by E. E. Knight
A backswept forehead had a little plume of stiff hair to it, like a centurion's helmet.
Valentine must have startled, misstepped. The long, backswept face turned and cocked, just like a robin listening for a worm.
The eyes, the color of a dying sun, were cold and familiar.
Valentine shouldered the 18 Select and it launched itself off the branch with a spring of its rear limbs. A short, forked tail had more webbing leading to the legs. The thing could maneuver like a duck. It turned and Valentine loosed a burst.
It disappeared into the trees. Valentine got a glimse of elongated ostrich toes as it disappeared. He hardened his ears and heard branches snapping.
"What the blue hell was that?" Patel asked, coming forward at a crouch. He scanned the branches above, as if fearing nests filled with little chirping Reapers.
"I don't want to wait to find out. Back to the landing."
Valentine's head wanted to disappear between his shoulders, turtlelike, the whole way back. It was far too easy to imagine the avian Reaper—if it was a Reaper—reaching down and knocking his head off with one of those slender legs like a perched cat swatting at a ball of string.
The men had fun stripping and destroying the trucks. They'd even used a tree limb to winch out one of the diesels. Patel made some flat-bread on a greasy skillet while the strike platoon rested and let Rand's team do their jobs filling the boats. Valentine rode back on the ricketiest-looking raft, leaning against stacks of tires and boxes filled with headlights and radio gear as he watched the old houseboat's pontoons and netted masses of Ping-Pong balls scrape and roll through the water.
He could hear firing from downriver, a kak-kak-kash of small cannon that reminded him of the old Thunderbolt's Oerlikon. He watched signal flares fired from the friendly shore, and a boat roared by with the last of the Wolf rear guard.
The sky was already pinkening.
Some of his men gathered at the far end of the boat, watching the hostile shore recede. As Valentine watched the southern half of the mighty river in the direction of the firing, he listened on a member his strike platoon and a member of the landing detail talking to a rafter as they were towed back across the Mississippi:
"The major is the coolest sonofabitch under fire I've ever seen, I'm here to tell. The bat-bastards came in and he stood up on the truck, just picking them off while grenades dropped all around."
"They can't train guts into you," another agreed. "He's tough."
Well, you can bungee yourself up so you can’t run too.
Valentine was too pleased to correct them; besides, the shaggy hound had decided to hop up on the piled tires and deploy a rasping tongue on the cuts and scrapes courtesy of the Kentucky roadside growth.
* * * *
All in all, it was a successful operation. A sniper had killed one of Moytana's Wolves and a Bear was missing in action. He'd last been seen roaring down after a blood trail in the assault on the river patrol docks. Gamecock was hopeful he'd wander back into camp in a week or so once he sniffed out a method to get back across the river.
The worst losses had been suffered by the Skeeter Fleet: A motor-boat with three men had blown up during a riverine duel with river patrol craft. Their pictures had already gone up on the memorial wall at Backwater Pete's, a bar up the Arkansas River near the Skeeter Fleet general headquarters.
That was the hateful side of the Cause. A chance conversation leading to an opportunity to hit the enemy where he wouldn't expect. And at the end of it, when the excitement was over and the ineffable, after-action halo faded, came the bill. All because he did his duty.
But his duty was also to turn this assortment of experienced soldiers (and the odd ex-sailor; he had two floaters in with his fighters) into a cohesive unit, to know which pieces functioned in what way under stress. They'd been over the river and back again together, in spirit, even if everybody hadn't crossed the Mississippi.
Now he had a team.
* * * *
At the debriefing back at Camp Highbeam, the only person unhappy about the raid was Brother Mark. He looked strained and pale in the fluorescent lighting of the camp classroom that doubled as a conference room. He'd been out on one of his contact trips, negotiating with legworm ranchers, the resistance, and who knew what else.
"There is a plan, you know," Brother Mark said after asking questions about exactly where the fighting had taken place. "We don't need to be jamming sticks into the hornet's nest, stirring them up."
