Valentine's Rising

Chapter Ten

Big Rock Mountain, March of the forty-eighth year of the Kurian Order: Viewed from above, the outline of Big Rock Mountain looks like a cameo of a Regency buck, or perhaps Elvis Presley done during his last Vegas days. The Arkansas River flows west into the King's forehead, complete with lock of hair hanging down, where it's stopped by the cliff face of a quarry and turns south. After the small bulge of the nose the river passes a protruding jaw. The hill curves off east, gradually leaving the river, into an oversized collar tucked into the hair flowing down to North Little Rock. What was Interstate 40 runs up the base of the north side of the hill.
It's a picturesque prominence, named "La Grande Roche" by Bernard de La Harpe in 1722 as he traveled among the Quapaw Indians. The climb up the 580-foot hill is worth it, for the view west and east along the two gentle bends the Arkansas makes as it flows into Little Rock. Or so it must have seemed to the man who built a luxury hotel upon it for the swells of the Gilded Age. But hotels are a chancy business; the hilltop property became Fort Logan H. Roots, when men trained for the Great War in the swampy ground of Burns Park north of the hill.
Following a progression so logical that it verges on the sublime, the fort became a Veterans Administration Hospital for those shattered in the staccato series of twentieth-century wars. It became a warren of buildings, from elegant Grecian structures complete with solemn columns to the smallest maintenance shack and pump house, surrounded by parks full of oaks and a hilltop lake, memorials and green-ways.
That was before the Blast. The twenty-megaton airburst, part of the nuclear fireworks that helped end the reign of man in the chaos of 2022, went off at ten thousand feet somewhere in the air between the Broadway Street and Main Street bridges over the Arkansas. It left nothing but foundations ten miles from the epicenter, barring reinforced concrete construction.
And a limb-shorn oak that had seen it all, like one of the shattered veterans of the former VA hospital.
* * * *
The men were gathered beneath the grandfather oak. The tree, perhaps because it was partly sheltered by one of the great buildings, had survived the blast and the fires that came with it. It had the tortured look of a lightning-struck tree, scored on the southeast side and shorn of older branches from two o'clock to four, and from seven to ten, though knobby amputations showed where the once-leafy limbs had been.
Valentine looked at the expectant faces in the afternoon sun. They were haggard, unshaven, tired. Post and Styachowski had pushed them to the extreme of what could be expected of soldiers, and then beyond. The former POWs were mixed in with the men he'd brought away from Martinez-though they looked better, strangely enough, than when they first arrived.
Almost anything is preferable to being inside barbed wire.
Post has assembled a list of operational specialties from the prisoners. The hilltop redoubt was well supplied with ration processors-women and men who were experienced canners, food dehydrators, pickling and drying specialists. There were no herds to slaughter or bushels of fruit and vegetables to puree and seal. "If they come up the hill, we'll just can the AOT troops like sardines," Post said with a fatalistic shrug. Valentine had almost a whole motor pool from Pine Bluff; invaluable to Southern Command with their wrenches and hoists, but they would have to put rifles in their hands and cartridge cases around their waists.
In this he was blessed, as Southern Command had a tradition of rotating men between front line and support duties, allowing the freehold to rapidly convert support units to combat operations. All of them had heard bullets fly and shells land in dreadful earnest. He wished he had more time to get to know them. Post and Beck would have to rely on volunteers to put together an NCO grid.
The four big guns were spaced out like the bases on an oversized baseball diamond in the open ground in front of Solon's Residence, each in its own pit, dug by the bulldozer, and ringed with sandbags. The backhoe was still making trenches to the ammunition dump, buried deep beneath a layer of sandbags, dirt, railroad ties and rail beams. This last came from the dismantled rail line the now-destroyed train had run on to the station near the old interstate.
Apart from the occasional shell from Pulaski Heights, the only military action to take place in the last forty-eight hours was a skirmish already going into the Free Territory folklore as the Great Howling Grog Chicken Raid. Ahn-Kha had led two platoons into the outskirts of North Arkansas and snatched up every chicken, goose, goat, piglet, calf, sheep and domestic rabbit they could run down and stuff in a sack-at the cost of the commanding officer getting a buttock full of birdshot from a twenty-gauge-while a third platoon blasted away at the men guarding the partially blown bridge from a thousand yards. Ahn-Kha had been running from a henhouse with a pair of chickens in each hand when the birdkeeper peppered him with shot that had to be dug out by a medic named Hiekeda with sterilized tweezers. In tall-tale fashion, the circumstances of Ahn-Kha's wounding and subsequent extraction of the pellets were exaggerated until, in one version already being told over the radio, Ahn-Kha was sneaking past a window with a sow under each arm and six chickens in each hand when an eighty-year-old woman stuck a gun out the window and gave him both barrels as he bent to tie his shoe. The shot, in that particular version, had to be dug out by a Chinese tailor working with knitting needles used as chopsticks. But the raid was the Big Rock Mountain garrison's first offensive success of the campaign. As a bonus, a baker's dozen of forgotten milkers were rustled from their riverside pasture and driven up the two hairpins of the switchback road on the south side of the Big Rock Mountain.
"Men," Valentine said. "You've been following orders that haven't made much sense for three days straight. You've done your duty without questions, or answers that made any sense. I'm going to try to straighten you out now. Please pass on what I say to everyone who is on watch at the skyline."
The "skyline" was the men's name for the edge of the hillside, where a series of foxholes and felled trees traced the military crest: the point where the slope could be covered by gunfire. They didn't have a quarter of the trained men they needed to man the extended line; by using three companies he could place a soldier about every fifteen yards along the line, if he didn't cover the cliffs above the quarry with more than sentries.
"We were the first move in an effort to take back the Ozarks from Kur."
He couldn't get any farther; the men broke into cheers and the corkscrew yip of the Southern Command Guards. Valentine let the cheers stop. He said a silent prayer of gratitude for the high spirits of the men, tired as they were.
"We're about as far behind the lines as we can be. There are divisions of Quislings between us and the forces north and south, which will soon be driving for us."
Valentine knew he'd be roundly damned for what he was telling them; by the men if they found out he was lying, by his conscience if it was successfully kept from them. It was a guess at best. For all he knew, Southern Command was going to move toward Fort Scott or Pine Bluff. Since the men holding the Boston Mountains were a charade of an army, there wasn't a snowflake's chance in hell of being relieved from the north, and as for the south ...
"We're in radio contact with Southern Command. They know about the blow we struck the night before last. We threw a wrench into the gears of the TMCC. You know it, I know it and the Quislings will know it when they start going hungry and running out of bullets to shoot at your comrades."
All that was true enough. With only Post in the basement radio room, he'd made a report to Southern Command, and after an hour's pause they contacted him only to say that he'd been promoted to major and was now part of "Operations Group Center" under the titular command of General Martinez. They told him that he was to tie down as many troops as possible and be prepared to operate without the direct support of Southern Command for an "indeterminate time frame." Valentine didn't think that clumsy phrase, or the mention of Martinez, would bring cheers.
"From this hill, with the guns and mortars taken in our raid, we command a vital rail, road and river crossing. Consul Solon had to give up his old headquarters at Fort Scott to the Kurians of Oklahoma. He was in the process of transferring it here. Now we've taken his new one, right down to his personal foam-cushioned toilet seat, which I placed under new management this morning." The men laughed.
"We're in a strong position with plenty to eat and shoot. I hope you like the view; you're going to be enjoying it for a long time. But the work has just begun. I'm going to put every man in this command under the temporary command of Captain Beck, the officer commanding the prisoners we brought out of Little Rock. I served, and chopped, and dug, under him. He's been in two corners as tight as this one, outside Hazlett and commanding me at Little Timber Hill, and I'm still breathing because he knows how to fortify. He's going to work you until you drop. Then he'll wake you up and work you some more, but you'll be alive at the end of this because of it."
Liar.
* * * *
Beck pulled Valentine aside as Lieutenant Colonel Kessey took over the assembly.
"Major Valentine needed a trained artillery officer," she said, "and I, for my sins, happen to be one. I need more crews. The one I put together to set up the guns won't help me much to shoot the other three. Anyone who's got experience as a gun-bunny, cannon-cocker, or ammo-humper, please raise your hand. Not enough. Anyone who knows what those words mean, raise your hands ... anyone who thinks they might know. Finally. Good news, you're all in the artillery now."
"What are the latest regs on friendly fire casualties?" Beck asked sotto voce.
"Be thankful they don't have to counterbattery the mortars on Pulsaki Heights just yet."
"We won't hear from them for a while. They shot their ready reserve and we've got the rest. That, or they're saving it for a charge up our hill."
"What do you need, Captain?" Valentine asked.
"Valentine, what happened after Little Timber... I'm sorry. This arm meant no more duty in the Wolves."
"It meant no more duty in the Wolves for me, too, Captain."
"That's my fault."
"Doesn't matter now. You're a helluva fortification engineer. The best officer I ever served with was Le Havre in Zulu Company, but if I had my choice of him or anyone else in Southern Command for this job, I'd want you."
Beck swallowed. "Thank you ... sir."
"It won't be easy. We don't have anything like the men we should have to defend this position. You've got to make it look like we do. Sooner or later they're going to get around to trying us."
"The firepower we have is better than what we had in the Wolves. Supports, heavy weapons, mines. That counts for a lot."
"When the construction equipment is done with the artillery, it's all yours."
Beck nodded. Valentine saw his jaws tighten. Back in his days as senior in Foxtrot Company he'd known that meant Beck was thinking. Valentine reminded himself to give Beck
Consul Solon's humidor of cigars. Beck enjoyed a good smoke while working.
"Rough out what you want and run it by Styachowski. She's sharp. I've told her and Mr. Post that you're in charge of getting us ready. They'll follow your orders. If there's anything I can do, let me know."
"You've done more than enough. How long are we going to have to be here?"
"How long were you going to hold that road to Hazlett?
Beck thought it over. "It's like that, sir?"
"We've got to keep as many troops occupied as possible for as long as we can. We're right at the nexus of river and rail traffic in the Ozarks. We need to make sure they can't use it. At least not easily. We've got to protect the artillery covering the river and rail lines."
"Then I'll build a redoubt around these buildings and foundations. We have to figure on them getting on the plateau. More railroad rails and ties would be nice."
"There's the line running to the quarry. The Pulaski Heights boys might have something to say about us working right across the river from them."
"Maybe the 155s can say something back to them if they do."
* * * *
Nail was a little pale, but he was eating and sleeping well.
"Better than I'd've expected," Dr. Kirschbaum said. Valentine didn't think she looked old enough to be a doctor, but wasn't about to ask her for a diploma. "Could be that kidney's in better shape than the triage report says. You should see this."
The doctor led him over to Nail. The Bear lay on a bed now; they'd taken mattresses from the construction huts and moved them into me hospital-along with the generator and a refrigerator that had been holding beer.
"Lieutenant, you've got another visitor," Kirschbaum said.
Nail managed a tired smile. "I'm about visited out, Doc. Unless he's got more of Narcisse's gumbo."
"You need a second nurse to handle your dishes and bedpans as is, soldier."
Nail drained his canteen and handed it to the doctor. "More."
"Do your trick first, Lieutenant."
"What trick is this, Nail?" Valentine asked.
"Check out my toes, sir."
They were wiggling.
"You don't have a battery under here, do you?" Kirschbaum said, pretending to check under Nail's bed.
"Ever treated a Bear before, Doc?" Nail asked.
"I've seen some DOAs. You boys take a lot of killing, judging from the holes. I'll leave you with the lieutenant, Major. Or are you going to ask him for a quickie, too?"
Nail winked.
Valentine swung around the chair next to Nail's bed. "I'm glad you're feeling better. What's in that gumbo?"
"Part of being a Bear."
"This isn't healing, Nail. This is more like regeneration."
"You know Lost & Found, sir? You know why he's called that? He's got me beat. He was dead, like body-getting-cold dead, and he came back. He was in the fraggin' body bag, sir. Zipped up and in a pile. He came to when the gravediggers picked him up. It's like a legend, this story. Sat up and asked his mom for griddle cakes. Three men there had simultaneous heart attacks. He kept the twist tie on the tag they stuck through his ear. We try to keep it quiet. In case we ever get captured, we don't want some Quisling cutting a notch in our arm just to see how quickly it heals."
* * * *
Valentine found Narcisse in the basement of the hospital, pouring honey down the center of loaves of bread, risen and ready to go into the oven. She was organizing the kitchen with the help of one of the pregnant POWs and a former Quisling soldier, one of the three from the captured bunch at the warehouse, who looked about fifteen.
"Where's Hank?" Valentine asked. "I thought he was helping you out."
"He volunteered for the artillery. That woman Kessey came through earlier today, she adopted the boy."
"How's he doing?" Valentine had avoided Hank since the night they broke out of New Columbia.
"He told me he hated his parents. He hopes they're dead."
"No, he doesn't. Would it help if I talked to him?"
"Daveed, I don't know what you did when you went off that night. I don't want to know. I think it'd be best if Hank, he never know either. You tell him his parents, they run away."
"What makes you think they didn't?"
"Your eyes. They are your grief. They say, when you leave that place, you were dipped in blood."
"Enough with the juju stuff, Sissy. What have you been putting in Nail's soup?"
"Sausage, rice, celery, no chilies or nothing; the doctor, she say keep it mild-"
"That's not what I mean. He had nerve damage. It's healing. I'd heard Bears recovered from stabs and bullet wounds fast, but I've never known of a higher animal doing this."
" 'More't'ings in heaven and earth," Daveed. If I knew how to make a gumbo that make cane-man walk again, I use him on myself and get new legs."
"Colo-Major, passing the word for Major Valentine," a soldier called in the hospital.
"Down here," Valentine yelled back.
A private from the command company made a noisy descent to the kitchen, a signals patch on his shoulder. "Major! Sergeant Jimenez needs you in the radio room. Priority broadcast from Southern Command. For all troops."
"Did you say broadcast?"
"Yes, sir, not direct communication. The Sarge said you needed to hear it."
"Thank you, Private. I'm coming."
Valentine stole a fresh heel of bread and dipped it in honey.
"You too bad, Daveed," Narcisse said. "This galley supposed to be for hospital."
"Impossible to resist your cooking, Sissy," Valentine said, moving for the stairs.
Word had passed among the men that something was up. There were a couple of dozen sandbag-fillers trying to look busy in front of the Federal-style command building. A new long-range radio mast had gone up atop its molding-edged roof since the previous day. The signals private held the door for Valentine.
"Does Jimenez have the klaxon rigged yet?"
"I helped him, sir. Klaxon, PA, he can even kill electricity."
"Quick work."
"To tell you the truth, sir, it was mostly rigged already. We just added the kill switch for the juice."
The radio room was a subbasement below the conference room where Solon had laid out his scheme for finishing off Southern Command. Solon had a sophisticated radio center. A powerful transmitter, capable of being used by three separate operators, was surrounded by the inky flimsy-spitters capable of producing text or images from the right kind of radio or telephone signal. Sergeant Jimenez had a pair of earphones on, listening intently.
"What's the news, Jimenez?"
"Oh, sorry, sir. Lots of chatter. Something big is going on down south. I'm scanning Southern Command and TMCC. Chatter north and south, but it sounds like mere's action somewhere on the banks of the Ouachita."
"What about west? Anything from Martinez?"
"Not a word, sir. Like we don't exist."
"What did you call me here for, then?"
"There's going to be a broadcast from the governor. Thought you might like to hear what he had to say."
"I'm not the only one, Jimenez. Can you put this on the PA?"
"Uhh ... wait, I can. Just give me a sec."
The radio tech rooted through a box of tangled cords in the corner, pulling up wires and examining the ends. He pulled out a snarl of electronics cable and unwound what he was looking for. Valentine put an ear to the headphones, but just picked up a word or two amongst the static. His eyes wandered over the Christmas-like assortment of red and green telltales, signal strength meters and digital dials. The apparatus was a Frankensteinish creation of three mismatched electronic boxes, placed vertically in a frame and patched together. The electromagnetic weapons that darkened so much of the world in 2022 took their toll on everything with a chip; the more sophisticated, the more likely to be rendered useless by an EMW pulse. Sets like this were an exception-restored military com sets with hardened chips. The Kurians frowned on any kind of technology that allowed mass communication; radios were hunted down and destroyed as though they were cancers. An illegal transmitter was a dangerous and practically impossible thing to have in the Kurian Zone. Only the most trusted of the Quisling commanders had them for personal use. Southern Command made transmitter/receivers by the hundreds, and receivers in even greater quantity, in little garage shops for smuggling into the Kurian Zone, and of course had encouraged the citizens of the Free Territory to own them as well, even if they were on the telephone network. Caches of radios had probably been hidden along with weapons when Solon's forces overran the Free Territory. If Governor Pawls was about to make a statement, chances were he had in mind speaking to those of his former citizens who still possessed theirs, and if they still had radios they probably had weapons. Valentine hoped for a call to rise. The Ozarks, especially near the borders, were full of self-reliant men and women who knew how to organize and fight in small groups. With his guns at the center of the Quisling transport network, the Kurians would have difficulty stamping out fires.
