Valentine's Exile (34 page)

“Zak, I want to talk to you about that. I'm passing through. Hoffman Price brought us up here in the hope that we'd get a guide to the Ohio River, up around Ironton or Portsmouth. I'll swap you my share of the recovered beasts for a ride.”

Zak shook his head. “I've got a bigger string a little to the west. I'm leaving early tomorrow to get back to them.”

“Then I'll drive you,” Tikka said. “That way I'll get my string back.”

“He's already got a girl, Tikka,” Zak said. “You'll have to excuse my sister, Dave, she's man-crazy.”

“Any girl who doesn't want a husband by twenty and babies after is man-crazy, in my brother's opinion,” Tikka said. “Zak, you know you're the only one for me.”

“ ‘Only one' when I'm around, that is. And that's just 'cause I keep saying no to a train.”

She tried to stomp him with her heavy riding boot but Zak danced out of the way. “You're a fresh piece of worm-trail, Zachary Stark.”

“What in the hell are you wearing, David Black?” Alessa Duvalier asked from the darkness. She wore her long coat, black side turned out, and carried her walking stick.

“And that's the girl, Tikka,” Zak said, grabbing for her long hair. She dodged out of the way and got behind Valentine.

“Apparently I'm Bulletproof now,” Valentine said, striking a Napoleonic pose. “What do you think?” Tikka played with his hair.

“I'm tempted to get your pistol and test you. Starving, is there any food left?”

Valentine smelled blood on her. “Sure. I'll show you. Excuse us.”

“Let's hurry. Starved.”

Valentine led her up to the food tables, and she cut open a loaf and filled it with barbecue. They went back to their camp in the empty field. Ahn-Kha and Bee were wrapped up in a fireside game that involved piling buttons on a rounded rock.

“Price is walking his mule,” Ahn-Kha said. “Did they offer us transport, my David?”

“Oh, he's got a ride. Count on him,” Duvalier said.

“What have you been up to?” Valentine asked.

“I didn't miss your performance this morning. I just watched it from the Wildcat side. I was checking out these camps. There's some bad blood between these, um, tribes.”

“You've made it worse?” Valentine asked.

“Of course. We might want to shift a little more to the west. When it got dark I offed a couple of the Wildcats and left a note warning them not to use Grogs in any future contests. They were already stirred up because someone got shot when they captured those Bulletproofs. When they see what I did to the bodies it ought to put them over the edge. A lot of their riders were upset that they let it go with just a contest. This should put them right over the edge.”

Ahn-Kha sent a cascade of buttons down the side of the rock and bowed to Bee. He got up and went over to the wrapping for his oversized gun.

Valentine rose and looked across to the ridge with the Wildcat campfires. Had some of them gone out? He should have counted. Captain Le Havre would have taken a piece out of his ass for that kind of sloppiness. He picked up his U-gun.

“Wait here,” Valentine said. “If shooting starts, let's meet at the creek we crossed just before we turned in here.”

“Val, what are you doing?” Duvalier said.

“I'm going to warn them.”

“Why? The Bulletproof will probably win; there're more of them. It'll get a good war started between these assholes.”

“There are kids all over the place.”

“Nits make lice, Val,” Duvalier said.

“Is that who you really are?” Valentine asked.

“Whose side are you on, Ghost?” she called after him. “I know the answer: your ego's.”

Valentine hurried up to the barn, the new leather pants creaking as he trotted. His ankle hurt, but seconds might count.

“Yes, you look fine in your leathers, Bulletproof,” a woman called from the door of the barn. The party was still in full cry, and Zak and Tikka were stomping the concrete with bootheel and toe in syncopation, another quarrel forgotten. Valentine ignored his greeter and went straight for the Dispatcher.

The crowd parted, alarmed at the U-gun. Valentine carefully carried it pointed down, his hand well away from the trigger area. Zak stepped in at his rifle arm. “Dave, there's no need—”

“Watch that weapon, David,” the Dispatcher said. “What's going on? Pants too tight and you're looking for the tailor?”

A few laughed.

