Santo Domingo, May: The Kurians outside the rebel territories of the Roots divide their subjects into a simple caste system. A young Santo Domingan is born into life as a peon, engineer, artisan, or soldier. The peons are the most numerous. They are the laborers who work the plantations, on the docks, in the fields, and within the mines. These establishments are known as stations, named for what they produce and for the man in charge. "Sugar Sanchez" would be a cane-sugar farm managed by a man (or infrequently a woman) named Sanchez. Peons are born, live, and die on the same plantation, though women are sometimes married off to other stations. The engineers are hardly worthy of the title-they are construction laborers responsible for maintenance of roads and buildings who enjoy a more varied life than the peons. Artisans can be found in the workshops doing tasks which take more expertise, enjoying enough comforts in exchange for their skill that they could be called "bourgeoisie" by the French-speaking Haitians. And finally, there are the soldiers, many of whom live in hope of distinguishing themselves in such a way that they are promoted to "Station Manager."
Being born into a class does not mean you stay there. An unenthusiastic soldier will find himself in a peon's barracks at a nickel mine if he makes an enemy of one of his officers. A young, vigorous peon may get into the soldier class through superior performance at the "trials," yearly con-
tests held at some larger stations or towns by the Kurian Order's recruiters.
Geography plays a role in Santo Domingo's organization. The Kur control the island from the coastal cities, and as a traveler goes inland, the visitor will see less and less evidence of organization. The Cordillera Central, the Caribbean's highest mountains, are comparatively uninhabited save for runaway peons and hunting Reapers. And the roadwatchers.
After the death of his parents and siblings, when Valentine filled the hours of youth in the Padre's library, he read a book about the space program. Though the astronauts were deservedly the heroes of the story, Mission Control back in Houston was the real nerve center of the operation.
As he stood at the roadside stop of La Miel at the unofficial border, a month's worth of planning came to a climax. He felt like the NASA flight director, receiving last-minute reports from the Haitians, the Thunderbolt's crew, and even Santo Domingans before setting off.
He started off with Post, in charge of the core group of Thunderbolt marines and sailors who would use the machine guns brought off the ship.
"How are we doing with the ammunition for the belt-feds?" Valentine asked.
"I just finished checking it. The Haitians couldn't come up with any, or so they said. Leaving a supply on the ship, we've got a few thousand rounds, enough for one good fight unless we can pick some up."
"Let's have an 'alpha' gun and a 'beta' gun, then. Put the best gunner, by which I mean the least trigger-happy, on alpha. We'll just leave one belt with the beta team. The marines?"
"They're in good shape, plenty of rifle ammunition. I don't think anyone's got under sixty rounds-most have decided to carry over a hundred. About the same with the pack animals."
"Two canteens a man, at least, right?" Valentine asked.
"Yeah, some of the guys are carrying four."
"So far I haven't seen water being a problem, but we'll be moving fast. How are those pikes you came up with doing?"
Post shuffled his feet and looked down, but Valentine knew he was proud of his invention. Valentine had seen him working on them, and had a good idea of what Post was constructing, but he wanted his lieutenant to have his moment. Post waved a Coastal Marine over.
The man held an aluminum tube a good seven feet long. Valentine tested its heft.
"I wanted something light, of course. I found a bunch of aluminum pipe for electrical conduits in the machine shop. There was heaps of the stuff lying around in Kingston. It was easy to screw it together. Then we came up with the heads. It's that quickwood, threaded just like a pipe. Just a matter of screwing it in. It holds in well enough, but if we get a chance to stick it in a Reaper, it'll break off. Then you screw a new one."
He handed Valentine a sharpened cone of wood. It was perhaps sixteen inches long altogether, six inches of handle, threaded to go into the fitting at the end of the aluminum pole. The handle widened by an inch or so, before narrowing to a point capped with a sharp metal tip.
"I've seen those Reaper robes before. This'll penetrate," Post continued. "Material designed to stop a lead bullet doesn't do much good against a point like this. If things get dicey, you can grab a spare point by the handle and use it like a dagger. We've got an adapter for the rifles even, the men can put them on the end like a bayonet."
"The training with the Haitians?"
"We've got two pikemen to go with every rifleman. If it works like it is supposed to, the one with the shorter spear will stay in beside the rifleman. Then there's the man with the gun, and another with a long pike in back. Of course, that's only if we're up against a Reaper. Otherwise, the pike-men will be hugging dirt until they can get firearms."
"That's the whole point of this expedition."
Valentine met with Ahn-Kha next. The Grog held a mass of metal and wood the size of a ship's anchor in his arms.
"Practice with the crossbows?" Valentine asked.
"The new cords are holding better, my David."
"No shortage of nylon line on the Thunderbolt. Just a matter of weaving it together. We'll need Grogs for those. I don't think any of us are strong enough to cock a leaf-spring from a truck."
"Care to try?"
Valentine took the oversize crossbow. The wooden frame showed the usual Grog craftsmanship, from the reinforced trigger-housing to the heavy stock to balance the weighty span of metal at the front.
Valentine placed the crossbow on the ground, planted his feet against the reborn leaf-spring, and gripped the corded nylon. He heaved, and just managed to lock the cord over the trigger. He handed it back to Ahn-Kha, feeling sapped. Even a moment's exertion in Hispaniola's heat brought a fresh layer of sweat running over old accumulations of perspiration and dirt.
Ahn-Kha showed him one of the quarrels, also tipped with a metal point like Post's pikes. "See the wooden flutes? They will splinter in the wound. The quarrels are lacquered to keep the sap inside fresh."
"You're sure?"
"We shot a wild pig with one," Ahn-Kha said. "We dug inside, found half the shaft. The rest of the head shattered into splinters."
"How's it shoot?"
"Try."
Valentine lifted its weight with an effort. He tried to aim at a tree, but the weight of the crossbow defeated him.
Ahn-Kha snorted. "Try this." The Grog knelt into a three-point stance, and Valentine put the crossbow across his friend's back. Sighting on the tree was a good deal easier with a quarter ton of tripod. He tried the trigger.
The crossbow had more recoil than he'd thought, though it pulled forward rather than back into his shoulder. The quarrel spun oddly in flight; Valentine had only shot bows on occasion as a youth. The shaft buried itself into the tree trunk with a resounding thwack.
"We have four crossbows, and something even more interesting." Ahn-Kha threw a blanket off a lump on the ground, revealing something that looked like an old-fashioned cannon. Ahn-Kha unfolded a bipod at the nozzle, poured a measured amount of gunpowder in the muzzle, and tamped it down with a metal rod. Four wooden fins flared from the tip.
