by E. E. Knight
“Who’s this Steiner?”
“His-uns got a few places in country. Half day’s hard walk.”
“I’ve got a box of shells for that twelve-gauge if one of your sons will take me to him. Looks like you could use some paint for that barn, too. I might be able to find some.”
Cub Kelly looked suspicious. Of course Valentine had seen only two expressions on his face, suspicious and taciturn. He made up his mind and nodded to his brother.
“We-uns got a deal, sojer-man.”
Cub Kelly’s scarecrow-lean, half-naked son Patrick spoke as little as his father. All tan skin and searching eyes, he guided Valentine through a series of swamp trails. The boy carried a sling and a bag of rocks the whole way. Valentine watched the youth kill a watchful hawk atop an old utility pole. He retrieved the limp mass of talons and feathers, saying, “Sumpin‘ fer the boilin’ pot.”
Bozich whistled at the sight of the Steiner place. A cluster of buildings sat on a mound in the center of miles of rice paddies. The whitewashed buildings were in good repair, with aluminum-covered roofs surrounded by walls, and the walls in turn surrounded by a wide moat.
The Wolves observed it from a little hummock of land marking the end of the trail and the beginning of the paddies. A small cemetery filled the hill, neat little crosses in rows, interspersed with rock cairns. Some of the graves were tiny, in clusters, telling the usual tale of high infant mortality in a rural region, lying next to cross after cross with died in childbed burned into the wood. After a moment’s study of the community’s dead, Valentine turned back to the living.
“Have you heard about this?” he asked Bozich.
“We knew there were some big plantations out here, but this beats all. These aren’t border squatters—this is years of work, sir.”
“Wonder how you get in? Drawbridge?” Valentine said.
“A boat on a line, sojer,” Master Kelly said.
“Thanks, son. You can take your hawk home to the pot now. Tell your pa he needs anything, we’re always ready to trade.”
“Sure, sojer,” the boy said, tying his sling around the legs of the hawk and trotting back into the brush.
“There’s the boat,” Michaels said. “Under where the wall goes down to the water.”
Valentine surveyed the walls with his binoculars. The stone for them had been quarried; they were fitted together with no small skill. He saw another head, binoculars held to the eyes, staring back at him. “They’ve seen us, too. No use looking timid, let’s go find the landing.”
The three Wolves zigzagged across the earthen dikes separating the rice fields. It occurred to Valentine that anyone attacking the compound would have to take a circuitous route to rush the walls if they did not want to flounder through the mud.
“Think these folks’ll feed us?” Bozich asked. “The Kellys weren’t too hospitable.”
“We’ll learn soon enough,” Valentine said. “Michaels, you stay outside of rifle range. There’s a funny smell to this place.”
Bozich sniffed the air. “Smells kinda like pigs… I hope, Mr. Valentine. Really clean ones?”
“Smells like Grogs to me. Doesn’t look like there’s been a fight. But be ready for anything. If night comes, Michaels, and you don’t hear from us, you skedaddle. You hear shooting, you skedaddle. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll bring help.”
“You’ll tell Quist to alert Southern Command is what you’ll do.”
Dogs barked as they approached, not just the yips of mongrels, but the deep baying of hounds. A man appeared at the wall. He looked at them from behind a firing slit.
“Hi-yi, strangers. Whatever you’re selling, we don’t need any.”
“We’re buyers, not sellers. We’d like to speak to Mr. Steiner. We don’t have an appointment.”
“You don’t have a what?”
“Never mind, can we come in?”
There was a pause.
“He says he’ll come out.”
Steiner was a sizable man with a shock of red hair grow-ing out of freckled skin. After a glance at the visitors, he rowed himself across in a small flat-bottomed boat.
Valentine guessed him to be about thirty-five. He wore rawhide sandals and a short wide-necked tunic that made Valentine think of pictures he had seen of Romans. It looked cool and comfortable.