“Dispatcher,” Valentine said. “Our Grogs were down looking at the contest field. They went off to some bushes to—you know—”

“And?” the Dispatcher asked.

“They saw the Wildcats. Some of them on their worms, armed, others gathering.”

“Coming this way?” the Dispatcher asked.

“The Grogs just ran back. Armed riders is all I know.” The Dispatcher upended his glass of bourbon onto the concrete. “Carpenter, get to the herd riders, have them try to lead the wild worms west. Mother Shaw, take the children out to the cover-field. Everyone else who can shoulder a gun, get to the rein-worms. Lead riders Mandvi, French, Cherniawsky, and McGee, with me. David, you and your people with Zak; Zak, get them clear.”

“You might see some fancy riding after all,” Tikka said.

The crowd dissolved, and the musicians cased their instruments, if not sober at least sobered.

Zak brought Valentine to his legworm at the road trough. Other riders were climbing on board, bawling orders to the teenage boys watching the mounts—

—when a rocket cut across the sky, leaving a sparking trail. It exploded overhead with a
BOOM
that rattled Valentine's bones.

The legworm reared but Zak settled it.

Zak extended a hand, but Valentine found that with the hooks and spikes in his costume, climbing the side of the legworm was possible without assistance, as long as another shell didn't fire.

“What the hell was that?” Valentine asked, the boom still echoing in his ears.

“A big firework, sorta. Scares the worms. They're trying to make the mounts bolt.”

Valentine saw one worm humping as it headed down the road, a rider raising dust as he was dragged. The others had their mounts under control, more or less, and turned them toward the barn.

Another rocket exploded, but it only served to hurry the legworms in the direction they were already going. Zak reached their campsite.

“Get on!” Valentine called. “We've got to ride out of here. Where's Price?”

“I don't know,” Ahn-Kha said. “Still off with his mule.” Valentine helped the others up.

Bee looked alarmed, and refused to mount. She let out a shriek into the night. Ahn-Kha barked something at her and reached out, but she slapped his hand away and ran off toward the road.

“I'll drop you off with the kids in the cover-field,” Zak said. “You'll be safe there.”

“Take us to the fight,” Valentine said.

“The Dispatcher—”

“The Dispatcher's going to need every gun,” Valentine said. “We've got three. Right?” He looked over his shoulder at Duvalier and Ahn-Kha.

Anh-Kha nodded. He had his cannon and Price's Kalashnikov. Duvalier patted her shotgun. “I'm happy to plant a few bobcats.”

“Wildcats,” Zak said.

“Then let's get online.”

Valentine looked down at his U-gun. The only ammunition he had for it was Everready's 5.56mm. He wished he had a real sniper load. He looked at Duvalier's shotgun. The Mossberg would be useless in anything but a close-quarters fight. “Ali, take Price's rifle.”

“Be sparing,” Ahn-Kha said. “There is only one magazine. ”

“Where's the rest?”

“In boxes.” Ahn-Kha rummaged around in the battle satchel that contained spare bullets and gear for his gun, and handed him the box.

Cookie and Gibson joined them and the legworm slid quickly down the hill to where the other riders were gathering. Cookie had his ear to a headset, coming from a hand-crank-charged portable radio.

Another rocket exploded over the massive barn. Yellow-white sparks ran down the tin roof.

“They're good with the fuses over there. Probably been cutting them all day. So you're a brother rider now,” Gibson added to Valentine.

“Seems like,” Valentine said. Zak lined up his legworm behind another. Just behind them, in the center of the column of legworms, the Dispatcher waved a flashlight. The column turned and the legworms went single-file up toward the barn.

“If we go to battle line you, the girl, and the Grog can cling to the cargo netting,” Zak said. “Keep your heads down.”

Valentine learned what battle line was as soon as they crested the hill and turned their line north. Another sky-cracking explosion over the barn sent a legworm humping over from the other side of the hill, its riders hanging on for their lives. The line of battle-ready legworms twitched, but stayed in station front to back.

“They're coming. Flank facing offside,” Cookie called, listening to his headset.