"It's a harpoon gun. Better range than the crossbows. The shaft might go clean through, but the fins will break off. We use loose-grain powder for this. The tight stuff launched it too fast-it didn't aim right."
"Seems a hell of a load to tote."
"The harpoon isn't the only thing it fires. We can load the head with explosives. It makes a good grenade thrower. I've designed one- and three-pound loads. We may find a use for them."
"We might at that," Valentine agreed.
He joined Jacques Monte-Cristi next. The guerrilla leader had an elongated face and deep hollows at his temples, as if a giant had grabbed his head as an infant and pulled his physiognomy into a new face. Gray frosted his shorn hair, and his eyes never rested. He had the lean, suspicious look that Valentine remembered from his years in the Wolves: that of a man who spent much of his time walking into danger.
"Have you heard from the others?" Valentine said. The French tripped off his tongue more easily with constant practice.
"My men reported that they are on the move. They will attack in the night the garrisons north and south of our route, and screen our movement into the central mountains."
"Rations?" Valentine had been asking the same questions for weeks, then offering advice until he got the answers he wanted. Now it was a matter of routine.
"Each man has two days, and we have a further two days on packhorses."
"Let's take a walk."
Valentine took a turn through Monte-Cristi's campsite. Two hundred armed men, aided by thirty "pioneers" who carried extra supplies and tended to the pack animals, were gathered in chattering groups. Valentine expected more tension on this, the morning of the expedition. Instead he heard singing, joking, and laughter from the clustered men. There was little formal command structure to Monte-Cristi's "regiment"; some of the guerrilla leaders had eighty men under them-some commanded a dozen. Valentine knew the names of only the leaders, and the men under them were a nameless mass, though he knew many faces by now.
They looked at Valentine as he passed through, smiling and nodding. He caught a word in Creole and smiled as he silently translated it. Valentine had heard a few men call him "Scar," and it seemed that the moniker had become general.
"How did you become responsible for all this?" Valentine asked after they had passed through the men.
"My 'sacred knives'? Pure obstinacy, Captain. It is not well known, but I am Santo Domingan."
"Why shouldn't it be well known?"
"The two sides of the island have bitter feelings going back before the Kur."
"I see. How did you end up on this side of the line?"
Monte-Cristi walked him out of the village and up the hillside and found a shady tree. They sat on the ground side by side and looked down at the lounging soldiers in the village. War, as always, was endless stretches of waiting. Fingernail-sized wildflowers bloomed in the morning sun.
"I was in the Santo Domingo underground. And we were literally an underground. We lived in natural caves and tunnels. I was in the 'cadre,' which I suppose meant officers. Mostly we exhorted others to join, and our men to stay.
Eventually they hunted us down to our caves and blocked us up. Two times they went in after us. None ever came out to tell how strong we were. So they turned to words. The National Guard promised us good treatment if we would come out, and we refused. They tried to smoke us out with burning tires. There is not much gasoline on this island, but they even used that. Some died choking. Have you ever seen a body of a man who is air-poisoned?"
Valentine shook his head.
"We began to go hungry, and the next time they sent a prisoner in with food and more promises, I gave my men a choice. They could leave with honor-they had already been asked to endure more than any man could be expected to survive and remain sane--but I would stay and die. I asked only that they leave me their knives, so I would have something to remember them by as I stayed in the cave."
"How many stayed?" Valentine asked.
"Very few, perhaps one in eight. And you know, I was glad. I felt that no man should have to die as we were, like some kind of vermin. Even if they marched them out to a firing squad, I thought that a better end.
"Those that remained ... became ugly. We stayed alive in there seven months. No food but what we could catch, water that tasted like sulfur. They sealed the entrance and made the cave a tomb though we were not yet dead. We sickened and died. Some of the men took their own lives. We kept alive in ways that only one who has been through it before would understand. I kept up hope by looking for other exits, or seeing if we could enlarge the air holes to get out. We did find a cave with bats and we ate them, and I remember those days as you might remember one of the finest feasts of your life.
"So how am I alive and out, you are wondering? Some of the very men who left me their knives had slipped away, and came into the hills to get our bones. Our remains were to be relics in a secret monument to the resistance, you see. When they found us, I had to be pulled up and out. We were walk-
ing skeletons. Sadly, three more men sickened and died eating too much when we got out. But I still had their knives, and offered them back to their families. When I was well enough, we slipped into Haiti. My heart is weak and sometimes I think I am a little crazy, for all I dream of is those days in the darkness. I keep away the desire to return and die in that cave by fighting."
"So you became a leader because you refused to give up? That's as good a way as any to become a hero."
"But I do not deserve it. There are legends already about our ordeal. In Santo Domingo they say I turned my men into zombies, and ate them; Here in Haiti they say Baron Samedi came and brought us food from the other world, and anyone who has eaten it is never the same again. Both legends are part truth and part falsehood. Ever since then I have been Monte-Cristi, the one who lives for revenge for all those who died in the cave. I fear I will return to the cave, either in body or spirit. Both would mean the death of me."
"Narcisse told me that you were the kind of man to fight to the last drop of your blood. Sounds like you came closer to doing it than anyone I've ever heard of."
Monte-Cristi did not smile. He was the only Hispaniolan Valentine had met who did not smile at the slightest opportunity. "The men are interested in you, too. Your ship, the Grogs, the Jamaican pirates, they already say you are a white Toussaint-Louverture. A man of cunning alliances."
"They say too much," Valentine said. He thought of adding a platitude, like, 'We all do what we can,' but decided it would be trite. The man sitting next to him was beyond aphorisms.
"I think someone looks for you," Monte-Cristi said, pointing down the hill.
"Lieutenant Post. Thank you for the story ... err ... do you have a rank? Colonel, perhaps?"
"I am just Monte-Cristi. I would feel happier if I were Jacques to you."
"Then I will always be David to you, sir."
"Your other responsibilities await. I should get back to my men."
They walked back down the hill. Valentine noticed that Monte-Cristi breathed heavily.
Post trotted up to him, showing no sign of wound or alcohol. "That bandy-legged fellow's back, sir," Post said. "He's asking for you."
"That 'bandy-legged fellow' is going to keep us alive in the mountains, Post. His name is Cercado, and we're counting on him to get us to San Jose."
"No offense, of course. He's just funny-looking, whatever he's good at."
Valentine found the funny-looking man in question at the village well, drinking. He was short of stature, potbellied, and naked from the waist up and knees down. Tangled hair covered his head, shoulders, and even something of his face. He was a "roadwatcher," the one with the most extensive network in central Hispaniola.