"We're live, sir. Just let me know when you want to pipe it through," Jimenez said. Valentine heard a voice through the padding on the earphones. He picked up another pair.
"When's the broadcast?"
"Soon, sir."
"I'm just getting static."
"I'll fix that," the technician said. He sat and worked the tuner. "Code messages again. Something's happening."
"Why aren't they doing it in the dead of night?"
"They usually do; reception is better. Maybe they want to get it rolling today, before the Kurians can react."
"Or tonight."
"Could be, sir. Oh, just a sec. Five minutes."
"Give me the microphone." When Jimenez handed it over, Valentine tested the talk switch. He heard an audible click outside. "Lend an ear, men. Lend an ear. We've got a broadcast coming in from the governor. I'm not sure what it's about, just that it's a general broadcast to what used to be the Ozark Free Territory. I figured you'd want to hear it. We'll pipe it over as soon as it comes on."
"They've got cassettes, so I can tape it," Jimenez whispered.
"For those on watch, we'll tape it and play it back tonight. That is all."
To pass the time Jimenez took Valentine through the shortwave spectrum. There were notes on a clipboard about where to find the bands for the Green Mountain men, the Northwest Command, even overseas stations like the Free Baltic League.
"Well have to set up a canteen where you can play the news," Valentine said. "Solon has enough office space down here; we can knock down some of these walls-"
"Just a sec, sir. He's coming on." Jimenez nodded to himself, then flicked a switch. Faintly, Valentine heard Governor Pawl's voice from the loudspeakers outside. Jimenez unplugged the earphones and the sound went over to the old set of speakers bracketed to the wall. Valentine had heard the old Kansan's rather scratchy voice on occasions past, explaining a new emergency measure or rescinding an old one, eulogizing some lost lieutenant or passing along news of a victory against the Kurians overseas.
"-and all our friends and allies who may be listening.
Late last night, after speaking to Lieutenant General Griffith, my interim lieutenant governor, Hal Steiner, and what members of the Ozark Congress are with me at Comfort Point, I gave the order for the counterattack you've all been waiting for in this, the darkest year of the Free Territory. A combination of weather, enemy movements and a fortuitous raid on the Quislings at the old Little Rock Ruins-"
"Hey, that's us," Jimenez said, smiling. Valentine nodded, listening.
"-I took as portents that it is time for the storms and shadows to disperse. Therefore I gave the order for 'Archangel' to begin."
"Archangel" must have meant something to the men outside; Valentine heard cheering.
"The first shot was fired before dawn this morning. As I speak, in the south we have seized Camden and are on the march for Arkadelphia; in the north we descend from the mountains and onto the plateau. So now I ask the men and women of the militia, when they hear the sound of our guns, to gather and smash our enemy, hip and thigh. Smash them! Smash them to pieces, then smash the pieces into dust. For the outrages inflicted on us, smash them! For the future of your sons and daughters, smash them! As you are true to your heritage of liberty, smash them! For the honored dead of our Cause, smash them! Now is our time. With courage in your heart, you will know what to do. With steel in your arm, you will have the means to do it. With belief in your spirit, you will not falter but shall see it through. We have lived through the night. Now let us make a dawn, together."
The broadcast switched over to a marching song of Southern Command, based on an old marching ditty. Valentine left the radio room and went out to see the men, the song ringing in his ears:
We are a band of peoples, granted through our creed The Right to Life and Liberty: our Founding Fathers' deed. But when those rights were taken, our duty then as one: Cry "Never!" to the Kurian Kings, and take up arms again.
Never' Never! Our sacred trust... Never!
"Never!" to the Kurian Kings, we 11 take up arms again...
Outside, Valentine heard the men join in the song. It spread across the hill, even to the pickets on the crestline. Though most of them couldn't carry a tune with the help of a wheelbarrow, they did slap their rifle butts, or shovel blades, in time to the "Never!" It was a rhythmic, savage sound. He hoped the Quislings across the river were listening.
* * * *
Valentine found Hank Smalls learning his duties as a "runner." The boy's job was to pass oral messages between the guns and the main magazine, headquarters, or the forward posts in the event of a hard-line breakdown with the field phones. He and a handful of other young teenagers were being escorted around the hilltop and taught the different stations still being put together by Beck and his construction crews.
"Can I borrow Hank a moment?" Valentine asked the corporal walking the teens around.
"Of course," the corporal answered. She had the nearsighted look of a studious schoolgirl entering her senior year, despite the "camp hair" cropped close to her scalp. Valentine stopped the children as they lined up, as though for inspection.
"Excuse me, Corporal." He drew Hank aside. "How are you getting on, Hank?" Valentine asked the boy. Hank wore a man's fatigue shirt, belted about the waist so it was more of a peasant smock. Mud plastered Hank's sandal-like TMCC training shoes, but the old tire treads were easy to run in and then clean afterwards.
"Busy. Lots to remember about fuses, sir."
"Are you getting enough to eat?"
Hank looked insulted. "Of course. Two hot and one cold a day."
Valentine had a hard time getting the next out: "Worried about your parents?"
"No." But the boy's eyes left his this time. Valentine went down to one knee so he was at the boy's level, but Hank's face had gone vacant. The boy was off in a mental basement, a basement Valentine suspected was similar to his own.
"Keep busy,"Valentine said, summing long experience into words. The boy looked like he needed more.
"Hank, I'm going to tell you something a Roman Catholic priest told me when I lost my parents. He said it was up to him to turn me into a man since my father wasn't around to do it. He'd never had kids, being a priest, so he had to use the wisdom of others. He used to read a lot of Latin. Roman history, you know?" For some reason Valentine thought of Xray-Tango and his groma.
"They had gladiators," Hank said.
"Right. A Roman statesman named Cicero used to say that 'no Roman in any circumstance could regard himself as vanquished." You know what vanquished means?"
"Uhhh," Hank said.
"What Cicero meant was that even if you were beat, you should never admit that you were. Especially not to the people who'd beaten you."
"Like Southern Command keeping together even after all this," Hank said. The boy's eyes had a sparkle of interest, so Valentine went on.
"Cicero said a man had to have three virtues. Virtus, which meant courage in battle. Not minding pain and so on. You also have to have gravitas, which means being sober, aware of your responsibilities, and controlling your emotions. Even if someone has you madder than a stomped rattlesnake, you don't let them know they've got you by the nose, or they'll just give you another twist. Understand?"
"Virte-virtus and gravitas," Hank said. "I see. But you said there was another."
"This is the most important one for you now. Simplicitas. That means keeping your mind on your duties, doing what most needs to be done at the moment. In fact, I'd better let you get back to yours. I don't want to keep the corporal and the rest waiting."
"Yes, sir," Hank said, saluting. The vacant look was gone. Valentine wanted to hug the boy, but settled for a salute. Gravitas required it.
* * * *
All through the following day the sound of distant trucks and trains could be heard.
That night, though the men were exhausted from laboring on what was now known as the "Beck Line," they danced and cheered at the news that Arkadelphia was liberated, and the Quislings were falling back in disarray. Southern Command would soon be knocking on the hilly gates of Hot Springs, barely fifty miles from New Columbia.
They'd had their own successes. The mortar crews had prevented repair gangs from working on the rail lines during the day, and the occasional illumination shell followed by 4.2-inch mortar airbursts slowed the work to a crawl at night.
But strongpoints with machine guns were now all around the base of the hill, and the mortars on Pulaski Heights had begun to fire again, scattering their shells among the buildings of Solon's Residence. Two men laying wire for field phones were killed when a shell landed between them.
Big Rock Mountain added a life when one of the women gave birth. The eight-and-a-half-pound boy was named Perry after one of the dead signals men.
* * * *
"That's pretty damn arrogant of them," Valentine said, taking his eye from the spotting scope the next day. It was late afternoon, and the shadows of the hills were already stretching across New Columbia. "Bringing a barge up the river in daylight."
"I'd say the river's too tricky to do it at night," Post said.
"Then we'll make it too tricky for them to do during the day."
They stood at an observation post above the switchback road running up the southeastern side of the hill, looking through a viewing slit with the protection of headlogs. There were snipers at the base of the hill good enough to get them, even with an uphill shot. There had been minor wounds among the work parties until three-man teams of counter-snipers had been sent down the hill to hunt out the marksmen. Valentine knew there was a gritty war of precision and patience being waged through scoped rifles two hundred feet below, but he had to keep his mind on the river, or rather denying its use to the enemy.
"They're trying to time it so they can unload at night," Post said. The barge was still far from the docks, behind the old brush-covered roadway of the interstate loop.
"I'd like to see if Kessey's guns can make a difference. Durning, you're forward observer for this side, I believe?"
The corporal in the post looked up. "Yes, sir."
"I want that barge sunk. Can you do it?"
"A crawling target like that? Yes, sir!"
Valentine listened to him talk into the field phone to Kessey, acting as fire direction controller, and the far-off squawk of the alarm at the gun pits. Kessey had decided that, because of the lack of experienced crews, she could only put two guns into effective action at once. The other two would be used once some of the raw hands gained experience. Within three minutes the first ranging shot was fired as the barge negotiated the wide channel around the swampy turd shape of Gates Island.
"Thirty meters short," the observer called, looking through the antennae-like ranging binoculars. Kessey tried again. Valentine heard her faint "splash" through his headset, letting him know another shell was on the way. Through his own spotting scope, Valentine saw the white bloom of the shell-fall well behind the barge. He took a closer look at the tug. Thankfully, it didn't belong to Mantilla. The observer passed the bad news about the miss.
"Sir, it's the damn Quisling ordinance. Their quality control sucks sewage."
"The target's worth it. Keep trying."
The Quislings on Pulaski Heights tried to inhibit the crews by raining shells down on the battery. Valentine heard the crack of shells bursting in the air.
The observer was happy with the next shell, and he called, "Howizer battery, fire for effect."
The shells traveling overhead whirred as they tore through the air. Valentine stepped aside so Post could watch.
"Keep your heads down, boys. Nothing to watch worth a bullet in the head," he called to a pair of men resting concealed behind rocks and earth along the crestline to his left.
"I think there were two hits to the cargo, sir."
"Secondary explosion?"
"No, sir."
"Probably just a cargo of rice then. Worth sinking anyway. Corporal, keep it coming."
The sun was already down beneath the trees behind them. Three more times the guns fired, with the forward observer relaying results.
"Another hit!" Post said.
"Sir, the barge is turning," the observer said.
"They cut loose from the cargo," Post said. "There's a fire on board. Black smoke; could be gasoline."
Even Valentine could see the smear of smoke, obscuring the white tug beyond. "Forget the cargo, sink that tub."
It was getting darker. Tiny flecks of fire on the sinking barge could be made out, spreading onto the surface of the water. There had been some gasoline on board.
The observer cursed as shells continued to go wide. Valentine could not make out anything other than the guttering fire.
"Illuminate!" the observer called.
A minute later a star shell burst over the river.
"Hell, yes," Post chirped.
Under the harsh white glare, Valentine squinted and saw the tug frozen on the swampland shallows of the northern side of Gates Island. The pilot had misjudged the turn in the darkness.
"Fuze delay, fuze delay ..." the observer called into his mike.
Shells rained down on the barge. Its bulkheads could keep out small arms fire, but not shells. The star shell plunged into the river, but an explosion from the tug lit up the river. Another illumination shell showed the hull torn in two.
"We got her," the forward observer shouted. "Cease fire. Cease fire."
"Pass me that headset, Corporal."
Valentine put on the headset. "Nice work, Kessey."
"This isn't Colonel Kessey, sir," the voice at the other end said. "It's Sergeant Hanson, sir. She was wounded by the mortar fire. Permission to redirect and counterbattery."
The mortars on Pulaski Heights were scattered and in defilade; the number of shells required to silence even one or two was prohibitive. "Negative, Sergeant. Get your men to their shelters. I'm promoting you to lieutenant; you'll take over the battery. What's the situation with Colonel Kessey?"
"Blown out of her shoes, sir, but she landed intact. I'm hoping it's just concussion and shock. She's already on her way to the hospital, sir."
Valentine kept his voice neutral. "Thank you, Lieutenant. Over and out."
* * * *
Later that night Valentine went through the solemn, and rather infuriating, ritual of composing his daily report to General Martinez. He labored over the wording at the end of the report.
At approximately 18:20 we sighted a barge moving up the Arkansas River. Our howitzer battery took it under fire. After ten minutes sustained shelling the tug cast off from the sinking cargo. The battery shifted targets to the tug, which ran aground and was subsequently destroyed by howitzer fire.
Counterbattery fire from the Pulaski Heights mortars caused two casualties. A loader was wounded in the foot and the battery Fire Direction Officer, Lt. Col. Kessey, suffered head trauma resulting in a concussion when a shell exploded near her. I hope to report that she will return to duty shortly, as she was still training and organizing her crews. The battery is now under the command of a first sergeant I promoted to lieutenant. Lt. Hanson completed the battery action.
Enemy troops continue to concentrate in front of us. Eventually larger weapons will be moved to Pulaski Heights, making our current position untenable and offensive action impossible. The mortar tubes are dispersed and guarded from the river side, but I believe the New Columbia area to be open to attack from the hills in the west. I respectfully suggest that a movement by your command in our direction will allow us to control central Arkansas and pressure Hot Springs from the north as other commands push up to join us.
My staff has a detailed plan worked out. Establishing closer contact would go far toward coordinating the actions of our commands to the benefit of Southern Command in general and the detriment of Consul Solon and the TMCC in particular.
Writing Martinez was an exercise in futility, but it had to be done, no matter what taste the task left in his mouth.
Valentine put a code card in the envelope and sent it to the radio room. He looked around the basement room that served as his office and sleeping area. If a man's life could be measured by his possessions, his life didn't amount to much. A little leather pouch of Quickwood seeds. A toothbrush that looked like an oversized pipe cleaner. Field gear and weapons. A report from Styachowski on her progress in organizing the POWs from the camp into battle-ready infantry. Pages of notes. A terrain sketch on the wall. He was a man of lists. Lists of officer rotations. Lists of Quisling brigades and regiments identified in the area-it had doubled in length in the past week. A list of needs for the hospital-God knew where he'd find an X-ray machine, why did they even ask? Xray-Tango. A man who wanted and needed to switch sides thanks to intelligence and conscience, but who couldn't bring himself to do it.
He collapsed into his bunk, palms behind his head. His scalp was getting past the prickly stage, and the returning black hairs on his head made him look rather like someone on a long walk home from prison; the visible skin of his scalp made even more odd-looking thanks to their presence. He let his hearing play around the headquarters building. Fresh construction made the most noise: hammers and electric saws turning Solon's future meeting rooms and art galleries into living space, with fainter splats from the ground floor above as windows were bricked up into firing slits. Typewriters clattered as clerks catalogued and allocated the stores from the warehouse raid. He could hear Post and Styachowski talking with the top sergeants and a smattering of lieutenants as they worked out the organization of the hilltop's men; many of the prisoners were getting their strength back after a few days of balanced rations and could now be blended into other units. From the communications center he heard field phones buzzing or jangling-they'd come away with two kinds, the ones that buzzed doubled as short-range radios, the jangling ones had been used by Solon's construction staff-now shakily melded together in a single network rather like Valentine's ad hoc command.
The Consul hadn't reacted to his seizure of the Residence as quickly, or as violently, as he'd expected. The Quislings under Xray-Tango had just concentrated on keeping him where he was rather than prying him off the hill. The forces they'd assembled could overrun him, at no small cost, but so far they hadn't moved beyond the engagement of dueling sniper rifles. Perhaps they couldn't afford a Pyrrhic victory with Southern Command still on the move in the south.
Did they want to starve him out? He had just under sixteen hundred soldiers and captured Quislings-the latter were digging and hammering together log-and-soil fortifications under Beck's direction-that he could feed for months, if necessary, at full, balanced rations. After the canned meat and vegetables ran out he could still manage beans and rice for another ten or twelve weeks. They must have known the contents of the divisional supply train he'd made off with. Of course, the food would run out eventually, but not before Solon had to send most of his boys back to where he'd borrowed them, or Archangel had been decided one way or the other. A few shady Quislings had made contact with the forward posts, offering to trade guns and small valuables for food. Valentine's hilltop forces were, temporarily at least, better off than the besiegers. He could just wait for Southern Command to move up after taking Hot Springs, or the less likely relief from Martinez. If he were Solon, he'd destroy the the forces in his rear as quickly as possible, before turning his attention to the new threat from the south.
