by E. E. Knight
He sent another message to Seng, reporting the destruction of the bridge.
"Scouts confirm you are being pursued. Two trains out of Lexington. The rear is heavily armored with engines at either end. Coming your way. Over," headquarters reported.
"A Big Boy might be managing the pursuit. Over."
"GC will attend to it," Seng's headquarters replied. "Instructions on the way. Over and out."
Valentine slowed their progress to a crawl, both to check for track obstructions and so they could easily see a messenger. He smelled roasting goat in the refugee car—with tarragon and cumin, it seemed. The resourcefulness of soldiers in feeding themselves still found ways to amaze him.
A mile later the intercom crackled. "Stopping. Rock slide."
Valentine swung off the caboose and took a look. His Cat-sharp eyes made it plain. That ended it. Piles of sulfur-colored limestone had ended the chase. This was no tree that could be sawn and rolled, or blown. The rock slide would take his entire company working with beams, chains, and the train engine to clear.
At least half a day, working in daylight.
The door in the next car opened. Valentine caught a whiff of the improvised charcoal brazier they had set up under an air vent. Glass and the Grogs were eating chunks of goat meat toasted on skewers made from bedsprings. Other members of the company dismounted from the train to take a look at the rock slide. Everyone shook their heads.
It was a tight little corner of Kentucky, Valentine decided, looking at the steep hillsides to either side, the braaak of complaining sheep and goats from the railcars magnified by the cut.
They'd come at least ten miles. Horsemen or cyclists would be strung out, keeping up with the Reapers. Would whoever was puppeting the Reapers risk them? Valentine wondered if there was a finders-keepers policy for the rail security Kurian.
The hills around this cut would allow his troops to set up murderous cross fire. There'd be no danger of the men hitting each other; they'd be shooting down.
There was a slight upward slope to the rail line. Valentine thought of the wild cart ride he'd taken down Little Timber hill.
"Set up company headquarters back in that rock pile," he told Ediyak and Preville. "Try to make contact with the brigade."
"Yes, sir."
Valentine felt something tickling at the back of his scalp. He decided it was his imagination, fretting at the dark and the delay, with Seng still miles away. He put some men to work making stretchers from the rickety beds in the boxcars.
He posted Glass and the two Grogs in the rocks above at the source of the fall, having him take some illumination flares. The .50 would have a nice look down the cut from that point, and they could make a quick retreat over the ridgeline.
He put Rutherford and DuSable on the other hill, just above the caboose, with a machine gun taken from one of the train's mounts. He made sure they had pistols with Quickwood magazines loaded and ready.
Valentine posted himself with the majority of the platoon around the caboose. The cupola gun in the engine could cover a quick fallback and serve as a rally point in the rock pile.
Valentine posted Crow at the coupling between the engine and the boxcars.
He walked from position to position, checking the men, checking that nagging itch at the back of his neck that was turning into a doubt, stiffening the hairs there. He told Bee to stay in the caboose. She'd be an unpleasant surprise to any Reaper who clawed his way in.
There were Reapers somewhere off to the west. Or maybe it was the Kurian, reaching out with his senses, searching for his quarry.
Valentine heard a sudden burst of voices from company headquarters. He saw a flash of messy, knife-cut hair in the dim light from the LED bulbs lighting up the radio log.
Duvalier?
He clambered up the rocks, saw Duvalier putting away her sword into the walking-staff holder. He smelled sweat, rubber, and lubricating oil on her.
Ediyak's mouth was opening and shutting like a landed fish, and Preville trembled like his heart had been jump-started.
"Sorry, guys, had to make sure. Where's your major?"
"Right here," Valentine said, stepping across a rock.
She sat down on a rock and rubbed her thighs. "Three hours on a bicycle bumping along a railroad. The things my poor body does for you."
"That's it. I'm shooting for senior rank," Preville said to Ediyak, sotto voce.
Valentine offered his canteen and Duvalier cleared her mouth out, then drank.
"I wish we could have saved you a few miles. These rocks prevented it," Valentine said.