“My guess is y’all are Wolves out of Southern Command. If you’re looking to buy rice, I already sell mine up in Pine Bluff. I’ve got an agent there. And don’t go quoting your Common Articles, this spread isn’t part of Southern Command’s ground. We built it, no help from you, and we hold it, no help from you. Last jumped-up bushwhacker that tried that ten percent routine walked up threatening and ran off yelping.”
Valentine held the man’s gaze. “You think you hold it, no help from us. How long you’d keep it if the Free Territory weren’t still standing is another question. But I’ll concede the point to save an argument.”
“I’m done talking,” said Steiner.
“Quite a spread you’ve got here. You must have room for fifty families or more. Is this a refuge if the Kur come through?”
“That’s our business, Running Gun.”
“We’re a couple of tired Running Guns, Mr. Steiner. Hungry, too. Part of my unit is camped near the Ouachita, and I’m just trying to get to know the neighbors. I’m impressed. I’ve never seen a settlement quite like this in the borderlands. I’d like a better look.”
“It took a lot of hard years, mister.”
“Valentine, David. Lieutenant with the Arkansas Wolf Regiment.”
Steiner considered. “Mr. Valentine, we don’t take strangers in normally, but you seem a better sort than your usual Com-mand type. I’ll offer you a tour and a meal, but I don’t want your men showing up weekly, making speeches about how totin‘ a gun for Southern Command entitles them to a fried chicken dinner. You’ll see things not many in your outfit have seen, or want to see.”
They took the little dinghy to the island. More corrugated aluminum covered the wooden gate. Valentine wondered if Steiner knew his aluminum wouldn’t do him any good against white phosphorus bombs.
They passed through the gate—
And froze. A pair of Grogs stood inside, cradling their long rifles. They wore tunics similar to Steiner’s and pulled back rubbery lips to reveal yellow teeth.
Bozich gasped, reaching for her carbine.
“Wait, Bozich, leave the gun,” Valentine barked, putting his hand on her barrel to keep her from raising it. His heart pounded, but the Grogs kept their guns in a comfortable cradled position.
“Don’t worry,” Steiner said. “These aren’t the usual Gray-backs. They’re friendly.”
“I’ve seen a tame Grog before.”
“These ain’t tame,” Steiner said, flushing. “They’re as free as you and me.”
Valentine looked at the homes. The village resembled Weening in its circular shape, but there were no barns, just henhouses and goats. A water tower stood in the center of the village, and the community focal point appeared to be the troughs where the women did the laundry. A female Grog (with just two breasts; Valentine had heard they had four teats, like a cow) pressed the water out of her wash with a bellowslike tool. People and Grogs stopped to stare at the strangers.
Steiner invited them up onto a porch of a small house and bade them them to sit down on a comfortable-looking wooden bench.
“Mr. Valentine,” Steiner began, “a long time ago I came out of Mississippi with a Grog named Big Joke. He helped me and my wife escape a labor camp, and we found the Free Territory. Some of your Wolves picked us up in the border region, took both of us prisoner. Prisoner! After weeks of trying to get to this ‘bastion of freedom,” I had to go before a judge with the Grog who saved my life and beg for both of ours. I’m either convincing or she was liberal, and we were released as citizens of the Free Territory. Big Joke and I learned quick that there was no place for Grogs in your towns. The person— and he is
a person, even if they think a little different than us—I owed my life to couldn’t get a job, a bed, or a meal for love or money. Best he could do was ’work for food‘ on the docks. So my wife, Big Joke, and I headed south and found this land in the midst of these swamps. I’d spent years draining swamps and building paddies in Mississippi for them, so doing it a couple years for me came easy. A few others came down and joined us. That was the beginning of a lot of hard times, but we got this built.“
“You lost your wife early on. I’m sorry.”
Steiner’s brows came together. “How—?”
“We came in past the cemetery. I saw a Lalee Steiner, who seemed about the right age. ”Evergreen‘ was a tribute to her?“
“No, it was her last name. I lost her to a fever, after she gave birth to my son. Two years after that some Southern Command Johnny shot Big Joke dead from ambush. He had been out hunting. I tried to understand. A Grog in the borderlands poking around with a crossbow. If I didn’t know better, I’d shoot first and ask questions later myself. But y’all got to start knowing better.”
