Choice of the Cat

Chapter Two

On the banks of the Lake o' the Cherokees: Foxtrot Company waits in a forward camp. Tepees, tents, wagons, livestock, and a smokehouse cluster around a stream running down from the hills into what remains of the lake behind the breached dam. A few eagles fish beneath the ruined arches, lingering along the flight paths most have already followed north up the Mississippi Valley.
In this border country, the Wolves of Southern Command imitate the eagles, moving quickly here and there to survey the countryside and striking at prey small enough to take. Their duty is to scout the Kurian 2x>ne, pick up information, and warn the Free Territory of any impending threat to the human settlements in the hills and dales of the Ozark Freehold. Similar military camps lie scattered in the foothills of the Ozarks and Ouachitas throughout Missouri, the eastern edge of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas. Beyond this uninhabited ring broods the Night of the Kurian Order.
The Kurians on the other side of no-man's-land wait for a chance, perhaps some combination of weakness and error, to engulf the Free Territory and put an end to one of the last bastions of human civilization.
"Congratulations, Valentine," Captain Beck said, emerging from his tent to receive the report of his tired lieutenant. "I hear you got four Reapers. You're a credit to the Regiment." Beck held out his right hand, back straight as a telephone pole, smiling at Valentine through clenched teeth.
The young lieutenant shook the proffered hand. "Three, sir. The fourth was a little burned, but got away."
"Stafford said he was blinded. That's one less Reaper to worry about, in my opinion."
Valentine never stopped worrying about a Reaper until its corpse quit twitching.
"Could be, sir," Valentine said, massaging his aching neck. He was so tired, he had a hard time organizing his thoughts, but he had to snap to for this particular superior, fatigue or no. Captain Beck had a reputation as a man-driver and courageous fighter. After being promoted as the senior surviving officer after the Battle of Hazlett in the summer of '65, he'd pushed his company through training and once up to strength requested a forward posting.
"I got Stafford's report on the action at the Rigyard," he said, inviting Valentine into his tepee with an outstretched arm. Valentine entered; the shelter smelled of leather and cigars. Socks and underwear drying on a line added a hint of mustiness. "How was the trip back?"
Valentine collected his thoughts. "It rained after Stafford drove off. Slowed us up. The next day I sent out details to start some fires to the north, make them think we were moving across the flatlands for the Missouri border. We spotted a couple of patrol toward evening, one on horse and one in a truck. We lay low and cold-camped. The next-"
Beck held up a hand. "What's that, Lieutenant? A single truck? Sounds like a good opportunity for prisoners."
"It had a radio antenna. Even from ambush, they might have got off a message. We had been lucky with casualties. I didn't want to press it."
Beck frowned. "I'd like my officers more worried about what they are going to do to the enemy than what might get done to them. Your return would be easier if the Territorials were too scared of losing patrols to send them out."
"We'll have a hard time scaring them worse than the Reapers, sir."
The captain clucked his tongue against his teeth, and the tepee seemed to grow warmer. "I'm not questioning your judgment, just telling you how I might have handled it, had I been there."
"Thank you, sir. The next day, we really put on some mileage. By nightfall we passed the old interstate. When did you get back, sir?"
"Two days ago, morning. We scouted that refinery outside Tulsa. It's fortified, but I think the whole Company could hurt it, if we could bait a chunk of the garrison out somehow."
Valentine nodded. Months ago, he had learned the best way to change his captain's mind was to make any objections he had seem like Beck's own. "Certainly, sir. While we're trying to draw the garrison out, what orders would you give if a flying column comes up? Or Reapers? I'm sure we could take it, leading some Bears and a regiment of regulars as a reserve. That or have the help of a really good Cat, sir."
"Getting Southern Command to launch something like that isn't so easy to do," Beck said with a knowing chuckle. "That's enough for now. Take tonight off, get some food and sleep, then give me your full report tomorrow."
"Has anyone talked to the four Okies Stafford brought out, sir?"
"Stafford got their vitals. None of them were military. Feel free to interview them yourself. Add it on to your report if you get anything. Nice work out there, Valentine. Dismissed."
Valentine saluted. "Sir," he said quietly, and backed out of Beck's tepee.
A night off. Exhausted from the fight at the Rigyard and eight days in the Kurian Zone, he longed to fall into his cot, into oblivion. A hot bath first was tempting, but the platoon needed to be checked over, and he wanted to have a word with the liberated prisoners before they were taken east into the Ozarks.
He found Stafford with the platoon, engaged in an impromptu celebration for Poulos and his new bride. Someone had produced a jug, and Freeman, the company's oldest ranker, was pouring generous portions into the cluster of wooden cups held under the spout. The mugs were pieces of off-duty artistry: Free Territory hardwoods had been carved into wolf heads and fox ears. Some had handles chiseled to resemble curved tails. Even the rawest recruit in Foxtrot Company had his individual mug.
"Stafford, a word please." Valentine had to raise his voice over the ribald jests being directed at Poulos and his new bride.
The ruddy-skinned platoon sergeant left the guffaws and joined Valentine. They watched the festivities from the edge of the campfire light. Though himself a teetotaler, Stafford allowed his men to indulge after hard duty. The 120 miles covered on foot in the last seven days qualified.
"Poulos and the Meyer girl tied the knot, Gator?" Valentine asked.
"This morning, Val. They did it up right and proper. She's got her mom's wedding ring on now."
"It'll be a story for their grandkids. Hope nobody takes the hooch too close to the fire; I think Freeman adds a little turpentine to give it that woody, aged flavor."
Gator snorted, and Valentine returned to business. "I looked over your report on the drive back. Anything happen that you didn't want to put on paper?"
"No, sir. Except that I was cutting the engines about every fifteen minutes to listen. God, it was like I was driving around, setting off firecrackers. It's a wonder I didn't get every Territorial for fifty miles around me. But all we saw were a couple of deer we flushed. Came leaping at us in the headlights with glowing eyes and twelve-foot jumps. It took about two minutes for my heart to start beating again." His left eye twitched at the memory.
"I need to talk to that girl's mom and the others you brought out. Where can I find them?"
"The captain had to deal with that when we pulled in. Since they were your responsibility, he put them up in your tepee. Maybe he's sending a message about picking up strays. Lieutenant Caltagirone is still out on patrol with a chunk of third platoon, so Beck figured he might as well give that space to them. The little old guy, though-the one with the really long hair-you won't get much out of him. I think he's cracked. Hasn't said anything that makes much sense the whole ride."
"I don't even remember what they look like. Can I borrow you for a quick introduction?"
"Follow me, Val." Dodging dancers, they moved toward the ring of Company tepees at the center of the camp.
Valentine followed Stafford through the flap of the tepee he shared with Lieutenant Caltagirone. The refugees were relaxing. Their faces had been washed, and plates that looked as though they'd been licked clean were stacked by a washbasin.
"Here's the lieutenant; just a few more questions for you," Stafford said.
Valentine looked longingly at his cot. What was left of last night's charcoal was cold gray ash at the center. Caltagirone's cot and a tiny folding table paired up with a rickety stool completed the furnishings. A folding wood lattice stood behind the beds; spare equipment and clothing belonging to the Foxtrot's lieutenants hung from hooks.
As the prisoners sat up, Valentine walked over to his paperwork pouch bearing his stenciled name-months ago, someone had sewn a patch of a floating white cowl with two black eyes beneath the letters, a reference to his nickname, "the Ghost"-and extracted a clipboard. A new letter was clipped to the top of the assorted forms. He recognized Molly's hand by the deliberately printed black inscription, like a schoolchild's. Temptation to let the questions wait in order to peruse its contents almost overwhelmed him, but he stuck it back in the pouch.
Knowledge that a letter awaited him lifted the fatigue. He swung his leg over the little camp stool, sat, and awaited introductions. Stafford gave the names of the three men-Mrs. Meyer still being at the wedding celebration- and then returned to the platoon.
Their stories were the usual sad tale of refugees from the Kurian Zone. When they relayed the usual Kurian propaganda stories about life in the Ozarks-that a Rule Eleven existed condemning anyone who ever cooperated with the
Kurians to either execution or being worked to death, and further, Free Territory soldiers were allowed to rape any woman they wished-Valentine only shook his head and returned to the routine questions. He had taken hundreds of statements in his time from refugees, and the picture was always the same bleak snapshot: a hard, bland life of labor until the inevitable end in the draining embrace of a Reaper.