But you're not Solon. You don't know the cards he's holding; he knows exactly how many aces you've got. Except for the Quickwood . Valentine hoped a few dozen Reapers had already been turned to wooden mummies by the beams he'd passed to Mantilla.
A whistle sounded from outside. Barrage?
Valentine took up his tunic and ran through the officers' conference room, with Beck's proposed layout still on the blackboard. He entered the radio lounge, where off-duty men gathered to hear news and music piped in by Jimenez and the other operator.
"What's the whistle?" he asked Styachowski, who was sitting below one of the speakers, fiddling with Solon's old bow and quiver. She'd had an idea to use Quickwood chips for arrowheads. The cane she relied upon was conspicuous by its absence.
"Thought I heard someone yell 'star shell." I haven't heard it followed up with anything. Maybe it's a psych job."
"Get to the field phones, please. I want you in the corns center in case it isn't."
Valentine hurried out to the front of the headquarters building. Sure enough, a star shell was falling to earth. A second burst far above the hill as the first descended. Valentine saw the men atop the building pointing and chatting. A few figures hurried to shelters, assuming real shellfire was on the way.
"Sir, you don't want to be standing there if a beehive bursts," a private behind the sandbag wall filling one of the arched windows called to him, referring to the flechette-filled antipersonnel rounds fired by larger guns.
The Cat stood, anxious and upset, listening to the night. There was a droning in the sky, faint but growing. Suddenly he knew why he was anxious. The chills...
"Reapers!" Valentine shouted to the men on the rooftop. "Reaper alarm!"
The sentry froze for a moment, as if Valentine were shouting up to him in a foreign tongue, then went to the cylinder of steel hanging from a hook on the loudspeaker pole atop the building. He inserted a metal rod and rang the gong for all it was worth. Valentine picked up the field phone just inside the headquarters entrance and pushed the button to buzz the com center.
"Operator," the center answered. Another star shell lit up the hilltop, creating crossing shadows with the still-burning earlier one.
"This is Major Valentine. Reaper alarm." He heard the woman gasp, then she repeated the message with her hand over the mouthpiece.
"Captain Styachowski acknowledges, thank you," came the flat response.
Ahn-Kha appeared in the doorway behind him, a golden-haired djinn summoned by the clanging alarm. He had a Grog gun in his arm and a Quickwood stabbing spear between his teeth. A second spear was tucked under his arm.
"This is going-" Valentine began, then shut up as he saw what was coming from the east. In the glare of the star shell, he saw a little two-engined turboprop, the kind used by pre-2022 airlines to hop a few passengers between small cities, roar into the light at a hundred feet. The rear door was open.
"What the fuck?" one of the soldiers on the roof said, watching. A figure plunged from the plane, trailing a cathedral train of material that whipped and flapped in the air as it fell. A parachute that failed to open? A second one followed it, and a third, all with the same flagellate fabric acting as a drogue for the plunging man-figures. Valentine saw
another plane behind, a different make, this one coming for him like a missile aimed at his position, its daring pilot almost touching the treetops.
"Your shoulder, my David," Ahn-Kha said, as Valentine felt the barrel of the Grog gun fall against his shoulder. Valentine froze, a human bipod.
"Nu," Ahn-Kha said, and the gun jumped on Valentine's shoulder as the Grog fired.
The boom of the .50 echoed in the hallway. The plane reacted, tipping its wings to the side. At that height there was no room for error; the plane veered into the treetops. It roared through them to the music of snapping wood, then struck a thicker bole and pancaked. Exploding aviation fuel flamed yellow-orange in the night.
"Good shot," Valentine said, hardly believing his eyes.
"Good luck," Ahn-Kha returned. "I guessed to which side the driver sat."
The star shells lit up the first figure's landing in white light and black shadow. It hit the ground running, shrugging off the drapes of fabric attached to it. Only a Reaper could survive such a landing with bones intact... as did the next, and the next, striking earth to the sound of clanging alarm gongs.
Valentine watched, transfixed, and his "Valentingle" told him where the others were. To the west. Climbing the sheer face of the quarry, the one part of the hill almost un-climbable and therefore almost unguarded. He took one of Ahn-Kha's spears.
God, two were headed for the hospital.
"Ahn-Kha, get the Bears!" he shouted, hurrying toward the hospital building. He ran past the old stable building mat now housed the dairy herd. He paused in his race and threw open one of the barn doors. If these were the "unguided" sapper Reapers, they might be drawn to the heat and blood of a cow more man a lighter human.
A Reaper ran across the hillside, leaping from fallen tree to earthen mound like a child hopping puddles, making for the hospital.
"You! You!" Valentine shouted, waving his arms.
It turned, hissing, face full of malice, eyes cold and fixed as a stuffed snake's. It squatted, and Valentine braced himself for the leap.
Tracer cut across his vision like fireflies on Benzedrine. Men in a hidden machine-gun nest, covering the open ground between the buildings and the artillery pits, caught the Reaper across the side. It tumbled, closing its legs like a falling spider, and rose dragging a leg.
Valentine was there in two Cat leaps, but he must have looked too much like a jumping Reaper to the machine-gun crew. Bullets zipped around him. Valentine dropped to the ground.
The Reaper staggered toward him, one side of its body recalcitrant, like that of a stroke victim learning to use his worse-off half again. Valentine heard screams from the machine gunners: a Reaper was among them.
He rose, spear ready, and realized that once he used Ahn-Kha's point, he'd be unarmed. The nearest weapon was with the machine-gun crew, now dying under the claws of a sapper. Valentine ran for their gun pit, pursued by the half-leaping, half-staggering stride of the shot-up one.
The Reaper in the gun pit was feeding, back to him. Valentine jumped from ten feet away, landed atop its back and buried the Quickwood in its collarbone. The beast never knew what hit it; the Quickwood sank into the muscle at the base of its neck before the handle snapped off. Valentine's body blow knocked it flat. It stiffened, legs kicking and hands pulling up fistfuls of earth in black-nailed claws.
Valentine ignored the bloody ruin of the soldiers in the machine-gun nest, noting only that one was a promising soldier named Ralston, who'd qualified at the bottom in marksmanship with his rifle, but when given a tripod and the sliding sights on a Squad Support Gun, came to the head of the class with his accurate grouping. He tore the machine gun from Ralston's limp fingers and fired it in time to see the flash reflected in the eyes of the oncoming Reaper, lit up in the gun's strobe light of muzzle flash as it came toward him. The 7.62mm bullets tore through even the Reaper cloth, blasting back the staggering nightmare into a jigsaw cutout of tarry flesh and broken bone. What was left of the thing rolled around aimlessly, clawing at and opening its wounds in search of the burning pain within, a scorpion stinging itself to death.
He opened the gun, put a new ammunition box on the side, let loose the tripod catch, and ran for the hospital.
The next fifteen minutes were a blur, and would remain so for the rest of his life. Not that he wanted to remember any of it. The fight lived on in his mind as little snapshots of horror. The hospital, looking as though a scythe-wielding tornado had passed through it, leaving Dr. Kirschbaum and Lieutenant Colonel Kessey in mingled pieces. Nail standing, eyes bulging, holding down the Reaper as it stiffened with his spring knife in its eye, feeling its clawed hand digging bloodily into the muscle of his thigh, searching for the femoral artery as it died. The wave of Reapers, a dozen or more, coming across the hillside, throwing aside men like a line of hunters knocking over cornstalks for fun. One Reaper descending into the ready magazine for the 155s and a resultant explosion, lighting up the night and sending a railroad tie skyward like a moon shot. The Bears and Ahn-Kha meeting them, backed up by the Thunderbolt's old marines, clustered in a protective ring around Valentine, pikes and guns working together to knock over the death-machines and then pin them until they stiffened. Styachowski, fear-whitened face like ice in the moonlight, carrying Solon's bow and sending an arrow into a leaping Reaper just before it landed on Post's back. When another Reaper broke the antique as she used it to ward off a blow that threatened to remove, her head, she thrust up with another arrow held near the tip, putting the Quickwood into its yellow eye. Max the German shepherd, a pet of one of the construction engineers, licking the face of his dead owner, stopping only to snarl and stare at anyone who approached the body. The screams of panic from the maternity ward, where the pregnant women had drawn one of the sappers, a dozen men dying as they tried to pull it down as they protected the mothers to be with nothing but their knives and scissors. Hurlmer finally sticking a pike into it, his head torn off for the act. The fearful, confused eyes of the last Reaper to die, a wounded beast trying to escape by crawling amongst the cows, harried by bullet and pike until it died beneath a feed trough, corn-meal dust sticking to the blood coating its face. All the while there was rattling fire from the crestline, as Quisling troops probed the hill.
* * * *
At dawn there were fifty-three corpses lined up. Thanks to the backhoe and a lot of sweat from soldiers with shovels, each would have an individual grave. Woodworkers were hammering together the arrowhead tepee-cum-cross design of a Southern Command grave post and passing them on to painters. The men were gray and haggard after last night's bitter fighting and the probe up the hillside. Valentine pulled as many men out of the line as he could and gathered them by the graves. They had to follow a circuitous path to get there to avoid observation from the spotters on Pulaski Heights; any gathering of men in the open drew mortar fire.
Ceremonies weren't for the dead; they were for the living. There was a lay preacher to say the right words over the bodies. When they were rested in their graves, Valentine walked down the line of bodies in their shrouds, searching for words to add meaning to what had been random slaughter.
"We're in a siege, men. This hill is like a medieval castle, and the enemy is at our gates. That enemy, the TMCC, is in the first phase of taking a position by siege. It's called the 'Investment' He's already put an effort into destroying us. Last night we killed eighteen Reapers, thanks to the Quickwood. Eighteen Reapers." Nothing else could explain the malevolent choice of targets: the magazine, the infirmary, the maternity ward. "That means there's more than one Kurian Lord in the area, perhaps four or five... even six. Not many Kurians can work more than two or three Reapers at once. Thanks to the rising that we began across the river, I suspect some governors have already been kicked out of their holes."
He picked up a handful of dirt, and tossed it on the row of corpses.
"Last night they tried to get our lives cheap. We kept the price up, thanks to the Quickwood, your courage and especially the sacrifice of those killed last night. Solon's investment isn't paying any returns yet.
"The fifty-three soldiers we're putting in the ground pinned down thousands of troops with their lives. Those mortars, and the guns that will probably soon support them, could be used outside Hot Springs, or against the Boston Mountains. The forces around the hill, from the snipers to the machine-gun crews, are looking up the hill at us instead of at Southern Command's Archangel operation. They're here because our guns are covering the rail and water nexus for Solon's territory. There's no fast and easy way around us; it means moving on broken-down roads, crossing bridge-less rivers. Nothing moves by water or rail, east-west or north-south, without our stopping it. They're not able to shift troops fast enough, and Southern Command's eating up what they can move piecemeal."
They liked the sound of that. Bared heads of all skin tones and hair colors, sharing a common layer of sweat and dirt, lifted, nodded, turned to each other reassuringly.
"Every town Southern Command takes is liberated partly by us ... though at the moment we're doing nothing here but having the occasional mortar shell dropped in our laps.
"Unless we're lucky, the fifty-three here are going to have more company as the days and weeks go by. It could be that we'll all end up on this hill with them. If that's our fate, I hope we cost the TMCC as much as they did. If any of you want to say anything, now's the time."
"I've something to say," Yolanda, the woman who had mutilated the captured guards back at the prison camp, began. "It is not right for such men to go into the ground without a flag to be under. They are soldiers. Soldiers are their flag."
Free Territory flags weren't stocked in the warehouses we raided , the overtired part of him said.
"So I made them one. The men who came in to get us, I thought of them as I made this. Styachowski helped me with the wording, and Amy-Jo on the mortar team drew the animal."
She held it up. It was not a big flag. The base of it was red, rimmed with blue and gold roping ... probably from a curtain somewhere in Solon's imperial Residence. In the center was a silhouette of a tusked Arkansas razorback in black, pawing the ground angrily and lowering its head to charge. Blue letters stood out against the red as if luminescent, don't feed on me read the block-letter slogan.
The men laughed, not at the amateurish nature of the flag but at the pithy sentiment it expressed. They liked it. Valentine felt a little electricity run through the men as she turned it so everyone could see. It was a fighting flag: black and blue set against red, the colors of a brawl. A team could rally round the image of an animal-that was part of the Lifeweaver Hunter Caste appeal-and a savage boar was as good as any. Wily, tough, stubborn, a brute that would gore any animal that dared hunt it-and ugly as its mood when challenged-it suited the dirty funeral attendees.
Valentine went to Yolanda's side, and Styachowski came forward to admire the flag in the sun. Three parallel wounds, probably Reaper claw marks, stood out on her forehead.
"Let's have it up," Valentine said. "Ahn-Kha, where's the pike Hurlmer got that one with?" Ahn-Kha walked along the graves until he found the aluminum conduit pipe.
It took a few minutes to rig wire through the grommets and fix it to the pole. Valentine recognized Yolanda from the prison yard, but he only knew Amy-Jo as one of the heroes from the hospital fight. She'd snatched up the infant Perry and barricaded the babe and his mother in a bathroom, holding the door shut as the Reaper pried it off its hinges before it was swamped by pursuing men.
"Where do you want it, sir?" Yolanda asked.
"Here at the graves," Valentine said. "You said they deserved a flag above them. Can you think of a better place?"
"Make some more," Ahn-Kha said. "Or at least another, for the headquarters. This battalion needs an emblem."
"Hell, with the prisoners, we're a regiment," Styachowski said.
"Valentine's Razors," Post suggested.
The phrase passed up and down the ranks and more cheers broke out.
Valentine looked at his feet, embarrassed for the tears in his eyes.
Styachowski dug the pole into the ground and Amy-Jo and Yolanda found rocks to pile about its base. It wasn't a big flag, nor was it high off the ground, but every eye was on it as it flapped in the fresh spring breeze.
* * * *
"What kind of shape is the battery in, Hanson?" Valentine asked, after the memorial service dispersed.
"Is 'piss-poor' an appropriate military description?" the new lieutenant asked.
"Can you quantify it a little more?"
Hanson scratched the growth on his chin. "Those Reapers that came up the cliff, half of them made straight for the guns. That suicide mission into the ready magazine-I lost men there. Ives, Lincoln and Lopez bought it in their gun pit. We found Streetiner in a tree. Smalls is missing, Josephs-"
"Smalls? Hank Smalls?"
"Yes. He was a designated as a messenger. When I heard the firing at the base of the hill, I sent him to tell the mortar pits to start preregistered fire missions. He never came back. There's still some woodland that we haven't searched yet. Maybe he ran and hid, and has been too scared to come out yet. Can't say as I blame him."
Valentine tore his mind away from Hank. He feared for the boy, but had to keep the rest of his command in mind. "How many guns can you have in action?"
"I'm jimmying the lists so I can keep three firing, sir. It won't be quick fire, and I'd like another twenty men to start training."
"We're thin as it is. But ask Lieutenant Post about it."
"Thanks, sir."
"Feel free to practice on the Kurian Tower. No shell fired at that is wasted, as far as I'm concerned."
"In all honesty, sir, I'm not sure I'm up to being battery officer. Could you give me a new commander? Like Styachowski? She knows the theory, and she's good at putting theory into practice."
It took guts for Hanson to tell Valentine that he didn't feel up to the job.
"I'll talk it over with her."
"Thanks, sir. We'll get 'em firing again."
"I'll talk to Beck about getting your ready magazine rebuilt."
"Yeah, it's probably landing in Berlin right about now."
* * * *
Valentine finished his walk of the perimeter. The men were in better spirits than he would have expected; killing the Reapers and resisting the probe had made them confident.
What success they enjoyed should be shared with Beck's defenses. There were clearings along the easier paths up the hill for open fields of fire, and a series of foxholes and trenches, many lined with logs, for the men to do their shooting. They were still digging dugouts for the men to wait out shellfire, adding interconnecting trenches and access to the flatter hilltop so the men could bring food and water forward safely, and laying mines and wire along likely alleys of approach. Valentine saw one of Kessey's-now Hanson's-forward observers teaching the other soldiers the defensive fire mission zones. With the use of a simple code word, they could call in mortar fire on their attackers.
He returned to the headquarters building, and asked around for Styachowski. She was in her usual spot, beneath the speaker in the radio lounge, eating a bowlful of rice and milk. Her skin had that translucent look to it again; she'd been pushing herself too hard.