Zak and his team slid off the top of their worm, as did riders all along the battle line, digging their hooks, goads, and spikes into the thick patches of dead flesh. Women and teenage boys with rifles, hooks looped around their chests and attached to their ankles, joined the fighting line, adding their guns.

The column moved in the direction the fleeing legworm had just abandoned. Valentine readied himself for what would be on the reverse slope of the hill when they topped it.

Cookie slapped his thigh, headset to his ear. “Zak, we got 'em. They're in the field, not halfway across, in open order.”

Cheers and foxhunting hallos broke out all across the Dispatcher's line of legworms as the news spread.

Zak's mount crested the hill and came down the other side, turning slightly as it followed the worm directly ahead.

Twenty or more legworms crept—or so it looked in the distance—in three columns across the contest field toward the Bulletproof camp.

Valentine took comfort in the thick length of legworm between him and the Wildcats. It was like shooting from a moveable wall. He thought of stories he'd read of fighting warships, their lines of cannons presented to each other. In naval terminology, the Bulletproofs were “crossing the T” against the oncoming Wildcats.

The Dispatcher's legworm followed theirs, and the one behind his let loose with a whooshing sound.

“The pipe organ's firing!” Gibson yelled. “Yeeeah!”

Streams of sparks cut down the hillside and exploded in the earth among the columns. The Wildcat legworms began to turn and get into line to present their own bank of rifles to the Bulletproofs, but the mounts kept trying to get away from the explosions.

Machine guns from the front Wildcat legworms probed their line, red tracers reaching for the riders. Another Wildcat firework burst above and Valentine felt the legworm jump, but it had overshot.

The Bulletproof column accelerated. Zak employed his sharpened hook to urge the legworm along and close the gap that opened between his mount and the one ahead. Zak still had his rifle slung; his job was to keep his beast in line, not fight.

Now the two masses of legworms, the Bulletproof's tightly in line and moving quickly, the Wildcats' in an arrowhead-shaped mob, converged.

Ahn-Kha sighted and fired. “Damn,” he said, loading another shell. He shot again. “Got him.”

A legworm in the Wildcats turned and others writhed to follow or to avoid its new course. Ahn-Kha picked off another driver.

“That's some kind of shooting,” Cookie said. Ahn-Kha ignored him, fired again, swore.

The front end of the Bulletproof column began to fire. It had run ahead of the Wildcats; the marksmen got an angle on the exposed riders clinging to the right sides of their mounts.

The Wildcat column dissolved into chaos. Each legworm turned and hurried back toward their camp as fast as the hundreds and hundreds of legs could carry their riders.

Cheers broke out all across the Bulletproof line.

“That's how you win a scrap!” Gibson said. “Tight riding. Damn if Mandvi can't point a column.”

“It's because we were ready for them,” Zak said, nodding to Valentine.

“Cease fire,” Cookie shouted, radio headset still to his ear—though no one but Ahn-Kha was shooting. The Wildcats retreated in disorder.

Valentine hadn't used a single bullet.

More rounds of Bulletproof were being issued as riders danced jigs. Other legworms, still with armed riders, circled the barn at a distance, though the scouts had claimed that the Wildcats were decamping and heading for higher ground to the east.

“Zak, I take it you're willing to give our friends a ride north, now,” the Dispatcher said. “And if you aren't, I'll make it an order.”

“Of course I'm willing. I'm willing to dig a hole to hell if that's where they want me to drive my worm.”

“Your sister can go watch your string,” the Dispatcher said.

“Wormcast.” Tikka kicked a stone.

Duvalier hung on Valentine's arm, but it was play; she felt stiff as a mannequin. “Better luck next time.”

“What's your destination over the Ohio?”

“We're trying to find an old relative,” Valentine said. “She's come up in the world, and we're going to see if she'll set us up.”

“Take Three-Finger Charlie, Zak,” the Dispatcher said. “He's got connections with the smugglers. Tell him to trade egg hides if he has to, I want these folks set up so they can pass through the Ohio Ordnance in style.”