Only one statement stood out, and that was from the man Stafford had described as "cracked." He was a smallish man with a permanent squint that gave him a wizened look. His name was Whitey Cooper, no doubt a reference to his snow-white hair. He wore blue-striped ticking, a shirt in the last stages of decay. Not a button remained, and the collar and cuffs were gone, so his bony forearms and hands had a false appearance of unnatural length. It was trying work getting anything out of him. Valentine finally managed to learn that he worked in the main rail yards of Oklahoma City.
"And for better than thirty years, junior," Cooper pointed out, stabbing one of those fingers at Valentine as if threatening him with a dagger. "Nope, not a bird to change its tune, not me. So many came and went there. Ducks-the lot of them, quack-quack-quacking out their lives before flying south. I wasn't set to fly, though, not by a long shot."
"No?" Valentine said, having given up the fight to make sense out of the man after an inquiring glance or two exchanged with the others. He wondered what Molly had written, and if her mother's health had improved.
"Naw, I was quiet as a broke television. If you're up to your neck in shit, don't make waves. Kept me kicking these years. Till them Nazis showed up on their way north and spoilt it with that big train. They messed me up, but they'll get theirs. Now, I know my history, boy. I've read mor'n books than you got fingers. I know the Nazis got beat once, and we'll beat'em again."
Valentine stirred from musings. "Nazis?"
"That's the problem today, nobody's got no schooling. Yeah, Nazis, Mr. Lootenan. They were the bad guys way back when the world had the old-time black-and-white life."
"How do you know they were Nazis?" he asked, picking up his pencil.
"First I thought they were just train men like me. Most of'em weren't much to look at. Thin and sickly kinda, so I assumed they was just railroad men on short commons. What I call the old "gun to yer head" Railway Local Union Nine Em Em. See this good-sized train come through, not the biggest I've ever seen, not by a long shot, but armored engines and caboose and all. I see these guys drinking coffee when it's stopped between, relaxing between the cars on break like. So I figure I grab a cup while it's hot and say howdy, 'cause I had a spare cigarette to trade. I climb up, and they get all exhilarated. Haul me to the caboose, where this big shot fancied-up general starts giving me the onceover. I got thirty years' worth of work stamps in my ID book, but does that cut anything with him? Prick. No, sir. Says I'm spying, as if a bunch of closed boxcars are anything worth spying on. Everyone's all saluting and calling him Generalissimo Honcho or something. Then they take me when the train leaves and start all zapping me with this electric stick. Oh man, I cried, no no not a spy."
"This general, he was in charge of the Nazis? Did you see a name, perhaps on his uniform?"
Cooper winced, as if the memory slapped him. "Oldish, sir. Not oldish and healthy, oldish and dried out, skin like a wasp nest in winter. Thick, wiry gray hair, cut real luscious 'n' full. Little shorter'n me, and I'm only five seven. Pink-eyed, too, like he was hungover. Had a voice like an old wagon running on a gravel road. I've never heard a young man talk like that. Old and squeaky and tired."
"Could you tell from the way they talked where they were from? Did they mention any cities?" Valentine asked again, keeping his voice casual.
"No, if he said it, I forgot."
"What about his men-you said they were thin and sickly?"
"Jest the ones hanging round the wagons. The ones that grabbed me, big burly fellows they were. Plenty of guns, high-quality iron from back then, or as good. Had somun'em oversize gorilla-men with him, too-tall, tall they were, those snaggletooth varmints. It was them that held me when they started in on me."
"I still don't see how they were Nazis," Valentine said.
The man rocked as he sat hunched over, eyes screwed shut. "No, I got a good record here. Check my book. Me a spy?" Cooper trailed off.
Valentine switched tactics. "I think you're wrong, Mr. Cooper. You probably just mistook them for Nazis when they were hurting you."
"I'm learned, I tell you. I can read, just don't get the opportunity. How could I tell? The flag, like they had by the millions in them pictures. On the uniforms, and on the flags in the caboose behind the General Honcho's desk. Wore it proud, the bastards. You'll show'em, though, like you did at the house."
Valentine wrote something on his clipboard. "Like this?"
"That's it, Mr. Lootenan. That's it. I bet you beat on them tons of times before, right?"
Valentine just nodded, to himself rather than to the poor man's words, looking down at the clipboard. He had seen that design before, here and there, and wherever he had encountered it, there had been trouble.
Written in pencil on the slightly yellow paper was the backwards swastika he'd heard called "the Twisted Cross."
"You're sure you don't know where they come from?"
"Naw. Why you need to know that?"
"You said we had to beat them."
"Course you will, Mr. Lootenan. Of course. But you don't have to go looking for them. They're coming for you."
It took Valentine a moment to come up with, "How can you be sure of that?"
"All summer, new lines is goin' in. Labor and materials already arranged. I was supposed to second a section chief. A new north-south running Dallas-Tulsa-Kansas City, and after that then three branch lines."
"Branch lines? Where?"
"Pointing like a pitchfork right at these hills.
Valentine camped in an accommodating wagon that night among three other Wolves who had given up their tepee to Poulos and his new bride. As the final earthy taunts and wedding-night stories died down, Valentine reread Molly's letter by the cold light of the rising moon.
January 18, 2067
Dear David,
I hope this letter finds you well and doesn't take too long-you'd think they could find your unit in less than a month, wouldn't you? Everyone here in Weening is good the winter passed with hardly any sickness but the food is all starting to taste the same though I shouldn't complain as I am certain it is worse for you. I read your last letter out loud during Sunday Services and received many greetings and well wishes to pass on to you that are too numerous to list. Mr. Bourne has something he's going to send you as soon as he can find one of the Wolves passing through the area since he doesn't trust the post with it-the package is a box or trunk of some kind so be on the lookout for it. He was working on it all winter and made me promise not to tell-and he can be sure I'm not telling as he is helping me with this letter! As you know I am somewhat behind in my education, the 3 Rs not being taught in that part of Wisconsin where we met. Have you heard anything from Frat? I think he's still an Aspirant down by Louisiana, but you all move around so much my information is always out of date. I am told the mail is even slower to him and just collects until he can return to his camp.
Graf has been recommended for Lieutenant-I think he's going to ask me to marry him if he gets the promotion. It may mean leaving the village but Mom is doing much better. Mary is old enough now where she can take over a lot of the chores and the Hudson brothers help out with the hardest. My mom and dad pretty much handle everything to do with veterinary work for the town livestock, if someone's having trouble with a calving they run and get them. With Mom better Dad's going to take a larger place in the Village, there's talk of him becoming a Director. To think when he first got here the town gave him a cow and two piglets and some chickens, and now we've got eight good milkers. Of course, in a way our start here is because of you. I should just say it, we owe everything to you: getting out of the badness in Wisconsin and everything that happened in Chicago.
Your tetters are very cheery and polite in the way you ask about Graf. But you always are very casual and polite when you are upset. David, you're one of the finest men I've ever known. I still love you in a way, but a different way than I feel about Graf I think you have a Purpose. I know we talked that our futures were woven together at one time, but something in me associates all the badness back there with you and every time I see you I remember. I should not say it was all wrong, before Chicago our time was wonderful, and precious, but I've sealed up everything that happened with Chicago, it's kind of like a memory of an old nightmare, not very clear. You were so patient with me all that winter, God did I even talk at all while we were in Minnesota? I think you need to be free of me to become whatever it is you are going to become (as you are all bound up with the Lifeweavers and Mr. Bourne says it is a hard way and the choice to follow them doesn't make for a normal life) I need to be free of you to start here with a clean slate. We tried last spring and it was just bad, I was cold-God it was the last thing you deserve!- and you were distracted.
The way things are now is for the best, I'm sure of it. You've written that you think it's great that I have a man like Graf and those words meant a lot to me and I hope they weren't painful to write. I suppose we both have mixed feelings for each other. One thing is certain though, you will always have a home among the Carlsons in Weening no matter what happens to you. You've been my friend, my love, my protector, my healer, my guide, and now I hold you as a dear brother in a Very Special Place in my heart. I look toward your next letter, and pray that your duties will allow you to visit soon.
Yours truly and always,
Molly
Molly was a bright young woman, and painfully right about them. Valentine returned the letter to his dispatch bag. He played a mental slide show of the Molly he had known: from when he first met her in Wisconsin when her family hid him at great personal risk from the Kurians, to his trip to Chicago to rescue her from violent public death after she had killed a Quisling official. They'd escaped by ship to the Minnesota shore, near where Valentine had been born and grew up, and stayed a season at his adoptive father's house.