"What is that?" Valentine asked.
"Rice pudding. Narcisse made it."
"Don't you ever sleep? You were up all last night."
"Listening to the radio is like sleep. I can zone. What I really need is food."
"I'd still rather see you flat on your back."
"Major, under the Uniform Code, I believe you've just made a sexual suggestion."
Valentine snorted. "That's not what I meant and you know it."
"I was trying to make a joke. You look like you need one."
"Hank Smalls is missing. Since last night. Hanson sent him with a message ... He never came back."
"A Reaper?"
"Could be. We never knew how many they sent in, just how many we killed. Poor kid."
"And naturally you're blaming yourself."
Valentine left that alone. "I did dig you up for a reason," he said. "I need your help. How would you like a change of duty?"
She brightened visibly. "The Bears? I know Lieutenant Nail's hurt again-"
"Sorry. Hanson isn't confident in his ability to run the battery. I want to put you in charge of it."
Styachowski pursed her lips. "I only know mortars."
"But you know the theory, right?"
"Of course."
"You've done everything I've asked you. You can do this, too. Those guns have to be kept good and lethal. They're the reason the Quislings are all corked up."
"Major Valentine, I've got a question for you, if you don't mind."
"Shoot."
"Last night, you sent me down into the communications bunker. That's the safest place on this hill. Even a Reaper would have trouble clawing through that door Solon had put in. Why did you want me there of all places?"
"I notice you didn't stay. You're my second in command. I couldn't risk us both being killed."
"I'll take over the battery if you take my place in the headquarters. I heard what you did last night, running around in the dark with Reapers everywhere. I've been scared all day thinking about it."
"Are you afraid of having to take command?"
"Not that. I-"
"Courier, Major Valentine," a staff soldier called. "A courier's come in. She's asking for you, and she said for you to hurry."
"She?"
"Yes, popped up on the west side. Pretty gal, red hair, says she's your mama but she's too young for mat. I think she climbed the cliff, just like the Reapers."
"Where is she?"
"Eating in the main galley."
"Thanks." Valentine turned to Styachowski. "Sounds like we're getting intelligence. Want to come?"
"For news? Naturally."
They found Alessa Duvalier shoveling rehydrated scrambled eggs into her mouth. She had changed into an outfit Valentine knew as her "traveling clothes." She wore a long, deep-pocketed riding coat, wide-brimmed hat, hiking boots and a backpack blanket-roll combination.
"Hello, Ali. Tired of the showgirl routine?" He and Styachowski sat down opposite her. The cook brought a plate of fried potatoes and Duvalier loaded them with salt before digging in.
"They've got you boxed in tight here, Val. I had to wade across a swamp to even get to mat damn cliff. This sort of reminds me of the day we met."
She still had her fast, deft hands, now working knife and fork instead of tying dressings. Both of them had added a few pounds since men. They shared a smile at the memory.
"Then it must be important."
"First, Hamm's back in town with his whole division. Another is moving for Pine Bluff. They won't be there for a couple days maybe; bad roads, guerillas, mines and no rail. Hamm's going to be going across the river in small boats to get south."
"You're not going along?" Valentine asked.
"He's always been unpleasant. Last night he was a bastard. Mean as a stuck pig. The Trans-Mississippi is crashing down around his ears, he's angry at everyone. Executed a junior officer himself."
"Anything from us?"
"Yes. Two days ago a Cat came in from Mantilla. He got your answer, and it's in this letter." She reached into her coat. "What good can come of it beats me. We had to run risks to get this to you. Hope it was worth it."
Valentine opened the envelope and looked at the page. A few bare paragraphs, handwritten, told him what he suspected.
"Where are you off to, Duvalier?"
"South. Every Cat's on the hunt for Solon. He was supposed to be assassinated at the outset of all this, but the Cat shadowing him missed. He disappeared and the Cat's dead."
"Damn. Hamm's division is moving on too?"
"He was supposed to dust you off this hill cheap. They were supposed to take you out while the Reapers were up here causing trouble, but there was some screwup at headquarters. Only half his division got here in time. The Ks lost a lot of Reapers. I think they're gonna blame him."
"What happened that made you choose last night to leave?"
Duvalier's eyes shifted to her eggs. She added more salt. "He said something about wanting to climb this hill and piss on your body. Accused me of sneaking with you. I think I was going to be arrested. When he went to the CP, I took off; around morning I came up on some pickets along the old interstate north of you. They were talking about how you were still up there. Thought I might as well deliver the message before moving on."
"And check to see if I was still breathing?"
"I brought you along as a Cat. Call it a family interest. Hope the packet helps."
"Your soaking was worthwhile. What's your opinion on Xray-Tango?"
She shrugged. "Typical high-ranking goon. I did hear a rumor from Hamm. The Reapers took his wife away some years back. They thought she was a Cat."
"Remember our Invocation? The blood in our palms?"
Duvalier scrunched up her eyebrows. "Yes. Of course."
"Wonder if that's what passed on our abilities. Something in the bloodstream. Maybe she somehow passed on some abilities to him."
"I don't know Lifeweaver technomagic. Hope it's not something that would show up on some kind of blood test. Might make it easier for them to find us."
"Perish the thought," he said.
She finished her meal and drummed her fingers on the table, so fast each tap combined into a single dull noise. "Sorry I can't be more helpful. Don't try to figure Quislings, especially high-ranking ones. Might as well try to win over a scorpion."
Valentine took his eyes away from her hands. "Feel free to load up with whatever you need. I'd like to ask one more favor of you, though."
"What would that be?"
"The sound of your voice."
* * * *
It felt a little like a producer doing radio theater that night. Valentine, Styachowski, Jimenez and Duvalier were crammed into the little room, each holding a page of notes. Jimenez twiddled the dials.
"We're on TMCC New Columbia band now," Jimenez said.
"Contact GHQ New Columbia, do you read? Over," Jimenez said. There was a pause of just a moment.
"GHQ here, reading five-five," the speaker crackled back.
"I have priority com from Colonel Le Sain on Big Rock Mountain to General Hamm. He requests that the general come to the mike, wishes to discuss terms of surrender, over."
"Nulton, cut the crap," the voice said.
"Check your RDF and signal strength," Jimenez said. "I'm just up the hill from you, over."
Valentine pressed the transmit trigger. "This is Colonel Le Sain, boy. Get the general to the radio rikki-tik, would you? Standing by."
"Ack-acknowledge," the voice responded.
Jimenez cut the static as they waited.
"You really think turning this into a soap opera will work?" Duvalier said.
"Life's been hard on him lately. I want to make it all my fault," Valentine said.
The minutes passed. "This is Stanislaw, GHQ New Columbia, with General Hamm online. Do you read, over?"
"Zippety do-dah," Duvalier said. "He went for it."
"Colonel Le Sain here. Put the general on the phone."
"I'm here, you turncoat," Hamm's voice cut in. "They said you wanted to do a deal."
"Yes. I'm in charge of guerrilla activity north of the river. I'm in a position to accept your surrender."
"Drop dead, dunk. Signing off."
"Any unarmed man who comes up the switchback road will be taken prisoner, no reprisals."
"Le Sain, if you called me here to joke around-let me tell you my terms."
"Hey, Hambone," Duvalier cut in. "Guess who this is?"
There was static at the other end.
"Yes, sir, I'm up here, too. You were right about one thing, Knox and I had a little fling. He's a man with a future, treats me good, and you know what they say about Indian guys-"
"Get stuffed."
Duvalier checked her notes. "I told him all about you, Hambone. To all those out in radio land, tune in at oh-one-hundred for a detailed description of just how pathetic General Hamm is in bed, complete with what he begged me to do to him. Sorry, General, Knox said this was just too good to keep from the world. We had quite a laugh."
There was no response. Styachowski took over the microphone, and Jimenez switched it to a different frequency.
"This is Ozark Central Command. Ozark Central Command to all stations. Latest intelligence has Third Division moving south of the river. Activate Zones Nuthatch and Finch, alert Jay and Crane. Authentication Z-4, repeat Z-4, P-9, repeat P-9. Signing off."
Jimenez killed the transmitter as she finished the farrago of nonsense.
"That'll give him something to chew on," Styachowski said, looking over at Duvalier.
"I hope he chokes on it," she said.
* * * *
Valentine put Duvalier in his room, ordering her to get some sleep before her after-midnight broadcast. "Makes me feel like a whore, but if you think it'll help," she said, as Valentine transcribed a few bedroom details about General Hamm. Valentine wrote it so there were five minutes of gossip, then a teaser for the next night's performance, describing what Hamm liked to do to elicit an erection.
Then he had the observers fire a star shell above the river while the moon was down. There was no sign of boat activity; the Third Division showed a lot of activity in its posts.
He gathered Styachowski, Post and Beck for a late-night briefing.
"I want us to be extra alert this morning. Anyone else noticed an increase in activity?" Valentine asked.
"Yes, spotters saw a ferry shuttling back and forth upriver in the last four days," Styachowski said.
"I'd rather have that division busy with us than moving down to Hot Springs," Valentine said. "Earlier this evening we stuck a couple of banderillas in Hamm. Tonight Smoke is going to wave the red cape. He might charge at dawn."
"With the division?" Beck said.
"That's my guess. He'll try to overwhelm us. Captain Post, get every man you can into your line, but quietly. Captain Beck, I want you in the western command post. Send out pickets to listen-again, quietly."
"Yes, sir," Beck and Post said.
"Styachowski, have all your gun crews ready. Good people on the mortars; we'll be dropping shells close to our lines."
"I'll have everyone on station at 3 a.m."
"Major Valentine, report to the radio room, please," the PA Matted.
"Excuse me, please," Valentine said.
He made his way down the hall and to the stairs. There were crowds of men in the radio lounge, grinning and joking.
"Sir, we're going to be on the news," a private said.
"Really? Well, by God, we should be. You're causing Kur a lot of grief, for only fourteen hundred men. We're tying down something like ten thousand, you know."
"Go tell the Spartans," a better-read soldier commented quietly to a friend, but Valentine's ears picked it up anyway.
Valentine went down to the radio room, where Jimenez's relief was at the headset.
"I've got Baltic League on shortwave, sir. They're doing the news. In the news summary they mentioned us, and we're about to catch the repeat broadcast."
"Pipe it up, good and loud. Hell, put it on the loudspeakers."
".. . in the Caucasus continues," the vaguely English-accented voice announced. "Another Kurian Lord in the Rhone Valley went the way of his cousin last month when humanist guerillas seized his chateau, proving that the flames of resistance still burn in Western Europe. This is Radio Baltic League, broadcasting in the first language of freedom to humanity's patriots around the Baltic and around the globe, finishing the European part of me broadcast. Turning to America, an update on the news flash earlier. We have more details from Southern Command in the Ozark Mountains, lately the scene of heavy fighting. General Martinez reports that forces in his organization infiltrated, seized, and destroyed a major supply base on the Arkansas River, formerly the city of Little Rock. For those of you mapping at home, that's a major red-white-and-blue flag for our Cause. General Martinez's command has guns on a nearby hill commanding the entire town, and recently sank river traffic moving to resupply the forces engaged with Southern Command on the South Arkansas Front. He reports that the senior officer on the scene in command of the guns, Lieutenant Colonel Kessey, was wounded in the action, but has hopes for her speedy recovery. Congratulations to the daring and resourceful general, this morning's broadcast is in tribute to you and your men fighting on the Arkansas. Turning to other news from America, with spring coming to the Green Mountains and the Saint Lawrence Seaway-"
Valentine forced a smile across his face and went up into the radio lounge. The men garnered there looked like they'd been slapped.
"What the hell was that, sir?"
"Yeah, Major, that ain't right."
Valentine looked around. "What part isn't right? Did they get the location wrong?"
"No ... no ..."
"The lieutenant colonel is dead, but you can't expect them to know that detail. I've only just reported it."
"It's not that sir," Sergeant Hanson said. "They didn't mention you. Valentine's Razors. We're the ones that done it. Martinez, he's-"
"He's in charge of the central part of Arkansas. I send my reports to him, and he communicates them to Southern Command. They don't know everything that happened in his camp yet."
"But it's not right for him-" Hanson persisted.
"Sergeant, let's try to stay alive until this is over. They'll get the story right. It just takes some rime. Get some food and rest, men. We might be busy tomorrow morning."
* * * *
The next morning, they came in fire and thunder. Duvalier's short broadcast gave the men a chuckle before they crept into Beck's fortifications. Soldiers always enjoyed a general getting his ego pricked.
The harassing fire started at three a.m., the mortars on Pulaski Heights peppering the whole hilltop with shells. Most of the men were in their trenches and posts, and those who weren't underground ran to safety in a hurry.
Valentine participated in the battle from the basement of one of the smaller buildings on the hilltop, between the gun pits and the western command post. All he saw of it was shellfire, all he heard of it was over scratchy field phone lines.
The men on Pulaski Heights came first. They'd obviously been given orders to pressure them with a river crossing, to look as if the attack were going to come by water. Styachowski dropped a few flechette shells among their boats, and the Quislings thought again about sacrificing their lives just to draw the attention of the artillery.
The listeners returned to their lines before light, with reports of men coughing, swearing and giving quiet orders. Beck ordered his handful of claymores-mines that swept the ground before a position with bursts of dartlike fragments like an enormous shotgun shell-placed above where they were concentrating.
When dawn came the artillery started. The divisional artillery was on the other side of Park Hill; Valentine wished he had a few trained men and a radio somewhere with a view. If Southern Command saw fit to send him a company or two of Wolves and a Bear team-
Their shooting was poor, compared to the mortars across the river. Shells landed all over the hill, damaging little but the turf.
The besiegers were at the bottom of the hill in the predawn gloom. Valentine listened in to the field-phone chatter. Kessey had her guns set up so the observers and officers on the line called the mortar pits directly without going through her, trusting the individual mortar crews to prioritize the use of their shells. Styachowski had been relentlessly training the men on the system ever since. The mortars went into action first, dropping their shells all around the base of the hill.
The assault came. Hamm struck from two directions, the north and the east, both driving to cut off the men at the tip of the finger of the hill extending eastward, to get control of the road going up the hill Valentine had used on his first trip to Solon's Residence. Styachowski used her guns to form a curtain of steel along the north face of the hill. Valentine paced and waited, watching the trees along the top of the eastern finger for signs of the Quisling troops. He forced himself not to call every time the firing quieted, and the company commanders had enough on their hands without him calling for status reports in the middle of action.
"Danger close! Danger close!" the voice of one of the forward observers crackled over the phone. He was calling in fire just in front of his own position-that the Quislings were partway up the hill this soon was troubling.
"Post, take over here. I'm going forward," Valentine said.
"There's no trench, Maj-" Post objected as he left.
Valentine had a soldier's eye for ground. His route to Beck's command post was determined by cover rather than directness. He scrambled through the fallen scrub oaks, along foundations of old buildings and then up a little wash to Beck's position on the north face of the hill.
Beck was at a viewing slit in his wood-and-earth bunker, looking west down the ridge pointing toward the train station. He had a band of dirt across his face the same size as the slit, giving him a raccoonlike expression.
"They're not having any luck from the east," Beck said. "Too much fire from the notched hill by the war memorial. They're coming up hard on the north side. Jesus, there it goes again ... They're using flamethrowers. Sergeant, call in more mortar fire where that flame's coming from."
Valentine looked at the little gouts of flame as the sergeant spoke into his field phone, binoculars in his other hand. Beck passed his own glasses to Valentine. Valentine surveyed what he could of the north side of the hill; there were mottled TMCC uniforms all along it, all lying in the same direction like freshly cut hay.
Some gutsy company officer fired a signal flare, and the aligned figures stood and began to run up the hill. Beck tore the glasses from his face and flicked a switch on a fuse box. Explosions blossomed across the hill as the signal traveled the wire, little poofs of smoke shooting down the hill like colored sugar blown through a straw.
"The claymores," Valentine said. He saw the Abica brothers moving forward, great belts of ammunition about their necks like brass stoles.
"They're turning around."
"Lieutenant Zhao is back in the machine-gun post," a soldier reported. "He says they're heading back down the hill."
They tried again. According to Beck the second attack showed nothing like the patience and skill of the first. Hamm concentrated all his gunfire on the easternmost tip of the hill, until a permanent cloud of thrown-up smoke and dirt hung at the end of the hill, constantly renewed by further shellfire. But the men there held; the machine guns weren't silenced. As fast as they came up, they turned around and went down.
"We broke the second wave!" Beck's forward observer shouted. "They're running!"
"And the Third Division's bad luck continues," Valentine said. "Cease fire. Cease fire."
"Why?" Beck asked.
"Let 'em run. I want the others to get the idea. So next time they come, they have to start from scratch, not from halfway up."