“How’s that?”
“Your Southern Command. Old thinking. Maybe it’s because it was built by a bunch of military types. They’re trying to preserve a past, not create a future. The Grogs are here, and they’re here to stay. I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, by now. Seems a long way off, but if we ever do win, what’ll we do with ‘em? Kill ’em all? Not likely. Put ‘em on reservations? Good luck.”
“Southern Command is trying to stay alive,” Valentine said. He silently agreed with Steiner about Southern Command, but he could not publicly criticize it, especially in front of Bozich. “They don’t have the luxury of looking too far ahead.”
“Not that living with Grogs is easy. They have a lot of fine qualities, but their brains work different. They’re the most day-by-day thinkers you ever saw. If they plan three days ahead, it’s an act of genius. How’d you like to wake up every morning surprised? That’s what they do, in a way. Though they’re smart enough at solving a problem once they understand it. You two hungry?”
“Yes, sir,” Bozich said, turning from the sight of Grog children playing with a young dog. Valentine looked out; the Grogs were mimicking the dog’s behavior, gamboling on all fours and interacting with it through body posture better than a human child could.
Steiner took them in to the dim house. The homemade furniture had a rough-and-ready look, though someone with some skill with a needle had added cushions.
“Sorry it’s dark. We save kerosene, and anyway it just heats the place up.” Steiner rekindled the fire and placed a pot from the cool-room on the stove.
“Hope you like gumbo. It’s the staple here. The rice-flour buns are pretty good.”
Steiner offered them a basin to wash in while the stew heated.
“I get the impression you’re responsible for more than just this settlement.”
The redhead laughed. “I’m still trying to figure out how that happened. Once this place got going, and we had wagons going up to Pine Bluff and back, some of the other smallholders started tailing along. With them and the Grogs guarding our wagons, it made quite a convoy. We have some great stonecutters and craftsmen here, and the locals just started trailing in, especially once we got the mill going. They started coming to me for advice, and the next thing I knew I was performing weddings and deciding whose lambs belonged to whom.”
“King Steiner?”
“The thought’s crossed my mind. Seems like the worry isn’t worth it, but then when you get a baby or two named after you, it appears in a different light.”
It occurred to Valentine that Steiner hadn’t mentioned his son. He had already pressed the man on the sorrow involving his wife, and the grief in his eyes then made him hold his tongue now.
The food went into wooden bowls, and the Wolves scooped the spicy gumbo into their mouths using one rice-flour bun after another.
“Guess they call you Wolves ‘cause of how y’all eat,” Steiner said.
“Ain’t the first time someone’s said that,” Bozich laughed, gumbo coating her lips.
Valentine finished his meal and helped his host clean off the dishes.
“Steiner, if you don’t want to live under the Free Territory, how about you live with it?”
“With it?”
“Like an alliance.”
Steiner shook his head. “What do I need Southern Command for? We do all right by ourselves.”
“You might need guns and ammunition.”
“We make our own shells and shot. Better than yours, mostly.”
“Someday this swamp might find itself with a Kurian column in it. What then?”
“They’d lose more than they’d gain taking this place.”
“We could give you a radio, and Southern Command would answer a call for help in this part of Arkansas. Anything coming through here is on its way to us.”
The redhead looked doubtful, then shook his head. “Don’t want a garrison, thanks.”
“No garrison. We could build a hospital… well, health center anyway. A full-time, trained nurse and a doctor. Not just for here, but for all the farms in the area. Might mean a few less crosses in your cemetery. You could do even more for these people, if you’ll just give the okay.”
“Who are you, son? You have that kind of pull?”
“I’m an officer with Southern Command. I can offer whatever I think appropriate to the locals as long as it’ll be used for us and not against us. Maybe I’m overstepping what they expected, but if they’re going to grant me that authority, I’ll use it. We put a health center up near the Saint Francis a year or so back. Why not here? Every gun you have means one more gun Southern Command can put on another border. You feed, clothe, and arm yourselves. That’s a savings in money and organization. I’ll put it all on paper, assuring your independence. No ten percent tithe. You’d never have to defend anything but your own lands.”