"Good news?" Valentine asked. He had learned in previous conversations with the roadwatcher that most items in his brain were categorized as either "good news" or "bad news." This valley was "bad news," for there were troops under an active officer. Another mountainside was "good news," because there were strawberries to eat and many honeycombs.
"Good news," Cercado reported. "The soldiers in the garrisons think they are going to be attacked along the mountain roads. They've sent out many patrols where the Haitians have gathered. We could take elephants over the mountains, and it would not be known for days."
"How about food reserves?"
"There could be much more, if you could let me go outside my personal network. And this business about putting caches everywhere-both north and south of the peaks- much of the effort will go to waste."
"Tell them if it is not eaten in four days, they may have it back. We could be forced to turn aside, or even back, and I want that food available. Also, just in case word does get out
and they find some of them, they might guess wrong about where we are going because of the supplies."
Valentine missed his days on the Thunderbolt. Being on a ship eliminated many of the problems of food and drinking water, thanks to her available tonnage of stores. He was back to the days of commanding Wolves in the mountains, constantly worrying about how and where he would feed his men.
"You've done all that I asked and more. Take a meal and sleep while you can. We'll be setting off this afternoon."
"I can sleep while walking. I shall find you on the south slope of the Nalga de Maco tonight. If you hear hollow-log drumming, that means bad news. Turn back."
"Yes, I remember."
"But you will hear no drums, I am sure. Our friends will cause too much trouble for that."
Valentine made a noncommittal grunt.
The column was already ascending the mountainside when they heard the shots. Some trick of acoustics among the clouds and hills brought the faint popping sound of small-arms fire and deeper explosions from the garrison to the south, where Bayenne was making as much noise as possible. His feint against the garrison guarding one of the valley passages into Santo Domingo was crucial to drawing away whatever patrols might be out north of the garrison.
The raiding column moved with Ahn-Kha and his Grogs in the vanguard. Valentine hoped their unexpected presence would frighten, or at least confuse, any patrols they ran into. The heavier weapons, along with the sailors and marines of the Thunderbolt, followed behind, with Post in charge of making sure the main body did not lose contact with the Grogs. The Haitians were next with the packhorses, accompanied by a mounted force of Monte-Cristi's men watching the front, flanks and rear.
Valentine, astride a Haitian roan with a white blaze across its face, walked the animal along the marching col-
umn of Monte-Cristi's men. A runner from the forward column sought him out.
"Bad news, sir. The forward van ran into a patrol. They shot at each other-no one was hurt."
Valentine said a prayer of thanks that the men Monte-Cristi chose for his runners spoke their Creole clearly enough for him to understand.
So the Santo Domingans were no fools. He had hoped their forces would pull in around the garrisons, fearing an all-out assault. Instead they were probing.
Hoofbeats behind announced the arrival of Monte-Cristi.
"We're found out already. The screening patrol Bayenne sent out missed them," Valentine said.
"Do we turn back?"
Valentine fought the urge to swear. "They're your men, no matter what we decided about the command. The risk is greater now, but I say no. I won't make it an order, however. We can go with less. Detach a good number of men, fifty or sixty, under a capable officer. Have them chase that patrol south and make it look like we're a flanking maneuver to cut off the garrison's road. If they do cut it, so much the better."
"And if they meet greater numbers in turn?"
"Then they run like hell for Bayenne or anywhere they think is safe. I want the Santo Domingans to do the bleeding, not us."
"Agreed. Papa Legba said you were a man to be followed, despite your years. We go on."
After a brief halt that allowed Monte-Cristi to organize the detachment, they got under way again. The column trudged steadily and slowly uphill. The sun vanished in a crimson explosion, then turned the sky over to the stars. With the night complicating matters, Post called frequent halts to allow the column to keep in a compact bunch. At every stop, the men ate some of their rations meant to last for two days, but Valentine left that to Monte-Cristi. He had been warned that the men preferred to carry their food in their stomachs instead of in their bags.
Cercado appeared out of the dark, with two skinny youths he introduced as nephews. The boys did not take after their uncle in grooming: their scalps were shorn like merinos in springtime.
"We had some trouble near the border. A patrol."
"I am sorry, Captain. Always in war is bad news. Always."
You just summed up war almost as concisely as Sherman, roadwatcher. "We're pressing on. You've got more of your family spread out up the mountain, and then down to San Jose?"
"Yes."
"How many are there?"
Cercado frowned. "Were it not for the accursed ones, there would be sixty-seven or more. My father had five sons and three daughters, and I am the second oldest. My father and my elder brother both died. Every year more die than are born. There are twenty-nine of us now. In ten years' time, the family of Cercado will cease to be, unless some of the infants survive. They hunt us up and down the mountains, and sometimes they find us."
"Why do you keep on?"
"Why do you?"
Valentine nodded at the feral-looking man, for a moment feeling an affinity for him stronger than his battle-tested friendship with Post. "I understand. I'm the last of my family."
"You are still young. Find a wife, have children, go far from them. There are other ways to beat them than killing."
"My father tried that. I'm still the last."
"I see. So you stick to killing." It was a statement, not a question.
Valentine looked back at the men. "How long until we can rest?"
Cercado took the question literally. "At the rate you go? A few more hours. Say five at most. Then you will be safe among the heights."
* * *
They reached the heights, grassy meadows on the rounded tops of the mountains that reminded Valentine of some of the weather-rounded peaks of the Ouachitas. They had come up far. Far higher than the mountain that held the Once-ler's Citadel. It was cool, even for Haiti in June, at this elevation.
Valentine walked his horse backwards down the column. He nodded at Monte-Cristi. "We'll rest until dawn," Monte-Cristi announced. The men groaned in relief as they sat.
There was Post to see, and Ahn-Kha. The Grogs were already sleeping in a heap of limbs and broad backs, like pigs seeking the comfort of each other's warmth in a cold sty.
"Rest, my David. I will keep watch," Ahn-Kha said.
"I'll join you. I can sleep in the saddle tomorrow."
"You are limping. You always do when you are tired. Stop pretending you're a ghost and rest," Ahn-Kha argued, sotto voce. Ahn-Kha's rubbery lips came to a point like an accusing finger.
"Wake me in two hours. Then you can sleep. Two hours, old horse, and that's all."
"Agreed."
Valentine unsaddled his mount and wiped the sweat from its back and muzzle. By the time he hobbled it, gave it a nosebag full of vegetables ground with sugar, and checked its hooves, half an hour of his two was gone. He looked at Ahn-Kha, standing atop a rock with the patience of a tree, as if the rock itself would succumb to fatigue before the Golden One would. Comforted, he slept beneath the statuelike shape.