Valentine was a little dissatisfied too, when he told the story about the flying Reaper.
"Sure it wasn't just a real skinny gargoyle?" Captain Moytana asked. He'd written the letter about the dead Wolf and posted it to his folks that morning.
"I'll send a message to the Miskatonic about it," Valentine told the faces around the conference table. "I don't suppose there's a good artist somewhere in the brigade."
"One more matter," Colonel Seng said, his wide catfish face graver than usual. "The usual after-action leaves will not take place. I wish to intensify training. The whole camp is going to start route-marching exercises and war games. The orders and scheduling will be on your desks within two days."
Gamecock groaned. "My Bears expect their due."
"They're not your Bears, Lieutenant," Seng said. "They're Southern Command's. They'll get their chance at a short leave. So will all of you. This operation may begin sooner than anyone dreams."
Valentine intercepted Brother Mark as the meeting broke up. It was easy; he wasn't a popular man. Valentine didn't know if it was his fussy manner of speaking or the resentment of soldiers who had to work with a civilian's eye on them.
"Excuse me, sir," Valentine said. "Were you just with the rebels in the Virginias?"
"I can't tell you that, son."
"You've been there, though. You've told us that much."
"Yes," Brother Mark said, wary.
"Have you seen the Grog that's supposed to be with them? Leading them?"
"I don't know about leading. They definitely listen to him. He's sort of a mascot or good luck charm. They always perk up when he's around."
"What's he like?" Valentine asked.
"I suspect you know. I was briefed on your trip through Kentucky. Big. Leaner and less stooped-over than those thick-hides with the fangs. He can speak too. I've never met a Grog who can do that."
"The last time you saw him, was he well?" Valentine asked. Brother Mark should be able to answer that.
"Healthy as a horse. They call him the Uncle, by the way. I just remembered that. He's scarred, but the injuries are healed. Does that put your mind at ease."
"You've— I'm very happy to hear that, sir. Thank you."
"Happy. I remember that. I'm jealous, son. Excuse me, I must attend to the colonel. Be true."
He turned away, hurrying to catch up to Colonel Seng, ending the conversation.
* * * *
The brigade made practice marches interspersed with combat training. Jolla's command, including Valentine's company, was often matched against the rest of the brigade.
After one of these skirmishes, the Guard lieutenant colonel Gage sat Valentine in his command car, a beat-up old Humvee with an oversized bed and extra brackets that allowed it to double as an ambulance.
"Goddamit, Major, our boys are supposed to win. How are they supposed to build confidence when your glorified chicken wranglers burn a couple dozen of them?"
"Tell your junior officers that just because an area's been checked for mines, it doesn't mean I can't go back and replant after they've passed through," Valentine said. "My orders were to delay your march on Red Ridge."
Valentine wanted to add that if Daniels would keep his companies in closer contact, Valentine wouldn't have had time to mine their road, but that would be presumptuous.
"You could act a little more like Quislings. They always fall back in the face of superior numbers. They don't hunker down and let the first wave get past."
"I know,
sir," Valentine said.
Gage cooled down. He'd obviously just been chewed on by Seng, who was pushing the brigade like a madman. "They still calling your guys the shit detail?"
"I haven't heard it in a while," Valentine said.
"Got to hand it to you, though. After the last time getting at those Grogs of yours with the auto 50s, everyone figured we hadn't run into your boys yet because they hadn't started sniping. Weren't you staff at one timer"
"Supposed to be. An old ghost caught up to me and I never made it."
"Sorry to boil up on you like that. I'm glad you'll be on our side when we march up-country."
* * * *
As January turned to February, a big duffel bag arrived, labels and identifying inking scrawled all over it. It turned out to be all the way from Pacific Command.