Valentine and the old priest sat up night after night, discussing what he'd learned of the Kurians. It was the Padre who'd first taught him about ancient civil war that divided the Lifeweavers and led to the Kurian Lords, who- through their vampiric Reapers-killed sentient beings to harvest the energies that sustained their endless lives. They'd been thrown off Earth long ago, the interstellar gateways sealed and destroyed, but they'd come again in 2022, and won.
Valentine made no attempt to renew the intimacy that had briefly existed between himself and Molly, concentrating instead on feeding everyone. Each night he read to Molly by the light of a single candle out of the Padre's collection of old books. Books that had become his family, in a way, after his orphaning. They'd taken him out of his misery, and he'd hoped they could do the same for Molly.
That spring, Valentine was determined to rejoin Molly with her family, although he had no idea if the Carlsons had even successfully escaped to the Ozarks with his fellow Wolf, Gonzalez.
Molly strengthened and blossomed on the journey in the spring sunshine of the north. Valentine had a good nose for trouble, and skirted wide around areas controlled by the Quisling servants of the Kurians. They reached the outskirts of Southern Command on the first day of May, and the young pair caught up to Molly's family at one of the small fortress posts in the hills watching the old roads and trails up from St. Louis. That reunion on the soil of the Ozark Free Territory was perhaps the proudest moment in his life. As if some silent bargain had been fulfilled, he and Molly renewed their intimacy that night, making love with giddy, laughing abandon.
But it was not the same. The desperation and danger of their situation in Wisconsin was absent, and Valentine felt the pull of duty. He had been posted missing and presumed dead, and upon hearing of his safe return to the Ozarks, Gonzalez and a few other Wolves of Zulu Company showed up to welcome him back. He settled the family with old friends in the little borderland settlement of Weening in northern Arkansas near the Saint Francis River and returned to his duties.
It was a frustrating return. Southern Command read, and promptly forgot, his report on the mysterious Kurian operations in the hills of southern Wisconsin he and Gonzalez had stumbled upon, and shrugged their shoulders at Valentine's suggestion of a new organization under a reversed-swastika symbol Valentine had heard called the Twisted Cross.
Zulu Company had replaced him, and Valentine was assigned to Captain Beck and Foxtrot Company, mostly freshly invoked Wolves who had never seen a live Reaper and knew Grogs-the variegated, semi-intelligent beasts bred to aid the Kur in their subjugation of humanity-only by their oversize footprints.
Constant training drained him, and he found it impossible to visit Molly in far-off Weening; they exchanged letters less and less frequently. Molly was young and beautiful, and soon found herself under the attentions of a sergeant in the regulars, the well-turned-out Guards who formed the main body of Southern Command's armed forces. Twinges of jealousy vied with genuine hope for her happiness on the unstable emotional teeter-totter that described his feelings for her.
Valentine shifted his weight on the hard boards of the wagon, causing the springs to squeak in complaint. That trail of thought led to a dead end. He returned to present problems, reviewing Cooper's ravings. He still knew little of the Twisted Cross. Only that its members were human, at least some of them, and that they were objects of dread in the Kurian Zone and on its borders. He had briefly met one in the bizarre garden of unholy entertainments of the Zoo in Chicago while searching for Molly. A man who talked like a soldier and acted like a Reaper, even to the extent that he thirsted for blood. And whoever they were, they were now somewhere just outside the no-man's-land separating the Free Territory from the KZ.
Despite that unsettling thought, he finally slept. Above his hard bed, the stars whirled away in the bright clear night.
"Grogs, Mr. Valentine. Hundreds of'em. Five miles off and coming hard," a pubescent voice intruded on Valentine's deep predawn slumber.
Valentine woke like a startled animal, instantly alert, and the boy ceased shaking his shoulder. It was Tom Nishino, one of the teenage Aspirants who traveled with the Wolves and performed assorted camp duties in the hope of someday joining their ranks. The youth almost danced with excitement beside the wagon. Captain Beck had taken Nishino, the brightest of Foxtrot's teens, under his wing and used him as a messenger.
"Whose are they?"
Nishino looked puzzled at the question. He'd never served down south, where Governer Steiner had his unique and independent enclave of humans and Grogs. So far, Steiner had never let his militias off his lands, which formed a buffer in the south between Kurian Louisiana and the Free Territory. Valentine had always hoped to hear of closer cooperation-he'd played a small part in that alliance his first year as a Wolf.
"Don't know, sir. They're coming out of Oklahoma."
"Are we supposed to sound assembly?" Valentine asked, letting his ears play across the campsite for sounds of the tents being struck and men gathering.
"The captain asks that you have your platoon turn out with full weapons and equipment, and you're to report to his tent, sir," Nishino reported.
"Thank you, son. Please walk, walk mind you, back to the captain and tell him I'll be there in five minutes. Sprinting in the dark is a good way to turn an ankle, or have a sentry put a bullet into you. Take it easy, boy." "Sir," the boy said, showing his best salute, and turned neatly to begin a stiff-spined walk back to the captain's tent. Valentine tried to remember if he'd acted like that when he'd first joined the Cause at seventeen. The Wolves sharing the wagon with Valentine still lay in their bedrolls. The pose was deceptive-Valentine had seen them lay hands on their rifles at the first hint of action in the air.
Valentine pulled on his boots. "Benning, find Sergeant Stafford, please. Tell him to get the platoon together, ammunition and two days' rations. Gabriel, please go and get the draft animals together on a line. We may be moving fast without the wagons. Thank you."
He hopped out of the wagon as the men exchanged knowing looks. They'd already seen through his facade. Whenever their young lieutenant spoke in that crisp, politely affected manner, action was in the air.
Valentine walked to the command tepee, unconsciously registering the clatter and curses in the night air as the camp came to life. Grogs were significant. The battle-bred warriors of the Kurians were rare in Oklahoma; Kur relied on Quisling troops in the plains. Might be they'd been brought down from Northern Missouri, and that could mean an attempt to thrust into the vitals of the Free Territory. Valentine ticked off the possibilities in his brain: a raid, an attempt on the Fort Smith region, or perhaps a thrust northeast to link up with others pushing south into Missouri, catching the forces and populace in that corner of the Free Territory in a meat grinder. Or most likely of all, it was a rushed-up retribution for the recent raid by Foxtrot Company. If that was the case, the Wolves could do what they did best: skirmish and ambush. They'd lead the Grogs on a chase until they could be decoyed into the Ozarks and cut off.
Captain Beck stood outside his tepee in the pink dawn, his hands behind him in the at-ease position.
Valentine came up beside him. "What's the situation, sir?"
"Pickets spotted the Grogs crossing the lake about midnight, five kilometers north of here. Tango Company might have picked them up; that's getting up in their area. They turned south right away, moving along the banks of the river. I sent the camp squad out to keep an eye on them- they're freshest. They'll bushwhack any scouts if they can. That'll slow the Grogs some."
"Strength?"
"Probably won't have any idea of numbers until daylight, but they're on those legworms-it's how they crossed the river so quick and easy. Pickets said they spotted harpies above the treetops. No sign of them here, so I'm hoping it's just their imagination."
"Coming here or just trying to raid into the Ozarks?"
"They're after us, no doubt about that. Maybe some Kurian is down to his last Reaper thanks to you, Valentine. We're going to make them sorry they caught up to us."
"How's that, sir?" Valentine asked, adding a silent prayer. It wasn't what he thought.
"I've already tele'd to Decatur for reinforcements and put the sick and wounded in the trucks you captured. Oh, and the children. There's a cavalry regiment of Guards in the area, and more behind them. The Grogs have got to be planning to burn this camp and maybe catch us pulling back toward the Free Territory. They've moved fast, so it can't be a well-planned assault. If we pull up onto Little Timber Hill, we can hold out there for days. It would take more artillery than the Grogs have in Missouri to blast us out of those rocks." Beck reached for the waxed linen packet in which he kept his cigars. With his usual courtesy, he offered one. Valentine shook his head, gathering the right words.
"Sir, there's nothing here worth fighting for. There aren't any of our farms within twenty miles at least. Let the Grogs bum some wagons and barrels of pork. If they follow us toward Fort Smith, the farther they go, the fewer will get back alive."
Beck's dark brows dueled like bighorn sheep. "Dammit, Valentine, you know how I feel about that kind of crap. Until we start making those Jaspers more afraid of us than we are of them, they're going to keep pushing into us whenever they feel like it. Besides, you're forgetting Lt. Caltagirone. He's still out with his short platoon. I don't want him coming back to a camp crawling with Grogs."
"I know that sir, and I agree. But we're Wolves, not Guards. Even a couple of our men are worth more to us, worth more to Southern Command, than every Grog in that column is to the KZ."