"Up. You've been asleep two hours," Ahn-Kha said, prodding him in the back with one of his crossbow bolts.
Valentine snatched the bolt and rapped Ahn-Kha on the shin with it before the Golden One could react. "Thanks."
Ahn-Kha responded with a playful swipe of his long-toed foot that Valentine ducked under even as he rose. There was a hint of something in the air, the early purple of the
predawn. He realized he was chilled. "You lie down. My blanket's warm."
Ahn-Kha grunted and wrapped what he could of himself in the blanket. "Thank you, my David. That scout, Sera-"
"Cercado."
"Cercado kept awake. He moves well. I've never seen a man who can vanish among the rocks like that. Only you are more silent. But he hides even his shadow in his pocket."
"Speaking of silence ...," Valentine said.
The Grog snorted and closed his eyes.
Valentine watched the mists revealed by the dawn, admiring the craftsmanship of the crossbow quarrel while waiting out the light. The quarrel had chiseled ridges running down the shaft, creating an artful, air-guiding line from tip to flange. The Grogs put artistry into everything they made, even something meant to be fired once into an enemy.
The pink-and-blue of first light revealed his column isolated as though on the shores of an island, surrounded by a calm gray sea of fog. Everything was reduced at this height: the trees, grasses, and flowers were all smaller, as if imitating the foreshortened landscape below. He woke Monte-Cristi, who in turn woke his other chieftains. The soldiers gathered at a spring Cercado pointed out. Their guide's discovery was hardly more than a seep, but the men lined up as though it were a tiled bath.
Valentine wished for a moment he were one of them, joking as they waited for a washup. His thoughts drifted back, as they did with unsettling frequency, to the months of Quisling service on the Gulf Coast. Ordinary soldiers weren't asked to put on the uniform of their bitterest enemy, salute men they despised, organize more thorough sweeps of coastal islands and bays to capture auras for the insatiable Kurians. At the time he told himself, told Duvalier, that he just followed orders, didn't kill anyone himself unless they were shooting at him. Usually in defense of their families. Maybe Duvalier believed him. Trouble lay in that he couldn't convince himself. He could still hear the squalling
of terrified children as his men shoved them and their mothers into pens, ready to be shipped...
"The mists are a stroke of fortune," Cercado said from somewhere on the other side of the world. "If we move now, we can be back among the trees before they clear. It is downhill from here."
Valentine boxed up his terrible memories. For now. "Good. We'll get off this ridge while it lasts."
He endured a series of vexing delays while the men took up their arms and equipment. Only the packhorses were ready, happily cropping mouthfuls of mountain grass.
Post came up the slope from the head of the column as Valentine mounted his horse. "There's trouble with the Grogs."
Valentine rode off the ridge and came upon Ahn-Kha, arguing with his scouts. The Golden One used a combination of barks and gestures to encourage his reluctant charges.
"What's the matter?"
Ahn-Kha's ears were up and pointed forward. "Fools! They take the mists for poisoned air. They remember their grandfathers' tales of chemical weapons of fifty years ago, and they're frightened of descending into the fog."
"Post, keep the column moving, don't worry about the Grogs for now," Valentine said, using the quarrel to tap the horse's flank. It trotted down the grassy slope toward the fog.
"I'll ride in and come out alive," he hollered back. "Tell them I breathe just as they do." The mist closed in around him. The sun winked white on the horizon.
When he replayed the incident in his mind later, Valentine rebuked himself for forgetting everything old Everready had taught him about moving alone, his first year as a Wolf. He had failed to lower his lifesign and his anger at the delays kept his senses from knowing the Reaper was near until it leapt out of the mist.
It wanted him as a prisoner, not as a corpse, for it killed the horse with a kick that caved in the roan's skull. Man, beast, and Reaper crashed to the meadow grass. Man fell be-
neath beast; Reaper landed on its feet beside Valentine with feline poise. It turned, its bullet-stopping cape cracking the air like a whip.
Valentine reached for his holster, but the Reaper was faster. It planted a foot on him, and knocked away his automatic faster than his eyes could follow the motion.
His arm went numb. The Reaper reached behind him and removed his machete from its sheath across his back. Pinned as he was, he could no more grasp the machine gun strapped across his saddlebags than he could the mountaintop.
"Hel-," Valentine managed, before the Reaper's long-fingered hand closed over his face. Fingernails like steel talons dug into his cheek.
The Reaper dragged him out from under the horse by his head, its baleful yellow eyes staring into his from an unkempt tangle of thin black hair. Its mouth was open in a theater-mask grin, revealing pointed black teeth. It looked upslope at some motion Valentine caught out of the corner of his eye, and pulled its captive to its chest, putting the other arm under his knees, like a muscular hero taking up his lover. The Reaper turned to run.
Valentine struck. In pulling him free, the Reaper released his trapped hand holding the quarrel. He gripped the wood near the point and struck the Reaper in the pit of its stomach. The Reaper staggered, gripping him so tightly to its chest, he thought his back would break. Valentine fought the crushing embrace and lost. He could not draw breath.
Suddenly Post was in front of them, one of his pikes barring the way. Valentine looked up at the Reaper's face. Its mouth yawned open in a terrible grimace, fighting some inner seizure. It dropped him, and sank to its knees.
Valentine rolled downhill. He turned three full revolutions before stopping himself. Vision wavering from pain and dizziness, he looked up at the Reaper. Its eyes rolled up into its skull. Post stood frozen, staring at the thing in astonishment.
Ahn-Kha appeared in the mists, his crossbow cocked and ready. The Grog circled the Reaper, and saw the bolt protruding from the stomach, the wood swollen where it touched the avatar's flesh. Ahn-Kha came to Valentine's side, keeping the weapon ready but his attention on Valentine.
"My David. You are hurt?"
Valentine shook his head, cradling his right arm. "Not seriously. I think my hand ... or my arm is banged up good." What he wanted to say was that it stung like a son of a bitch, but Ahn-Kha never complained of discomfort, so why should he?
"I heard your horse fall, and feared for you. I readied the crossbow, for only one of those would get the better of you, and came. Post, too."
"Stupid," Valentine grunted, flexing his fingers.
"For leaving the column?"
"No, stupid of me. My apologies, my friend, I put us in danger because I wasn't thinking."
"There can be no apologies between us. Come! Let us see how this quickwood kills."
The Grog pulled him to his feet with burly ease. They walked up the hill, Valentine feeling like a Sioux version of Richard III, limping along horseless and with paralyzed fingers. The head of the column appeared out of the mists, Grogs among the Haitians with weapons at the ready.
