March in Country (40 page)
Authors: EE Knight
“Are you always this cool and collected?” Pellwell asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Bullets flying, Grogs running everywhere, and you’re in the toilet shaving.”
“I thought I should make an appearance,” Valentine said.
Word passed around. Valentine heard two Wolves muttering to each other that he’d been so confident of victory he’d stepped into the bathroom so he could change his shirt and shave in order to tour the scene.
The second strongpoint was found abandoned. A halfhearted attempt to blow up the tracks had been attempted, but the railroad-working Grogs knew their business. An entire train car was devoted to railroad equipment, and they simply took rails and ties from a siding and transferred them to the main line.
They found a looted warehouse with a pair of fresh Grog cairns behind.
“Looks like word is spreading, my David,” Ahn-Kha said. “I think those are Missouri Valley clans.”
They found Grog Point defended, but not by Grogs. A hasty line of defenses was drawn up in a hummock between two hills that might charitably be called a pass, but it was hardly Thermopylae.
They backed the train out of sight and Valentine dropped out of the armed flatbed, field glasses in hand to take a closer look.
Valentine could make out red caps among the hastily constructed head logs and machine gun positions.
He deployed his Grogs and set up the light artillery. He sent a screening force forward to probe, with instructions to fight, then return and report what kind of troops they faced. His real infantry strength he kept back with the train and guns.
Pellwell tried to convince him to wait and let her ratbits explore the lines—they could get an exact count of men and machine guns—but Valentine wanted to probe and attack before they could be reinforced. They were so close to the Mississippi they could practically smell it, and the flotilla was waiting downriver for him to radio that the town had been cleared.
Firing broke out all along the line of fortifications. Sustained, panicky firing.
His probe pulled back as though they’d touched an unexpected flame, without firing. No need to reveal positions to the wildly firing machine guns. A grenade detonated somewhere in the middle and Valentine saw a rabbit run for the hills.
High-pitched cheering broke out along the defensive line. They went up and over their fortifications, some calling the others forward, others waving them back. They had camouflage ponchos, so oversized they looked like caftans, pulled over black uniforms.
“They’re advancing?”
“Send the Grogs forward. Bring the train up for cannon support,” Valentine told Chieftain.
Chieftain was getting along like a house aflame with the Grog Warriors. He pushed and shoved, showed his blades to get the toughs to back down, and head-butted others to laugh off a mistake.
The main force of Grogs went forward and a few confused seconds of shooting broke out. The ponchos didn’t retreat, they ran. The armored train came forward and the cannons opened up on the fortifications. Explosions and black plumes rose from the machine gun positions.
They went forward cautiously. There were still a few sporadic shots from the head logs, but careful Gray One fire silenced the snipers.
They advanced into horror. They’d been fighting children, in neat, unblemished black school uniforms and red kepis. They lay in windrows, a fragile, fallen fence.
“Poor kids,” the Wolf communications tech said.
Chieftain took the hat off one, ran a gentle hand through a boy’s sun-white hair. “We just killed the local choir,” Chieftain said.
There were a few disarmingly sweet, freckled female faces among the dead.
“What the hell are those?”
“Now what was the point of that?”
“Who are they?” Pellwell asked.
“Youth Vanguard. Jesus.”
Two had survived their wounds. They were all nine- to fourteen-year-olds, the next generation out of the Ringwinners and Quislings in Iowa, proving their worth to the Kurian Order.
“Patch ’em up and take them along,” Valentine said, taking his youngest POWs, ever.
Grog Point was theirs.
Valentine learned from the wounded that a military school in southeastern Iowa had turned out, and been rushed to Grog Point to keep order. They were supposed to be joined by Illinois troops and some artillery coming across the river, but the Illinois men never showed up. The school had either been sacrificed uselessly with lies, in the hope that they’d hold long enough for men to come downriver, or been caught up in a Kurian Zone double cross between rival Iowa and Illinois factions.
It took all the sweetness out of seeing the rest of his charges arrive and start to board the river barges. Valentine spent the next thirty-six hours with a bilious taste in his mouth, working like a fury to get the population organized and into the boats.