* * * *
"Hurrah for the Razors!" a soldier shouted as Valentine surveyed the devastated ridge. Stretcher-bearers braved sniper fire to bring in the wounded, and Valentine had come forward to see to those wounded. Pickups converted to ambulances were bumping across the shell-holed road to take them back to the hospital building.
God, and there's only one doctor.
"Valentine, time for me to be moving on," he heard, as he knelt beside a wounded man.
Valentine glanced up at Duvalier. "Interested in lugging a radio up Park Hill tonight?"
"No, sorry. Suicide isn't my style. I've got another assignment. They think Solon's outside Hot Springs. The Cats are concentrating. Someone'll get him."
"Is he so important?"
"Wherever he goes the Quislings do better, for some reason. He's like a lucky charm."
Valentine went back to cleaning the soldier's face. The man's elbow was torn up, and the skin on his forearm and hand already had a gray look to it. He'd never use his right hand again. "They won't try that again, will they, sir?" the private said, smiling.
"They're dumb, but they're not that dumb," Valentine said. "You taught them about touching hot stoves."
"It was them Bears, sir. They backed up our platoon. When the flamethrower burned out the machine-gun crew, they went down and got 'em, then held the machine-gun post, flames and all. We took the line back after that."
"Good teamwork, hero." He looked up at Duvalier. She stared at him, strangely intent. "Take off. It's getting dark. If you pass a TMCC mail pouch while you're sneaking through the lines, drop a note in for Xray-Tango; tell him I want to have a word."
Duvalier's lip trembled. "Val, if you guys get pushed off here ... make for the south bank. There's good cover in the hills."
"We're here to stay, Ali. In the ground or above it."
She hugged him from behind; he felt her lips brush the back of his neck. Then she was gone.
* * * *
There was a week-long respite from all save harassing fire. The Quislings were being careful with their shells, so only one or two an hour landed on the hill. Sometimes they would ratchet up the fire into a bombardment, so every time a shell landed Valentine tensed, waiting to see if others would follow. It was exhausting.
The only thing Valentine remembered about the period between the Third Division attack and the arrival of the Crocodile was Nail's recovery. Dr. Brough reported that one day the wounded Bear simply sat up and swung his legs off the bed, then walked downstairs for breakfast. He returned to command of the Bears and reorganized his tiny but ferocious group. With wounds from the Reaper fight healed, his teams were back at full strength.
Which was something that couldn't be said for the rest of the command. The bonfire they'd held to celebrate the victory was lit with the flames of Pyrrhus. The hospital overflowed with the bloody debris of his victory over his old general. Beck's line was a series of points; if the enemy came again as they had the first day of the attack, they would go through it like floodwaters through a screen door.
Then the first "railcar" struck.
The men called them that because it was what they sounded like as they roared overhead, looking like red comets of sparks. They may have sounded like railcars, but they struck like meteorites, causing the ground to writhe and shake in an explosive earthquake.
The shells landed all through the long night, every hour at the hour, precisely. The timing made the shelling even worse. Each man, Valentine included, dreaded the rise of the minute hand toward the top of the clock. One overshot the hill and splashed into the Arkansas River, while others killed men just from the concussion. Valentine saw one man with either a part of a lung or a stomach sticking out of his mouth. Others died without so much as a tooth being found.
The explosions drove man and animal mad. Max the German shepherd had to be put down after he attacked anyone who came near. The wounded in the hospital had to be tied into their bunks to keep from crawling under them, tearing out IV lines.
"It's the Crocodile, sir," a rummy-eyed old Guard said to Valentine in the blackboard-walled briefing room. Post stood next to him. "That's what we called it, anyway. They tell me from a distance it's all bumpy and green, and the tug tower sticks up like an eye."
"I've never heard of it."
"It's a Grog thing, out of St. Louis. She shelled us from twenty miles away on the Missouri, when we were dug in during the siege on the Bourbeuse in '61. She's naval artillery. She goes on the water and they move her around in an armored barge, like a battleship. I think they put the gun together on the banks, but nobody knows for sure."
"Solon's called in the Grogs? He must be desperate." Valentine wondered what kind of deal Solon had made to get the Grogs to aid him.
"You may get a chance to find out," Post said. "A messenger came forward at oh-nine-hundred, on the dot, under a flag of truce. He had a letter from Xray-Tango. I guess Hamm's been 'relieved' because it's signed General Xray-Tango, CINC New Columbia State, Trans-Mississippi. No demands, just a parley."
* * * *
"Colonel Le Sain," Xray-Tango said, when Valentine emerged from the lines. Nail and Ahn-Kha stood alongside, Nail carrying the white flag. They met on an old residential road at the base of the hill. The growth had been blasted and burned by shellfire.
"General Xray-Tango," Valentine said. The general's spasm-afflicted eye sent out mental distress signals like Morse code.
"Both still alive, I see," Xray-Tango said.
"I should have shot Solon and you when I had the chance on that hill back in March. Would've been a nice change; the commanders kill each other and the privates live."
"What are you suggesting, a duel? We both take our pistols, walk ten paces and shoot? The winner gets the hill?"
"Save a lot of blood, General."
"You know it's ridiculous. Change of subject."
"You sent the message, General. What are we to discuss?"
"Your surrender. Prevent the 'further effusion of blood." I believe that's the traditional wording."
"You're working for the experts in the effusion of blood, General."
"Forget it, Le Sain. I'll go back and blow you off that hill."
"General, suppose we step over under that tree and talk," Valentine said.
"That's better. A smart man knows when his bluff's called."
They walked along the old road at the base of the hill, leaving Nail, Ahn-Kha and Xray-Tango's aides looking across the road at each other. A red oak sprouted from a crack in the pavement, now big enough to offer them some shade in the late-morning sun. A dead apartment complex watched them with empty eyes.
"Just out of curiosity, General, what happened to Hamm?"
Xray-Tango's eye twitched. "He was"-blink-blink- bliiink -"relieved."
"Permanently, I take it."
The general said nothing.
"What are the terms, General?"
"Very generous, Le Sain. Very generous, indeed. These come from Solon and all the governors. Each has allowed their seal on the deal."
"I can just hear my last words as the Reaper picks me up: 'The seals are in order. '"
"It's got my name on it, too, if that means anything to you. It says you and your men can walk away. You can travel wherever you want, with your small arms. Join Southern Command's lines for all we care. Just get out of New Columbia."
"That simple, huh?"
"We kept it simple so you could understand it."
"I need to contact my higher ups."
"Oh, Colonel," Xray-Tango said. "I almost forgot. One more gesture of good faith for you. Bring him forward."
One of Xray-Tango's aides waved, and two soldiers stood up from the bushes, a slight figure between them. It was Hank. Valentine held his breath as they brought the boy forward, fearing some sort of sadistic display.
The boy had his right hand swathed in bandages. He was thin and haggard.
"What did you do to him?"
"That's a story, Colonel. He was being questioned, you see. By General Hamm himself."
Hank looked up at Valentine. He read pride, and something like defiance in the boy's eyes.
"I didn't tell them anything, sir," Hank said.
"No, he didn't," Xray-Tango continued. "Hamm took the boy to a charcoal grill. He threatened to cook the boy's hand there on the grate, smash it down like a hamburger with a spatula. Wanted to know who the spy at his headquarters was, like some kid would know. Your boy here stuck his own hand into the coals. Stared right at Hamm until he passed out. One of the men there puked from the smell."
"Hank-"
"Take him back with you. Your whole command, in the person of a prepubescent boy. What'll it be, Le Sain? Do they live or die? Does this brave kid live or die? Up to you."
Valentine pulled the boy over to his side of the road. "I'll see you later."
"You have until sunset. After then, anyone coming off the hill is dead. You've already had some deserters. This is your last chance."
"No, General, it's yours."
Xray-Tango stared with his owl eyes. "Pretty pathetic threat."
"You're fighting two wars, General, one with me and one with your conscience. The things you've seen, the people you've helped. You've been on the wrong side your whole life. You should have talked to your wife more."
"Huh?"
"She was a Cat. Same as me. The Lifeweavers train us to assassinate Kurians, Quisling generals, what have you. Maybe she was on an assignment, to kill you maybe, but she saw some hope in you, Scottie."
Xray-Tango's eye twitched. This time it didn't stop after three.
"That is ... horseshit."
"Do you suppose they killed her quick, or slow?"
"Shut up. Shut up! I've made my offer. You have until sundown."
"They probably killed her. Maybe she was hung. In New Orleans I used to hear the guys in the wagons talk about a last ride for the women they-"
"Shut your fuckin' mouth!"
Valentine raised his voice in return. "What kind of sword is hanging over your head, General? How thick's the thread? You don't get us off this hill in hip-hop time and they'll haul you off, I bet. Brass ring or no. I saw one taken once. They jerked the ring right off, along with the owner's finger-"
Xray-Tango's eyes widened as he thought through the implications. "Balls," he howled. Xray-Tango's left fist exploded toward Valentine's jaw.
Valentine slipped under it, and just dodged a right cross that he only saw coming at the last split second. Xray-Tango moved fast for a big man. A jab by Valentine bounced off a beefy triceps. Xray-Tango paid it no more attention than a plowhorse did a fly.
Xray-Tango squared on him and the Cat's vision exploded into dueling rainbows; all the colors of the spectrum and a few Valentine didn't know existed danced to the ringing in his ears. He brought his forearms up to cover his face and saw a fuzzy apparition between his parallel radii.
Xray-Tango took the opportunity to work Valentine's stomach, the blows like the kicks of an entire team of mules. Valentine lashed out, but it only left him open for a combination that left him looking at the grass.
He fought for breath, took one and the mists cleared. He heard men shouting as he rolled to his feet.
Xray-Tango advanced, his fists turning tight circles in front of his massive shoulders. "Should have taken your dose and gone down, Valentine."
Valentine saw men from both sides gathering, emerging from tueir holes and trenches and piled-rubble redoubts to watch the fight. Even those who stayed behind with their weapons stood atop headlogs and sandbags to see the action.
Valentine tried a combination, but the big arms came up and he just missed losing part of his jaw to Xray-Tango's riposte.
"Who do you really wanna hit, General?" Valentine said.
Xray-Tango stepped in with lethal speed and tried the uppercut that had started the music still echoing in Valentine's ears, but me Cat stepped out of the way. The blows came like an artillery barrage, but every time the general's fist cut nothing but empty air. Valentine sidestepped, back-stepped, but there were no ropes to pin him, just an ever-shifting circle of soldiers.
"Shadowboxing, General. You're shadowboxing," Valentine gasped between breaths. "Quit fighting me and fight them!"
"They're fighting for the hill," someone in the crowd shouted as others came up. "A duel. General Extasy's winning against the Red Renegade!" An excited murmur went up from the crowd; every soldier's fantasy seemed to be coming true-the two big bugs fighting, instead of all the little worker ants.
Xray-Tango began to pant. "How are you going to win if you never hit back?"
Valentine bent under another combination, slipped under Xray-Tango's reach and came up behind the general, and tapped him on me shoulder.
"Did she ever ask you to desert, Scottie?"
"Narrr!" Xray-Tango bellowed, swinging laced fingers as though he held a sword to take Valentine's head off. Valentine ducked under it and the momentum of his blow carried Xray-Tango off balance. Valentine helped him to the ground with a cross.
The audience roared with excitement. "Southern Command is winning!"
"Extasy's a champ, you dunks," a sergeant from the other side shouted.
Xray-Tango rolled to his feet with the same grace that seemed so out of place in his big frame. Suddenly his feet were against Valentine's chest as he launched himself at Valentine with a two-heel kick, and Valentine felt something snap as both opponents fell backward to the ground.
The general rolled, got a hold of Valentine's leg and it was a ground fight. Against most other men Xray-Tango's weight would have ended the contest, but Valentine was a veteran of dozens of Zulu Company wrestling matches, often ending with Valentine facing the old top sergeant, Patel, before Patel won and went on to regimental competition. Valentine got a hold of an elbow and kept Xray-Tango's face in the dirt so he couldn't breathe. He forced the arm up, up-
Clack!
The arm suddenly gave way with horrid ease. Valentine sprang to his feet, let the general up.
"You're done," Valentine said.
"So are you," Xray-Tango answered. "We're going to roll up your men like-"
Valentine raised his voice toward the assembled Quisling soldiery. "The general lost. You're to retreat west, home to Texas or Oklahoma."
Dozens of faces suddenly brightened. An end.
"No!" Xray-Tango roared. "That wasn't what this was about."
"He's trying to back out of it," Valentine shouted over his shoulder to his soldiers. It was all lies; his men deserved more than lies, but if he could take the heart out of the Quislings, make them feel that their lives were being sacrificed after the general's loss of a duel-
"Back to your posts. Back to your posts. Open fire on this rabble," Xray-Tango shouted.
"Welshing Quisling!" a Razor shouted. Boos broke out on both sides.
"Back up the hill, men," Valentine said. "He lost and he's not squaring up!"
The two groups of men parted like magnets pressed positive to positive. Two floods of dirty soldiery retreated in opposite directions.
Valentine carried Hank up the hill himself.
* * * *
Responsibility. Valentine had dreamed, on his long trip back across Texas, of being able to give up the burden, turn his command over to higher ranks. Let someone else make the decisions for a while, and lie awake nights because of the consequences. This was a decision he couldn't make.
He tried to consult higher authority. He had raised Southern Command on the radio, and got a colonel in Intelligence Operations who told him that "as the officer commanding locally, you're better able to evaluate the situation and reconcile your orders to keep as many as you can of the enemy tied down as long as possible, denying traffic across the enemy's road, river and rail network, rather than someone who had to be apprised of the situation over the radio."
"Thanks for nothing," he replied, fighting the urge to curse. He didn't want the techs in the radio room telling the others at breakfast that he'd lost it.
The anger at his superior officer was surpassed only by that with himself. He slammed the microphone down and retreated to his room. All over the camp, the story was spreading that Valentine and Xray-Tango had fought for New Columbia. Valentine had won, but the Quislings wouldn't leave. It made the men fighting mad, all the more determined to stay and win.
But Valentine lay in his bunk, feeling like a fraud.
* * * *
The day's respite gave him a chance to gather the men in the open, in the afternoon sunshine. He gathered them at the grave site, where the fifty-three, now swollen to triple the original number, rested under their tiny hand-sewn flag. Valentine took in the faces. They reclined, his handful of Jamaican Thunderbolt marines, prisoners, Southern Command Guards, Bears, officers, NCOs and men, not a mass of uniforms, but a collage of faces. Faces he knew and trusted, under their dirt and bug bites. Only one or two had regrown the beards and mustaches they'd lost in the woods outside Bullfrog's phony station. Most had kept themselves as shorn as new recruits or in short, spiky hair-with showers a rarity, fleas, ticks and lice had multiplied.
He met the gaze of Tamsey, a corporal who'd shown him pictures of sixteen sisters. The boy had seen his mother die giving birth to his sixth sister, then his father remarried a woman with daughters of her own and jointly they produced more, and he knew every detail of each of their marriages. Next to him was a private named Gos, so nearsighted that he was almost blind, but an expert at feeding belts into a machine gun overlooking the switchback road on the southeast side of the hill. Gos could whistle any popular tune you could care to name, pitch-perfect. Amy-Jo Santoro, the heroine of the Reaper fight in the hospital, turned out to be an insomniac who sewed at night. She'd fix anyone's uniform, provided they gave it to her clean of dirt and critters; she had a horror of lice. There was Tish Isroelit, reputedly the Razors' best sniper, who'd stalked and then managed to bring down a Quisling colonel at dusk by the glow of his after-dinner cigar, shooting him through a closed window. She kept score by adding beads-Valentine had forgotten the exact ranking system, but it was color-coded-to braids in her chestnut hair. Sitting crossed-legged behind her was Denton Tope, a combat engineer whom everyone called "the Snake." Though a big man when he stood, he could press himself so flat to the ground one would swear his bones were made of rubber, useful for his trips out in the dark and wet to replace mines and booby traps at the base of the hill. He was always borrowing powerful binoculars at night to try to spot satellites among the stars. Dozens of other mini-stories, sagas that had briefly joined with his own and were likely to end on the churned-up hill, waited for him to speak.
"This is the deal," Valentine began. "That wasn't a duel for the hill, that was a private fight. Here's the truth: General
Xray-Tango has given us until sundown to walk off this pile on our own. He'll escort us, with our rifles, anywhere we want. Hot Springs. Up north to Branson, maybe; see a show.
"Or we can stay here. Let them waste their time and bullets killing all of us, instead of Southern Command soldiers liberating towns and villages full of your relatives. Make sure there are a few less of them at the end of it all. At the end of us."
