Valentine's Rising (16 page)

“I'll pass word around as soon as the morning patrol comes in,” she said.

“Lieutenant Frum, you think you could send out your men as sentry? I'd hate to have a convoy come by for refueling and spot the whole bunch of us.”

Bullfrog nodded. “Sure, Captain.”

“Anything overnight?”

“Another train, pulling south; men returning to Texas and Louisiana, looked like,” Frum said.

“The Ozarks seem good and pacified,” Meadows said. “We're beat and they know it.”

“Always interesting times, the pause between conquest and exploitation. I wonder if they're as organized as they think they are,” Styachowski said. Valentine's selection of documentation from Bullfrog's files had given her quick mind enough to make a guess as to what the column's next move would be.

“Or if we're as beat as they think we are,” Valentine added.

 

Valentine stood at one of the glassless windows above the entrance to the office building, on the second floor. Bullfrog hadn't gotten around to reclaiming this floor of the building yet. Birds flitted in one side of the building and out the other, zipping over low cubicles and around offices.

Creeper and broken glass crunched underfoot as he tottered to the window, glad that the men hadn't seen Ahn-Kha half carry him upstairs. The men and women who had followed him out of General Martinez's camp sat around the door of the lot and in the notch leading toward the main entrance; unformed, unranked, a mass of faces and variegated uniforms—some still damp, Valentine noted, from a quick wash. Some elbowed others at Valentine's appearance, and faces turned up toward them. The chatter stilled.

The silence of their anticipation made Valentine oddly uncomfortable.

Valentine inflated his lungs, ignored the pain in his rib. “You all know about the Cats, am I right?”

“Yes, sir,” a few answered back. Valentine thought about making them all holler a response back at him, but he wanted an honest conversation with the men, not an oration filled with theatrical tricks.

“They work behind the Kurian line,” Valentine said. “Sometimes in their uniform. I've done it on more than one occasion.”

He let that sink in for a moment before continuing. “We're making for what's left of Southern Command in the Boston Mountains. But if we keep going as we are, snaking back and forth, backtracking and sidestepping, we'll only show up sick, hungry, unarmed and tired—if we make it at all. If you men are willing, I know a way we can ride instead of walk, and join our comrades with rifles in our hands and ammunition in our cartridge cases.”

They perked up at this. Even the jokers and snoozers in every informal assembly of personnel shut their mouths and fixed eyes on him.

“There'll be risks,” Valentine continued. “But the risk of getting across the Arkansas River and through the lines with an unarmed column this big is about the same, by my calculations.

“So we have to balance the likely risks with the possible rewards. Anyone who isn't up for it, anyone who wants out of the game, can stay here with Colonel Meadows and Lieutenant Frum. Guerrilla service is just as honorable, just as important. But I have to make it to the Boston Mountains for reasons of my own. Anyone who wants to follow me, meet at the hollow where Lieutenant Post and and the Wolves are guarding the wagons.”

“Then what?” Styachowski asked from among the audience. Just as they'd arranged when Valentine went over his prepared speech with her.

“Then we shave, strip and sew.”

 

“Get out of the way of the trucks, like obedient little Quislings,” Valentine ordered over his shoulder to Post, who signaled with an arm to pull the files off the paved road. Valentine leaned against the base of an old traffic signal pole on the outskirts of Little Rock and waved first to a motorcycle, then to the trucks as they passed on southward. Only ten feet of the pole remained; the rest of it lay in an overgrown ditch atop an engine block. But ample enough for leaning.

Valentine pulled off his helmet and rubbed his newly bald skull as he surveyed the column. The fuzzy-headed troops looked good enough in their Quisling uniforms, though they marched poorly. They were all shorn of their hair, and even the elaborate mustaches and beards—the pride and joy of many of the soldiers of Southern Command—had been left on the dead leaves in the woods near Bullfrog's station.

He had organized his footsore charges into three parts after leaving seventy-odd men and women tired of the trail or unwilling to face the risks of operating in the enemy's uniform. At the lead were Finner's Wolves, bereft of their beloved buckskins. They now wore the uniforms of the TMMP, an acronym for the Trans-Mississippi Mounted Patrol—the military police of Solon's newborn empire, entrusted with everything from guarding rail bridges to directing traffic. He, his officers, the Bears and the Jamaicans wore the simple, shapeless uniforms of recruits newly incorporated into the Quisling AOT—Army of the Trans-Mississippi.

At the center of the column, teams of four “recruits” each carried a Quickwood beam on their shoulders, faking exercises under the shouted direction of their NCOs. Mrs. Smalls rode in one of the wagons with the camp equipment; her husband and son led teams carrying the sick. The family had insisted on coming along, so that Mrs. Smalls could have her baby in the hospital reported to be in Little Rock. Valentine thought she stuck out like a cardinal in a coven.

