Winter Duty (38 page)

“What reply should we give, in your opinion?” Tikka asked.

“Why should my opinion matter?” Valentine asked.

“I trust it, for one,” Tikka said.

“I’m . . . uneasy. Everyone in the Kurian Order seems to be shouting ‘surrender’ or at least ‘keep out’ at Kentucky. I can’t make sense of it. I don’t mean to denigrate the land or the people, but it’s not like Kentucky is filled with industries they’d miss and resources they can’t get anywhere else.”

“There’s the coal,” Tikka said. “And the Cumberland’s the easiest route to the east coast in the South.”

“Perhaps they are more worried about invasion than we thought. I can’t help but feel there’s something here very important to the Kurian Order.”

“What? We know about what they did here; they weren’t at all secretive about it. There are no big tracts of the country that are off-limits. A few towers in Lexington, a few more in Louisville. The legworm meat? The big plants up in Louisville fill boxcars with canned protein every day. I was told some of it even gets traded overseas.”

Valentine tried to keep his mind on the possibilities in the Kurian strategy, rather than the possibilities behind Tikka’s uniform shirt buttons. “Without food it’s hard to grow your population. Maybe that’s all it is: They don’t want to lose their free-labor butchery.”

“Perhaps its just geography. If Kentucky becomes a Freehold, the Free Territory extends from the foothills of the Appalachians to Mexico. That’s a lot of people and a lot of resources, more than many countries in the world have.” Tikka worked her fist into her palm. “The Assembly said that they wanted to hear from me before they make their final decision. Whichever way I go, I think the rest of the Alliance will follow.”

“That’s quite a responsibility.”

“Well, if someone else made the decision and I didn’t agree, it’d drive me straight into a froth.”

Valentine smiled at her.

“I think we should tell them to make like a frog and boil. I’m sure they want us to disarm, get complacent, and then they’ll give us the works anyway.”

“It’s happened before,” Valentine said, meaning both throughout human history and in relations with the Kurian Order.

That night the reunited elements of the Kentucky Alliance held a celebration. All along the hillside impromptu bands started up their fiddles and guitars, or raucous parties rolled out the barrels of beer and casks of bourbon.

The locals knew how to live well. Any excuse for a celebration. The sentries and flankers were out and paying attention to their duties, so it wasn’t all revelry.

Valentine didn’t join in. He was tired from the trip and worried about what the Kurians were hatching in their towers, and he was in no mood for carousing—especially with negotiations at an impasse and an enemy army just across the river.

Chieftain and Silvertip were content to load up with food and settle down by Valentine and Duvalier.

“In another time,” Duvalier said, “all we’d be worried about now is keeping New Year’s resolutions. High-carb or lo-carb diets.” Duvalier had the pinched look of someone on a no-food diet, but then her stomach gave her difficulty under the stress of field cooking.

“I’ve plenty of resolve. I just hope I’m granted the strength to see it through. Then another generation will get to worry about their carb intake,” Valentine said.

“I don’t know about that,” Silvertip said. “I don’t think the old world’s ever coming back. Good riddance to it.”

Chieftain stood up. “Not this speech again. I’m going back for seconds. I’ll have fourths by the time he’s done.”

Silvertip gave him an elaborate double-index-finger salute. “You just don’t know wisdom when you hear it. I say it’s all got to come down. Everything: Kurian Order, the Free Territories. Let’s say we beat the Kurians—we’re not just restoring the United States as it was. There’s Grogs settled all across in their bands from the swamps in North Carolina through Indianapolis, St. Louis, the Great South Trail and then up Nevada and out to Oregon. We just going to put them on reservations? Exterminate them? The Kurians have ruined half of mankind and impoverished the rest. Southern Command’s handed out land right and left. Suppose some relations show up with old deeds saying it’s theirs?

“It’s all gonna get burned down, and then maybe the decent folks will rebuild civilization. The honest and diligent and talented will find others of like mind and start setting up again. It’ll be ugly for the Kurian herds, but maybe their kids or their grandkids will be human beings again. That’s why your legion’s bound to fail, beg your pardon, Major.

“In the end, we’ll be thanking the Kurians. They gave us a challenge and we’ll end up better for it, the way a forest fire helps the trees thrive. Gotta burn away the rubbish once in a while.”

Valentine disagreed but knew better than to get into a heated argument with a Bear. Most of Valentine’s command would be “rubbish” in Silvertip’s taxonomy. Time would tell.

Chieftain returned with a piece of newspaper filled with honey-dipped apple slices. “He give you the
world’s got to burn down
speech?”

Valentine bedded down with the sounds of music and celebration still echoing from the hillside.

Duvalier shook him awake in the predawn.

“There’s something brewing across the river. Can you hear it?”

Valentine went to the riverbank. There was still enough night air for the sound to carry; his Wolf’s ears did the rest. A steady crunch and soft clatters and clanks like distant, out-of-tune wind chimes sounded from the screen of growth and trees across the river.

Frat was already at the riverbank, on his belly with a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Valentine asked.

“We’re about to get served by the Host,” Frat said.

“Run to the A-o-K headquarters and tell Tikka that they’re coming.”

Frat passed the binoculars to Valentine and took off.