"So it's a life-or-death decision. How many of you know what the phrase 'Remember the Alamo' means?"
Hands went up all across the command. His command.
"I see a few who aren't familiar with it. It refers to a battle fought two hundred and fifty years ago, or thereabouts. Some Texicans under a colonel named Travis were holding out against a general named Santa Anna at a little abandoned mission station on the Rio Grande. They were outnumbered, surrounded, but they fought anyway, gave a man named Sam Houston time to organize his own counterattack. It became a battle cry for an entire war.
"How many of you remember Goliad?" No hands this time. "I'm not surprised. They were also a group of men in that same revolt against Santa Anna. They didn't fight like the men at the Alamo. They surrendered. Santa Anna executed every one of them.
"I'm not saying we'll be remembered, I'm not saying we'll be forgotten. What we do up here may have an effect on the future. Whether that future remembers us or not... it's not for me to say. I'll tell you another thing about the Alamo. Each of those men made a personal decision to be there. Some say they stepped across a line in the sand.
"I'm not doing anything that dramatic. Any of you who want to leave can get up and walk down mat hill. I'm staying, and Ahn-Kha's staying. Each of the rest of you have a decision to make. You have until sundown to get out of town, according to Xray-Tango. He's going to kill the rest of us. Well, he's going to try.
"I'm going down to the radio lounge. The smart thing to do is run. It may not be the right thing to do, but it's the smart thing. The dummies can join me for a drink. We need to be back in the line at sundown. I expect the Crocodile will start firing again."
* * * *
Valentine used his knife to cut open a carton marked "snakebite serum," from the medical quarters. Mantilla had given him the case that night he'd passed most of the Quickwood on to Southern Command. He extracted a bottle of bourbon and broke the seal on the paper screwtop. He sniffed the amber contents. He flipped up two shot glasses on the bar.
"One drink for you, Colonel Travis, and one for me."
Travis didn't seem to want his, but Valentine left it there for him anyway. Ahn-Kha stood in the door.
"Good news," Ahn-Kha said. Nothing more. The Grog turned and went upstairs.
Valentine walked out the oversized doors, still on their hinges despite the shellfire. The soldiers stood in ranks, not neat, lines not dressed, and nothing but a proud expression was uniform, Post, Styachowski and Beck to the front.
"Thank you, men," he said, blinking back tears. "How many smart ones were there?"
"Nineteen," Styachowski reported. "Two were wounded. None of them women; they all wanted to stay."
Valentine saw a bright bandanna in the back.
"Couldn't get anyone to carry you out, Narcisse?"
"Didn't want to run again," she called. "Haven't had much luck with that; only have one arm left, sir."
Dr. Brough appeared with the case of bourbon. "Company commanders, to me. We've got some bottles to distribute."
"Okay, you dummies," Post said. "Back to business. Let's disperse, no point in getting killed all at once."
Valentine pulled the youngest member of his command aside as they dispersed.
"Hank, you sure you're fit to rejoin your outfit?" Valentine asked.
"Yes, sir."
Valentine disagreed. Hank looked sick.
"How's the hand?" Valentine said through gritted teeth. His nose picked up a faint, sweet smell from Hank's bandaged hand.
"Not so bad."
"Report to the doctor. If she says you're okay, you can get back to Captain Styachowski. She needs quick feet at the battery."
Hank turned away, dejected. Valentine whistled, and the boy turned.
"Hank, of all the men who stayed up here tonight, I'm proudest to have you with me."
* * * *
The Crocodile opened up on them again as soon as the sun disappeared. The Grogs upped their rate of fire to three shells an hour, every hour. Their firing was wild at night, though the air-cutting shrieks and earth-churning impacts made sleep impossible. When dawn returned they began reducing Solon's Residence to rubble.
The men began to go as mad as Max the German shepherd.
One snuck out of his dugout at dawn and was spotted by an observer standing atop a heap of rubble, arms outstretched as though welcoming a lover's embrace as the sun came up in thunder.
Later they found a boot, Post reported, his incipient beard now going gray as well.
Sergeants had to put down furious brawls over nothing. The precise timing of the shells tightened everyone's nerves into violin strings as they waited for the next howl and explosion, leaving flung dirt floating like a cloud atop Big Rock Hill.
Valentine was coming up me stairs from the generator floor, where he'd been checking fuel feeds damaged by the shelling, and passed Styachowski in the stairwell when the 15:20 struck, burying its nose in the ground deep-and near-enough to cause a collapse at the floor above. Valentine threw himself at Styachowski, pushing them both into a notch under the stairs-unnecessarily as it turned out-and the lights flickered and died just as he smelled her hair and the feminine musk coming up from her collar.
They scooted up against an intact wall, Valentine covering his head as well as he could, and he felt a wave of dust hit him in the dark.
"You okay?" he asked, hearing rubble fall somewhere up the stairs. It sounded strangely far-off and muffled.
They sat there as the air settled. Valentine thought he heard a shout from above, but there wasn't a hint of light.
"I'll be dead soon, I think. It works on the mind. I'm smelling food, growing plants, coffee being warmed up. Listening to everyone."
"There's still hope," he said.
"You tell yourself that? Or just the rest of us?"
"They haven't whipped us. They aren't even close."
"That's not an answer."
He didn't supply one.
She pressed his shoulder with hers in the darkness. "You're an odd duck, sir. You look so . . ."
"So what?"
"Never mind."
"I'd like to know what you think. Might as well talk about something."
"How about that bacon we had yesterday? Talk about the bottom of the lot," she said.
"You've got me curious. I look so what?"
"Well, you look so soft, I was going to say. You've got really gentle eyes. They're scared, too. Sometimes. Like that night they dropped the sappers."
"I was scared. Till I saw you with that bow. You looked like you were at target practice."
She didn't say anything. He broke the silence. "Speaking of setting an example-I should go up those stairs and see-"
"No. Give it another minute. We're here, it's dark, and you smell... comforting."
"Is that a soft smell?"
"See, you are hurt."
"No. Interesting to see yourself through another's eyes. What another person thinks."
"I want it to be over. I'm down here in the dark pretending there's no fighting, no Crocodile. No memories of Martinez and his gang. You can't imagine how good it feels, to have all that gone."
Actually he could. Valentine had sought oblivion in lust in the past...
They sat in the dark, feeding off each other's warmth, conducted through her hard-muscled shoulder.
"Sir, why are you what you are?" Styachowski asked.
"You mean a Cat? And it's 'David' or 'Val' when I'm off my feet."
"Okay, Val. Why?"
"Why don't you go first?"
"I took up soldiering because I knew I could fight. When I was little, about six, I got into a scrap with a boy two years older man me. I beat him. When I say 'beat him' I really mean 'beat'-he ended up in the hospital. After that my mom told me about my dad. He'd been a Bear, in a column marching back from some fight in Oklahoma. Caught Mom's eye somehow, and they had a night before he moved on. She said she wasn't thinking-just doing patriotic duty she called it; I showed up nine months later. She said the hunting-men were like wild animals and I had to control myself and never lose my temper. The doc said that was superstition, but I dunno."
"Your mom may have been right. My father was a Bear, too."
"So you joined to be like him?"
"Something like that. I think it was my way of knowing him. He was dead by that time."
She sniffed. "Oh, I'm sorry."
"So the Bears didn't want you?"
"No. But I still want to be one. It's like this monster inside that wants to get out, wants to fight. I'm afraid that if the monster doesn't get to take it out on the enemy, it'll get out another way."
Valentine had never met someone with the same dilemma before. After a moment, he said: "You worried that you're a threat to others?"
"I meant myself."
Valentine brushed dirt off his kneecaps. "I wondered what my father's life was like fighting for the Cause, what made him give up and go live in the Northwoods. Now the only thing I wonder is how he lasted so long. There were other reasons. I believe in the Cause. I've got no time for the 'it's over, we've lost, let's just weather the storm, fighting makes everything worse' crowd. The Cause is no less just for being lost. Then again, being special appealed to me- meeting with the Lifeweavers, learning about other worlds."
He wanted to go on, to tell her that he worried that the Lifeweavers had also unlocked the cage of a demon somewhere inside him, to use her metaphor-even more, fed and prodded the demon so it was good and roused when it came time to fight their joined war. The demon, not under his bed but sharing his pillow, was a conscienceless killer who exulted in the death of his enemies at night and then reverted to a bookish, quiet young man when the fighting was over. He worried that the David Valentine who agonized his way through the emotional hangovers afterward, who sometimes stopped the killing, was vanishing. He could look at corpses now, even corpses he'd created-felling men like stands of timber-with no more emotion than when he saw cord-wood stacked on a back porch. It made him feel hollow, or dead, or bestial. Or all three at once.
A voice from above: "Clear from here on ..."
Valentine saw the flicker of a flashlight beam and got to his feet, reaching up into the dark to feel for the stairs above.
"Hellooo-" he shoulted as he helped Styachowski up.
"Stay put. On the way," a male voice called back from above.
Soldiers with flashlights, one carrying a bag with a big red cross on it, came down the stairs.
"Hey, it's Re-Major Valentine," one called to the other.
"That was fast digging," Styachowski said.
"There's not much of a blockage," the one with the medical kit said. "Just a wall collapse and some dirt to climb over. Ol' Solon built his foundations well."
Styachowski straightened her dust-covered uniform. "We're fine," she said, reverting to her usual brisk tone. "Let's get those lights in the generator room and see where the trouble is."
The last of her warmth left his skin as Valentine nodded. She turned, and he followed her and the soldiers into the generator room.
They had electricity within the hour, but Valentine wasn't sure how much longer he could transmit, so he composed a final report to Southern Command of two bare lines. He walked it down to the radio room himself.
Jimenez had the headset on. Jimenez took it off and threw it on the desk, upending a coffee cup. He didn't bother to wipe up the spill.
"They left Hot Springs yesterday. The official bulletin just went out."
"Then what's wrong? They're only fifty miles away. There's nothing between us and them."
"They're turning northwest. Heading for Fort Smith."
Valentine patted him on the shoulder. "There's a lot of Kurians in Fort Smith. Let's hope they get them."
"Right. Across mountains."
He placed his final transmission to Southern Command on the coffee-covered desk.
WE STAYED. WE DIED.
* * * *
The shelling from the Crocodile went on for four more days. It was the closest thing to insanity Valentine had ever known. Nothing had any meaning except where the next shell would land. Styachowski's guns couldn't reach the Crocodile. One by one they were put out of action.
The radio room was buried by a direct hit, and Jimenez with it. The hospital had to go underground when a near miss blew down its southern wall. Beck died on the third day, torn to shreds as he turned the knocked-down remnants of Solon's Residence into a final series of trenches and fire lanes. Styachowski took over for him, pulling back what was left of her mortars and placing them in a tight ring of dug-out basements, along with a few shells they were harboring for the final assault.
They knew it was coming when the Crocodile's fire stopped. Thirty minutes went by, and the men garnered at their firing posts. An hour went by, and they began to transfer wounded.
The single remaining pack radio, kept operating by Post, crackled to life. For the past two days it had been rigged to the generator recovered from the kitchens. Post whistled and shouted for Valentine across the ruins. He hopped over a fallen Doric column, a piece of decor Solon fancied, and climbed down the wooden ladder to Post's dugout. A shell or two pursued him. Just because the Crocodile was silent didn't mean the mortars on Pulaski Heights quit firing.
"Urgent call for you, sir," Post said. "Scanner picked it up."
"Le Sain? Are you there, Le Sain?" the radio crackled, on Southern Command's frequency.
"Go ahead; not reading you very well."
"It's a field radio." Valentine heard distant gunfire over the speaker. "It's me, Colonel. The Shadowboxer."
"Go ahead, General. Another surrender demand?"
"It's Scottie to you, Knox. Or whatever. I'm the one mat surrendered, using your metaphor. I took a few members of my staff on board the Crocodile. We wanted to see the gun in action, you see. For some reason the Grogs didn't think it was odd that I had a submachine gun with me. I shot the crew and pulled out a hand grenade. Grogs sure can run when they use all their limbs." He laughed, and it occurred to Valentine that he'd never heard Xray-Tango's laugh before. "Now I'm sitting between the magazine door and a shell. There's a dead Grog loader propping it open. This shell's a monster: it's got to be a fourteen-inch cannon. My driver and a couple of members of my staff are making their way around the other side of the gun through the woods. The Grogs are running for dear life. Regular Cat trick, isn't it? Infiltrate, assassinate. All that's left is the sabotage. I've got a grenade bundle in my lap right now."
"Scottie, I-" Valentine began. Post had an earpiece in his ear and a confused look on his face.
"Going to have to cut this short, Colonel." Valentine heard automatic fire. "My driver almost has an angle on me. Apologies to St. Louis, looks like they aren't getting their gun back. You know what the best part is, Le Sain?"
"What's that?"
"Since I started dreaming up this plan night before last, my face hasn't twitched once. God, what a relief, it's wonderful. Over and out."
Something lit up the sky to the east and Valentine felt the ground shudder. He counted twenty-two seconds. Then it came, a long, dull boom. Valentine went back up the ladder, and saw the top of a mushroom cloud climbing to the clouds, white flecked with gray at the edges. He watched it rise and spread.
Until the tears came.
* * * *
The shells stopped, but not the attack. On the thirty-fifth day of the siege they came up the north face, like the wind behind a rain of mortar shells. They came up the east ridge; they came up the switchback. They came up everywhere but the quarry cliff.
The Beck Line collapsed.
Valentine's men tumbled backward toward the Residence. What was left of the gun crews dragged the one remaining gun back to Solon's prospective swimming pool and set it up there.
Even the headquarters staff turned out to stanch the attack. Valentine watched it all from a tangle of reinforced concrete, a conical mound of debris looking out over the hilltop beside what was left of Solon's Residence.
"Officer by the switchback road," Valentine said, looking through some field glasses. He and Ahn-Kha occupied one of the higher heaps of rubble. Ahn-Kha swiveled his Grog gun. His ears leveled and he fired, kicking up concrete dust.
"They'll zero that," Valentine said. "Let's move."
They slid off the mound and into the interbuilding trenches. Rats, the only animals that didn't mind shellfire, disappeared into hidey-holes as they picked their way to the headquarters basement.
It still had a roof of sorts on it, three stories of collapsed structural skeleton. Among the cases of food and ammunition, Brough patched up wounds and extracted shrapnel with the help of her remaining medics. Bugs crawled in cut-off clothing, stiff with weeks' worth of sweat and dirt.
Brough didn't even look at the worst cases. After triage, performed by Narcisse, the worst cases were sent to the next basement over, which was only partially covered. There a few of the stronger-stomached women replaced bandages and murmured lies about recovery. That the men called the passageway to the next basement the "death hole" showed the general opinion of a sufferer's chances within.
Styachowski and Post bodily shoved the men into positions in the final series of trenches as the stream from the crestline turned into a trickle. They moved dully, like sleepwalkers, and collapsed on top of their rifles and slept as soon as they were told to stop moving. Soon, what was left of his command had to keep their heads down not just from mortar fire, but from machine-gun fire that swept the heaps of ruins.
Valentine looked around the last redoubt. In a year it would be a weed bed; in five these mounds would be covered by brush and saplings. He wondered if future generations would wander the little hummocks and try to pick out the final line, where the Razorbacks were exterminated in their little, interconnected holes like an infestation of vermin.
Hank was in the death hole. His burns had turned septic despite being dusted with sulfa powder, and Brough was out of antibiotics. The boy lay on the blankets someone else had died in, waiting his turn, keeping the tears out of his eyes.
"We sure stuck a wrench in their gears, didn't we?" Hank asked, when Valentine sat for a visit.
"With your help," Valentine said. "Wherever your parents are, they're proud of you."
"You can be honest with me, Major. They're dead; they have been since that night. You can tell me the truth, can't you? I'm tough enough to take it."
"You're tough enough."
Hank waited.
"They're dead, Hank. I went after them, and I killed them with the rest of the Quislings. They were telling about the Quickwood. About the ruse."
"My fault, sir," Hank said.
Valentine had to harden his ears to make out the tiny voice. "No."
"It is," Hank insisted. "I heard them talking after the baby-after you told us she was dead. "We won't be sacrificed," Pa said, and they started speaking with their heads together. I should have told you or Ahn-Kha or Mr. Post-but I didn't. Just Mister M'Daw and then it was too..." The boy faded back into sleep, like a child who has fought to stay awake until the end of an oft-repeated story but lost.