Steiner probed his teeth with his tongue and stared out the window at the wash troughs.
“Mr. Valentine, you have yourself an ally.”
Lieutenant Mallow stared openmouthed as the sergeants quieted the excited comments of the men of First Platoon. Captain LeHavre shook his head, a wry smile on his face as the ferry pulled him and the weary men across.
LeHavre had sent a runner two days ago to let Valentine know the patrol was coming in, tired and hungry. The river was still deep enough to make refloating the ferry necessary. Valentine alerted his new ally at the swamp fortress to gather his militia for a meeting and review.
On one side of the landing Valentine had his platoon drawn up, at least the men who weren’t working the lines and mules pulling the ferry across. On the other, Colonel Steiner stood at the head of three hundred men, women, and Grogs. Each wore a dark green bandanna tied around the neck, the only common item to the tatterdemalion Militia Steiner had christened the “Evergreen Rifles.” To Valentine, the name had a certain amount of irony, as under half the group’s members had firearms, mostly shotguns, and the rest carried spears, bows, pitchforks, and axes. A hundred more rifles were on their way from Southern Command, as Valentine had added several impassioned letters to the paperwork requesting heavier weapons, a health center, and a radio for the local residents. From the Wolf camp, smells of barbecue and cooking drifted out to the river. The first semiofficial gathering of the Evergreens would be celebrated with a feast.
LeHavre jumped off the ferry and splashed ashore.
“What’s all this, Mr. Valentine? Grog prisoners, or a posse?”
Valentine saluted. “Welcome back, sir. Those are local Militia. Their commander and I are still going around to some other homesteads. We hope to get five hundred together before the summer is out. He’s an influential man in this area.“
“Leave it to you, Valentine. I leave you with a little over twenty men, and I come back to hundreds. What are you handing out, free beer?”
“Just fr
eedom, sir.”
Chapter Eight
The battlefield, August of the forty-third year of the Kurian Order: Burned-out motors and wagons fill the streets of Hazlett, Missouri. Some of the brick buildings still stand, but of the wooden houses only stone chimneys remain, standing as monuments to the homes that had been.
A few soldiers still poke and rake among the sooty ruins, their smoldering houses finally quenched by the morning’s downpour. The salvaged Grog weaponry and equipment lay in three heaps: destroyed, repairable, and intact. Expert scroungers added to this mechanical triage as they gleaned further material from the surrounding woods and the road back to Cairo, Illinois.
The only bodies in evidence lay in neat, unshrouded rows lined up outside a wooden barn a half-mile outside the town proper, conveniently close to a water spring. The maimed and wounded inside, groaning their agony out on pallets, old doors, and even hay bales, envied the corpses now past all suffering. Two-man teams of battlefield surgeons, faces gray with fatigue and smocks brown with hundreds of bloodstains, fought exhaustion and sepsis.
The gravediggers adhered to their own priorities. The first day after the battle, they put to rest the dead of Southern Command: Bears, Wolves, Guards, and Militia. The second day, the dead Quislings were buried in a long common grave, dug by the prisoners spared after the fall of Hazlett. Finally on this day, the third after the battle, the gravediggers set alight a great pyre of Grogs, who shared the flame with putrefying dead horses, oxen, and mules inside a ring of firewood. Exhausted from the labor of dragging the bigger corpses out of sight and smell, the officer in charge decided to rest his detail before attending to the row of this morning’s bodies outside the field hospital. The doctors couldn’t save everyone.
Thus the miasma of burned flesh introduced Lt. David Valentine to the tableau of a battlefield. Three companies of Wolves, including Zulu, marched up from reserve near the southern border. Sent to help deal with the incursion, they arrived too late to do anything but shake their heads at the destruction of the little town and join in the services held over the bodies of the slain.