Valentine inspected the dead Reaper. Propped up on its knees, it seemed to be howling at the waxing sun rising from the Santo Domingo mountains.
"Tell your great friend that he hit it square," Monte-Cristi said. "A good shot, near enough the heart to kill it in a few seconds."
"No, that was me. I barely stabbed it. The wood went in an inch or two at most, that thing has muscle like armor plating."
Valentine thought back on those "few seconds," which seemed to his pained remembrance to be hours at least, and looked into the empty yellow eyes of the Reaper. He tried to
imagine what it would feel like, having the heart harden into a solid mass. Did the Kurian at the other end feel the pain, as well? He found himself hoping so, before shrinking back from the sadistic speculations.
The men would waste the whole morning admiring the dead Reaper if he didn't move them along.
"Post, let's tighten the column up in this mist. Ahn-Kha, you and your Grogs will get a break for a while. Take a place at the rear."
As the various groups got themselves organized in four different tongues-counting Grog-speech as a language- Valentine retrieved his weapons and saddlebags. Monte-Cristi offered him his horse, but he declined. Penance for his foolishness would be being on foot for the rest of the long journey. A pair of Haitian pioneers retrieved the saddle and added it to the pack animals' burdens.
The Grogs looked at him, sniffing and pointing at the still-warm cadaver and muttering to each other. One licked its chops. Ahn-Kha growled something, and they turned abjectly away.
The Cat intervened: "Oh, belay that. They can dress and quarter it, as long as they do it quickly. But they have to share with any of the men who want a piece of horsemeat."
Valentine squatted in the hills looking down at the armory, which in turn stood in the hills above the dilapidated town of San Juan. Behind him, the serration crowned by Pico Duarte purpled the dawn's horizon.
His column had covered close to fifty mountainous miles in three nights and two days, and had once again been reduced when he detached Post to cut the valley road leading northwest out of San Juan to the garrison on Haiti's border. What was left of his command was hardly larger than the garrison inside the armory, if Cercado's estimation was to be believed.
Their march had been uncontested, if not uneventful, as they descended from the high mountains, following paths
staked out by Cercado and his family. Until they ran into a trio of Santo Domingan soldiers on patrol.
Monte-Cristi's horsemen had finally run the scouts to earth this morning, and the hunt ended tragically, with the shooting of all three scouts when they came to bay among some rocks. Valentine seethed at the loss of vital information even as he congratulated Monte-Cristi's men for their coup.
He examined the armory from higher ground. It was built more to withstand thievery than assault, though inside a perimeter fence of barbed wire the buildings were linked by a series of walls and wooden towers. The whole edifice had the slapped-togefher look endemic to the Kurian Zone.
"The defenses are strongest to the town side," Monte-Cristi said, agreeing with Valentine's estimation. "If we can get through the wire before they know we are here-"
"See all the dog kennels?" Valentine said. "They'd start barking while we were still fifty feet outside the wire."
"So we turn around?"
The temptation was strong. He'd seen the quickwood work, up close and far sooner than he'd expected. Valentine had no desire to burn the lives of Monte-Cristi's soldiers, who had come so far so fast without letting fatigue wear down their spirits. Valentine couldn't take all the quickwood he could carry and then leave Hispaniola no better off than the day he arrived.
But there was more than duty and orders at stake.
If the Roots accomplished something to make the march worthwhile, won a victory, it might bring more numbers to their cause. A successful raid that didn't involve being ignominiously chased back across the border would hearten the Roots as much as it would dismay the Santo Domingan Kurians. But it had to start somewhere.
"No. We can't blow them out of there, and I can't ask your men for an assault. We'll have to do it another way."
"I cannot imagine how."
"With parley."
* * *
An hour later Valentine, Ahn-Kha, and Cercado walked out of the hills to the wire, a white flag in Ahn-Kha's. hands. Again and again Valentine blew a small officer's whistle, drawing attention to their movements.
Behind them, Monte-Cristi's men and the Grogs flitted from tree to tree, appearing in as many places as possible. They appeared at the tops of rises, then sank into the long grass to show themselves again behind a tree. Even the bodies of the three Santo Domingan scouts were impressed into the action; they manned a wooden machine gun from the crotch of a branch while leaning behind a tree. Ahn-Kha's Grogs called to each other from a wide semicircle around the armory; their otherworldly voices echoed ominously between the hills.
The multicolored flag of Santo Domingo hung from the flagpole, its white cross visible now and then as the breeze took it. A small house stood before the flag. From it an officer with a braided hat emerged and observed them. Calling a few men around him, the officer strode up to the wire fence, looking toward his towers to see that he was properly covered. As he approached, hand on the pistol at his hip, Valentine took the safety off his drum-fed submachine gun.
'Translate for me, would you, Cercado? My Spanish may not be up to this."
Cercado nodded.
"What is it? Who are you men?" the officer called to them.
"We represent the free forces of Hispaniola," Valentine said, and waited for Cercado to translate. "We do not come to fight, but to find friends among those who would oppose Kur. Much of Haiti stands free of their menace, and we look to our brothers on this side of the island to join."
"Your men have been beaten in battle at the border. You are misguided. It would be best if you surrendered to me, not the other way around," the officer said.
"Do your generals always tell the truth?" Valentine asked through Cercado. "We give you an hour to decide. You do
not have to join us, just leave us this place, intact, and you may go in peace. Though we would prefer for you and your men to join the movement which will see Hispaniola rid of them."
"Thank you for your terms. Here are mine. I will take your heads, or you will take mine. San Juan has many men, and others will come and drive you out of these mountains. The garrisons at the borders still stand. Two days ago they asked for more ammunition."
Valentine yelled in Spanish, as best he could: "Have you heard from the garrisons since then, my friend? And was the ammunition delivered? Or did it fall into our hands?"
The officer pursed his lips, but to his credit, he did not look doubtful. "We shall use the hour given to make ready for you. Come at your peril. If I were you, I would leave. Remember what I said about your heads."
"You can be sure of it," Cercado called, not waiting for Valentine's answer.
Valentine had his group back up, still facing the fort, and the officer did likewise. The men said something even Valentine's ears could not catch, but their tones were anxious.
Valentine returned to the shadow of a battle line. He would be reluctant to attack the alerted garrison even if he had the men he was trying to feign that he had. Was the officer bluffing as much as he?
He paced for a moment or two, as Ahn-Kha stared down at the armory.
"If they are expecting battle, there is not much sign of it. I've seen the same men go in and out of the center building three times," Ahn-Kha said.