Valentine knew from fifteen years of regret what sort of abyss yawned before the boy. Agony rose and washed through him along with a gorge he fought to keep down, all the pent-up emotional muck of his losses breaking in his roaring ears and wet eyes. Maybe if he'd been tending to his ax and the kindling as was his duty that day, instead of corn collecting, he would have warned Mom of the trucks coming up the road to the house; she would have grabbed his sister and baby brother and gotten his father from the lakeshore-
Regret might haunt Hank, grind the child down, or drive him to God-knows-which bitter lengths to compensate for an imagined fault. Valentine couldn't allow that to happen to the boy-or man, rather. If anyone on the hill exhibited the manly virtues Valentine had listed when he sent Hank off to the guns, it was the septic boy in the cot.
Being able to forgive himself was a cause as lost as the Razors'.
* * * *
There was still plenty of hot cocoa; it came in tins with little cups inside so all that was needed was a glass and hot water. He, Ahn-Kha, Post, Styachowski, Nail, Brough and Hanson met one final time. Their conference room was filled with wounded, so they gathered in the last artillery magazine. A few dozen mortar rounds stood, interspersed with sandbags, where once there had been hundreds stacked to the ceiling.
"You know what's always pissed me off about this operation?" Valentine asked.
"Your haircut?" Post asked. The officers had enough energy left to laugh.
"That railroad bridge. We never were able to bring it down."
"Isn't that in the 'too late to worry' file?" Nail asked.
"Not necessarily. If we get the men up and moving, we could punch through. Some of us would make it to the bridge. I doubt they've got reserves massed everywhere in case of a counterattack. Once we got off the hill it's only a mile."
"I'll go with you, my David," Ahn-Kha said. "I don't want to die like my father, in a burned-out hole."
"What happened to tying down as many troops as possible as long as possible?"
"Aren't you all sick of this?" Valentine said. "The dirt, the death? Sitting here and taking it?"
Styachowski and Nail exchanged looks. "If we do it, I imagine you'll need Lieutenant Nail."
"Of course I'd need him."
"Then I can't try my plan to save Hank," Dr. Brough said.
"What's that?"
"The boy, the one with the gangrenous arm. I've been curious about the resiliency of the Bears. I put some of Lieutenant Nail's blood in a dish with a bacterial culture. It killed it, like his blood was full of chlorine. I thought I'd try a transfusion; he and the boy have the same blood type. But it would take time for him to recover."
"You may not have that, Doctor. They'll attack again. I don't believe we're in any kind of shape to hold them off."
"Hank can't hold off the gangrene. It's system-wide."
Valentine finished his cocoa. "Nail, would you turn over your command to Styachowski? She's always wanted to be a Bear."
Nail tried walking on his wounded, mangled leg. He was still limping.
"I hate to miss out on a fight if my Bears are involved."
"I'll bring them back to you, if I can," Styachowski said.
The transfusion took place within the hour. It was done under fire; the Quislings launched a probing attack to see what sort of defenses the defenders still had. It left Nail drained, and after a tiny meal-by Bear standards-he drifted off to sleep.
As it turned out, they weren't able to try Valentine's plan that night anyway. The day's clouds dissolved and it was a clear night for the half moon. They'd be spotted on the river too easily. Valentine looked down at the bridge, and saw the white Kurian Tower beyond, shining under its spotlights like a slice of the moon fallen to earth.
The Quislings cleared the roads and brought armored cars up the hill. They prowled the edges of the ruins like hungry cats at rat holes, shooting at anything that moved. Styachowski and the Bears went out and buried what was left of the mortar shells where they had driven before. The next day they managed to blow the wheels off of one. It sat there, looking like a broken toy in a rubble-filled sandbox.
Then came the quiet dawn. The harassing fire slacked off, and the men were able to dash from hiding hole to hiding hole without anything more than a sniper bullet or two zinging past. Valentine was watching Hank sleep. He felt strangely relaxed. Perhaps it was because of the color in Hank's cheeks and his deep, easy breaths. The boy was on the mend. He worked out a final plan. His last throw of the dice, in the strange table run that had begun with Boxcars.
He talked it over with Ahn-Kha, Nail and Styachowski at the nightly meal. Post had been briefed early and would assume command of what was left of the Razors-mostly a noisome aggregation of wounded sheltering in dugouts and the basements of Solon's headquarters.
"It's worth a try," Nail said, looking at the weird, question-mark-shaped assault path Valentine had mapped out. He had a little of his energy back. "They won't be expecting it, after all this time, with them so close."
"It could take the heart out of them. Even more than the loss of Xray-Tango," Ahn-Kha said. The Golden One's ears drooped unhappily. He'd been tasked with his supporting role.
"The only heart I'm after is in that tower," Valentine said.
* * * *
Nail joined them despite his weak state. Valentine wanted to leave him and Styachowski both back at the camp, but they presented a strangely united front, and he couldn't argue with both.
Their chosen path to the river was down the cliff face above the quarry. Valentine had only rappelled once, long ago, in an exercise as a trainee. Valentine, Ahn-Kha and the Bears crept out of the trenches and moved west, where they fixed ropes to tree stumps.
"I would like to come on this, my David," Ahn-Kha said.
"Sorry. I need your muscles to haul us back up this rock," Valentine said. "Don't stay here and die. If you get overrun, try for the swampy ground to the north. Go back to your people."
Ahn-Kha looked over his shoulder at the shattered walls and missing roofs. "My only people are here, now. I will wait. Unless a bullet finds me, I will wait here, yes, even through another winter and another like that."
Valentine gripped arms with his old ally. "I'll be back sooner than that." He looped a line through a ring on a harness improvised from an AOT backpack, and dropped over the edge.
Naturally, he burned his hands.
The Bears loaded their gear onto an inflatable raft as Valentine applied antiseptic and dressings to his hands. The raft was a green thing that rose at each end like a sliced quarter of melon. A box containing four of them had been on the first train brought to Big Rock Hill. With a little luck and a little more dark, they might be able carry the Bears to the other side without being observed.
They waited by the riverbank as they half inflated the boat. It only needed to carry their gear, and the lower its profile the better. A warm breeze blew down the river for a change. Summer was coming on, and the frogs were welcoming it with creaky voices. Bats emerged from their riverside lairs in the quarry and hunted mosquitoes with meeping calls Valentine's hard ears could just pick out.
Valentine and the men were nervous. Even Rain, who had started a second set of slanted brownish scars on his left arm, shifted position and mumbled to himself constantly.
The Bears huddled together as they worked the little bellows that inflated the raft, keeping watch for patrols at the riverbank. The AOT had lost men on this side of the hill to snipers and had given up trying to occupy the narrow strip of ground between the cliff face and the river, but they could never be sure there weren't dogs loosed at night.
"What's going red like?" Valentine asked. He'd heard various stories, including one from ex-Bear Tank Bourne, but he was curious if different men felt it differently.
"You can't control it too well," Red said, patting the belt-fed gun on his lap. "All that has to happen is a gunshot and over I go. You get all hot and excited, like you've just won a race or something. Everything seems kind of distant and separated from you, but you have perspective and everything, so when you chuck a grenade it lands where you want it, not a mile away. Pain just makes you hotter and ready to fight more. It wears off after everything's all over, but once in a while Bears drop over afterward and don't wake up. Their hearts burst."
"You feel like you can run, or jump, or climb forever."
Hack put in. "Sometimes you have to scream just to give it all somewhere to go. Here's something they don't talk about at the bar, though. Most Bears piss themselves over the course of it. Every single red nick I've got on my arm means I've come back with a pantload of shit."
Nail nodded. "I always go into action with an extra diaper under my pants. The guys in Force Apache wear kilts- actually, more like flaps-that's another solution."
"Glad I'm a Cat," Valentine said. "What about you, Styachowski, what do you want for a handle?"
Styachowski looked up from where she sat, knees hugged to her chest, one hand wrapped with a leather wrist guard for her archery. "I'd like to be named by my team."
"How about 'Guns'?" Nail asked. "From the cannon. Plus, she's got the arms for it."
Styachowski looked down, flexed her muscles. "Let's wait until after tonight."
* * * *
The chill of the Arkansas River's current was enough to geld the seven men. The river flowed differently every few yards, it seemed; for a few minutes they had to kick hard to keep from being pushed downriver too far, then they'd hit a pool of slack water in the lee of some sandbar. They swam like pallbearers with a floating casket, four to each side. They made for a spot halfway between the Pulaski Heights and the bridge, near the place where Styachowski had been buried by the fallen sandbags the day the river ran mad.
When their feet struck muddy bottom again, they halted, and Valentine went up the bank for a scout. He saw that the rail bridge was lined with sandbags, thick with men and weapons points. Cable was strung about ten yards upstream, festooned with razor wire and looking as though there were more lines underwater, barring access to the bridge pilings. The boats would never make it through without a good deal of work with bolt cutters and acetylene torches.
But his Bears were on the enemy side of the river. In the distance, the concrete tower of the Kurians stood like a white tomb in the rubble-strewn grave of Little Rock.
Each pair of Bear eyes fixed on it like lampreys. Any chance at a Kurian was enough to heat their blood. He took the team up for a look.
He wished his blood could run hot like the Bears'; the spring night was no longer as warm as it had been when they were dry on the other side of the river. The water beaded on his oiled skin. The greasy coating served two purposes; it helped him resist the water and darkened his face and torso. His legs protruded out of camp shorts. He slipped some old black training shoes, preserved dry in the rubber boat, over his feet and put on a combat vest and his gunbelt, then picked up a cut-down Kalashnikov and an ammunition harness. He would have preferred the comforting bluntness of his PPD, but it was out of 9mm Mauser and the gunsmith didn't have the right molds for reloads. Finally he put his snakeskin bandolier of Quickwood stabbers over his arm and checked his bag for the presence of a battered old dinner bell that had, until a day ago, served as a Reaper alarm in one of the trenches.
He felt the mental echo of a Reaper in the direction of the bridge. It was in motion, crossing to the north bank. Wiggling up the bank and into cover, he checked the bank. In the darkness in the direction of Pulaski Heights he saw the twin red eyes of a pair of sentries smoking cigarettes. They weren't near enough for him to smell the tobacco, even though he was downwind. The sentries wouldn't hear or see his Bears, if they were careful.
Valentine inspected the remains of the buildings along the riverbank. He found an old outlet for the storm sewer system and waved the Bears over. The concrete mouth was wide enough to store the rubber raft. No words were necessary; the Bears took up their weapons silently. Styachowski had armed herself with a silenced .223 Mini-14 along with her bow. Valentine issued each Bear a Quickwood stabbing spear, almost the last of the precious supply. Ahn-Kha and the squad of Jamaicans, who proudly bore the informal label "Hoodhunters," had the few others.
They cut through the Ruins, skirting their old TMCC campsite. Their weeks at the camp-now occupied by a field hospital for those wounded in the siege-gave them a knowledge of the buildings that let them pick a route to cross the fallen city discreetly. They went to ground twice, once for a dog-led patrol that passed a block away, and a second time when Valentine felt a Reaper on his way to the hospital. Had the Kurians been reduced to feeding on their own badly wounded? Or did Mu-Kur-Ri fear to send his avatars far afield in search of auras?
They could see the Kurian Tower clearly now, no longer just a white blur in the distance. Valentine, then Nail, examined it through night binoculars from the vicinity of Xray-Tango's burned-out headquarters. The old bank had no flag before it as when Xray-Tango had made it his headquarters, though a few lights glimmered inside and a sentry paced back and forth behind it.
"Wonder how many are in there?" Nail asked. "Southern Command has to have driven a few out of their holes down south."
"I was hoping Solon had moved in," Valentine said. "I'd like to catch him in the temple of his gods." He swept the building with hard eyes, using the glasses and naked eyes alternately, naked eyes to spot motion, glasses to identify the source. "There'd be more guards if he had. Looks like the Quislings think the place is bad news."
"There's bars over the windows. And bunkers at the corners. How are you going to get through?"
"Don't worry about that. Just make sure you handle Xray-Tango's old building."
Nail smiled. "If there's anything they hate worse than Quisling soldiers, it's officers. They won't need a fire to look into to go Red."
"This is it then. When the shellfire starts, give me a few minutes. Then hit them. Look out for men on the roof."
"I didn't get the Bear bar on my collar by not knowing how to hit a building quiet. Take Rain at least, sir; he's worth a whole team of Bears."
"You're the hunter at the rabbit hole. I'm the ferret going in. I want to flush them, not fight."
"What if they hole up in a bunker and just work their Hoods?"
"Not your problem. Just get into that basement where I told you."
"Let me go with you, sir," Styachowski volunteered.
Valentine hesitated to say "no" and she filled the gap. "Lieutenant Nail and his Bears are a team; I haven't trained with them...."
"Okay, two ferrets, Nail. See you below."
"One way or another, sir," Nail said, smiling as he gave a little salute.
* * * *
Like a pair of rats, alternately hunting and being hunted as they went over-and under-the debris of old Little Rock, Valentine and Styachowski threaded their way toward the Kurian Tower. Construction hadn't stopped; they'd finished the second level and were starting on the third, even with the fighting across the river. It looked like an unevenly baked wedding cake with the layers stacked off center, or maybe a soft-serve ice-cream cone, Valentine couldn't decide which.
They found a rubble-filled basement loading dock just outside the glare of the tower's lights. The spiderwebs told them that the Quisling patrols didn't visit it, and they made themselves comfortable. They sat next to each other and looked up at the night sky through a gap above.
Valentine passed his time looking at the TMCC officer's handbook, a list of field regulations and procedures condensed to pamphlet size. He opened it to a page he had turned down and reread the passage he'd penned a tick next to. Even in their almost lightless refuge, the script stood out against the paper to his Cat-eyes as if it was on an illuminated screen. He finished and put the book back, trying to relax against the cold concrete. Rodents scurried somewhere farther inside the building.
* * * *
The whistle-crash of the first shell ended the respite. The 155s came down with a terrifying noise-not as bad as the monster shells of the Crocodile, but unnerving all the same. He let five land to give the Quislings time to take cover, then nodded to Styachowski. They left their hideout.
They wriggled their way to a good view of the Kurian Tower, its white sides already smudged by the explosions. Valentine counted each shell burst; they arrived almost on the minute. After twenty had been fired, he grabbed Styachowski by the shoulder and they ran toward the tower, dodging their way through construction equipment and supplies. He heard one distant alarm whistle but ignored it. They made for the concrete bunker flanking the construction entrance to the tower. A scaffold with an electric elevator stood next to the entrance, on the other side of the bunker. Styachowski tore the colored tabs off a thick cylinder of a grenade, squatted listening to the fuse hiss-and threw it in the firing slit of the bunker.
"Hey!" someone inside shouted.
It would have been ideal if the next shell had landed at the same time as the grenade exploded, but they were seconds apart. The grenade went off first, followed by the louder, but farther off, explosion of the artillery shell.
Valentine had his own grenade to deal with. It was a green smoker. He pulled the pin and rolled it under a sluice on the steel curtain door of the construction entrance. It went off like two cats spitting at each other, and green smoke began to billow out from around the edges of the door. Valentine threw two more green smokers around the edges of the buildings. When the grenades were spewing he pulled the dinner bell from his bag and pulled out the sock he'd used to silence it. He rang it, loud and long.
"Gas! Gas! Gas!" he shouted. He rang the bell again.
"Gas! Gas! Gas!" Styachowski added, deepening her voice. She pulled out a pair of crowbars.
Valentine clanged the dinner bell for all he was worth, then tried the electric lift. No juice.
"We climb," he said.
Valentine went up first while Styachowski covered him, shrouded with green smoke. The gas warning had been taken up by men inside the building. Valentine heard a klaxon go off, three angry buzzes, followed by the triple "gas" call over the PA system within. He took the crowbars from Styachowski and pulled her up.
Valentine went up the scaffold to the platform on the first level. Styachowski joined him and they put their crowbars to work, pulling at a metal screen blocking a window. It was more of an iron grate than true bars, designed to explode an RPG aimed at the window. Nothing but cardboard stuck in a fitting for thick glass closed the window beyond, but the bars blocked them out.
Styachowski roared in frustration.
Valentine tucked his crowbar nearer hers. Together they pulled, shoulder to shoulder. Styachowski's muscles felt like machine-tool steel against his.
"Graaaaaa!" Styachowski heaved. She set her leg against the tower face. They pulled again-
The grate gave way, pulling the masonry at the top and bottom of the narrow window with it. Styachowski pulled an opening big enough for them to climb through.
Eyes wild and burning, Styachowski swung through, knocking the cardboard away. Wisps of green smoke could be seen within, and the gas alarm was still bleating its triple call every ten seconds. The tower's interior was still being worked on; the walls were nothing but cinder block coated with primer paint.
Valentine felt something crackling inside his mind, like a man running a sparkler firework across the field of an empty stadium. Or maybe two or three, waving and parting and separating like schooling fish. With them were the colder, darker impressions of Reapers.
