by E. E. Knight
"I never saw anything like the Moondaggers when I crossed Nebraska."
"Oh, they're not from there. I guess they headquarter near Detroit with a couple of posts in northern Michigan, watching the Canadian border. Sort of a province of the Ordnance. That's one of the better-run—"
"I know the Ordnance. I've been into Ohio."
"They moved them fast, took them through the Dakotas on that spur they built to go around Omaha. At least that's what that Cat Smoke told me. She's the one who urged us to get to Olathe before it was too late."
Valentine didn't say anything. He let the words come.
"But once the Moondaggers started moving, they moved fast. On good roads they travel in these big tractor trailers made out of old stock cars stacked like cordwood. I've seen them riding on old pickups and delivery vans and busses, clinging like ticks to the outside and on the roof. They only do their marching when they're near the enemy, and then they pray and holler like that."
Moytana gestured at the winding snake.
"First they send an embassy of men from another town they've cut up, so the right accent and clothing and set of expressions is passing on all the gory details. I'm told their lives depend on getting the rebels to give up without a fight. Then they send in guys like our Last Chance to negotiate, get men to thrown down their guns and quit, sneak off, whatever—then they make them prove their loyalty to the Kurians. Arm them with spears and one-shot rifles or have them carry banners in their front ranks so neighbor has to shoot neighbor."
He gulped. "Once they go into a town, well, they gut the place pretty bad. There are always a few Kurians in the rear, adding little tricks and whatnot, scaring the defenders. Outside of Olathe a rainstorm worked up and the Kurians somehow made it look like blood. I don't care who you are, Valentine—that'll rattle you, seeing blood run off the roof and pool in the streets. The Kurians get their pick of auras. The Moondaggers get their pick of women."
"You mentioned that before."
"Yeah, everyone from NCO on up in the Moondaggers has his little harem. Flocks, they call them. The gals are the flocks and they're the buggering shepherds jamming the gals' feet into their boots so they can't kick.
"That's the big thing in that outfit, breeding. A guy with a big flock, he's more likely to get promoted. They get decorated for the number of kids they've sired.
"Trick's getting started. You haul as many women as you can control home with you and start churning out babies. Seems the favorite age to grab is about nine to twelve. They don't eat as much, can't put up a fight, and they got all their breedin' years ahead of them."
"So making babies is like counting coup. What happens to the progeny?"
"Starting about five to eight they test them. I'm told one gets chosen to look after household when 'Dad' is away—almost always a boy. Toughest of the kids go into the Moondaggers, smartest go into the Church, the rest go off to labor training or get traded somewheres."
"Who controls the 'flock' while they're off fighting?"
"Dunno. Reapers, I suppose. Maybe the Church brainwashes some of the gals."
"You couldn't stop it in Olathe."
"No, it was just me and a squad of Wolves. We went through town after they pulled out. Found lots of bodies. And about a million crows eating the bits and pieces left in the streets. Moondaggers always like to chop a few up and stuff them back into their clothes the wrong way around, feet sticking out of shirtsleeves and heads where a foot should be. For it is the blessed man who obeys the Gods and knows his place, for they are Wise; the man who claims for his head the mantle of godhood is as foolish as one who walks upon his hands and eats with his feet.
"They left three men alive. One with his eyes burned out, one with his ears scrambled with a screwdriver, and one with his tongue ripped out. Just like that trio from the Mammoths. They did a story on them in the Free Flags. Pretty sad picture to put on the front page. Did you see it? About a year and a half ago."
"I was out west at the time."
"Whole bunch of young women barricaded themselves into one of the New Universal Church buildings and killed themselves with rat poison. I found a note: One kind of freedom or another. Girl looked about fourteen. That Smoke, she cried a good bit. Wasn't a total loss. We found some kids their parents stuffed up a chimney. Poor little things. I saw pretty much the same story in three other towns. Now they're here."
Valentine, feeling impotent in the face of the river of men snaking south two miles away, picked up a dry branch and snapped it. "Now they're here."
