Winter Duty (21 page)

“Is that all?” Duvalier said. “You let me in to the plant again, and I’ll arrange that.”

“How?” Valentine asked, unaccountably nervous at the idea.

“I’ll know that when I get there.”

“When will we attack the bridge? Strong daylight?” Lambert asked.

“No,” Valentine said. “We’ll need dark, with no moon. The bridge is too well-guarded for anything else.”

“I don’t like breaking up my Bears,” Gamecock said. “They’re too used to working together as a team.”

“You won’t have to,” Valentine said. “That bridge is a job for a whole regiment—which we don’t have—or one man. If he’s there, I’ll get him.”

Duvalier stiffened. “Val, the last time you went off on your own wildcatting, it took me and a town full of Grogs to go get you back. Let me go.”

“No, you’re going to be busy at the power plant, getting it back in once piece.”

They worked out a plan involving Duvalier, the Wolves, and the Bears creating a diversion at the power plant, while Valentine and Brother Mark made a try for the Kurian on the bridge.

The big basement in the Legion House—as the men were beginning to call it—was something of a treasure trove. Besides a spare generator and the new communications room (inhabiting what had been before then a wine cellar; the precise climate control equipment was kind to the electronics—and the operator), it had an old bar that was now filled with boxes and odds and ends of the previous occupants, arranged like sedimentary layers in an archaeological dig. There were a few holdovers from when it was a nature center: glass cases and displays. Valentine planned to empty them and return them to the “lobby” behind the main doors, where they could post Javelin memorabilia. Above that were the stored clothes from the owner and his family, elegant suits and dresses too delicate for his men to make much use of. Then above that were piles of Moondagger clothing, uniforms and slipperlike footwear and odd Kurian icons, the most artful of which was a wooden frieze of the curve of the Earth’s surface in near-silhouette, as though drawn from a picture taken from orbit, with a great nail like a railroad spike driven through it. The spike had curious etchwork in it. Valentine would have to have Brother Mark take a look at it when things calmed down and see if he could make anything of it.

Valentine found an interesting, richly woven Moondagger outfit that looked part prayer robe and part dress clothes and part military outfit. It must have belonged to some high-ranking Moondagger, judging from the beautiful knitwork around the collar and seams and cuffs. It had an attractive cummerbund or waist-wrap—he wasn’t sure of the word—of a flexible material like a bandage that had numerous zip pockets. Inside, Valentine even found a little Ordnance currency.

Valentine had sought find some decent attire from the ex-owner’s wardrobe, an outfit suitably impressive and redolent of status, but the Moondagger robe-uniform might serve even better.

Luckily it didn’t smell—some of the Moondagger stuff was now rank and musty beyond belief.

With his clothes selected, Valentine and Brother Mark worked out a rough timetable. It was a cloudy night, as had become usual as November wore on.

He and Brother Mark put together a small truck and a canoe, tying it in the bed and on the roof and looking for all the world like they were departing for a fishing trip.

Then it was a bumpy drive with Valentine, Brother Mark, and a Wolf corporal at the wheel. He knew the roads, trails, and railroad cuts for miles around and promised to get them to the other side of Owensboro—a town that was still more or less neutral. Wolf scouts had gone into town, overcoats thrown over their uniforms but weapons carried openly, and eaten at a diner with Ordnance soldiers at another table. They both paid their bills with Ordnance currency. Kentucky might be semi-free, but it was still integrated with the Kurian Order economically.

Discussion about the quality of the apple pie available in Owensboro or the amazing coffee at the Hitch had to be curtailed when they parked above the river. Valentine and the Wolf scouted and decided they were near enough to the bridge to make it a quick trip but far enough to avoid observation from the guards. Valentine and their driver set about untying the canoe while Brother Mark set out food and thermoses. They were all in for a long, cold night.

“Cold night,” Brother Mark said. His breath steamed on the riverbank in the shadow of the bridge on the northeast side. They had left the Wolf back with the truck. “So much for our In—long-lingering summer.”

“Indian summer, you mean,” Valentine said. “Indian summer’s a good thing, especially up among the lakes in Minnesota.”

The Quisling guards didn’t have any dogs on this side; Valentine was thankful for that. He’d heard barking up on the bridge at the guard change and briefly worried about patrols.

The bridge itself was elegant, a delicate-looking road bridge. Two tall pylons, one at the north end, one at the south, supported the bridge with a series of cables. They looked rather like a pair of matching spiderwebs, Valentine thought. The cables weren’t tied to bigger main cables such as in more famous suspension bridges such as the Golden Gate. Instead they all linked to one of the two supporting pylons.

“You near enough?” Valentine asked.

“There’s a Kurian on that bridge. That’s all I may determine.”

“What does it feel like?” Valentine asked.

“How do you mean?”

“The mental impression they give. Is it a voice, or thoughts?”