"Are you suggesting I'd throw away men's lives? Because if you are-"
"No, sir, certainly not, sir."
"The toughest decisions are always where to fight. I appreciate you speaking your mind, Valentine. That takes a kind of courage, too. Just because we disagree, it won't be held against you."
He waited, as if expecting a thank-you, then continued. "Someday you'll get a company of your own. When you get it, command it. No councils of war. This is a screen of Grogs who are about to get their noses lopped off. And even if it isn't, we can hold them until the regulars arrive.
You know how long I held outside Hazlett, Val? Five days. By the second day we were low on ammunition, and by the third even the Grog guns were empty."
Valentine had heard the story of those five days several times. Versions from the senior surviving Wolves of Foxtrot Company did not match the commander's account exactly, but this was not the time to bring that up.
"Your orders, sir?"
"Your platoon is going to haul as many supplies as possible up Little Timber Hill. We've already got trees down all around the hill, we've been working on the fortifications since we got here. Fill a couple wagons, triple-team them if you have to, and get them up that hill to Rocky Crown. Water's not a problem this time of year, but I want food and ammo. And every hand grenade we have. Drive the livestock up, and make a pen."
Valentine took the orders like bitter medicine. Now he had to decide how to carry them out, quickly. Grogs on leg-worms ate miles, skirmishing pickets or no, and with daylight they would move even faster.
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Clear the camp as soon as you can."
"And the spouses?"
"Some left with their kids. The others have to get up the hill, too. Any further questions, Valentine?"
"No, sir," Valentine said, already wondering if he could even get the wagons up that slope, triple-teamed or no.
The whole camp was stirring now as the Wolves gathered their weapons and equipment. Valentine returned to his platoon to find Stafford sitting on top of a wagon, issuing orders and equipment to the assembling men.
"We'll be ready to pull out in fifteen minutes, sir," Gator reported. "If we aren't moving the wagons, some of the women can ride on the draft animals. We'll make good time, probably hit the outskirts of the Territory by sundown."
"Good work, Staff, but we're not leaving. We have to hitch up some wagons and fill them from the stores. We've got to get the ammo and food up to the redoubt."
Stafford's face fell, lacking only an audible thud. "The captain wants to fight it out?"
Valentine hid his own misgivings with his best airy smile. "Gator, it's probably just a screen of Grogs to flush us. The Guards are already on their way if it's not. And besides, Caltagirone is still out with his men. We can't abandon them to the Grogs. Get the men moving; they've got fifteen minutes to get something in their stomachs-then we have to hitch up a couple of wagons, fill them with food and bullets, and haul up that trail. Minutes count, okay, Sergeant?"
"Yes, Lieutenant."
Gator turned and began bellowing orders. Poulos's new bride, her mother, and a few of the other camp casuals were already passing out ersatz coffee and the morning's biscuits. The men squatted around their NCOs, cramming food into their mouths while they discussed how best to get the supplies up that hill. The smell of bacon frying brought saliva to Valentine's mouth, and he moved over to the cooking fire. A seven-year-old girl, the daughter of Corporal Hart of First Platoon, scuttled past him in a flutter of tangled dark hair chasing a chicken.
Valentine swore under his breath. She should have left with the trucks. Hart and his wife must have decided to keep the family together despite the risks. The girl got the chicken and hurried off to the coops. Valentine tried to put her out of his mind. It was too easy to imagine a Grog loping after her.
By the time he had eaten two heels of bread dripping with bacon fat and a pair of still-sputtering strips of meat, the platoon had the outlines of a plan. Stafford and the other NCOs decided to run two wagons, one from the camp to the base of the steep hill that served as the Company redoubt, and a second double-teamed one to run light loads up the hill. Valentine watched the first group of men move off with axes and two small horses toward the hill. They would improve the trail and check for deadfalls, then improvise a corral at the rocky top of the hill. The camp dependents would follow, bringing a few necessities and driving the goats, geese, and cows that made up the Company's livestock.
In the early hours of the morning, Valentine left everything but the ordnance to Stafford. He personally supervised digging up the Company's reserve grenades and ammunition. Some of the explosives used black powder, and he wanted to make sure that in the rush, the volatile mixture was not mishandled.
"Mr. Valentine," said O'Neil, uncovering the last case of grenades from the shallow trench that had covered them, "gimme half an hour, and I'll set a little booby trap here. We leave behind a case, and the first Grog tries to shift it gets blowed into pieces that wouldn't fill a spoon."
"If we had time, we'd leave surprises everywhere, O'Neil. But they're going to be here any minute."
It promised to be a cloudy morning. As Valentine walked behind the load of ammunition, eyeing the balance of the load in the wagon bed as it ascended the first gentle slope toward the redoubt, a running Wolf broke cover from the tree line to the north. Valentine watched him disappear into the thick trees of Little Timber Hill, making for the new command post.
"Let's keep it moving, men. The Grogs are on their way. We want to have this load to shoot at them, not the other way round."
O'Neil quickened the pace of the four horses, and the last of Valentine's platoon soon disappeared into the trees at the base of the hill. Stafford waited there, with more horses ready to be hitched to the rest.
"Everything and everyone's up at the top, sir. The corral took no doing at all-there's a little hollow in the rocks that we just closed off at one end. The captain's going to use the other wagon to block the trail once we make it to the crest."
"Good work, Staff. Let's get a man at each wheel with a rock, ready to brace it up if the horses need a breather. Get a few hides between the crates, just in case the load shifts. I don't think even a bad bounce would set it off, but better safe than dead. Where's the platoon supposed to be once we get up?"
"We're to form a reserve. He wants the dependents armed, too. The rest of the platoon will cover the south and the saddle to the east where it joins the rest of the hills. First platoon is going to be on the main line, covering the trail. The captain figures if they'll come, they'll come up the trail, where the slope's gentle."
The newly double-teamed wagon ascended the hill, with men ready to prop the wheels with rocks when the horses could no longer take the strain. Even this, the "gentie" part of the hill, had an exhausting slope to the grade, running way up Litde Timber Hill like a long ramp.
A little more than halfway up the hill, they came upon the fortifications. Whatever Valentine's other disagreements with the captain, he had to admire the planning and execution of the redoubt. Trees were felled at the crest of the steepest part of the slope, pointing outward with their branches shorn and sharpened into abatis. Earth-and-wood fortifications, complete with head-logs in many places, frowned down on the steep slope. If the Grogs wanted Little Timber, they would pay a steep price, as steep as the hill the wagon now climbed, exacted by the marksmen of Foxtrot Company. Valentine put himself in the enemy's canoelike sandals at the base of the hill. How would he go about the assault to minimize the cost?
He knew his men would fight like cornered rats, but Valentine disliked being in a corner in the first place. The Wolves lived and fought mrough their mile-devouring mobility, striking where and when the Kurians were weak and disappearing once the enemy concentrated. He dreaded the coming hammer-and-tongs battle, but what could he do in the face of orders?
"C'mon, men, push!" he shouted, throwing his weight against the wagon when the horses began to shift sideways in exhaustion. His Wolves hurled themselves against the wheels, sides-anywhere on the wagon where they could get a grip. The wagon and men groaned on up.
At the line of fortifications, Valentine braced up the wheels and passed out cases of ammunition and hand-bombs. The slope from here was easier to the crown of the hill. A little above them a small boulder-strewn spur off the crown marked Beck's designated command post. He saw the captain moving down the slope toward the trail.
"Keep it moving, Sergeant. I'm going to talk to the captain for a moment."
He found Beck, legs stiff as though rooted among the rocks.
"Nice work, Lieutenant. That was a big load at last."
"The ammunition took a while to dig up, sir. What's the word on the Grogs?"
Beck looked grim. "It's in the hundreds, at least. The scouts marked a dozen legworms. There're men with them, too, but they were too far away to see if it was Quisling regulars or just the supply train."
"Grogs don't move with much in the way of supplies. I think they eat rocks if it comes to it."
"Valentine, you and I both know what they eat. Let's just try to stay off the menu for a few days. I want your platoon covering that ravine to the south and the saddle where the rocky crown meets the other hills. Keep your best squad as a reserve, back up wherever they decide to hit us first. I've put a squad in reserve, too, and we're going to shift them as needed. Twenty or so extra guns will make the difference wherever they come."
Valentine did some quick mental math. Beck's deployment put a man every ten feet or so in the tree-trunk fortifications on the crest of the little hill. Maybe a little more to the west and on the saddle, a few less at the steep ravine on the south side. Lt. Caltagirone and his twenty men would be a godsend, if they would just return. The two flying squads would be very busy.
