. The canoe was pulled up, well out of the river’s reach, on a little backwater of the river. A long peninsula of land, probably an islet at some times of the year, pointed westward beyond the boat: rising and then falling away rapidly like the profile of a wooded sphinx.
Valentine, after a quick look at the overturned boat, gazed at the spur of land pointing into the river. Something about that ominous shape troubled him. But if Eveready, veteran of thirty years’ guerrilla fighting against the Reapers, thought it was safe, why shouldn’t he trust the wisdom that had not yet put them into danger?
Later, he castigated himself for his silence. The Wolves spaced themselves out and readied their weapons. Eveready unslung his carbine.
“I’m going to take a little look-see. You four relax, stay centered, keep your lifesign down, breathe deep. We got lucky. It’ll be dark as we’re trying to cross, and the moon won’t be up for a while. But I want to make sure, just in case Val’s radar is working better than my own.”
Valentine nodded, struggling with an encouraging smile as he tried to put into practice what Eveready preached. He envisioned his body glowing with a warm red aura. As he centered himself, he envisioned that aura changing color to blue. Then he began to contract the blue, drawing it inward with each breath. As he inhaled, the blue glow shrank to a small, softly glowing ball in the center of his body. The world around him seemed to fade.
Eveready approached the boat in two great loops, moving to the low edge of the sphinx-peninsula and then back to the base of their own hill before scouting the boat more closely. He even pointed his rifle under it as he approached, but as the last of the daylight faded into twilight’s gloaming, he waved the Wolves down.
The canoe was wider than most, well fashioned out of overlapping planks. Someone had put a great deal of time and effort into making it; the wood shone with a polished luster. Two men could sit abreast on its two fore-and-aft seats, and there was room for their packs under the thwarts. The canoe would have held twice their number. Four oars, matching the wood, lay underneath. They decided that the four young Wolves would row two to a side, and Eveready would sit in the center with rifle ready. Darkness grew as they inspected their prize.
“Let’s get out into the current quick,” Eveready ordered. “If someone starts shooting, the wood is thick enough to stop a bullet fired from anything but point-blank, so just dive into the bottom and let the river take us away. I’ll row by myself if I have to. This old Reaper vest stopped a bullet in my back before. Southern Command, in its wisdom, saves this stuff for the Bears, when they can get our guys to turn in the spoils of war, that is. Many’s the old Wolf that has one of these under his leathers where the officers don’t see it. Not that I’m advising you young men to break regulations, now.”
While Eveready stood guard, the four Wolves overturned the heavy canoe and slid it down the gentle gravelly slope. Hernandez pushed a driftwood log out of the way and hooked his hand on to the bow of the canoe as the team heaved then-transportation into the Mississippi.
“Hey, did you see this?” Hernandez asked.
Valentine peered through the blue-black night at the bow of the canoe. An insigne had been branded into the wood, scarring the delicate grain with four black bent bars. Something about the spiderish design tickled Valentine’s capacious memory…
“That’s a swash-sticker, I think. Only it’s backwards,” Al-istar said, in a hushed tone.
“The Germans and Japanese had them on their planes and stuff in World War Two, right?” Burton added, uncertainty in his voice. His schooling, like that of his comrades with the exception of Valentine, had been sporadic.
“Just the Nazi Germans,” Valentine said. “But Alistar is right, it’s the wrong way around.”
Eveready came down from his post. “Into the boat, boys. Try not to splash around when you row. I don’t like being this close to the bank.”
“Eveready, this mean anything?” Valentine asked, pointing at the palm-size design on the bow.
Eveready squinted his aging eyes at the swastika. Good as his distance vision was, he struggled with his “reading eyes.” For the first time in the entire summer, the big Cat looked afraid. “It means trouble. Let’s not waste time; we don’t want the owners to find us.” He clicked the safety off on his ancient gun. Another first, and far more unsettling.
They clambered into their allotted places and took up the oars. A few lusty strokes took them away from the bank. The canoe seemed to glide on a sea of oil.
“Breathe and row, breathe and row,” Eveready half chanted, kneeling in the center of the canoe. Valentine glanced at him from the right forward seat. He and Burton, the most muscular of the Wolves, provided the power for Al-istar and Hernandez at the back. Eveready searched the sphinx-shape to their right, rifle at his shoulder.
Valentine relaxed into his breathing and rowing. Reducing lifesign was a matter of falling
into yourself, concentrating on a single tiny point in the center of your being, like a candle glimmering in the middle of an enormous lake.