"They might have sent some of his men to the forward garrisons."
"Perhaps they need another push."
Valentine nodded. "He said he'd come for our heads, I believe. Give them a push ... good idea, old horse. I think I know how to do it. Come with me."
He climbed up the grassy slope, crunching through strawlike growth burnt by the dry season's sun. Monte-Cristi was at the edge of a steep ravine cutting the side of the slope, urging his men to move the unburdened packhorses down at a noisy, jangling trot and then up again at a walk.
"The hoofbeats echo well, do they not, Captain?" Monte-Cristi asked.
"Very well. Jacques, I think I have a better use for those poor scouts we shot this morning. I need a tent spike out of the baggage. Is there a bellows with the farrier supplies?"
"No, no bellows. Nor an anvil. But we do have tent spikes." Monte-Cristi got one of his pioneers to retrieve a spike, and joined Valentine as the Cat and Ahn-Kha went up to the stand of trees with the dead bodies.
"Let's get out of sight. Get a good hot fire going," Valentine said. He looked at the dead bodies, faces peaceful in death. Rigor mortis would soon alter their attitudes.
A couple of the Haitians gathered, looking on with interest. Cercado joined the group. Once the fire had grown, Valentine thrust a tent spike in the center of the fire, and Ahn-Kha blew through one of the hollow pipes used as a haft for Post's pikes, handing it to Cercado when he could do no more. The Grog's capacious lungs aided by Cercado applied enough wind to get the spike hot enough, when held with a piece of leather, hot enough so that when Valentine spat on the point, the spittle jumped off the metal rather than make contact.
Sweating from the fire's heat, Valentine crossed over to the bodies and shoved the spike into the eye sockets of each corpse. He was rewarded with a gruesome sizzling sound and the smell of burning flesh.
Valentine heard the Haitians mutter to themselves when he, evidently not satisfied with the disfigurement, drew his knife and sliced the ears and lips from each skull. He then ordered Ahn-Kha to sever the heads with an ax. Three hearty chops from the Grog and some knife work left the marred objects grinning in the sun.
Still not satisfied, Valentine took up the knife and looked at the three heads for inspiration. The frightening thing was how easy all this was. He expected to feel revolted, but something akin to exultation coursed through his veins. He remembered some lines of Nietzsche about how easily man reverted to savagery. Inspired, he knelt and loosened the uniformed culottes.
"My David, are you sure?" Ahn-Kha asked quietly.
"If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this all the way," Valentine said. He took up the first man's genitals in his fist, drawing them as tightly as he could from the bodies. He sawed through the skin under the scrotal sac and in a moment held the awful result in his hand. He returned to the head, and placed his bloody trophy in the dead lipless mouth.
Monte-Cristi looked sickened. One of the Haitians backed away, fingering a crucifix, but Cercado squatted and rubbed his hands in delight.
"We can't attack them where they are," Valentine growled. "This'll do one of two things. Enrage them so they come up after us, or send them running." Valentine continued his depredations. He finished by putting the three heads in a sack, and shouldered the bloody burden.
"Their hour has passed. Will anyone come with me?"
Ahn-Kha and Cercado, followed by a Haitian or two, walked down the hill, again covered by the white flag and blasts of Valentine's whistle. Valentine saw rifles pointed out of loopholes in the sides of the buildings, tracking them. Machine guns in the guard towers pointed ugly flared mouths in their direction, ready to spit fire. Valentine spoke into Cercado's greasy ear.
"Far enough!" the officer shouted. "If you seek death, you may come farther."
"You spoke of heads earlier, my friend. Here! These men served a Whisperer, who now is dead on the mountainside. We will come tonight for the rest."
Ahn-Kha took the sack in his hands. The Golden One spun like a hammer-thrower and released the sack to fly up
and over the wire wall. It landed with a knocking thump before the walls of the armory.
The emissaries scattered, followed by a shot, then a second, from the walls.
"So much for white flags," Valentine said to Cercado, as the pair took cover behind a hummock of earth. He searched for Ahn-Kha. The Grog lay concealed at the base of a tree.
"You fight as they do," Cercado said.
"Maybe," Valentine replied. "Actually, the whole reason I'm doing this is to prevent a fight. But if we have to face them, I want to do it with the advantage."
"Only two shots. Why not more?"
"Why not, indeed."
The skirmish line hit the wire after sunset. All through the afternoon and evening, Valentine rested and fed his weary men. He watched and waited. The town of San Juan, like most he had seen on Hispaniola through the eyes of his binoculars, was a patchwork of earthquake ruins, banana-leaf huts, and surviving architecture. A few women came to the gate, bearing baskets, but were turned away without admittance and wandered back down the six-mile trail into town.
The Haitians avoided his eyes as he moved among them, disturbed at his treatment of the corpses. Valentine tried to shrug it off as the natural uneasiness of superstitious men who had seen social taboos broken. The bodies had been beyond pain and as dead as Julius Caesar, whatever animating spirit they possessed was gone; their souls could be prowling the happy hunting grounds or barking in hell-he would never know. But their corpses might have saved some of the lives of the men now shifting their eyes whenever he looked at them. In a fit of ill-mood, he considered presenting Ahn-Kha's Grogs with the bodies as a feast-that would give them something to mutter about!-but discarded the idea.
With the moon still down and full dark upon the armory, Valentine hit the fence with Ahn-Kha and the Grogs. They
threw hides over the wire, and bodily pulled up the posts of the nine-foot-high fence, tearing away a twenty-foot section. The Grogs covered the gap with shotgun and crossbow, and the Haitians poured through. Valentine signaled Ahn-Kha to let the Grogs start their howling. The Haitians screamed like demons as they crossed the compound and made for the buildings.
Not one shot was fired from the walls.
The Haitians poured up and over the stone battlements linking the buildings, using loopholes as footholds or boosting each other up by having two men launch the third over. There were a certain amount of mishaps to the attempt on the wall, but without bullets flying, the bumps and falls were comic rather than tragic. Axes and fence-post battering rams made short work of the wooden doors once the men made it inside the compound, as Valentine and Ahn-Kha's Grogs secured the perimeter and main gate, which gaped open. He heard shouting, splintering wood, and assorted whoops of victory from beyond the peaked roof of the main building.
Valentine was glad to see a corral with animals still in it, but judging from the way the gate was left ajar, only lame animals were left by the departing garrison. As he patted a dejected-looking mare nosing her empty grain bin, he heard the main doors to the armory swing wide. Monte-Cristi and two panting soldiers bowed elaborately.