He jogged up to the crown of the hill, a windswept expanse of rocks on the heavily timbered rise protruding from the trees like a callused spot on an ox's back. Stunted specimens of scrub pine grew among the rocks, in what looked like just a few handfuls of dirt. A goat bleated from a little depression in the hill's crown. The stock drank from a muddy pool of rainwater caught in a basinlike depression. The camp casuals stood by, armed. Everything seemed to be in place here. He found a moment to smile and nod at the Meyer girl-or rather Mrs. Poulos now, the baby still in her arms, and tried not to mink about their fate if the Grogs overran the hilltop. He turned to the men taking their positions at the breastworks.
Sergeant Stafford had already arrayed the men, stretching them painfully thin at the ravine to the south, and clustered them in two groups on the saddle that connected Little Timber Hill to a larger ridge to the east. Beyond that line of hills to the southeast stood the comforting mass of the Ozarks, blue in the distance.
Valentine made only one improvement in the Sergeant's defenses. He had the men drape a few hides, hats, and bits of clothing over appropriately shaped saplings. The Grogs were remarkable long-range snipers, and a few extra targets to absorb potshots during an assault might save the life of a real soldier.
The Wolves took to making scarecrows with a will, even going so far as to naming them Fat Tom, the Hunchback, Mr. Greenshoots, and other colorful monikers. As a few aged felt hats were being fixed atop the faux Wolves, shots echoed up from the west side of the hill.
"Looks like they found us," Valentine announced, seeing his men stiffen at the sound. "Keep your heads down, gents. Let them shoot, and mark them. Then shoot when they reload their pieces. Or when they psyche themselves up for a charge."
Valentine fought the urge to go to the other side of the hill for a glimpse of the opposition. His place was with his men.
"Gator, I'm putting you in charge of the reserve squad at the top. That'll be the final line if this one goes. Get the ammunition in there with the stock, and fill every bucket and canteen with water. Understand?"
"Ahead of you, sir, at least as far as the ammunition goes. I'll get first squad to work up there. Whistle if there's trouble?"
Valentine extracted a little silver whistle on a lanyard from beneath his buckskin jacket. Stafford winced at the sight; the whistle had belonged to Valentine's predecessor. It would have been buried with him, too, if Stafford hadn't rescued it from before sending the body on to the field morgue. "We might be in for a long fight. Work the men in shifts."
A leaping figure raced up the hill from Beck's spur. It was the Aspirant, Nishino.
Valentine checked his carbine and pistol while he waited for the racing teen.
"Lieutenant Valentine, sir," Nishino said, again out of breath. "The captain wants you in charge of the flying squads. He says to assemble them behind the command post. They found us, and it looks like they're coming up the hill!"
"Thank you, Nishino. Tell the captain I'll be there at once," he said, granting the boy the formality of a salute.
He turned to Stafford. "I guess that leaves you in charge here, Gator. Put Corporal Holloway in with the dependents and the livestock at the last line."
"Yes, sir."
"The Grogs should be a while probing the hill. If they come in your zone, it'll be across the saddle. Put two men with good ears on the other side of it, and tell them to make sure the Grogs don't get between them and the crown."
"Good luck, Val." Gator shook his hand, hung on for an extra moment.
"You, too, Gator."
"See you soon."
"Soon."
Valentine trotted up the hill, feeling liberated. He'd done all he could. The Wolves would do the fighting now. All he could do is offer to stop a bullet like the rest of them. The day might see him as a hero, a coward, a fool, or a corpse. Like a drunk anticipating a hangover, he knew that the fear would come later, leaving him shaking in a cold sweat and nauseated.
He stole over to the command post, crabbing carefully between the rocks. Grog snipers could already have a view of the spur, and he wanted to avoid a rendezvous with one of the fifty-caliber bullets fired from single-shot rifles they favored.
Beck was scanning the bottom of the slope with his binoculars, listening to the popping of sporadic rifle fire, turning his head at the shots like an owl following mouse scratches.
He glanced once at Valentine and returned to the binoculars.
"Lieutenant, scouts are back. The legworms will be up this slope in a few minutes. They're lining the damn things up now in the camp. We've counted only ten. They'll have to do some winding to get around these trees, so they can't come up at a rush. Take the flying squads, and reinforce at that wagon. If I want you to pull out for some reason, you'll hear three short blasts from my whistle."
'Three blasts-yes, sir," Valentine repeated.
Beck put down the binoculars. "Give'em hell, Val. Captaincies grow from days like these."
"Yes, sir."
Valentine hurried up to Yamashiro and his squad, wondering what sort of stress Beck was under, to make him think his lieutenant would fight harder if he thought there was a set of captain's bars in it. He had served with Beck for nine months, and his superior still had no idea what kind of man his senior lieutenant was. It was a disturbing thought on a day that already had many other unsettling mental threads unraveling.
He gained the tree where Yamashiro waited with the most veteran of the squads of Second Platoon. The expectant, confident expressions on the men's faces were a tonic to Valentine.
"Here's the story, gentlemen. We're going to have about ten legworms in our laps in a few minutes. But this isn't the open prairie; those big bastards are going to have a tough time in the woods. Corporal, do you have two reliable catapult teams?"
"Sure, sir. Baker can hit the strike zone from center field, and Grub is pretty near as good."
"Very well. I want one team just below the CP."
"Just below the command post-yes, sir."
"There's a pair of boulders kind of leaning together above the line of fortifications on the south side of the road-the other team should be posted there. Take a sack of bombs, men, and make them count. Remember, the brain on a legworm is buried in the middle."
The Wolves began putting together the catapults. They were improvised weapons for hurling the baseball-size grenades of Southern Command. Essentially larger versions of the classic childhood slingshot, they consisted of a broad U of one-inch lead piping, with thick surgical tubing attached at the top. The grenade rested in a little hardened leather cup at the center of the tubing. Two men held the U while a third pulled and aimed the catapult, launching the grenade twice as far as it could be thrown, often with uncanny accuracy in the hands of a skilled puller.
Valentine took Corporal Yamashiro and the other four men down to the breastworks. He looked around the makeshift "gate" in the trail, made up of a wagon with rocks and timber piled around it.
"Sergeant Petrie, you in charge here?" Valentine looked up at a man kneeling with two others behind a long log stretched across the length of the wagon.
"Yes, Lieutenant Valentine."
"Nice job spacing the men. Pass the word, Wolves- we've got legworms coming. It does no good to shoot the damn things; they won't even feel it. Knock the Grogs off the top. And don't be afraid to use the grenades. We've got a whole summer's worth." The last was not quite true, but Valentine wanted to encourage their use. Explosions had been known to make legworms reverse themselves and creep away as quickly as they came forward.
A few of the men had bundled bunches of grenades around a hefty branch, making a throwable stick bomb.
Valentine moved up and down the line, checking the men's positions and equipment. Most gripped their rifles and stared down the hill with hard, alert faces.
Valentine let his hearing play all along the bottom of the hill. Muted light from the cloud-filled sky gave the woods an eerie, shadowless uniformity. A woodpecker beat a tattoo on a distant tree, as if drumming a warning of what was to come.
"C'mon, apes, if you're gonna bring it. . . let's get it over with," a Wolf said as he peered down the leaf sights of his rifle to the base of the hill.
The answer came: a distant horn sounded a hair-raising call of three blasts, each slightly louder and higher than the preceding: awwwk Awwwwwk AWWWWUUK! It made Valentine think of trumpeter swans he had heard in his Minnesota youth. A few of the newer soldiers looked at each other, seeking reassurance from their comrades after hearing the otherworldly sound.
"Good of them to let us know they're on the way," Valentine said. "Let's return the favor." Then more loudly, "Stand to your posts, men, and let them know that Wolves are waiting!"
The men cheered and began howling, imitating the cries of the canine predators. The cries were picked up and amplified by odier Wolves up and down the thinly held line until the hills echoed with them. Valentine spotted skinny young Nishino a little way above in the rocks of the command post, red-faced from yelling his lungs out.
A steady rustle, like a wind dirough dry fall leaves, came from the base of the hill. The cheers ceased. Valentine brought up his carbine, comforted by its reliable weight and smell of gun oil.