The candle flickered.
He felt his hackles rise, a curious corkscrew electricity running up his backbone, as if Death had run a playful forefinger up his vertebrae. A cold, hard spot appeared in his mind, coming from the head of the sphinx. Unable to say what it was, he knew only that he feared it.
“Eveready,” he said, voice low in his concentration. “The very top of the hill. Maybe by that big windfall trunk… I think something’s up there.”
The matchless night vision of the Cat searched the hilltop peak as the boat shot toward open river. Valentine dug his oar blade into the water as if trying to dig a hole for the boat to hide in.
“Val, I think you’re right. It’s up there, but not moving. A Reaper. Hard ears, boys. This is a sound you need to know.”
Fingernails on the blackboard. The cry of a stricken hawk. Sheet metal squeezed in a compactor. Each would remember the banshee wail differently, loud and fresh and terrifying, to their dying day.
“Madre de Dios,” Hernandez gasped, missing a stroke. “Shit!” he added, “I’m sorry, I dropped my oar.”
“Use your rifle butt!” barked Valentine.
Other, distant wails answered the ghostly cry.
“Five,” counted Eveready. “One for each of us. Hope that’s luck, not planning.”
The clouds thickened and dropped, bringing the horizon to a few feet from their faces. Aghast, Valentine brought his palm to the sky, barely able to see its outline.
“How the hell… do they do that?” Burton asked, puffing between strokes.
“I’d rather know how they knew we were going to hit this stretch of the river,” Valentine said as he paddled.
Even in their current perilous situation, Eveready had lessons to teach. “They’re disrupting your minds, not the weather. This could even mean a Kurian himself is around or working us from his Seat of Power. I’ve heard they can make a city seem to go up in flames, or a building catch real fire, just by willing it.
“They’re reading us somehow. One or more of you might be giving off lifesign. While the swamp is full of it, if one of them were close to us, they might have picked up on ours, kept their distance, and just plotted where we were going. We’ll never know for sure. The good news is that while they can swim the river, it’ll take ‘em a while. We can be across and separate, and head for the New Arkansas Post like hell. They’ll go after whoever they can pick up on, and with luck the rest of us will make it back.”
“Jesus, that’s cold,” Burton gasped.
“Makes sense to me,” Alistar said.
Valentine swallowed his fear. “Can’t do it, Eveready. We’re Wolves—”
“I was a Wolf before you were born, son, and—”
“Then you should know,” Valentine interrupted right back. “We stay as a team, whether it’s two or two hundred. Only the dead get left behind.”
“Whoever’s giving off lifesign is dead already, Val,” Eveready argued, trying to pierce the black curtain behind them. “Maybe not tonight, but some other trip in the future.”
“We don’t know they’re reading lifesign. Maybe they tracked us the old-fashioned way. There are sniffer-Grogs, I’m told.”
“Sorry, kid. I’ve got experience, and you don’t. Gotta be lifesign.”
Valentine broke the glum silence. “I say we put it to a vote. Every man for himself, yea or nay. If we decide to stick together, we put you off on the west shore. Alone, the way you like it.” Valentine feared he might have pushed the old Cat too far. Maybe the vote would go four to one against him again, but he needed to try.
“No, no votes. Not with five Reapers on your tail,” rasped Eveready.
“This isn’t about you anymore,” said Burton. “It’s for us to say.”
“Have it your way. Idiots. You know, if one Reaper catches up with you four, just one, you’ll all be dead in twenty seconds. Five seconds each.”
“Okay, lets take a breather,” Valentine ordered, turning himself around in the boat to face his fellow Wolves. “Tradition. Youngest first. Hernandez? Every man for himself: yea or nay.”
Valentine expected the sixteen-year-old to glance around at the others, or at least Alistar, for approval. But he looked squarely into Eveready’s eyes. His hero. The man he called sir despite Eveready’s repeated commands to knock it-off.
“Nay.”
Valentine’s heart leaped. He could have hugged the skinny youth. “Alistar?”
The tawny youth, who thought himself the leader of the Wolves through this summer, shook his head at Valentine, a half-sneer on his face. “Yea.”
“Fuck you, Al,” Burton spat. “Nay. And fuck you again, in case you didn’t hear me the first time.”
“Nay,” added Valentine, trying not to grin in triumph. “Al-istar, you can get off with Eveready, if you like.”