"The Citadel of San Juan is ours, mon capitaine," Monte-Cristi laughed. "Not a shot fired. Most of the garrison has evacuated. What is left is inside."
"Send a few men down the road, where they have a good overlook on the trail, but I want them still to be able to see these buildings. Get organized for a quick pullout, I'll blow my whistle, and loud, three times if I want us out of here. Is there electricity?"
"No, just fat lamps."
"Be sure no one goes looking in the dynamite shed with one, would you?"
Valentine left the gate to Ahn-Kha and passed the main gate into the compound. The hollow-eyed officer lay there, bound hand and foot, with two of his former subordinates holding on to lines tied to his limbs. An old charwoman sat on a step, smoking cigarettes rolled from newsprint as she watched events; a pair of Haitians clubbed the officer who had offered an exchange of heads with their rifle butts.
"Stop that!" Valentine yelled. Another guerrilla squatted before the officer, laughing and taunting the wretch.
"Stop that!" he yelled again, putting his hand on his pistol. The men stood and turned, and backed away, hiding behind each other like children caught at mischief.
"We join, we join, we fight the Capos, you see," one of the erstwhile Santo Domingan soldiers holding a rope said in French.
Valentine looked at his new recruits-they had probably been bad soldiers for the Santo Domingans, and would be bad soldiers in his Cause, but he had to make do with what he had. Valentine tried to put words together in Spanish.
"Thank you ... give him freedom," he managed.
The Santo Domingans looked at him blankly, either not able to understand why he would want to free an enemy or confused by his Spanish.
Valentine drew his knife and took a step toward them. They dropped the traces in alarm. He realized that he was snarling. He knelt by the officer.
"My eyes! For the love of God shoot me, but don't burn out my eyes," the man said.
"I won't hurt you," Valentine said, doing his best to soothe the man. "You won't be hurt at all. Have you left any surprises ... booby traps?"
The man shook his head.
"You'll remain among these buildings until we've found out for sure. If you speak the truth, you'll be let go. Do you still say there are no booby traps?"
"No. No, sir."
Valentine turned to Monte-Cristi. "Jacques, put him under guard. Guard, not torture. God, I'm thirsty. Is there a well?"
"Between the barracks and that house your friend stayed in."
"See if you can find any carts, wheelbarrows, anything, to begin with. I saw a wagon by the corral. Start there. Then start loading, medical supplies and machine tools first, then hand tools, then good-quality guns, and finally ammunition. Put the best cart you can find outside the walls but inside the gate. Load any explosives on it. No nitroglycerin even if you find it-I don't want to mess with that stuff. Dynamite would be best, if it hasn't sweated. Nothing heavier than a grenade or a small mortar. We'll use bigger shells and any nitro to bring down this place later. Then we'll start looking for food."
Valentine climbed a ladder to look out over the walls on Ahn-Kha, and then moved to the well. After a generous water break, he moved inside the officers' house. He checked the radio first. It was smashed, and there were no notes on the clipboard hanging next to it.
He wondered how long Bayenne and the other Haitians would be able to keep up their facade of an attack on the border garrisons to the northwest. Even now the Kurians could be mobilizing. He took up one of the smelly tallow lamps and checked the bedrooms; he decided that three officers shared the quarters. Strange that only one was still present; no wonder the man looked harried and his troops were on edge.
Valentine broke open lockers with a crowbar until he found a supply of cigars. He heard someone else investigating the dining room and saw Cercado rooting through a liquor cabinet. Once the roadwatcher had satisfied himself that nothing alcoholic remained, Valentine asked him for his translation services. He walked out of the house and went to the officer, who was drinking a cup of water brought to him by the charwoman. He offered his prisoner a cigar and a light.
"Now things are easier between us that the ugliness is over," Valentine said through Cercado.
The man drew on his cigar and looked at Valentine through narrowed eyes.
"You have nothing to be ashamed of," Valentine said, and waited for Cercado to interpret. "With the troubles you've been having on the borders and elsewhere, we knew you would have only a handful of men."
"Men!" the officer said, his eyes filled with disgust. "If only. I was left with the stupid and the incompetent. I, I- whose father was at the storming of Monte Plata. Left with the imbeciles and cowards."
"I understand. It is the same on my side. These Haitians, they look formidable, but they are hardly better than animals. I would trust a horse to have more sense."
"Mine forgot what sense they had when they saw the leavings of those scouts."
"With your best men away, what could you do?"
"Yes, first they called up the militia for the assault on the island in Lago Enriquilo. It is time we took it back from the Kurians of Haiti. Some of my underofficers went with them. Then when your guerrillas started trouble at the border, our Capos ordered that every man be scraped up and sent to reinforce the garrisons. Otherwise, you would not be sitting here."
"Undoubtedly. The fortunes of war, sir. One moment while I find out if you keep your word about the booby traps, and then you'll see that I keep my word about letting you go. I suppose it is too much to hope for that you would join us."
"No. In the end, you will be hunted."
Valentine smiled. "We shall see." He jerked his chin at Cercado and had him follow. When they were safely out of earshot, he stopped the guide.
"This Lago Enriquilo-it's southeast of here in another valley, yes?"
"I do not know much about it. An island in the center of a lake that lies in the pass to Port-au-Prince. The Kurians here have feuded with the Kurians there before. This island
is fortified, it has guns that command the roads in the valley."
Monte-Cristi moved about the courtyard, shouting orders to his men. He joined the two. "Not a great bounty, I fear. The tools yes, but few weapons. Some explosives, some ammunition."
"That's disappointing, but it will mean we can move faster," Valentine said. "Can we be out of here by dawn?"
"Even before. The men are looking for food now, but so far have little that is good for travel."
"If that's the worst luck we have on this trip, I'll take it," Valentine said. "We can raise some hell behind this Kurian's army on our way out."
Monte-Cristi nodded. He looked pale and weary. Valentine was about to tell him to get some rest when a call from the gate brought them to the walls.
A runner came in through the gate. "Engines, sir, coming up the road. Headlights, too."
Three trucks ground up the irregular road from San Juan, judging from the lights.
"Ahn-Kha," Valentine called, "get the Grogs out of sight." Then to Monte-Cristi: "Hell, we should have had someone put on a uniform. Where have our new 'recruits' gotten to?"
"Too late to find them now."
Valentine got a better look at the trucks. All were variants on the sturdy two-ton military model, the backbone of the world's former armies since the 1940s. So beat up were these that Valentine would have believed they had seen service with Patton's Red Ball Express. Metal panels had been replaced with bamboo and canvas, and instead of headlights, oil lamps hung from the front and sides like a nineteenth-century carriage. Each had a perfect set of off-road tires and spares, however, thanks to the abundant rubber trees on the island.