The pale-yellow legworms advanced, slinking up the hillside like gigantic centipedes. Each individual limb rippled one at a time along the thirty-foot length of their bodies, faster than the eye could follow. The motion fascinated Valentine; it reminded him of quickly falling dominoes. He tore his gaze away from the hypnotic sight of the legs. A probing maw ringed with catfish whiskers waved to and fro, finding the way for the rest of the creature between the tree trunks. Gray troll-like figures, proportioned like huge apes, sat astride the long, tubular legworms. They held metal shields in cordwood-thick arms, with long-barreled rifles resting in eyebolts projecting from the side. Each leg-worm in the assault carried six of these Grogs, already firing up into the Wolves' breastworks. Their shooting was worse than usual, owing to the unsteady motion of their side winding mounts.
A few shots rang out from the Wolves as bullets zipped overhead. Explosions tore through the trees when grenades fired from the catapults detonated on the hillside. One Wolf whirled a stick bomb on a short lanyard, sending the grenades bouncing down the hill and into the approaching line.
Between the legworms, Grogs on foot jumped from tree to tree, covering each other with steady rifle fire. A few shots told among the Wolves. But the infantry Grogs could not keep up with their mounted comrades.
A stick bomb rolled under a legworm's middle. The grenades detonated, sending black digits flying. The creature collapsed at the middle, dead, but both ends still writhed on reflex-driven legs.
Another grenade exploded close enough to one's nerve center to send it into convulsions, throwing or crushing its Grog riders and trees alike as it whipped and rolled like a scorpion stinging itself to death. A legworm on the northern end seemed confused, moving sideways, forward and back amongst the trees as if looking for an escape, giving the Wolves a chance to pick off its riders. Freed of their control, the legworm moved back down the hill away from the chaos. Two more followed it despite the frantic efforts to control it on the part of its simian riders.
"Pour it into them, men, pour it on," Petrie yelled above the din, blood spilling down his face from a gash across his temple. The bullet that nearly killed him had taken his hat. White bone glistened red under a ragged flap of skin.
Valentine squeezed off shot after shot at the lead Grog on the nearest legworm, but the bullets seemed either to miss or bounce off the piece of armored shield it held in its hand.
Vexed, he knelt to reload. Grog snipers put bullets where his head had been a moment before. He noticed the Wolf to his right had the whole right side of his head torn away, as if sawn off with a precision tool.
Carbine ready, Valentine rolled and came back up behind the breastworks at the dead man's notch. He squeezed off three shots into the same leading Grog from the shield's off side. This time his shots found their mark; the Grog toppled off its mount. Its fellows tried to grab the reins, but the leg-worm already began to arc off to the right. At the rate of a Grog a second, the Wolves dropped the other five riders like ducks in a shooting gallery.
Cordite filled Valentine's nostrils. Another legworm thrashed in tree-cracking pain, badly wounded by a grenade. But two more were atop the breastworks, forcing their way through the abatis, ignoring the sharpened branches, which first impaled, then broke off in their soft, puffy skin.
Valentine saw the flash of a fuse and heard a faint, wet pop. A legworm's mouth exploded, leaving a greenish-yellow wound open across the whole front of its body. The thing reeled and sped back downslope, shaking its riders like a bucking bronco. One of the catapults had managed to put a grenade right down its throat, using the basketball-hoop-size maw as a target. But the remaining legworm was up and over the head-logs in a flash, and the Grogs dropped off it and onto the men below, closely followed by a second yellow giant. As it climbed onto the logs, heavy and pulsing above Valentine's head, he ignored his own advice and fired shot after shot into its belly at the approximate middle. The bullets left green-goo-dripping holes, but the thirty-caliber shells fired muzzle-to-skin found nerve ganglia. The legworm collapsed; as it fell, he threw himself out of the way, but it still trapped him below the knees. A few legs hammered against his thighs as they twitched out their final spasm.
The Grogs fought hand to hand with the Wolves, tossing the smaller humans right and left, firing oversize pistols and swinging double-bladed battle-axes that gleamed red with blood. Volleys of fire from above cut them down: the grenade teams had dropped their catapults and turned their rifles on the Grogs fighting at the barricades.
He got one leg out from beneath the fleshy mass.
A Grog from the legworm Valentine shot hopped up onto the abatis. Valentine brought up his gun, but the carbine's hammer came down with an impotent click. A misfire, or he was empty. The Grog raised its battle-ax, and Valentine read death in its purple eyes just before two holes opened in its chest, throwing it backwards. Valentine had no time to look for his unseen marksman-savior; he pushed free of the dead legworm and brought his gun up and over the breastworks, only to see the Grogs retreating through the trees. Valentine looked one second too long; a bullet whizzed past close enough to feel the pressure of its passage against his ear.
He dropped to his knees, seeking safety in the thick comfort of the breastworks. To either side of him, Wolves were still shooting down the slope. A bloody-knuckled man helped another stop the flow from a head wound as Valentine counted the cost of the attack. Four dead. Many wounded.
Valentine looked down at a Grog pistol by his knee. The weapon looked like two revolvers joined at the bottom of the grip, with a thick trigger guard running between the two. A single lever cocked and fired both barrels.
"They're going," someone shouted. The survivors of the legworm assault sagged against the protecting logs, many with tears of relief running down their faces.
"They'll be back," Petrie said as another Wolf wrapped a bandage around his head. "They'll keep coming until they're all dead ... or we are."
They came six more times that cool spring day. Each time, like a rising tide, the Grog wave crested farther. And when they receded, they left snipers among the rocks and trees, sappers who could be silenced only by grenades and concentrated rifle fire. The Grogs wrapped their lines around Little Timber Hill like a python coiling around its prey, waiting for it to weaken and smother under its irresistible pressure.
Noon came and went, and afternoon brought a two-hour lull in the fighting. Valentine let the men leave the breastworks in small groups to steal away to the rocky crown for food and water-even a brief washup if they could get it. Although the last might be rendered moot: the rain clouds were piling up on the horizon again.
A sniper wounded Captain Beck when the Grogs came, thick and screaming, up the long slope at about three in the afternoon. Tom Nishino, not knowing what else to do, blew his captain's whistle. Valentine heard the trilling above the shrieks of the Grogs and looked up to see the boy waving to him. Valentine gestured back, outflung arm trying to motion Tom to keep down, when a slug took the youth, spinning him in one quick, 360-degree revolution to drop dead among the rocks.
Valentine left Petrie in charge and scrambled up to the command post. Two Wolves and one of the camp women knelt around Beck. The captain's left shoulder was shattered, leaving his arm dangling.
"How are the men holding?" Beck asked through pain-gritted teeth. The woman bound the wound with quick strokes, ignoring Beck's gasps. Valentine paused a moment, admiring the sure motions of her hands.
"They're holding good, sir. But I've got nine dead around the trail, and a lot of wounded."
"I don't know how long I'll be conscious here, Valentine. So I want you to take command. Hold this position; the Guards are on their way. Bring the wounded up to the rocky crown. They'll be safe there. Sooner or later they're going to figure out that the easiest way to get at us is from across the saddle, so you'd better reform your flying squads."
Valentine wished Beck would stop talking. If he was going to relinquish command, he should quit giving orders.
"Yes, sir," he said. "Let's get you up into the basin."
The two Wolves helped Beck to his feet, supporting him with his good arm. The captain's face contorted in pain as he made his first halting steps toward the rocky crown, the trio keeping hidden from the snipers at the bottom of the hill.
Valentine picked up Beck's dropped binoculars. The odor of the captain's cigars clung to their casing and strap. What had been Beck's was now his. Responsibility for Foxtrot Company's future put his stomach into a knot of Gordian proportions. He watched the ragged young woman who had bandaged the captain as she picked up Beck's bolt-action carbine, examining it. She had brassy red hair cut very short, freckles, and pretty, if angular, features. She looked like she had been on short rations for a week: her eyes had a wide, alert, and hungry look. Valentine suddenly realized he didn't know her.
"I'm sorry, who are you?" Valentine said. "I thought I knew everyone in camp."
"I've been in your camp for only a couple hours, Wolf. Are you missing about two dozen men?"
Valentine frowned. "My name is David Valentine, Second Wolf Regiment of Southern Command. I'm in charge of what's left of this company. I'd be obliged if you'd give me your name."
"I'd prefer not to be put in any official reports. My code name is Smoke, if you have to say something."
An occasional shot from below punctuated the conversation.
"Code name? You're a Cat?"
"Yes, Mr. Lieutenant. Since the age of sixteen. Normally I work the plains of here, but I'm on the trail of something."
"What was that you said about missing men? Some Wolves under a lieutenant named Caltagirone are missing."
She looked grim. "Don't expect them back. They got caught on the banks of the Verdigris. Slaughtered."
Valentine froze his features into immobility to hide his shock. Another friend gone. "Grogs?"