"Yeah. I know what's coming too. They'll just harry us, tire us out, get us used to running away from them. They'll terrorize anyone who even thinks about helping us. Then when we're starved and exhausted, they'll strike. Least they won't get too many candidates for their flocks out of our gals. Southern Command's shoot back."
"That's just one division there. Where do you suppose the other two are?"
"We never marked more than two in Kansas. The other's probably harrying what's left of the Green Mountain Boys."
"How did you find all that out?"
"We picked off one or two stragglers. Some just didn't talk, recited prayers the whole time or killed themselves with grenades at the last second. Some of the NCOs wear these big vests filled with explosives and ball bearings. They'll pretend to be dead and jump up and try to take a few with them. Smoke went and found a boy in Moondagger uniform and took him prisoner. Couldn't have been more than eleven; his only job was to beat a drum after the prayer singer spoke. He stayed tough for about ten minutes and then broke down and started crying when she sorta mothered him. Heard most of it from him."
Valentine had a hard time picturing Duvalier mothering anything but her assortment of grudges. But then she was a Cat, and it was her job to get information.
They left the hilltop, mounted legworms, and conformed to the line of the Moondagger's march. Scouts found a new wooded ridge with a good view of the highway and they repeated the process for another hour. Moytana took a break and started on a letter. Valentine watched the marchers and the opposing scouts. All Valentine could think was that the Moondaggers were experts at their particular brand of harshness. He wondered how long they could operate somewhere like Kentucky without—
"Sir, scouts have met up with a party of locals," a Wolf reported. "Armed. They saw us riding. One of them asked for you by name and rank, Major Valentine."
"Locals?"
"Hard to tell if they're Kentuckian or Virginian. Mountain folk. Careful, sir. I don't like the look of them."
Valentine put a sergeant at the spotting scope and Moytana abandoned his letter. They snaked down the slope to a rock-strewn clearing and Valentine saw five men in black vests waiting around a small spring-fed pond, boiling water. Valentine carried his gun loosely, as though meeting a neighbor while deer hunting.
Valentine approached. The strangers were lean, haggard men with close-cropped beards and camouflaged strips of cloth tying the hair out of their eyes. They had an assortment of 5.56 carbines with homemade flash suppressors and scopes.
Valentine didn't recognize any faces.
What he at first took to be a pile of littered rocks shifted at his approach.
A mass of straw canvas sitting with its back to him rose. It looked like a fat, disproportioned scarecrow made out of odds and ends of Reaper cloth, twigs, twine, netting, and tusklike teeth. A leather cap straight out of a World War One aviator photo topped the ensemble, complete with Coke-bottle goggles on surgical-tubing straps, though there were holes cut in the hat to allow bat-wing ears to project and move this way and that freely.
A face that was mostly sharp teeth yawned and grinned as a tiny tongue licked its lips in anticipation. The muddy apparition carried a strange stovepipe weapon that looked like a recoilless rifle crossed with a bazooka.
Bee let out a sound that was half turkey gobble, half cougar scream.
What? Valentine thought, feeling his knees go weak.
The
mountain of odds and ends spoke. "Well, my David. What kind of fix do you have yourself in this time?"
* * * *
When Valentine could see again, blinking the tears out of his eyes, he looked around at the two groups of men, Wolves and Appalachian guerrillas, both eyeing the astonishing sight of a man with Southern Command militia major clusters pinned on to a suit of legworm leathers crying his eyes out against the mud-matted hair of a Grog's chest.
"Our general ain't as bad as he smells," one of the guerrillas told a Wolf. "Talks a midge funny, but by 'n' by your'n gets used to it."
Ahn-Kha and Bee exchanged pats, scratches, and ear-cleanings as he and Valentine spoke.
"Did Hoffman Price turn up again?"
Bee turned miserable at the name and muttered into her palm, thumping her chest and pulling at the corners of her eyes.
Ahn-Kha made more sense of it than Valentine could, though he caught the words for "death," "lost," and "slave" in the brief story.