Valentine waved from the walls, hoping that he would just be a silhouette.
"Don't shoot, don't shoot," Valentine said to the men now gathering at the walls and main gate. "We'll need these trucks. Let everyone get off. Jacques, pass the word. Lower that gun!" he said, the last to a Haitian who was sighting on the driver's side "window," which consisted of corrugated aluminum with a triangular view-slit cut into it. "Nobody shoot until I do! Nobody shoot!"
The driver of the first truck dismounted, with not a few glances into the passenger cabin. He opened his mouth, as if summoning words, before ejaculating in Spanish and throwing himself to the ground, butt in the air and arms crossed over his head. Faces looked up from the beds of the trucks.
"I didn't catch that," Valentine said.
" 'Shoot, shoot, it's the Haitians,' the fallen driver said." Monte-Cristi translated, raising his pistol.
"Wait," Valentine bellowed in French. "Don't fire!"
A familiar figure swung himself out of the cabin of the first truck. "I told you not to be a hero," he said, planting a boot in the upthrust Domingan's behind. "Don't tell me I'm late to the party again?" Lieutenant Post called up at the walls, a broad smile on his face.
Post looked as exhausted as Monte-Cristi, and Valentine was determined to allow everyone a couple hours' sleep in shifts while they loaded the trucks and assorted wagons. Monte-Cristi and his men looked after the few animals able to pull a load while Valentine spoke to Post.
"We found the road easily enough, sir," Post said. "Overgrown, deadfalls everywhere, mudslides ... so picking a good ambush spot was simple, too. We let a rider or two pass before these trucks came running back from the border garrison. Full would have been better, but I figured you'd need either kind soon, so we hit these. There wasn't much of an escort, some men on horseback. The men went crazy with the machine guns-there wasn't an unwounded horse. I ended up pistoling three. Hated to do it. I don't know what's worse, screaming women or screaming horses. We got the
dead and hurt off the road, bandaged up the wounded as best we could in the time it took to turn around the trucks and get things organized, and drove down here. I think we got into third gear once-it was mostly first and second. First in one of these is crawling, second is a quicker crawl. Only one checkpoint outside San Juan. I don't know if word that we were heading that way got out or what, but it was empty."
"Losses or wounded?"
"None, unless you count dysentery. Some of the men got gut-sick from eating the Santo Domingan's rations, I think. Or maybe it was from drinking lamp oil. That kid from Cer-cado's family, he knew every bend in the road, I'll give him that. You know, we could do worse than to give the road-watchers the weapons we find."
Valentine nodded. "We've both been lucky."
"From the stories the kid told me, there's a lot of discontent on the island. If some of the peasants here could just get their hands on enough guns and mortars-"
"That's the first thing I'm going to tell them when we make it back to Mountain Home, my friend. Get some rest: find a mattress and use it."
"Aye aye, sir," Post said, licking his dry lips as he eyed the well.
The rest of Valentine's evening/morning was an excursion into the curse of Babel. He found himself giving orders to work details in French, English, and Spanish, all of it reinforced with hand gestures and a constant struggle against exploding into profanity. He had to stop men from putting ammunition into weapons meant to be transported, and piling their own weapons in stacks to be carried on the trucks. Groups of men occupied themselves by removing food from one truck and placing it in another, and others, after having made three trips in and out of the armory, decided they had done enough and crawled under the carts and trucks to sleep. Men lit cigars by striking matches on the side of the explosives truck, tossing the matches into the sawdust used to cushion the cases of dynamite. Some of the Thunderbolt's
sailors and marines worked drunkenly, reeling and reeking from Haitian-soldier-supplied rum concealed in their canteens, before passing out from dehydration or dropping to their hands and knees to vomit. He caught the Santo Domin-gan deserters stuffing block after block of chocolate into their mouths, and briefly considered making an example of them. In the end, he put them under Ahn-Kha's supervision, and after they saw their new supervisor pick up a napping Grog by his ear, half-tearing it off so that blood ran down the side of the derelict's head, they took to their duties with a will. Valentine tried to comfort himself with the thought that he had been on more disorderly expeditions into the Kurian Zone.
Somehow, the sun found the armory above San Juan empty and the trucks and carts loaded. Behind a vanguard of cavalry was Post's "battle truck," piled with sandbags and fitted out with the Thunderbolt's machine guns. Then came the other two trucks, towing carts filled with food and water. Behind that were horse-drawn carts and the packhorses, hardly burdened now compared with the loads they had brought over the Cordillera Central The engines gunned to diesel-fueled life. There was not room for everyone to ride, so the convoy would have to move at the pace of a walking soldier, though the walking men enjoyed the rare treat of moving with only their arms and a small amount of ammunition.
Valentine placed himself in the third truck, the one hauling the explosives, with the most experienced driver: one of the Chief's mechanics from the Thunderbolt. He was an aging, bald Asiatic, with the pulp-Western name of Handy Sixguns.
"Actually it's Hardy, and the family's real name is Chen," Sixguns explained when Valentine asked him his last name. He had always known the man as Handy, until he sat in the webbing that served as the passenger seat in the truck cabin. They made conversation while the vehicles inched forward out of the gate. "My father carried four pistols everywhere,
he was a 'wheelgun man' he used to say, just like the old old cowboy books. Trucker in the old times with a Mobile-Birmingham run, jammed gears for the Kurians, too. I wanted more variety, so I went to sea. Ended up in the Thunderbolt, going from Galveston to the Florida coast line once a month or so."
"You know Galveston?" Valentine asked. "I've been there, but never had a chance to get off the ship."
"Spent some time there, the old Darcy Arthur got wrecked in a storm, and I was living on the streets there for a while. You grow up fast under them."
"What ever happened to the elder Sixguns?"
"I never found out. I went back once, when I was in my twenties. The house was just deserted. No note, no nothing. The neighbors couldn't or wouldn't tell me anything. Funny, I still look for his face everywhere I go. Bad not knowing."
Worse than knowing the worst? Valentine wondered. At least Sixguns could imagine a future for his father. Valentine had the sorrowful memory of a crow pecking at the hole in the back of his father's skull, his dead siblings, his mother's violated corpse.
A long mile down the road, the convoy halted. Post and two sailors trotted down the road from the fort, where wisps of smoke could already be seen coming from the armory.
"When it hits that black powder..." Sixguns said.
Post trotted up to Valentine's truck. "We probably have another thirty minutes, sir," the lieutenant said. "I didn't want us to get caught in
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