"No-Reapers, at least sorta." She licked her lips, like an animal that comes across an unpleasant smell.
The news sank in. Caltagirone was as canny as Father
Wolf made them. Not like him to get taken unaware. "What do you mean, sort of?"
"It's a little hard to explain. It's a band of about twelve Reapers. I've never come across a group that big just roaming before. They're also using guns, which is odd from what I've heard about them."
"I've never heard anything like that before." It didn't make sense to him. Reapers served as conduits for vital aura between the victim and their master Kurian. Unless they were close enough to touch, the psychic energies were lost. Even in battle, Reapers killed so their masters gained the aura they craved.
"Saying I don't know my own eyes, Wolf?"
"No. Not at all. Thank you for the news about... about the Wolves on the Verdigris."
The redhead sat, removed a high-laced boot and two sets of dirty socks, then rubbed the instep of her right foot. Her bony feet had the calluses of someone who'd done a lot of walking.
"Now's not the time to discuss what the Kur are up to. Whatever or whoever these Reapers are, they still rest during the daylight hours. But I'm pretty sure they're headed here. If they wake at dusk, they'll be on you by midnight, maybe before. I about killed a horse getting here. I think the Grogs are just flypaper to stick you in place. The Reapers will be the ones to swat you."
She smelled of horse lather and swamp water.
"They might get their chance. The Grogs are all around us."
"Lieutenant, if I find a hole in their line, do you think you could raise a little hell somewhere else? It looks like you have enough horseflesh to drag your wounded out."
Valentine did not need any convincing to abandon the hill, as long at they could put some distance in between themselves and their gathering enemy.
"Night still comes early this time of year. Let me get my sergeants up here, and we'll talk."
The first mortar shell hit the rocky crown as they moved up the spur, and the pair threw themselves to the ground together. "This day just keeps getting better and better," Valentine said, spitting dirt.
Valentine had to raise his voice to be heard over the animals and gunfire sputtering below. The Grogs lobbed sporadic mortar shells into the hill, but they didn't make much more of a bang than the Wolves' hand grenades. The Grog column either did not pack much ammunition or lacked the ability to fire their piece very often. Maybe technology, maybe training.
The sun settled. Darkness crept up the hill, engulfing the wooded slope like a rising flood.
"One more time, Wolves. Stafford, you are with me on the diversion." Valentine had his best NCOs-save Hart at the breastworks-all around him, and he rotated like the second hand on a watch, issuing orders. "We're going to give the Grogs something to think about on the west side while everyone else pulls out east. Yamashiro, you cover the litters for the wounded. Make sure the drags stay attached to the draft horses and the wounded are ready to go-"
Yamashiro nodded.
"I don't want to hear anything about some of them being too bad to move. We're not shooting anybody, and we're not going to leave anyone behind. Petrie, if you're still feeling up to it, I need you to handle the rear guard. I want the shell in the line ready to collapse as soon as the diversion gets going."
"Hell of a headache, sir. Not your instructions, the Grog's little tap, I mean."
Valentine looked into the sergeant's eyes; the pupils were normal, though he had a black eye worthy of a medical book forming on the left side of his face near the wound. He turned to the next man.
"Holloway, you take five good Wolves and go with our Cat here. She's going to pick the trail. Your job will be to make sure everyone gets on it. Avoid gunplay if you can."
The Cat in question shoveled hot beans and rice into her mouth as she listened. The pockets in her ratty overcoat bulged with bread, and she had more food wrapped up in her blanket roll.
"Sure the Grogs won't smell you coming now?" Valentine ventured.
A few snickers broke out among the Wolves, but the young woman just eyed Valentine coldly. "Not a chance. You just make some noise this side of the hill, and keep everyone moving hard for at least an hour. Can you handle that, Lieutenant?"
Valentine suppressed the urge to shrug his shoulders. In an hour he could be dead. "We'll see what we can do." He reviewed the faces of his NCOs, reassured by their self-reliant expressions. "Questions, gentlemen? No? Then let's saddle up, please. I want to be very far from here by morning."
As he slid down to the breastworks with Stafford and the other four crack riflemen, Valentine considered the fact that he was ignoring Captain Beck's final orders. But Beck was in a drag-litter now, unconscious from shock or pain. Even if the Cat's guess that these mysterious Reapers were on the way was wrong, Valentine doubted he could hold Little Timber for the problematical arrival of the Guard Cavalry. If the Grogs were reinforced at all, they could sweep over the top of the hill by making one more effort that matched the first legworm assault.
His team approached the wagon. The darkening sky was turning the woods to shadow.
Sergeant Hart had modified the wagon for a one-way trip down the slope. Each wheel now had its own hand brake with a new leather shoe at the end of the lever. Some Wolf who had read Ben-Hur had fixed knives, blades outward, on the hubs of each of the four wheels. The sides and front had small tree trunks added, interwoven and lashed together around sandbags for added protection. A case of grenades and a box of phosphorus candles were secured to the reinforced sides.
The volunteers climbed in, rifles, pistols, and sawed-off shotguns at the ready. "Be pretty funny if a mortar shell dropped in here after all this work," Stafford commented, helping Valentine up into the wagon bed.
"I've heard of toboggan rides to Hell, but I never expected to sit in one," another Wolf said, putting two rounds of buckshot into a scattergun. He snapped the breech closed with a grin.
Valentine picked up a captured Grog rifle. Another like it lay in the bed of the wagon, loaded and ready. It was heavy and unwieldy; he decided he could aim and shoot it properly if he could rest it on the side of the wagon. The bolt and trigger were oversize and strange to work-the bolt was drawn all the way up and across the gun to the other side to eject the expended shell, like a large switch. Even the lever looked odd, until Valentine remembered the strange head jerk of the Grogs after they shot-they opened the chamber and popped the shell with their chins. He placed one of the Grog fifty-caliber shells in the weapon. The bullets were as long as his hand and thicker than his index finger.
As the shadows deepened, Wolves slunk away from their positions, leaving Petrie's picked few to hold the breastworks.
Valentine assigned a man to each brake, taking the right front one himself. The shadows turned slowly purple in the growing night as the minutes ticked by.
Darkness.
"Okay, let's have a little covering fire, men. Give us a shove back there! Heave!" Valentine yelled over his shoulder at the waiting Wolves.
The wagon began to roll down the long, straight slope. The ruts in the trail would serve to guide the wheels in the absence of horses, as long as they didn't pick up too much speed.
"Keep on those brakes, there," Valentine called to the other three men at the levers. He wanted to be moving fast enough to be a difficult target, but not so fast that the wagon got outside of the brakes' ability to halt it. Bullets from both sides whistled and zipped around them. "Stop before we get out of the trees."
Stafford and the other free Wolf threw grenades to either side, for all the world like parade dignitaries tossing taffy to children lining the road. A Grog jumped out onto the trail in front of them, rifle raised to its shoulder. Valentine had an instant flash of his life ending in the bed of the wagon, thirsty boards absorbing his blood, but the report of the gun was not accompanied by the impact of a slug. The Grog threw down his rifle and drew a knife the size of a machete. It ran up to the wagon's side, throwing its arm across the side logs in an attempt to climb in. Its fierce snarl turned into wide-eyed surprise as the knives on the hub rotated their way across its belly. The eviscerated Grog dropped off the side as quickly as it had leapt on and fell writhing on the trail behind them.
Snap! The Wolf at the rear brake looked down in stupid amazement at the broken handle-or more precisely, the piece of wood that had attached the handle to the body of the wagon.
"Keep the pressure on-we're almost to the bottom," Valentine said. The grade lessened. They would be out of the trees in a few seconds. "Okay, hard brake, everyone. Stop this thing!"
Damn, damn, double damn! The wagon was slowing, but not stopping. It rumbled out of the trees to the tune of squealing wood: the leather pads had peeled off the brakes.
Gun flashes peppered the night around them. A Wolf fell, gripping a shattered arm and thrashing in the bottom of the wagon. The others fired back. Grogs ran forward, throwing themselves prone to shoot at the wagon.
"Stafford, the candles," Valentine yelled. He picked up a pair of flares and handed some to Gator, who coolly threw a grenade into the night.
Valentine and Stafford ignited the fireworks on a glowing piece of slow match. They burst into eye-cutting, blue-white light. Squinting against the glare, Valentine flung his as far into the night as he could. Grog shooters appeared in the pool of light where it landed, giving the riflemen in the truck a mark. Stafford threw two more off to the left.
"More! If we can't shoot'em, let's blind'em!" Valentine shouted. A form appeared out of the dark into the blue light of one of the candles, cloaked and hooded.