They’d put together quite a river fleet. Three huge, multibarge tugs under Captain Mantilla protected by six armed craft, plus the firefighting tug rigged out with a few guns, to do double duty as a close-in armed boat and emergency tug, if the need arose. The flotilla was under overall command of Captain Coalfield, a veteran Mosquito Fleet boatman whom Mantilla tempted out of retirement with the prospect of the biggest riverine operation Southern Command had ever launched.
Valentine was astonished to see Gray Ones taking precedence over the Golden Ones in space in the barges, tentage, and bedding. They even ate and drank first.
“None understand the Golden Ones,” Ahn-Kha said. “We are peaceful looking—even our sports and games have none of the knockabout, violent energy of human and Gray Ones contests. We don’t roar out our accomplishments in battle. When the hot blood comes, it comes fast and hard and fades again, like a flash flood.”
Still, the Gray Ones weren’t behaving as he would have liked. Clearly, he’d gotten the outcasts, all but the most ambitious or the outcasts had stayed with Danger Close. He’d try the Baron again, in the hopes that he’d take charge of the lot.
The Baron smelled. He hadn’t shaved or washed himself.
“We’re getting on the boats, Baron,” Valentine said. “Nice easy trip on the water. You might avail yourself of it.
“A few days ago—was that all it was?—you told me you thought I had potential,” Valentine said. “I see the same in you. I could use a man like you in Kentucky.
“What is your real name, anyway?”
“Ricard Anthony Alido, but my father’s last name was Mairpault, of the Ithaca Mairpaults.”
“I take it the Mairpaults were important,” Valentine said.
“My father’s brother chaired the Council of Archons for North America. Church politics. I was an embarrassment, so they sent me to a military college in Wisconsin. Always wanted a title, the Maripaults were always dropping titles like trump cards in bridge. Bridge is very popular with the churchmen. They sip their white tea and play bridge and eat sandwiches made of cucumbers and bread that’s mostly air.”
“I could use a good officer for these Gray Ones. Pick any or all of those names, and swear under it. From then on out, you’re a new man. Like the Baptists pulling you out of a river.”
“I told you I don’t think too much of your definition of freedom. I was scratching-poor at the school and didn’t care for it.”
“Better than a POW camp in Arkansas.”
“You’d hand me over to Southern Command’s inquisitors? I’ve heard some funny things about you, too. Would your record survive that close a look?”
Valentine looked him in the eye. “No.” He reached into his pocket and took out a key, knelt and undid the leg irons, unthreaded the chain to the wrist restraints, then undid those.
Quick as one of Snake Arms’s serpents, he whipped the chain around Valentine’s throat. Valentine felt a hand fumbling for his holstered gun.
Valentine let him get it. The gun came out of the holster and the Baron released the chain around his throat and backpedaled.
“Now you’re—fuck!” the Baron said, fumbling with the plastic trigger lock Valentine had put on it. Quite an ordinary precaution before entering a prisoner’s cell with a firearm.
Valentine drove a solid chain-wrapped right into the Baron’s jaw, followed it with a roundhouse left. The gun fell, and Valentine kicked it back behind him.
“Can we stop this nonsense?” Valentine said, rubbing his chafed throat under his chin.
He quieted the soldiers calling from outside. “Stand down, we’re fine in here. Coffee!”
They shared a cup—coffee was almost always decent near the river where traders and smuggling boats could come and go at will.
“We’re boarding the barges. Next stop is Southern Command,” Valentine said. Technically, the next stop would be Saint Louis, but no point revealing too much. He grabbed a small rucksack from one of the men standing guard on the car.
As they walked along the ticking, waiting train, Valentine took an extra step away from the Baron and removed the trigger lock from his pistol.
“Kind of you, Valentine,” the Baron said. “I’d prefer the back of the head, if you’d oblige.”
Valentine said nothing, but nodded to the man on the scout-plane car.
“Won’t be the first ragged-ass general to wind up shot in a ditch. I’m in distinguished company.”
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