“It’s like a chill. An open window on a still winter day in an otherwise warm room. Like the heat is leaving my body and flowing toward—it.”

Valentine thought it odd that Brother Mark might be describing the cold tingle that sometimes came over him when he passed close to a Reaper.

“I just need to know where to go.”

“Somewhere high, is my guess. They can sense longer distances that way without the clutter of animal and vegetable life.”

Valentine looked at the riverbank. The Ohio was lined with refuse, mostly bits of plastic: bags, cracked bottles with blocky lettering advertising energy and stamina, cartons that looked like they were meant to hold eggs, chunks of foam clinging together like the chunks of ice Eliza hopped across to escape slavery.

There’d been a saying among the workers at Xanadu in Ohio—he’d learned it while digging ditches:
Flush it in Ohio, and it washes up in Indiana.
Valentine had taken it to mean that the less competent of the Northwest Ordnance were given duties in Indiana, but it appeared the phrase had a literal truth to it as well.

Owensboro, across the river, slumbered. There were burned-out ruins on the north side near the older of the town’s two bridges. The closer of the two had long since collapsed—or been destroyed to simplify the border between Kentucky and the Indiana portions of the Ordnance. The “new” bridge was a little over a mile to the west, linking a bypass road that ran around the edge of what had been the suburban part of the old river town.

The Wolf had told him that Owensboro was a lively little town, popular with shady traders who brought Kurian Order products into Kentucky and returned with legworm hides, crafts, tobacco, bourbon, and marijuana. The big conference center practically in the shadow of the old bridge was still intact, the site of a bustling flea market on “Market Saturdays” every other week.

Valentine searched the bridge. He found what he was looking for even without Brother Mark—a little cocoonlike structure high on the north pylon of the bridge.

“There,” Valentine said, pointing.

Brother Mark squinted. “I am afraid my vision is not what it once was.”

Valentine handed him some binoculars. There must have been enough light for him to see, for he followed the delicate cabling of the bridge up to the north pylon.

“Temporary,” Brother Mark said. “That, my daring Valentine, is the Kurian equivalent of a hammock-tent. Or the Kurian is very small and very young, a new bud off an old sire. Where else would he get multiple Reapers?”

Brother Mark muttered something else about budding in secret or an authorized increase.

“Is he there?” Valentine asked.

“I’m—I think so. There’s some activity. As I said, it may be young. But it’s able to control multiple Reapers at once. It must be a prodigy.”

“All the more reason to kill it when it’s young.”

Brother Mark lowered the binoculars. “Savage.”

“It’s the truth, savage or no.”

Brother Mark reached into his pocket and extracted a bandless watch. “Better get on with it, then.”

Valentine changed into the black Moondagger robes and thick wool socks. He didn’t have a beard, but if he tousled his hair right, it gave him a mad, Rasputin-like air that went with the Moondagger apparel. He didn’t have the little curved knife many of them carried either; they were prized trophies for Southern Command’s soldiers.

The robes had plenty of room in the sleeves to hide his Cat claws on their breakaway twine.

“Go back to the boat,” Valentine told Brother Mark. “If you see a lot of shooting without the flare going off, just head back for the other side. If they loose the dogs in the woods, head back to the other side. If I’m still alive, I’ll figure some way back, hopefully through Evansville. I’d rather not swim in this water if I don’t have to. We’ll have a frost by morning, judging from this wind, and I don’t want to die of hypothermia thanks to wet clothes.”

Brother Mark’s lips writhed. “I’ll do what I can to confuse matters.”

“You’ll do nothing. The Ordnance bridge guards are professional soldiers. I broke through a sentry point once and they chased me across half of Kentucky.”

“No, I was referring to our friend in that oversized wasp nest. I have some . . . abilities where our Kurian friends are concerned, and if it’s an inexperienced mind, I may be able to keep him occupied so you can approach with him unaware.”

“I’m glad I decided to bring you along,” Valentine said.

“Further proof that I’m good at what I do,” Brother Mark said. “Hurry along now, daring Valentine.”

Brother Mark was a man of deep waters—if he was a man. Valentine was beginning to wonder if he was in fact a Lifeweaver.

But he didn’t have time to think about it. The Bears were scheduled to hit the power plant in two hours—or when Valentine sent up a green flare.

He took his Type Three out of the horsehide sleeve, checked the action, placed a magazine inside it, and tucked his Cat claws into the wide sleeves of the Moondagger uniform-robe. With that, he set off up the riverbank.

Valentine considered trying to bull his way through with his brass ring and the Moondagger outfit, but it looked like the sight lines for the guard posts covered the entire bridge. If he passed one they’d be able to see him all the way to the other.

Plus, there was a shadowy figure in the middle of the bridge that Valentine knew, without a doubt, was a Reaper. Undoubtedly there to guard its master Kurian in its nest high above.