by E. E. Knight
It took a while for the negotiations to commence. The subchiefs and elders and warriors had to arrange themselves in a semicircle around the visitors, bearing their best captured weapons, flak jackets, and helmets. The most battle scarred of all of them, both with intentional artistry and in random wound, held a massive surgical-tubing slingshot and two bandoliers of captured hand grenades.
Whitefang's dozen or so wives stood behind him, the two most heavily pregnant in front of the others, turning now and then to display swollen bellies as proof of the chiefs potency. Others gripped their children by the ears to show them how their father conducted himself with strangers.
A splendid-looking teen female, almost attractive in her careless lounge, wore the white headband of an unmarried daughter as she rested against Whitfang's scarred shoulder. By the woolliness of her thighs, Valentine guessed her to be Whitefang's eldest daughter. She wore a long, modest skirt made out of old Disney bedsheets, but she managed to hike it up a little in the direction of the unblooded warriors.
Valentine heard splashes and slurps behind as the Grogs drank the root beer. A young warrior made for the tub, but his fellows held him back, grumbling and grunting.
"What do the strangers beg of Whitefang?" Whitefang asked. Valentine couldn't tell what had changed in the assembly that caused him to commence negotiations.
"Battle alliance," Valentine said.
The audience gasped or hooted.
"Battle alliance. With humans?" the veteran with the artistic battle scarring asked.
Whitefang laughed. His daughter rolled her eyes.
"Battle alliance is for against humans," a white-eyebrowed old male said.
"They insult," a younger warrior shouted from the crowd to the side. At least that's what Valentine thought he said. The youth's trade tongue was clumsy, either from emotion or lack of practice.
"Want battle!" another youth said.
Others shouted in their own tongue. Valentine thought he recognized the word for blood.
"Kill us and you will have battle with humans," Valentine said.
Whitefang laughed, finding the prospect of war as funny as the taste of root beer.
"Fuck you up," Whitefang said. In pretty fair English.
If the Whitefangs killed them, at least it would be over quick. Warrior enemies would be dispatched quickly and cleanly. The Grogs reserved torture for criminals.
"Means bad old times," Valentine said. "Come soldiers. Come artillery. Come armored car."
"Let armored car come," Whitefang laughed. He barked at his harem, and they disappeared into the basement of the chief’s house. They reemerged bearing steering wheels and machine-gun turret rings, executing neat pirouettes in front of Valentine and Callaslough.
Callaslough was breathing fast, like a bull working up a charge. "Bas—"
"Easy," Valentine said.
"Humans beg help," Valentine said, loudly enough for all to hear.
That got them talking: humans begging. Whitefang slapped his callused, hairless kneecaps to silence them.
"Doublebloods attack humans," Valentine said. "Steal much. Capture many. Doublebloods worst enemy humans now."
Even more talk now, with some excited yips from the young warriors. Valentine suspected that the Doublebloods had done their share of raiding on Whitefang lands, being just across the river from southern Illinois. He suspected an old feud existed.
"Worst than Night-stalkers?" Whitefang asked, his eyes lit by the setting sun.
"Night-stalkers on other side of Great South river. Doublebloods on human side."
"Humans stop Night-stalkers," Valentine said. "Otherwise Night-stalkers raid Whitefangs."
This time Whitefang didn't laugh. The uneasy truce—not without the occasional raid and ambush—that had existed in southern Missouri between Grogs and mankind dated to the brief Kurian occupation of the Ozarks. Reapers had been loosed into Grog lands to drive them away from Solon's planned Trans-Mississippi empire. The Grogs were only too happy to see Southern Command return.
Callaslough, who'd evidently been able to follow at least some the conversation, reached into his shirt and pulled up a pair of black Reaper teeth interlaced with his dog tags. They were only short ones from the back, but the Grogs recognized them. Callaslough held them high and rattled them.
Valentine remembered teaching Blake to clean teeth just like those, only smaller, with a brush and baking soda.
"Humans beg battle alliance," Valentine repeated. "What Double-bloods stole, Whitefangs keep. Who Doublebloods capture, White-fangs release."