Duvalier unwrapped a piece of dried legworm jerky and took a bite. "Seng's got half the brigade on the way. The Bears and what Wolves he has left are on their way to the bridge you dynamited, along with some of the legworm troops. Karas gave another whoop-'em-up speech and sent them off hollering. There's a big file of legworms following this track too. They're tearing a bunch of new holes in their mounts, prodding them at speed."
"Any orders for me?"
"Just to let them know if you found some good ground for an ambush."
Valentine let himself soar a little. Seng saw an opportunity to sting the Kurians good and was grasping for the rose and not minding the nettles. Even if it drew lots of troops into this part of Kentucky, he'd be across another line of mountains by the time they could organize themselves.
"Can you help me here?" Valentine asked.
"Sure. Want me to brew up some of this Kentucky hickory nut coffee? Not like those cafes in the French Quarter, but it's hot."
Valentine smiled. "Not that easy. The Reapers could be here any time. I'd really like another trained Hunter up with my men. You could jam yourself between a couple of boxcars, wait for a chance to make a move."
"Me? I'm a heroic kinda fighter, Val. When bullets start to fly I prefer to head the other direction."
Valentine touched her on the shoulder. "I know. Just this once. Please, AH."
She looked off down the tracks and into the Kentucky night. "No, Val. I don't like the odds. Multiple Reapers, at night?"
Duvalier at least had the sense to refuse quietly. At most, Preville and Ediyak heard her.
Valentine wondered if she'd obey a direct order. Technically, Cats bore the rank of captain, but he suspected she'd tell him to get stuffed and bring her up on charges. "All right, how about a job more in line with your tastes?"
"I hope it doesn't involve climbing back on that bike."
"No, I want you to scout out a good, covered route away from the rails and up this ridge. Take Ediyak with you and show her it. If a Reaper starts sniffing around in our rear, take care of him, or warn me."
"That's more my style," she said, fixing a button on her coat. "Want some of this bug jerky? It's not half bad. I think these guys use molasses."
Valentine stomped down his vexation with Duvalier. "Ediyak, go with Smoke here. Don't worry, she's just marking out a line of retreat. She'll keep an eye on you out in the dark."
"Two eyes," she agreed, smiling at his clerk. Ediyak was rather good-looking at that. But then the kind of Quislings who ended up in the Order's services had better access to nutrition and grew up well-formed.
A soldier trotted up.
"Sir, Red Dog is acting really weird. He's hiding under the sheep and whimpering. Harmony says they used to have a hound that acted just the same way when there were Savio— mean to say, Hoods around. He told me to get you. "
Valentine still felt disquieted.
He turned to Duvalier. "You'd better make your exit now, or you won't have an option anymore."
She gestured to Ediyak. "Direction is the better part of valor," she said. Ediyak picked up her rifle and checked it.
Valentine was beginning to suspect Duvalier liked to misquote Shakespeare just to bug him. He reached into a cargo bag and extracted a flare pistol on a lanyard and a pouch of flares.
"Don't get yourself taken," she said to Valentine. "One is my limit for heroic resc
ues." She gave him a quick buss on the ear, standing on tiptoe to reach, kissing lightly enough that Valentine felt like Peter Pan brushed by Tink's wings.
Then the Kentucky night swallowed her.
They were right about the dog. Valentine tried to tempt him out from under the train engine, but the dog bobbed his head and whimpered, tail tucked tightly between his legs.
"I know just how you feel, ol' buddy," one of the company said.
Valentine nodded and reached, opened a Velcro flap on his canvas ammunition harness. He extracted one of the blue-taped magazines, loaded it, borrowed some camouflage gun tape, and married a regular 9mm magazine to the Quickwood bullets.
Valentine walked up to his foremost pickets. He knelt, sent them creeping back to the main line, relieved in more ways than one.
They were out there. Reapers. Valentine's heart began to hammer.
Use it. Use the fear.
It woke him up with a capital awake. Each insect in the Kentucky night hummed its own little tune with its wings.