Valentine read the letter in the waterproof courier pouch stitched onto the canvas:
Valentine,
After many wanderings your goods surfaced and I became aware of their existence. I promptly inventoried and dispatched them to Denver, courtesy of a liaison, and I'm confident they'll make it to Southern Command before too many more months pass.
Been seeing a lot of your friend Gide. She's got a mouth on her but she's turning into a dead shot witch of the woods. They're talking about putting me into GHO up here and if that happens I might see about a ring for the end of those snake tattoos. She lost three toes and a chunk of buttock t0 a mortar round, so she's off the A-active list but is recovering nicely. She sends a kiss and wants to know if you're still musky. I won't be ungentlemanly and speculate.
Please accept your property with my compliments and apologies for the delay. What the hell is that thick leathery material, anyway? If you've got any to spare I'd like some for a jacket,
Yours in the Cause
J. LeHavre, Colonel
Pacific Command
His old legworm leathers, gear, and sword had been wrapped up in a waterproof, but someone had made off with his boots either before it was turned over to LeHavre or along the road. Valentine wished their new owner's feet well.
The thief, if there had been a thief, missed a stiffened cuirass of cross-grained Reaper cloth, light and breathable and yet strong enough to stop a rifle round.
He looked at the sword. Some craftsman had put a new sharkskin grip on it—at least he thought it was sharkskin; it might have been roughed up big mouth—which was just as well as the old woven one had been getting ragged and bloodstained. He looked closer. There was a tiny little G inked just under the hilt cap next to the stitching. Now that he knew what to look for, he found a similar initial stitched just inside one of the interior side's many map pockets.
Nice to have a souvenir of his best memories of the Cascades.
Valentine noticed that she hadn't returned the old Steyr Scout. He didn't regret it—she'd probably make better use of it than he could.
* * * *
With the company full up and the training proceeding as planned, Valentine found more time to study Seng's texts and notes from his term at the staff school. Seng was generous with his own time, translating cryptic notes if nothing else. Seng's graduation thesis, filling an entire binder, was on Winston Churchill when Britain was fighting alone during the dark years between the fall of France and Operation Barbarossa, when Germany launched her fatal attack on Soviet Russia. Valentine found the Seng thesis more interesting and readable than many of the historians he'd read in Father Max's old library.
He still felt his company lacked a certain spark of initiative that Southern Command's soldiers seemed to be born with. Or perhaps Valentine, with more experience in picked commands, was used to building a unit with a better grade of materials. Their instinct was to hand every problem up rather than improvise a solution and then report.
He took to sending out small units with simple tasks—find a backpack he'd placed in a ravine without being spotted by pickets—and then change their orders at the last moment and kill all radio communications. He and Patel would then lead a couple squads in a mock pursuit.
If they weren't bred to think on their feet, he'd train it into them.
The bright spot in the shakedown was Glass' improvement. He knew the men joked that in Ford and Chevy, Glass finally had some friends who shared his taste for mostly communicating in grunts. Glass wanted to try them out with grenade launchers or the new, ultralight knee mortars from a Southern Command inventor.
Valentine allowed himself one luxury (other than the occasional long shower with his gift soaps): He taught Bee to shine his shoes and polish his belt buckle and name tag on his A uniform. Bee was feminine enough to like things pretty, though he occasionally had to take the woven daisy chains of wildflowers off his pack or remove the mini-bouquets peeking out the gutter at the bottom of his pistol holster. Some of the other officers in the brigade asked him how he classified her—adjutant, aide, or spouse—but Bee's elephantine grace and gentility gave her a charm that assured her a constant stream of sweets and ribbons from officers "just passing through the trader stalls and thought she'd like this."
He'd even heard the Command sergeant major, the senior NCO for the brigade, refer to her as their "big beauty." She'd come a long way in the men's opinion since her arrival in a tutu.
For relaxation he played chess with Rand. Rand won most of the time. He was such a talented, cold player that Valentine wondered if he made intentional mistakes out of curiosity to see what his CO would do when presented with an opportunity, just to give his brain a new set of data points and challenges. Rand apparently never let anyone behind the shield of his professionalism, even when they chatted after their chess games about the progress of the company.