"Trophies?" Whitefang asked.
"All Whitefang keep."
The young warriors stirred at that. Their prospective mates among the females started chattering to each other. A warrior returning home with the blood of an enemy on his blade, or even better, some skulls or scalps, could marry, having proved himself worthy of establishing a household and producing children.
Whitefang's daughter stared out into the crowd. Valentine followed her gaze to a tall, proud-looking warrior standing naked with only his weapons, splendidly lush hair hanging from his head and shoulders and upper back. He hadn't wanted to contaminate his clothing with human blood, should it come to that, evidently. He stared back at the girl.
She whispered in White fang's ear.
Whitefang elbowed her hard and she toppled backward. He grumbled something to the female who ran to her aid.
The chief tongued the remainders of root beer out of his cup. "Trade root beer?" he asked.
"If battle alliance is successful."
"Trade licorice?" Whitefang asked.
"Yes."
Whitefang licked his lips and the eyes under the heavy brow brightened. "Trade—Soka-coli?"
"All Coca-Cola same."
An entrepreneur was supposedly bottling RC down in the sugar farms near the Louisiana border. Valentine had seen some cases behind lock and key in Shrivastava's mercantile Galaxy. Whitefang wouldn't notice the difference. He hoped.
Whitefang held out his hand, and a senior wife placed a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun in it. He extended the butt end toward Valentine.
Valentine wasn't sure what to do. He'd never observed a battle alliance; he just knew the term. But it never hurt to imitate the head honcho in any organization, human or Grog. He unslung his own carbine and held it toward Whitefang, butt end extended.
The oldster with the hand grenades cackled.
Valentine approached Whitefang, and the chief gripped the end of his gun. Valentine wrapped his fingers around the pistol grip of the shotgun.
The Warriors cheered.
"Fuck Doublebloods up," Whitefang said in English, winking at Valentine. Then he laughed long and loud into the night.
* * * *
The Mississippi, wild and untended since 2022, had carved little islands along its banks for most of its length. Within twenty-four hours of his promise Soka-coli to Whitefang, Valentine was swatting mosquitoes and trying to keep from being splashed by the paddlers.
Grogs paddle as though they were at war with the river.
Grogs had an instinctive knack for warfare. Once they made up their minds, they did everything at the hurry-up. After a conference that lasted long into the night—most of it taken up by definitions of geographic points—Valentine sent Callaslough back to Rally Base with a written report. Whitefang called for his warriors, and Grogs loped off in every direction.
They left a substantial reserve at the camp, perhaps still fearing a human trick, and a core of veterans set off with the youngest warriors on the Doubleblood hunt.
The Grogs were proud of their weapons. They displayed their prowess to Valentine, sending steel-tipped arrows through entire trunks of trees from bows made out of truck leaf springs (Valentine couldn't even string the bow, let alone draw it, and felt very much like a sham Odysseus) or driving spears through practice dummies made of old kegs and barrels. The tall young Grog Whitefang's daughter had made eyes at had a big
Grog gun and ten bullets probably donated by his entire family. The .50 caliber rounds were scarce on this patch of riverbank, and Valentine suspected they represented an investment of his whole family in the warrior's future.
He used one to shatter an old bowling pin at a distance of a kilometer, making Valentine stand within ten paces of the target to show that no tricks were involved. For a split second between the shot (Valentine saw the Grog take the recoil) and the pin's destruction, he wondered if he'd be dead before he heard the sound of the report.
With the young males gathered, their chief led them to war, leaving the old fellow with the slingshot and the hand grenades behind.
Valentine felt like a war correspondent watching them hike off in loosely grouped bunches, formed into a diamond shape if you plotted them on a map at any particular point. A poor sort of war correspondent at that, because he could get only a vague sense of their intentions. At first he feared they were just going to plunge into Southern Command's territory and make straight for the Doubleblood trail, but they proved craftier than that and took big war canoes down a stream to the Mississippi.