Reaper!
Valentine pulled up a Grog gun, balancing its overlong barrel on the log in front of him. The Reaper went into a defensive crouch as the Wolves fired at it, inhuman joints bent like a spider's and ready to spring.
The Grog gun roared like a cannon, flipping the Reaper neatly onto its back, feet twitching. Grog iron packed a kick at both ends: Valentine's shoulder felt as though he'd been shot, as well. But it was worth the pain; the bullet went through the Reaper's protective cloak. He reached for the second gun, but by the time he brought it up, the Reaper had already fled.
Splinters flew as Grog bullets pounded into the sandbagged logs the Wolves used for cover. The distance between the wagon and the trees at the base of Little Timber was a dark, deadly chasm. They had to try for it before the Grogs clustered too thickly around the wagon.
"Now! Break for the woods!"
The firing men seemed not to hear him. "Move it!" Stafford barked, shocking the men out of their firing with his field-filling bellow and slaps on the back of the neck. The sergeant pulled the wounded Wolf to the rear as the men jumped out of the wagon.
At the sight of the Wolves abandoning their mobile fort, the surrounding Grogs came running, hooting to each other. Valentine dropped one of the chargers with the other Grog gun and rolled off the wagon.
Stafford suddenly sagged, gripping his stomach. "Go, go!" he gasped at the Wolves, folding and falling.
Valentine caught Gator as he fell, reflexes in top gear.
"Go ... go," Stafford repeated, though whether he was still calling out his final order or encouraging his officer to leave him, Valentine couldn't say.
Valentine hoisted him on his shoulders in a fireman's carry. "Uh-uh. Not getting out of Foxtrot that easy," he puffed as he lumbered toward the woods. The howls and shots of the Grogs in pursuit spurred him on.
Another Wolf fell, sprawling dead on the field, a mere ten yards shy of the trees. The flash of a shotgun illuminated a Grog leaping at them from the woods, gray skin ghostly in the glare of the flares. It toppled, almost cut in two by the blast. Some acoustical trick made the shot seem as though from a great distance.
Valentine started up the slope, Stafford's hot, sticky blood running down his back. Nothing mattered but getting the sergeant to the top of that hill. Valentine forgot the Grogs, the other Wolves still hurrying beside him, covering him as best they could. The flaming agony in his legs, the thick, coppery-tasting burn in his chest-they were the here and now, all else faded into the noise and confusion of the running fight. He felt Stafford go limp.... Please God let it be unconsciousness.
"Get. . . to . . . the . . . wagon," Valentine gasped. The Wolves would be up the hill already, if they would only quit covering him and Stafford.
One worked the lever of his rifle. "After you, sir," he said, kneeling to shoot back down the hill. Valentine heard an inhuman scream of pain.
He found the strength and breath to keep moving.
"Lieutenant, get down!" Sergeant Petrie called from somewhere above.
Valentine sank to his knees, dropping one arm from Stafford to hold himself up.
A volley crashed out from the breastworks. A second ragged one followed as the Wolves worked the actions on their rifles.
"Now, sir!" Petrie called out. A tiny red dot, the fuse on a grenade, flew overhead.
The seconds of respite worked wonders on his legs. He struggled to his feet, still burdened by Stafford, and reached the breastworks at a run. Wolves squeezed off shots from a twenty-yard stretch of the breastworks.
"The rear guard should be off this hill already, Petrie," Valentine admonished his savior. "But I'm damn glad to see you."
"The feeling is mutual, sir. Shall I light the fuses?" the sergeant asked.
"Be my guest."
The second wagon, like the first, was lined up in the ruts leading down the hill. Only this one was filled with tinder, ammunition, black powder, and grenades, and manned by four smiley-face scarecrows pulled from the hill. Petrie nodded to a pair of Wolves who kicked out the rocks bracing up the wheels, and as tfie wagon began to roll, Petrie lit a spaghetti tangle of black fuse cord dangling off the end. Six individual threads hissed as they burned down toward the explosives.
The cart picked up speed.
"Let's not stay for the fireworks. Gavin, Richards, help Sergeant Stafford. Put him in that stretcher. I've got another man hit in the arm. Where's Holbrooke?"
"He didn't make it," one of the volunteers said. "He fell on the trail."
Valentine pushed Holbrooke, a newly invoked Wolf with the makings of a good officer, out of his mind. "Let's catch up to the others."
The Wolves fell back as explosions rumbled from the base of the hill. The small-arms ammunition and grenades cooked off, as well, adding their own notes to the destructive symphony.
The escape route Smoke scouted wound through the deep ravine on the south side of Little Timber Hill. Valentine and his weary men moved as quickly as they could along the crown of the hill to the Wolf posted at the point in the breastworks where the line of retreat began.
"Lieutenant Valentine," said the soldier, tears of relief in his eyes, "I'm to get you caught up with the rear of the column. That Cat sure knows her stuff, sir. We found two dead Grogs at the break in the ravine. Two others farther up, too. Did it without firing a shot."
With four men on Stafford's stretcher, they caught up to the rear guard in a matter of minutes. The Cat lingered at the back of the column, waiting for them.
"And they say we have nine lives," she said, eyes sparkling in the darkness. She twitched and turned at tiny sounds, pure nervous energy beneath her freckled skin. Her face was coated with black greasepaint, and she had turned her overcoat inside out to reveal a black shell on the reverse side. "Good to see you made it, Lieutenant. That was some stunt."
"Thank you, thank you for finding us a bolt-hole, that is. From everyone in Foxtrot Company." Valentine favored her with a little bow. "If there's anything the Wolves can do-"
"Sure. I'll take a carbine like the one I saw you with and a scattergun. A revolver would come in handy, too."
"Of course. Tomorrow morning you can have your pick."
"No, sir-now, if you don't mind. I'm going back to the hill."
Valentine stopped in his tracks, causing the Wolf behind to plow into him. Other men swore as the file sorted itself out. "What's that?" he asked, stepping aside and gesturing to the Wolf to keep moving.
"Look, Lieutenant, someone should keep the campfires going there. Fire an occasional shot at the Grogs. Tie up the stock so the lifesign fools mem-at a distance, anyway.
"We already used some wounded Grogs for that," Hart cut in.
She flashed a smile before turning back to Valentine. "Besides, I think those Reapers we spoke of are going to hit your camp sometime tonight. I want another look at them."
Valentine was startled into an unguarded comment: "You're crazy."
"Mmmm. I'm not trying to take heads. Just a look and a listen. I'm pretty slippery; they won't get their tongues into me. If I stay back there, it improves your chances of getting away about a hundred percent. When I do leave, I'll leave noisy. I'll try to lure the Grogs down toward Fort Smith."
"It's your aura. Take whatever you want with my gratitude."
She grabbed weapons from the astonished Wolves. She moved lightly, making no more sound on the forest floor than a breath of wind. "Thanks. Maybe we'll meet again, Lieutenant," she said, throwing her new carbine over one shoulder and cradling a shotgun.
"Hope so. Let me know what you find out. You can get in touch with me through the Miskatonic. I drop in there whenever I can."
"Those ghouls? They always want me to bring in Reaper blood bladders. Fresh ones. Like I walk around with ajar of formaldehyde."
"I've got friends there." He offered his hand, and the woman took it.
"You don't look like an egghead, Valentine. Until a better day."
"Better days," he agreed.
She disappeared into the darkness as quietly as she came, and Valentine was left with a grease-stained hand.
They buried Stafford at dawn the next day.
Foxtrot Company laid him to rest on a forested ridge overlooking a little ruined roadside town from the Old World.
The sound of the occasional shot from Little Timber Hill faded once they put the first ridge between themselves and the Grogs. With a couple of miles between him and the hill, Valentine relaxed into his after-action jitters, sticking his hands in his side pockets to keep them still. The news that Stafford had died barely registered through the worry and fatigue; he had been half expecting it. When he was told that Poulos, the handsome new bridegroom from his platoon, had succumbed to shrapnel wounds from the Grog mortars, he felt more of a shock. Poulos had been bleeding a little, but insisted on walking one of the litter horses instead of riding.
They paused to rest, eat, and bury the dead. Rain turned the dirt into wet lead for the diggers and as the little clusters of miserable people stood over the freshly covered mounds, saying the final good-byes of the graveside.
Good men and mediocre men, veterans and youths-all in all, Foxtrot Company had lost twenty-two Wolves, without counting Lieutenant Caltagirone and his short platoon. Adding in the wounded brought the casualty rate up and over 70 percent. A disaster. And he'd been in command.