Valentine saw brush move. A peaked back, like an oversized cobra hood, rose from the brush.
Valentine felt its gaze. Every fiber, every nerve ending, came alive. He felt as though he could count the blood capillaries in his fingertips and the follicles on his scalp. Individual drops of sweat could be felt on his back. He opened the front grip on the gun, put the machine pistol tight to his shoulder—
The attack came from the hillside. Valentine heard a flap—laundry on a line. The gun went up without Valentine willing it and the muzzle flash lit up a falling, grasping parachute of obsidian-fanged death.
The next one was up to him before he could even turn to face it.
WHAM and the gun was gone, spinning off into darkness. Valentine fell backward, rolled, came up holding his sword protectively in front, noted coldly that the Reaper he'd shot was clawing at its chest, foot-long barbed tongue extended and straining.
The unwounded Reaper advanced at a crouch, a thin sumo wrestler scuttling insect-like in its squat. The inhuman flexibility of its joints unsettled. Your brain locked up in frozen fascination, trying to identify a humanoid shape that moved like a fiddler crab.
Valentine backed up a step, opening his stance and setting the sword behind, ready to uncoil his whole body in a sweeping cut when it leaped.
It sprang, taking off like a rocket.
BLAM! BLAM!
Shotgun blasts struck it, sent it spinning away as unexpectedly as a jack-in-the-box yanked back into its box as Valentine's sword sweep cut the air where it would have been.
Bee rose from some brush clinging to the small gravel swell the tracks ran along, other shotgun now held forward while she broke open the one she'd just fired with her long, strong fingers.
Valentine heard crashing in the brush as the shot-struck Reaper ran away. Valentine's instinct was to pursue. If it was running away, it was damaged and disadvantaged. He forced himself back to his senses and his men, sheathed the unblooded sword.
"Good work, Bee," Valentine said.
"Beee!" Bee agreed.
Officers' whistles cut through the darkness somewhere down the tracks that led toward the pursuing Quislings. Valentine located the sound. It came from the middle of a trio of tall robed figures in the center of the columns. Valentine saw movement all around them in the dim light.
Someone—Glass probably—had the sense to fire an illumination flare. The firework burst high, lighting up the steep-sided cut as it wobbled down.
The railroad cut was full of troops walking their bicycles uphill in two open-order lines up either side of the tracks, carrying their rifles at the ready so that the muzzles were pointed toward their open flanks rather than at their comrades.
Valentine backed up a few steps, fired another flare with his own gun as he retreated toward his line, more to highlight himself to his men. He drew a shot and then another from scouts the Quislings had sent forward. Luckily these troops didn't have nightscopes.
"Check fire, check fire. It's the major," someone shouted.
Valentine made sure Bee was following—she was backing through the brush like a living fortification between him and the advancing troops—and came up to his men. They'd stripped the boxcars of bed frames, thin mattresses, and water barrels and improvised a breastwork, shielding it with cut brush.
"Fire on my order. Single shots only, and take your time," Valentine said. "Pass the word. Single shots only. We're guerrillas, remember. All we've got are deer rifles and bird guns. Sergeants on up, have your pistols out with Quickwood magazines in."
Valentine trotted to the other side of the tracks, passed the word to the troops in the opposite of the cut. As he was about to climb into the caboose, Valentine heard something skip and bounce through the dirt toward the fortification.
"Grenade," he shouted, embracing gravel like it was his mother.
It blew on the far side of the breastwork. The men began to shoot back, placing careful single shots. The machine guns from the caboose opened up and drew fire in return.
Did the Reapers know they were chasing nothing but sheep and goats yet?
More whistles, and the Quislings came forward at a rush, bright flowers of shotgun blasts cutting through the brush as the assault began.
He fired another flare and saw them coming, heads bobbing as they advanced, the foremost less than twenty yards away, covering each other with bursts of fire that pinged off the caboose or thwacked into the bed-frame breastworks. If they could be turned now . . .
"Fire at will!" Valentine shouted.