The Grogs watched him sit down in the canoe and unroll a condom over the business end of his carbine. A warrior with six feet of lethal, single-shot steel-and-wood showed Valentine how he protected his piece: Valentine recognized a leathery testicular sack, undoubtedly human, closed by a tight drawstring.
The Grog had left the hairs intact, probably to help it bleed water.
Then, with a call from Whitefang, they paddled as though chased by living fire. One hundred and eightysome Grogs moving fast with the current, canoes swerving and crossing like a school of excited fish.
They reached the islands opposite Cairo by dark, and Valentine saw smaller scout canoes hook to either side of Whitefang's. Valentine's canoe waited with several others under the metal remnants of an old interstate bridge.
They spotted the pulled-up canoes and flatboats and hulled pleasure boats and houseboats floating at anchor, shielded from Southern Command by a long strip of muddy island, tree roots fighting the Mississippi for possession of the soil.
With their objective in sight, Whitefang let his Grogs rest and feed, waiting for the moon to go down. Valentine found himself dozing, resting against a big warm Grog who smelled like brackish water.
Owl hoots from Whitefang's canoe woke him. Grogs slipped into the summer-warmed water.
Most of the canoes huddled against the banks, while scouts swam, or crawled, or slithered forward, depending on the depth of water.
Valentine's Cat-sharp eyes picked out a shadowy shape, glistening wet in the darkness, climb onto a sailboat and merge with something that looked like a bundle of canvas leaning against a mast. Others of the Whitefang tribe emerged from the riverbank and stalked into the trees.
Evidently the Doublebloods hadn't counted on an attack from upriver.
A flaming arrow, looking like a bum-winged firefly as it turned tight circles along its parabolic arc into the Mississippi, announced that the scouts had done their job.
Valentine splashed ashore with the veteran Grogs carrying belt-fed machine guns and laced-together Kevlar over their broad frames. Valentine felt sorry for anyone going against this contingent. It was hard enough to get a bullet through Grog-hide around the shoulders and chest. Add Kevlar to the mix and you had something resembling a living tank.
The younger Grogs were showing each other gory trophies taken from the Doubleblood sentries.
The remaining unblooded Whitefangs prepared to win their own bloody prizes. The Grogs caked themselves with mud, dead leaves, and bracken. It would conceal them from the eyes of their enemies and be an earthy burial shroud should they die.
By dawn Doubleblood message runners showed up at the Southern Command bank. Valentine got a good look at one. She looked a little like a bloodhound, with short dark hair, lots of loose skin about the face, and a gangly, underfed look compared to the gray Grogs. But the Doublebloods could run like deer and climb like spiders—even with an arrow through her leg that one Grog shot through the brush on the riverbank like a snake.
Valentine didn't care to watch the questioning of the captured messengers, but it amounted to bringing the bigger boats around the south end of the island and setting up boarding ramps big enough for young cattle and pigs.
The Whitefangs happily followed the plan. They were setting up the inviting-looking boarding ramps (and brush blinds for snipers and archers flanking the landing) when a brown-water river patrol motored upriver and turned in to get a good look at the operation, covering the Grog boats with what looked like 20mm cannon while a squat mortar boat watched over matters from mid-river.
Valentine slipped into the water off the side of one of the Doubleblood boats, just in case the Quislings stopped to search. He felt the deep Mississippi mud, cool and gritty, around his toes. But the patrol recognized the Whitefang warrior tattooing and gave the chief some boxes of ammunition and a case of incendiary grenades in the interest of bringing a little extra misery to Southern Command and staying friendly with Whitefang's people.
The tall young warrior who'd caught Whitfang's daughter's eye was able to fill his bandolier with .50 rounds, and stick extras behind his ears, braided in his long unmated warrior's mane, and up one cavernous nostril.
The patrol sped away, not wanting to draw more attention to a Grog raid than necessary. Valentine could still hear their motors from upriver—they were making for the Ohio, seemed like—when the first of the Doublebloods arrived.
Valentine stayed in the water with his carbine, waiting in the shadows beneath the gangplank, battle harness with his ammunition wrapped around his neck and shoulders to keep it out of the water. The bullets were supposed to be water-resistant, but Valentine had an old soldier's mistrust for allowing muck and gear to mix.