"Downstairs! They're down, in the basement, heading north."
"How can you tell? I don't hear anything but that friggin' alarm," Styachowski asked from the other side of the room, covering the hall with her gun.
"I just do. Find the stairs."
The tower appealed to some kind of Kurian sensibility for architecture; the "stairs" were a tight ramp-spiral in a corner under the tallest part of the tower. Valentine could hear footsteps climbing the stairs above in between the klaxon bursts; the Quislings or construction workers or whoever were sensibly getting as high as they could above what they thought to be lethal fumes.
There was a change in the air as soon as they got underground. They came to a corridor; the lighting fixtures and flooring told Valentine it was pre-2022 construction. A man in a uniform with a gas mask over his face was leading another toward the stairs, the one behind had his hand on his leader. Neither could see much through the eyeholes in the dusty old masks, and they were going down the corridor like they were playing blind man's bluff. One had a radio bumping against his chest.
The Kurians were still below and moving away somewhere. Where was that rathole to Xray-Tango's old headquarters?
Valentine and the Bear hurried down the corridor, catching up to the men. Valentine heard the radio crackle.
"Townshend, Townshend, what's the situation? Is there gas in the tower?"
As Valentine passed him he lashed out with his fist, landing a solid jab in the radio-wearer's breadbasket. The man went to his knees, gasping. Valentine caught the other under the jaw with the butt of his machine pistol.
"Help-haaaaaaaaaaa-help," the radio man on his knees gasped into the mike. His battle for air sounded authentic enough. Valentine kicked out sideways, catching him in the back of the head. The Quisling's head made a sound like a spiked volleyball as it bounced off the wall, and he went face-first on top of the radio, unconscious or dead.
"Val, here," Styachowski said, checking a room at the end of the corridor.
It was a utility room. Snakes of cable conduit ran up from the floor and across the ceiling; boxes and circuit breakers lined the wall. Another stairway descended from a room beyond. The steel door had been torn off its hinges. Valentine recognized the nail marks of a Reaper. He picked up the mental signature of the fleeing Kurians again, mis time clearer.
"You ready for this?" he asked Styachowski.
She nodded, giving him the thumbs-up.
He handed her two of his four Quickwood stakes. "Remember, they can make themselves look like a dog, anything. Just kill whatever you see. Unless it's another Bear, or me. No, strike that. If you see another me, kill him, too. I'll just hope you pick the right one."
"Yes, sir."
"Let's do it."
They went down to a boiler room, connected by another missing door-this one long since removed-to an arch-topped tunnel. Two Quislings, in gas-mask chemical weapon hoods, stood at the portal.
Styachowski's Mini-14 came up. She shot twice, the action on the gun louder than the bullet through the silenced weapon, and both men crumpled. As Valentine looked down the corridor she shot each Quisling again for insurance.
It wasn't much of a tunnel, only a little wider than the passageways on the old Thunderbolt. Old conduit pipes and newer wires ran along the walls and ceiling, lit here and there by bulbs encased in thick plastic housings like preserve jars. It smelled like damp underwear and bad plumbing.
Valentine went in first-trailing the psychic scent like a bloodhound-in the bent-over, lolloping run he'd picked up going through the underbrush in his days with the Wolves. He heard Styachowski behind; an occasional splashing footfall sounded as she hit a puddle in the damp tunnel.
He heard firing at the other end of the arrow-thin passageway.
The sparking mental impressions grew clearer. They were coming. With their Reapers.
Valentine pulled up. "They turned around."
"Shit! How many Reapers?"
"I don't know. Several." The corridor went dark. Styachowski pulled a flare out and lit it in a flash, then threw it down the corridor toward the coming Reapers. She reached for a fist-sized metal sphere on her vest.
She pulled the pin on the grenade. "Want to keep it?"
"No, throw it. When I tell you. If mere's anything beyond Red ... like Violet maybe, you might want to give it a try."
Styachowski pulled her bolo blade. It was a nice length for the tunnel. Valentine wished he had his old straight-edged sword. He felt oddly light and fearless. Just a mouth like dry-rotted wood and hands greasy with sweat and aching from rope burn. He shifted his grip on Ahn-Kha's stabbing spear.
The Reapers came in a wall of dead, three of them, jaws agape like Cerberus.
"Now," Valentine said. Styachowski threw the grenade and readied her Quickwood stabber.
The Reapers ignored the bouncing explosive. It went off behind them, throwing them into the Cat and the Bear in. a wave of heat and sound. Valentine's mind felt pain and confusion-his own, and that of the Kurians.
Styachowski went into the first Reaper like it was a badly stuffed scarecrow. Valentine could see me fight as clearly in the faint red glow of the flare as if it were daylight. She chopped off an arm, then buried her Quickwood into its neck. Another jumped on her back like lightning leaping sideways to hit a rod. It got its hands around her, claws reaching to rip open her rib cage, but Valentine plunged his stabbing spear into its shoulder, trying to hit the nerve trunks descending from me armored skull. The spear went through its robes and bit deep, eliciting an angry shriek, the loudest noise Valentine had ever heard a Reaper make.
Suddenly he was flying through the air. He crashed against the tunnel wall, held by the piece of steel that was the third Reaper's arm. Its eyes burned into his. Valentine slammed the side of his arm down in a chop against the Reaper's elbow, hoping to fold its arm like a jackknife, but he stayed pinned. The Reaper grabbed his other arm, forcing it to the wall so he hung in the crucifixion pose. Its narrow face drew nearer, jaws opening for the sweet spot at the base of his throat. The stabbing tongue stirred within its mouth like a serpent coiling for a strike.
Valentine brought up his knees, putting his feet on the demon's chest. It bore in, an irresistible force, folding him until his spine would snap-Valentine screamed in agonized frustration.
Styachowski's face appeared above the Reaper's. She was atop its back, her hands black with Reaper juice, her own blood pouring in a river from her nose. She brought her blade across its throat, grabbed it by the handle and tip, and pulled toward herself. The improvised guillotine cut through its windpipe and circulatory system, but the thing dropped Valentine and reached its queerly jointed arms around behind itself for Styachowski.
Valentine, his vision a red mist, brought both of his hands up, uncoiling with his body and helping the blade travel the last few inches. The Reaper's head went up and off in a gristly pop-snap.
The Reaper's body staggered off sideways, clawing at the air. The ambulatory corpse did a U-turn, crashed into the wall, and flopped over. There was shooting coming from the far end of the tunnel.
"Your hands!" Valentine barked, as Styachowski was about to wipe her sweating face. She froze.
"Oh, yeah," she said. Reaper blood was poisonous, whether swallowed or taken in through a mucous membrane. Even the best Hunters sometimes forgot in the midst of a fight. The tunnel was filling with smoke from the grenade, and the fight elsewhere.
Footsteps. Another Reaper charged out of the smoke, robes torn, one arm gone, its body riddled with bullet wounds. Valentine and Styachowski threw themselves against the passageway and it passed without noticing them.
"Fucker!" Valentine heard Lost & Found shout, spraying bullets up the corridor after it.
"Cease fire, Bear! You're shooting at us," Valentine shouted.
The bullets stopped.
"Sir! Sir! We got two of 'em. Two blue bat-winged bastards!"
Valentine could hardly see them through the smoke. He made his way toward the sound of the voices with Styachowski in tow.
"Reapers?" Valentine asked.
"We got two down. One got away from us."
"He got away from us, too. But I think he was running wild," Styachowski said, meaning its Kurian had been killed.
Valentine could better make out the haggard four now. They'd almost passed through the smoke. The Bears were missing Brass and Groschen.
"Where are the other two?" Valentine asked. He felt nervous somehow.
Nail jerked his chin up the tunnel the way the Bears had come. "A Reaper popped Brass's head off. Sorry, sir, couldn't be helped. Groschen is keeping an eye on the other end of the tunnel. The old headquarters had been converted to some kind of communications center. Lots of field phones and printing machines. We took it out."
Valentine didn't listen. There was a problem with the smoke. It didn't smell like anything. Smoke also didn't make noise as it crawled along the ceiling.
"One got away," Valentine hissed. "A Kurian. It's heading back down the tunnel."
Without further explanation he threw himself down the tunnel. In the distance he saw a faint figure, running for its immortal life. The Kurian could move. Not as fast as a Reaper. Nothing that wasn't engine-powered moved as fast as a Reaper.
It dashed through the door of the utility subbasement, Valentine almost on its heels. Its skin was the color of blue ice and it gave off a sickly sweet odor like marigolds. So intent on the chase was he that he bounced off the chest of the Reaper, which stepped out from behind the steaming boiler like a sliding steel door. The Kurian was safely behind it. The Kurian turned, looked at Valentine with red-black eyes, and then disappeared upstairs.
Valentine rolled backward and came to his feet.
The one-armed Reaper's eyes wandered. It extended its remaining clawed hand and pulled one of the boiler pipes free of its mount. Valentine heard the Reaper's skin sizzle against the hot metal, but the thing didn't even wince. It yanked the pipe out, so a firehose of steam flooded the passageway and the stairway behind it.
Then it advanced on Valentine.
"I know you," it hissed, "our false friend from Louisiana."
"Valentine!" Nail shouted from behind him.
Valentine dropped to the ground. A hail of bullets filled the tunnel. The Reaper's face vanished in the tight pattern of a buckshot blast. It roared, and charged down the tunnel toward the sound of gunfire. With its eyes gone, it didn't see Valentine wriggling forward after Mu-Kur-Ri.
He heard fighting behind. Styachowski and Nail should be able to handle a one-armed, blind Reaper without him. He wanted Mu-Kur-Ri.
But the hissing steam blocked his way. There was nothing to do but... do it.
Valentine lifted his combat vest and got his head and arms tucked into as much of the material as he could, and held it closed over his face.
"This is for you, Hank," he muttered to himself. He took a deep breath; it wouldn't be pleasant to breathe in hot steam.
Later, when he'd forgotten the pain, he examined the burn marks in detail using a pair of mirrors. His lower back took the worst of it, from beneath his rib cage-where the combat vest ended-to the line of his camp shorts. That part must have been hit by steam shooting from the hose, and it turned into a girdle of scar tissue. The back of his legs got it badly enough that the hair only regrew irregularly, but there was less scarring there than above the line of his shorts. The thick cotton of the shorts and combat vest kept the rest of the damage to first-and second-degree burns. Painful enough, but they healed.
The pain drove him on instinct through the steam and up the stairs. He caught up to the Kurian and fell on it like a rabid dog. It squealed rabbitlike as he tore into the slippery mass with fists and teeth. Cartilage crunched under his knees, a pulpy mass of digestive organs slipped wetly through his fingers, then its rubbery skull finally gave out as he slammed it again and again and again into the concrete landing, still shrouded in green smoke. Then he collapsed atop the spongy corpse of Mu-Kur-Ri.
As he passed out he thought of Caroline Smalls.
The next thing he saw was Styachowski's face, gently rocking as it floated above him. A pleasant warmth gave way to pain, agonizing pain, pain like he'd never felt and would shoot himself to keep from feeling again. It was so bad he couldn't summon the energy to do more than whimper, his body paralyzed, living only in the endless moment of the burn's agony.
Think of something, anything, anything to drive the pain away!
"They think of a name for you?" Valentine croaked.
"Not yet," Styachowski said. She'd shoved expended cartridge cases into her nostrils to stop the flow of blood.
Nail patted her shoulder. "You did just fine, you're a Bear to be proud of. How about Ursa? Like the stars?"
"Wildcat?" Valentine said. "No. A woman who can be anything. A Wildcard."
"I like Wildcard," Styachowski said.
"No, if you like it, we can't use it. Unwritten law," Rain said.
Valentine turned painfully to Nail. "Make it an order, Lieutenant."
The Bear shrugged. "After all this," Nail said, "it seems we should call you whatever you like, Styachowski. Wildcard it is. The drawn card that turned out to be an ace just when we needed it."
* * * *
"Wildcard, is he alive?" a voice that might have been Nail's said.
"He's alive."
It was torture to his skin to be lifted and carried. Sensibly, his consciousness fled.
He later heard about the scattering of troops from the Kurian Tower as Reapers ran amok, and the confusion that allowed Lieutenant Nail to carry him and lead the Bears back to the river, and how Lost & Found swam across with Valentine tied to an empty five-gallon jerrican to keep him afloat. As he heard the tale Valentine felt as though he'd lived it, but couldn't remember much except for vague impressions of floating. He rememberd shelling but no further large-scale attacks, just endless probes. He remembered Post's daily reports of units observed moving east through New Columbia, and the gun resting in the swimming pool running out of ammunition so that all the hilltop forces could do was watch. He remembered walking again, and giving up his bed to another wounded man and sleeping on a blanket on the concrete floor near where Narcisse worked the hospital kitchen and rubbed him with oily-smelling lotion.
Then came sounds of more trains in the distance and vehicular traffic around the base of the hill, and he managed to go outside. He'd meet the inevitable standing, even if he stood in bandages.
"Sir, you're needed on the west side." One of the pregnant women, in a man's service poncho which gave her belly growing room, reported from her station at the field phone.
Valentine made a stiff-legged journey. His bad leg ached all the time now, throbbing in sympathy with the healing burns. Ahn-Kha helped him up a set of stairs and they reached the observation point, what was left of Solon's grand balcony. Three soldiers knelt, sharing a set of binoculars, staring up the Arkansas River, a blue ribbon between the green Ozark hills.
"What in God's name is that?" Valentine asked.
The river was three deep in beedes. A flotilla of craft, none larger than thirty feet. Many towed everything from rowboats to braces of canoes.
"Reinforcements?"
"Depends on your point of view. Look-the mortars are shooting at them."
The tubes of Pulaski Heights were dropping shells into the mass of speeding boats, with little effect but wetting those inside.
Styachowski ran along the rubble-strewn base of Solon's Residence beneath them, tripped over a log and sprawled flat. She picked herself up, but didn't bother to wipe the mud from her chin.
"They're pulling back, sir," she called up, her voice squealing like a schoolgirl's in excitement. "Not the boats, the Quislings. They're coming off the hill."
"To oppose the landing?"
"They're just running," Styachowski said. "Running like hell for the bridge. A train just pulled out east, packed with men."
Valentine looked down the river, caught a familiar pattern. He snatched the binoculars out of the hand of the man next to him without apology, and focused on the boat trailing the leadmost pilot vessel. There was a flagstaff above the outboard motors. The State Hag of Texas flapped in the breeze.
* * * *
The boats were a surprise to the Quislings as well. They abandoned the weapons on the Pulaski Heights and fled with the rest toward Pine Bluff. When Valentine was sure the hilltop was clear he brought up the wounded from their dreadful holes into the fresh air and sunshine. There were the dead to be sorted from the living, and sent on to the swollen, shell-tossed graveyard.
The Texans found him among the corpses, burying his dead.
"That's him. I met him in Texas," he heard a voice say. Valentine looked up and saw a Ranger he recognized, Colorado. The youth's shoulders had broadened, and what Valentine's nose told him was that motor oil stained the Ranger's uniform.
Colorado brought forward a bearded man. Valentine suspected that when the campaign started the colonel of the Texas Rangers was clean shaven.
"Nice to finally meet the famous Ghost," the colonel, whose nametag read "Samoza," said.
The idea of a famous Cat struck Valentine as a bit absurd, and he fought down a laugh. If his nerves gave way now he'd fall on the man, laughing or crying or confessing, and none were appropriate to the moment.
"We've come all the way from Fort Scott for you," Samoza continued.
The words took their time in coming. Valentine's shocked brain had to inspect each one as it came out.
"Thank you. Southern Command couldn't even make it fifty miles," Valentine managed, looking out over the graves.
"Southern Command opened the door for us. Archangel was a joint operation from the start. The Kurians sent troops up from Texas to take you boys down. We figured if they didn't want it, we'd like it back. We got more besides."
It all hit Valentine like a warm wave. Intellect gave way to pent-up emotion like the dike that had swallowed Styachowski, and he found himself shaking, with tears in his eyes. He hoped his brain remembered it all and would be able to sort it out later. "What's that, sir?" he finally said.
"We linked up with Southern Command just outside Hope. Ironic, wouldn't you say? Then it was north into Oklahoma, and down the river to you."
"What made you come all this way?"
"A Ranger teamster named Jefferson made a lot of noise in East Texas. Claimed we had to go help the man who started it all. He fought alongside us all the way to Fort Scott and lost a leg there to shellfire. Haven't taken it yet but figured it could wait. You couldn't."
Valentine held out his hand to the colonel.
"You came all this way for a few companies of men?"
"We're from Texas, friend. We remember the Alamo."