Flashes of light, like distant lightning, lit up the eastern riverbank ridge. Valentine saw the red lines of shells pass overhead.

They landed among the mortar tubes and wagons parked on the hillside.

“Those rotten bastards,” Silvertip said, roused by the smell of action. “May they all rot in Kurian innards, or whatever happens when they dine.”

“I have a feeling it’s about to become unhealthy in these trees. We’d better fall back to the hill,” Valentine said.

He made sure of Duvalier and his weapons and pulled everyone out of the woods, turning them south so they moved parallel to river and hill until they made it outside the box of artillery.

The Host executed their attack well. Valentine grudgingly granted them that. Artillery shells exploded in the vehicle park and all along the artillery line, sending up plumes of black-rimmed gasoline explosions. Smaller secondary explosions from readied mortar shells added to the dirt in the air.

Branches and undergrowth up and moved on the opposite bank, as though the Birnam Wood suddenly decided to move a few yards toward the Ohio.

Boats shot through the gaps in the riverbank growth. Lines of the Host—it looked as though most were Moondaggers—splashed into the water and then fell into the boats, where they picked up paddles and began to paddle madly across the river.

The pontoon boat seemed to spark, and suddenly smoke began to pour out of its windows and lower doors. Strange gray smoke, to be sure, but it did its job obscuring the river.

“I know that smoke,” Valentine said. “Ping-Pong balls and match heads. Like ten thousand or so.”

The smoke billowed and spread under the influence of the wind, advancing toward them at an angle like a flanking army.

Valentine was of the opinion that many battles were won or lost before the first shot was fired. One side just did a better job of getting more force into a position where it could strike than the other. Such was the case here.

The Kentucky Alliance could see it as easily as he could and decided to get while the getting was good, as a few of their own artillery shells fell blind into the mass of smoke.

“Let’s get out of here!” Frat shouted.

“Bastards. Let me at ’em,” Chieftain said.

“You’ll fall back with the rest of us,” Valentine said, grabbing the giant by the shirt collar and dragging him back.

Silvertip, not yet full of battle fury and able to think, yanked Valentine so hard in the tug-of-war with Chieftain’s anger that the potential daisy chain broke. Valentine had to check to see if he left his boots behind. Bee did a three-limb galumph up and into the smoke.

As Silvertip dragged Valentine up the riverbank slope, he observed that the Moondagger artillery fire must have been heavy and accurate. The smoldering Alliance vehicles had been burned beyond belief.

With a scattering of fleeing Gunslingers, Valentine joined the route away from the riverbank, running as though hell itself followed.

Another Kentucky disaster to add to his list. At least Southern Command wasn’t involved with this one, and at best it would be a minor, two-paragraph notation in the newspapers.

Valentine made it over the hill, and suddenly the trees were thinner and he was into pasture.

He pulled up. A long line of foxholes and headlogs and machine-gun nests stood before him. Behind there were piles of logs and the A-o-K’s few armored cars.

This was no slapdash last line of defense but a prepared position. It was obviously quickly done. The fire lanes were imperfectly cleared and the knocked-over trees didn’t have their branches trimmed as they should have, but it provided ample if imperfect cover for the reserve.

An A-o-K sergeant took Valentine back to Tikka’s headquarters. Valentine heard regular reports of strength and direction coming in from observers on the ridge—she’d scared up a field-phone system from somewhere. Probably captured Moondagger equipment.

The Host came over the ridge in three attacking waves with a skirmish line trotting hard out in front, whooping and yelling. Their cries of victory as they drove the last few Alliance members like rabbits turned into confused alarm as they realized what they’d just stuck their head into.

An old trainer had once told Valentine that firefights won by just putting more SoT—shit on target—than the other guy. With the lines of riflemen backed by machine gunners, who were backed by light cannon and .50 calibers on the trucks and improvised armored cars, the Kentucky Alliance was throwing a pound of shit for every ounce hurled back by the dismayed Moondaggers.

The Gunslingers and Tikka’s A-o-K had a deadly effect. Valentine saw limbs of trees and entire boles fall in the holocaust sweeping across the Kentuckians’ front. What it did to the enemy could only be imagined.

They fell in rows, replaced by more men pouring up and over the hill.

“Get on up there,” an Alliance captain shouted, pointing at the advancing Moondaggers.

“Go on then,” Valentine called to Chieftain.

“About fuckin’ time. Aiyeeeee!”

The Bear ran forward, spraying with this double-magazined assault rifle. When he emptied both ends of ammunition, he planted the gun on its long bayonet and drew his tomahawks.

Valentine settled for employing his Type Three. Duvalier, hugging a protective tree trunk like a frightened child gripping its mother, used Frat’s binoculars to spot for him. Valentine squeezed shot after shot out, picking out officers for the most part.

Duvalier also seemed to be going by beard length.

They weren’t men; they were funny targets in dark uniforms and hairy faces. A beard on a field radio fell. A beard firing a signal flare—down. A beard setting up a machine gun on a tripod to return fire—knocked back into the grass.

Shouts and whoops started up from the Gunslinger and A-o-K lines, and a second wave of riflemen went up and forward, passing through and over the first wave, who covered them with fire laid down on the retreating Host.