They weren't close, but he was as fine a junior officer as Valentine could ever want.
Then came the spring storms. The camp began to buzz. As usual, the men had somehow picked up that something was about to happen and soon, days before Valentine got his orders to report to a final briefing.
* * * *
The camp grapevine proved to be right. All future leaves were canceled, the day trips into town ended, and last-minute munitions arrived, including a small supply of Quickwood bullets.
With the gear, the important men and women who came equipped with bodyguards, advisers, secretaries, and drivers began to arrive the next day. Valentine gave the same status report for his company three times in one day.
It would have been four but General Lehman cut him off as Valentine spoke to him in the base officers' club that never really got going. The dusty chairs, old movie posters, and license plates from the states making up the UFR all looked like they wanted to be put out of their misery.
"Javelin's under step-off orders, Major. Any reason your men can't go with it?"
"No, General."
"Heard good things about you. Gage says your men have been giving him hell playing OPFOR."
"That's kind of him, General."
"Not sure I like you training Grogs though. Sniffer dogs have their purposes, but you don't want them juggling grenades." He stopped, waiting for an answer.
"Of course not, sir."
An aide appeared and handed Lehman a flimsy. Lehman excused himself, scanned it, and nodded his head yes as he handed it back.
"They'll add a bit of verisimilitude to the, what is it, technical crew your men are supposed to look like."
"That's the idea, sir."
"A good one. Yours?"
"No, one of the Liberty recruit's. She's company clerk now."
"I don't trust ex-Quislings much farther than I can throw them. They caused us a lot of trouble before. Hope it works out for you. See you at the briefing tonight, Valentine. Dismissed."
The briefing, held in the guarded mess hall and using chairs begged and borrowed from every headquarters tent in the brigade, was mercifully brief. Which was just as well; the blackout curtains killed airflow as well as light. More than a hundred bodies burned a lot of calories over a couple hours. The tent
quickly became stuffy.
Lehman opened it with a few words about how javelins were used in ancient warfare to strike troops behind the front ranks. Lambert and Sime and a few new faces were there, politicians most likely. In the throng of uniformed aides and assistants stood one man in hunting gear who took a lot of notes and a few pictures. Valentine guessed he was from the Battle Cry, Southern Command's military newspaper.
Conspicuously absent, at least to Valentine, were Brother Mark and Moytana's senior Wolf lieutenant. Rumor had it they were already in the Kurian Zone, somewhere north of Memphis.
What combination of diplomacy and guerrilla havoc might be already under way? If Valentine had had his choice of assignments for this operation, he would have been with them as well. But support and logistics would be critical in an operation this far from Southern Commands bases.
Seng gave some final instructions for the movement to Rally Base, the terminus for the operation's communications with GHQ and what would one day, hopefully, be a routing station for troops staging trips to or back from the new Freehold on the northern Cumberland Plateau and Appalachians.
The campaign map had a few new notations. Three Cats had been dispatched to Kentucky, spaced out along their line of march. Logistics Commandos had infiltrated in behind the Cats. Valentine wondered what they'd been told about Highbeam, or Javelin, or whatever false information they'd been fed in case of capture.
Lambert look strained. But she collected her old briskness for a few words to the assembled officers.
"Yes, this operation is a risk," she said. The junior officers and senior NCOs had just found out their true destination from Colonel Seng. The news was still sinking in.
"But the coal country of Virginia, and the legworms of Kentucky, are both key to the Kurian Order. Civilization needs electricity and the people living in that civilization need protein."
For a moment Valentine thought he was back in the Cascades, where denial of resources had meant grisly strategies involving civilian bodies stacked like cordwood, while Adler carried out his war against Seattle. He envied the men around him for a moment. To them, Lambert's words were just military jargon.