A panting line of warriors loped up, waving to a couple Double-blood bodies on the flatboat nailed to wooden staves, gruesome puppets already thick with flies. Grogs hidden behind the gunwales worked the arms with bits of cattail.
Valentine slipped the condom off his gun barrel. He'd used more of the things keeping water out of his barrel than he'd had in sexual assignations. Not that one of Southern Command's rough-and-ready prophylactics could compete with the artfully wrapped, gossamer-skinned little numbers smuggled in from Asia at great expense that he'd tried in Fran Paoli's well-appointed bedroom back in Ohio.
The advance party fell to a hail of arrows. Two in the rear who figured out what was happening and shouldered carbines to shoot back were brought down with well-placed shots. Valentine knew Grog sniper checkdowns all too well: obvious officers, then anyone giving signals of any kind, then machine gunners. Sometimes they wouldn't even use their precious bullets on ordinary soldiers.
One of the Doublebloods spun as he fell, and Valentine thought of young Nishino on Big Rock Hill.
The time and miles that yawned between made him feel as old as one of the riverbank willows.
Things went badly as the Grogs cleared away the bodies. The main body of Doublebloods were close behind their guard, driving herds of cattle, geese, and swine. Blindfolded human captives, linked by dowels and collars at the neck, staggered under yokes with more bags of loot attached or pushed wheelbarrows.
The west bank of the Mississippi went mad as the bullets began to fly, with animals fleeing every which way and the humans getting tangled, falling, dragging their fallen comrades, until they too tripped and fell hard.
More and more Doublebloods arrived, seemingly from all points west, and the arrival of their rear guard gave the Doublebloods the advantage. Now it was the Whitefangs who were pinned. The Doublebloods even managed to set up some knee mortars, raining shells on the riverbank.
Grogs hated artillery. Many of the younger warriors crept back to the water.
A crossbow bolt whispered past Valentine's ear and struck the transom of the flatboat with a loud kunk.
As the skirmish progressed a group of Doub
lebloods forced their way toward the boats, using cattle as bleeding, lowing shields, splitting the Whitefangs.
Valentine laid down a steady stream of single shots at the shapes moving in the cow dust, but the Grogs on the boats had a better plan. They cut the anchors and sent the boats nearest the bank off downstream.
Something splashed into the water near Valentine. Grenade, mortar shell, or flung rock?, his brain wondered for a split second, waiting for an explosion.
It didn't come.
Seeing their salvation float away took the heart out of the Doublebloods. They broke and scattered for the riverbank, abandoning their prizes.
The Doubleblood rear guard stayed together, fighting as they turned north instead of south after the boats. Whitefang sent his most experienced warriors after them. Valentine emerged from the river, shimmied up a thick trunk and got a chance to observe a Grog assault from the rear, with warriors avoiding superior firepower by exploding from cover to cover in short hops.
Whitefang shook his head in disgust at the slaughter of livestock. He kicked a shrapnel-scratched youngster to his feet and set him to work hanging and dressing some swine who'd been caught in the cross fire.
Someone had tossed an incendiary grenade in his excitement and started a small brush fire. Valentine gesticulated and pointed and a few Whitefangs stamped and kicked dirt on the smoldering wood.
It gave him a chance to go to the captives. Using his utility knife, he started cutting ropes and unhooking yokes.
"Much obliged, son," a man with four days of beard croaked.
"He's a renegade. He's with these other stoops," another said. "We're just out of the frying pan and into the fire."
Valentine showed the beat-up militia tag on the shoulder of his half-wet tunic. "No, sir. This is a joint operation, of sorts. Southern Command will be along in a bit to offer assistance."
"A bit" turned out to be about fifteen minutes. Valentine marked the approaching troops flitting from tree to tree up the trail of the departing, exchanging shots with the last of the Doubleblood rear guard, a pair of sappers so occupied in shooting at the humans and keeping from getting shot themselves that they probably didn't even feel the arrows striking between their shoulder blades.