“You bet your ass I like.”
“Can we get moving, Valentine?” Eveready asked.
The four rowed with renewed vigor. Valentine, feeling the energy of vindication in his limbs, dug his paddle deep into the water. Burton poured out his fury on the other side, and the canoe sped through the night.
Within five minutes, the western shore loomed out of the darkness. Alistar buckled on his pack, and Eveready jumped out and held the canoe steady. Hernandez started to put on his pack.
“Wait, Hernandez. We’re staying in the boat,” Valentine ordered.
“What’s that?” Eveready asked.
Valentine put his oar behind his back and stretched. “Burton, let’s switch places so I can use some different muscles. Eveready, you said they don’t swim too fast, right? We head downriver, with the current. We’ll hear any patrol boat. Go all night if we have to, then start moving overland at dawn.”
“Hell, kid, if you had a plan, you should have said so. You’re still taking a risk that the Reapers don’t have another boat.”
“You said five. This boat fits five easy. Can you still draw one off?”
Eveready smiled, apple-whitened teeth the brightest thing Valentine had seen all night, like a beacon of hope. “If one is still following me by sunrise, it won’t live to see another nightfall.”
“Alistar, last chance,” Valentine called to the receding figure.
“You’ll be bled out before dawn, Valentine,” Alistar said. He turned. “Hernandez, this is your last chance, too.”
The teen shook his head. “Sorry, Al. The pack stays together.”
Alistar tightened his straps, managing to put contempt in the gesture. “Hope you make it anyway. I’ll wait for you at Arkansas Post.”
Eveready stepped closer to Valentine. “David, give me your gun.”
Valentine reached into the bottom of the boat and brought up the single-shot breechloader. “Why’s that?”
“We’re gonna swap. I don’t know if you have more guts than brains, or more brains than guts, but Trudy can pump five shots into a Reaper faster than you can count. You shot her pretty good this summer. You may need her tonight.”
“Aren’t you worried you’ll never see her again?”
“Just don’t let some Quisling mother take her off your body. Bury her at sea when she’s empty. You know what I mean?”
The men exchanged rifles and ammunition. “I know what you mean. See you in hell, Cat.”
“I’ll be waiting, Wolf.” Eveready shook his hand, then gripped his fingers in a curious gesture. “David, if you make it, tell your CO about how you sensed that Hood. That’s unique. They’ll want to know more about it, and you.”
“I’ll worry about getting home first. Take care!”
Eveready, still standing in the water, turned the canoe and pushed them southward.
“Get running, Alistar, it’s every man for himself,” Eveready said. “You heading north or south?”
Valentine listened with hard ears.
“I though
t we could make the run together,” Alistar said, deflated.
“Not a chance. I have to move fast and alone if I’m gonna draw one of these off. Take off, boy. I hope you make it, but I can’t have you around me.”
As they drew away, Valentine heard a shout from the Cat’s muscular throat, perhaps strong enough to be heard across the river by the Hoods’ ears:
“Halloo! Hoods, come on over. Eveready’s in the house, and he wants to par-tay. Bring it on, you balless bastards. I got forty-five sets of teeth around my neck, motherfuckers. I wanna make it an even fifty!”
The canoe glided southward, propelled by current and oars. Valentine realized he was achingly tired; they had marched all day on light food. Water was not a problem; the center of the big muddy gave them all they could desire, clear and cool.
“Hernandez, turn in. Just relax for a couple hours in the bottom of the boat. Burt, you’ll be after him. Take the stern for now. I’ll take the third shift.”
Hernandez almost collapsed into the center of the boat, asleep in a few seconds with his head pillowed on his pack.
“Jeez, he didn’t even put his blanket down,” Burton observed, after gaining the stern.
Valentine paddled on. “Anyway, you give off less lifesign when you’re asleep. Just in case it was him.”
“I thought it was me,” Burton said.
“Funny, I thought the same thing,” Valentine admitted. Both men chuckled. The canoe shot southward.
Splashing… an overactive imagination at work?
“Did you hear that, Burt?” Valentine whispered.
“Hear what?”
“Hard ears, Wolf. To the left. Didn’t he say they made a lot of noise swimming?”
Burton quit rowing as both men concentrated their ears to the left. Over the wind and noise of the river, a vigorous splashing could be heard.
“Oh, hell. Sorry, Burt. Looks like I guessed wrong.”