"I'm sorry to hear of his passing, my David. It seems to have worked out for Bee. You're her, urn, liberator and dignity restorer. As far as she's concerned, you hung her lucky moon in the sky."
"I can't tell whether she's a bodyguard or governess. She's always about yanking me out of my boots at the sound of gunfire."
"Proving that she has more sense than you."
"Can I hear your story?" Valentine asked.
"Oh, it is a long tale, and only the end matters. I managed to get myself put in command of the Black Flags. I still wonder at it."
Valentine still couldn't resist asking. "Your injuries?"
"Healed, more or less. Though I urinate frequently. I use your old trick of dusting with pepper or peeing into baking soda, otherwise the dogs would probably catch on."
"What happened to the pursuit?"
"They thought they caught a dumb Grog driver. I was sold to a mine operator. There matters turned dark in more ways than the coal face. I did not care for their treatment of someone who was kind to me and began a vedette."
"Vendetta, I think you mean."
"Vendetta. Of course. My one-hand war grew."
"What are your numbers now?"
"I will not tell you exactly," Ahn-Kha said. "Not with all these ears around. The Kurians believe our army to number ten thousand or more. But they have multiplied when they should have divided."
"I don't suppose I can count on you at my side this time?"
"These men deserve my presence. I began their war, and I will see it through. This is a strange land, my David. Victory and defeat all depend on a few score of powerful, clannish families who run things in this part of the country. Everyone knows and is related to one or more of these families. It makes my head hurt to keep track of it all. For now, they endure the Kurians as best as they can, though there are one or two families who relish their high placement overmuch. But the others, if they believe that we will win, they will place their support with us."
They talked quietly for a while. Ahn-Kha was waging a canny war against these powerful Quisling families. His partisan "army" had the reputation it had simply because it didn't exist as a permanent body. Ahn-Kha would arrive near a town and his small body of men would gather a few second cousins and brothers-in-law, Ahn-Kha would issue arms and explosives, and they'd strike and then fragment again as the Golden One relocated to another spot.
Sometimes when they struck and killed some officer in the Quisling armed forces with a connection to one of the more powerful collaborators, they dressed him in the guerrilla vests and left him buried nearby where search dogs were sure to find him. This led to reprisals and mistrust between the Quislings, and the rickety Kurian Order in the coal country of the Appalachians was coming apart.
The Moondaggers, on their arrival, had destroyed a trio of the Quisling families under suspicion, creating bad feeling among the rest. If they were to be treated as guerrillas, they might as well join the resistance and hit back.
"You wouldn't be interested in a trip back to the Ozarks, would you? I've felt like a one-armed man since we parted."
"And I a Golden One missing the ugly half of his face. But my men need me. Though I started a revolt more by accident than intention, I must see it through."
"Forget I asked."
"Can I be of assistance otherwise, my David? In this last year my small body of men have become very, very good at quick, destructive strikes. Shall I bring down bridges in the path of your enemy?"
"It's the trailing end I'd like attacked. Do you think you can to bust up their supply lines? I want the Moondaggers forced to live off the land as much as possible."
"It will not be difficult to find men to do that. They have carried off a number of daughters already. As I said, everyone here knows everyone by blood or marriage or religious fellowship."
Valentine felt an excited tingle run up his spine. Ahn-Kha usually underpromised and overdelivered. Ahn-Kha would tweak the tiger by the tail, and if the tiger was stupid enough to turn, it would find itself harried by a foxy old Grog up and down these wooded mountains.
"I can't tell you what this means to me, old horse."
"I have the easy end, my David. Kicking a bull in the balls isn't terribly difficult when someone else is grappling with the horns."
"They may deal harshly with the locals."
"They will find the people in this part of the country have short fuses and long memories, if they do so."
Ahn-Kha always was as handy with an epigram as he was with a rifle. Speaking of which—
"What the world is that thing?" Valentine asked. "A shoulder-fired coal furnace?"