Gunfire roared into the night. Grenades bloomed and died, each one exploding more softly as the ears became overwhelmed by the noise. Valentine saw figures falling or diving for cover.
A Reaper ran toward them straight up the rail line, a satchel held in each hand. The Kurian animating the Reapers must have been either desperate or determined to overwhelm them in an all-or-nothing gambit. Bee fired and missed, and then tore up its robes with her second barrel. Valentine didn't need to wonder what was in the satchels, or see the digital seconds ticking down. God, his pistol was out there somewhere—
A sergeant, Troust—though the men nicknamed him Surf, as he combed his thick blonde hair into a wave on his forehead—appeared beside Valentine and rested his 9mm on a step of the caboose, firing steadily, aiming with each shot. Valentine duly noted his coolness as though already composing the report.
The Reaper stiffened, leaning oddly, and started a throw, but the blood drinker's fingers refused to release. The momentum of the satchel toppled it, and Valentine saw the astonishment in its eyes.
Valentine saw heads rise as the Quisling soldiers scrambled out of the way of what was coming.
"Down!"
Valentine covered his ears and felt the weight of Troust come down on the back of his head. The satchel charges went off in twin booms that must have echoed in Georgia, and Valentine felt the world momentarily give way.
Surf let him up, the weird underwatery feel of the explosions' concussion sapping his strength and wits. A Quisling in a torn green uniform was at the barricade, staggering as he tried to climb over, and suddenly Valentine's backup pistol was in his hand and he shot, realizing as the bullets hit that he was killing a man trying to surrender.
More bursts of fire came from the darkness down the track. The gunfire seemed wrong. Those titanic blasts should have been an operatic blast at the climax of the fight, not punctuation in the middle of a long, deadly symphony. His flare hung on a tree downslope, sputtering as its light died.
More whistles, low and muted to his outraged ears. Valentine saw wounded men being carried back.
Had to do something to break up the attack.
"Empty the caboose," he told Troust. "Fall back to the rock pile as soon as the cars start moving."
Valentine crept along the tracks, sheltering from the wild high bullets in the wheels, Bee trailing him like a gigantic dog. He opened each boxcar door about halfway. A goat jump
ed out. The other livestock looked stupidly at him, jumping and quivering at each shot.
He climbed into the engineer's cab, told the soldier there to start the train backward, and hurried to the back door.
He found Crow still posted, moving the barrel of his rifle at every sound.
"I want you to uncouple as soon as the cars have a little momentum."
"While the cars are moving?" Crow asked.
"Yes."
The cars bumped into motion, their squeals curiously innocent after the noise of combat. Valentine gauged the train's speed.
"Now, Crow. Release!" Valentine shouted down from the engine.
Crow waited until the tension came off the coupling, then pulled it. Pressure cables for the car brakes hissed as the valves closed.
Valentine extended a hand and helped pull him back into the engine as the man working the controls applied the brakes. The rest of the cars pulled away, picking up speed on the slope.
"You did well, there," Valentine told Crow as the latter wiped his greasy hands on a rag.
The sheep and goats didn't like the motion and began to leap from the train. First a few goats, and then the sheep, all in a rush. Some went head over heels as they came off in a mass, a waterfall of wool and tufted hair. The goats' instinct was to head for high ground, and the more nimble goats made the escape up the hillside first. The sheep stuck together in bawling clumps.
Crow slipped and Valentine lunged, caching his arm. Crow's toes skipped on the tracks, sending up pebbles and dust. The train wasn't moving that fast, but the engine's tonnage could maim or kill even at a crawl. Valentine hoisted him into the engine compartment as the gunner opened up on some unknown target. Tracers zipped off into the darkness, zipping like hornets with meteor tails toward an enemy.
"Back up toward the rock pile," Valentine told the engineer, who applied brakes and sent the engine in the other direction. The gun overhead chattered again and Valentine heard casings clink into the canvas bags that prevented the spent shells from rolling around underfoot in the control cabin. Then, to the men at either side, he yelled, "Fall back! Fall back up the tracks."