Valentine watched the southbound trucks kick up gravel from the potholes with hungry eyes. In his days with the Wolves, a lightly armed convoy of six trucks falling into his lap would have been cause for celebration. He would have waited for signals from the observation scouts, then pitched into the convoy if his scouts flashed the all clear. The Quislings were sure of themselves if they were sending trucks with nothing more than a motorcycle and sidecar leading the way down the long road to Hot Springs. General Martinez must not have been too aggressive in the eastern Ouachitas over the winter, and Bullfrog only attacked the occasional Quisling target at night.

When the way cleared he got his column up and moving again. He stayed by his signal post, watching the men's faces as they walked toward Little Rock. A few looked excited, even eager to play the game, but others wore their fear like lead overcoats. They moved with the deliberative plod of men too tired and hungry to hope.

“Let's step out a little more, Calgary,” Valentine called to a former Guard shuffling down the road with a hangdog expression. “We're having a hot meal tonight.”

Calgary picked up the pace and smacked his lips, pleased for some reason to be recognized. Valentine felt better too. The weeks of starts and stops, double-backs, circling, hunger and cold in the hills, and soggy, fireless camps, keeping seven hundred men out of the way of Quisling patrols, were over. They were right where Valentine had placed his finger on the map at the conference the night they left Colonel Meadows and Bullfrog, and his column had all solemnly shaved their heads—starting with Ahn-Kha's destruction of Valentine's shoulder-length locks. At first it had been play, learning the AOT and TMPP ranks, working on their imaginary stories as mercenary recruits in Arkansas, or up from the swamps of Louisiana or the woods of East Texas, looking to seek their fortune in the new empire Solon was raising.

When they emerged from the hills and turned up the road for the old state capital, the men grew more and more anxious as the task became real, rather than just an imagined challenge in the future. At a rest halt, Valentine gathered the men and spoke to them as best as he could, relaying details of a plan he had kept from all save Ahn-Kha, though he suspected Styachowski had an inkling. When the time came to speak to them he had the men unharness the wagons and rest on a hillside, making a natural amphitheater.

“You all know I'm a Cat,” he finished, booming the words out so all could hear. “As of today, you're all Cats too. We're going to pretend we're Quislings recruits. Lieutenant Frum has phoned in to headquarters here the happy news that he's finally met, indeed overfilled, his recruitment quota. We've got faked documents requisitioning us food, new clothing, shoes and weapons. You've all suffered because of shortages of those things. The Quislings in the Ruins have plenty, and we're going to trick them out of them, get across the river and rejoin Southern Command. Just keep your mouths shut. One loose tongue could do us all in.”

So as they approached the Ruins, Valentine needed something to get their minds off their situation. Most of the men were worried they were walking right into a prison yard, the intermediate holding place leading to the inevitable Reaper embrace.

“How about a song, Jefferson. An old marching tune. ‘Yellow Rose of Texas,' anyone?”

“Huh?” Jefferson said, looking down from his wagon.

“Narcisse, I've heard your singing. Give us a song,” Valentine said.

“One everyone can sing?”

“If you can think of one.”

Narcisse ran her tongue beneath her lips. “Lesseee . . .

The men took up the march with a will. They began stepping out in time; some, used to singing hymns or just musically inclined, added harmonies. Even the Jamaicans knew the words.

While the song lasted Finner fell in beside him.

“Captain, you sure about what you're doing?”

Valentine considered telling him to shut his mouth and obey orders, but the man who'd brought him south from Minnesota deserved better. “Commanding one of the worst marches in Ozark history. I'll let Consul Solon take care of transport from now on.”

“But from the Ruins? Why not grab some boats and just cross at some quiet bend upriver? From a distance we'll look like a training march.”

“Styachowski says the AOT is scraping men from every border station. Little Rock is a supply depot. New formations are brought there now, to be equipped before being sent elsewhere.”

“If I had a suspicious mind I might be worried that you were marching everyone into a prison yard. That'd rate a brass ring and an estate in Iowa. If I had a suspicious mind, that is.”

“Would it make you feel better to know that I'm keeping your Wolves outside the wire?”

“It'd make me feel better. Don't know about the rest of these lunks. How far outside?”

“About seven miles. I want you to camp around Mt. Summit. We won't be in Little Rock for more than three or four days, I expect. If this turns bad we'll make for you if we can. You've got a good view of the old Highway 10 from there. If I need to talk to you and I can't come myself, I'll send Ahn-Kha or Post. Just a nice ride in the country. We'll have one of these red bandannas tied on our heads.”