"My individual 75mm," Ahn-Kha said. "Almost the only artillery in our possession. Some clever chap in my command rigs artillery shells so they go off like rockets."
"You're kidding."
Ahn-Kha's ears made a gesture like a traffic cop waving him to the left. "Kidding? It is more dangerous than it looks. That is why I have the goggles. You are lucky you haven't seen me after firing it. My hair becomes rather singed."
* * * *
They shared a simple camp meal of legworm jerky and corn mush. Valentine didn't even have any sweets to offer Ahn-Kha. If it had been in his power to do so, he'd have run all the way back to St. Louis to get some of Sissy's banana bread or molasses cookies.
If he could fantasize about running all the way, he could fantasize about bananas being available in the Grog markets.
"Sorry we don't have any molasses," Valentine said. "We're a long way from home."
Ahn-Kha extracted a small plastic jar of honey shaped like a bear, tiny in his massive fist, and squirted some onto each man's corn mash.
He quizzed Ahn-Kha on the capabilities of his guerrillas and their operations, soaking up his friend's opinions and experiences like a sponge. Ahn-Kha was doing his best to make coal extracted from these mountains as expensive in repair and garrisoning as possible.
As the Golden One told a story about the destruction of a rail tunnel, a report came in that the Moondagger column was turning again, this time north. They might have finally turned toward Javelin. They'd have to relocate again to keep it under observation.
They bolted the rest of the meal and washed their pannikins in the spring. Ahn-Kha wrapped up his jar of honey and stuck it back in a vast pouch on his harness that smelled like wild onions. Valentine gave him a collection of Grog guck scavenged from the men with promises to replace it with chocolate bars from the medical stores.
Valentine would always remember that tiny plastic honey reservoir, and the way Ahn-Kha licked his fingers after sharing it out. Would there ever be a world again where people cared about the shape of a container?
He hoped so.
When they parted he shook the slightly sticky hand again, felt it engulf his own. Fingers that could snap his femur closed gently around his hand.
"Good luck, my David. We will meet again in happier circumstances. "
"You said something like that before."
/> "And I was right. Give my regards to Mr. Post and Malita Carrasca. And our smoldering red firebug."
The staggering weight of all that had happened since they'd last said good-bye left him speechless. Ahn-Kha didn't even know about Blake.
"I trust your judgment on that one, old horse."
"Major, we have to leave. Now, sir," Moytana said.
So much for the fleeting pleasures of lukewarm corn mash sweetened by a tincture of honey. Valentine considered requesting that "Resting in peace—subject to the requirements of the service" be emblazoned on his grave marker.
Ahn-Kha's ears flicked up. "I'll give you a little more warning next time so you can receive me properly." He pulled his leather cap a little tighter on his head and picked up his stovepipe contraption. "After all, as you can see, I am a distinguished general."
"I'll bake a cake," Valentine said.
"Heartroot would do. See if you can't get me a few eyeroots, would your"
"Good luck, my old friend. I can't tell you how good it is to see you again," Valentine said.
"When matters are settled in these mountains, you will see me again. Chance is not yet done playing with us."
With that, he turned and loped rather heavily off to the east into the woods, his men running to keep up. Valentine wondered what another brigade, three thousand strong or more, of Golden Ones could accomplish if led by his old friend.
* * * *
The column had turned for Javelin. They were mounting a small force on armored trucks. Valentine wondered what the urgency was and requested that they make contact with base.
"Javelin's hung up at a bridge crossing. I can't get a warning through—there's some kind of jamming," the com tech reported.
"Moytana, try to delay those vehicles. Avoid a fight if you can. Block the road with trees at some gap."
"I'll see what I can do, sir. Looks like they're taking several routes, though."
The Moondagger column had turned into a hydra. One head crawled up a ridge, trying to get to the next valley over. A second was turning northeast, perhaps to get around behind Javelin.
"Send your fastest messenger back to headquarters with a warning. I think we can guess their route well enough. I'll follow as best as can.