Central Kentucky, January: The locals have a saying: "You have to come here on purpose." This is the fastness of Kentucky, the region that stretches southeast from Louisville to the Tennessee Valley. It is a bewildering maze of knobs, gullies, streams, ridges, choked at the swampy bottoms and backwaters, breezy and cool and clear atop the region's many ridges.

The meadows, breathing in the shadows of the ridges, are the gut of the country. So rich in blackberry bramble and cherry, with grasses that grow indefatigably in summer and only a little less lushly in the brief winters, the meadows support dairy cattle for the landholders and such an abundance of deer that even the region's skilled hunters hardly trim the population.

Winters here pass mild; snow blows across several times a year but melts quickly. Even the songbirds seem to be resting between mid-December and February; all the greens and browns fade and blend together and everything looks washed-out and dull.

The water is the same, winter or summer. The hills are rich in wells and springs, all flowing with clean, crisp, limestone-filtered water tastier than any city tap could produce. Underground flows and seeps have worn away the region's limestone, honeycombing it with sinks and caves famous, dangerous, and unknown.

The people are clannish in the best sense of the word. Interlocking circles of families spread news, offer support, celebrate marriages, and mourn deaths at the many little churches dotting the region. They are fiercely independent, even from their fellow Kentuckians: the city folk outside Cincinnati and Louisville, the flatlanders of the more gentle hills to the west (not that they don't range their legworms there and maintain good relations with the Jackson Purchase locals), or the Appalachian mountain folk. In past decades some were moonshiners and marijuana growers; later they ran Internet start-ups and were artisans. They were the first in Kentucky to learn how to wrangle legworms, to study their herds and breeding cycles, unafraid to learn from even the smattering of Grogs in southern Indiana, becoming elderly veterans of the battles following the cataclysm in 2022 in worm riding and harvesting.

They use the many caves and holes to hide their weapons, their precious machine tools, their spare radios, and even explosives.

This is the heartland of the old Kentucky Alliance that accompanied Southern Command's Javelin into West Virginia. Now what's left of that fellowship is reorganizing itself into the Army of Kentucky-at least that's the formal name on the documents coming out of the government. The worm riders, wintering their mounts in the protective heaps they form around each year's eggs, are now a group called the Line Rifles and organized into three troops: the Gunslingers, the Bulletproof, and the Mammoth.

Men like to have something or someone to follow. Sometimes it's nothing but a favorite song; other times a bullet-torn flag. In the case of the Mounted Rifles of the Army of Kentucky, their standard is a warrior queen.

Young and beautiful in her full bloom, with a mane of hair flowing and alive as a galloping horse's tail, she wears her authority the way another woman might wear a favorite hat, only taking it out for special occasions and drawing all the more eyes because of it. She's a natural atop a legworm or a horse, and she designs and sews her own uniform from egg skins she's harvested herself, bearing a pistol that belonged to her father and a pair of binoculars presented to her by the old Bulletproof clan chief she grew up calling her leader.

Her words were the ones the Kentucky Alliance listened to on the long retreat back from the Appalachians, when many were discouraged and wished to go home. Her voice gave the order for the counterattack on the banks of the Ohio that sent the Moondaggers running. Under her leadership they chased the bearded invaders all the way to Bowling Green.

She has her hands full at the moment. There's a white-hot blood feud with the old Coonskin clan, who betrayed the Kentucky Alliance on the long retreat, dividing cousin against cousin, uncle against niece. What's left of the Coonskins have taken on the Moondagger faith, and members of the Mammoth troop are forever disappearing for weeks at a time while they avenge some sister or cousin.

As if that's not enough, the newly constituted government of Kentucky is still getting itself organized. Volunteers come in unequipped, untrained, and irregularly, hungry and in shoes with old pieces of tire serving as soles, adding to the food supply problem even while they wait for a rifle.

Valentine's luck was in. As it happened, Brother Mark was also in the Karas' Kentucky Alliance heartland. They managed to get a fix on each other over the radio and agreed to meet on Gunslinger clan ground.

What was left of the old alliance welcomed them into the Gunslinger camp squatting for the winter in the ruins of a megachurch near a group of their worm piles outside of Danville. If not cheering, exactly, there were shouted halloos and greetings and excited children rolling around and bumping like marbles.

The camp was unsettling in one manner, though. It seemed to be devoid of men between fourteen and forty. All Valentine saw were boys and old men. He knew the Gunslingers had suffered losses during the summer's fighting, but he had no idea they were this grievous.

There were plenty of horsemen and vehicles and guns in camp, however. Tikka was there with a column of her all-Kentucky army, and Brother Mark had arrived with a few members of the Assembly and their staff.

"Lots of mouths to feed, mouths that didn't do any planting or weeding or varmint shooting this summer," one of the cooks grumbled as he spooned soup into variegated plastic containers.

Valentine presented Mrs. O'Coombe to the temporary leader of the Gunslingers, an old woman who'd long served as an advisor to their clan's leader. Mrs. O'Coombe quivered like an excited horse as she asked about her son.

The Gunslinger leader asked the camp doctor, who stepped up and cleared his throat. "I have good news for you, madam," he said. "Your son is alive and well. I saw him not four days ago."

"May I see him, please?"

The temporary clan chief shook her head. "He is with our muster. They left to meet the Coonskins on the Kentucky river some ways north of here. Corporal Rockaway is serving with the new army's artillery."

"But-he is a soldier of Southern Command," Mrs. O'Coombe said. "He has four years left. . . ."

"An informal arrangement," the Gunslinger said. "He's still in what's left of the Southern Command Guard uniform. Settle, ma'am; settle. He's just along so we can show strength if they try another decapitation attack. Fine boy you raised."

"It's that Last Chance," Brother Mark said. "Raving about some kind of apocalypse that's going to hit Kentucky. Sad thing is, he's getting a few converts."

Valentine fought his body. It wanted to be up and in action, chopping wood or clearing brush for kindling if nothing else.

"We've had a lot of townies flee to Coonskin territory," the clan leader said. "Mostly people who drew breath thanks to the Kurian Order anyway, so good riddance to them."

"If you would provide me with a guide-," Mrs. O'Coombe said.

"Sorry, ma'am. I hate to say no to a worried mother-I have four myself and one grandchild-but it's a clan rule. When a fighting man is away, no parents, no children, no spouses until the fighting's over."

"But there is to be no fighting," Mrs. O'Coombe said.

"We hope not. As I was saying, our people end up worrying more about their families than the enemy, and they get themselves in trouble that way. But it looks like you brought a few gunmen of your own. If you want to send them up with a message to your boy, they're welcome to join young Tikka upcountry. Until then, I'd like to offer you our hospitality."

Gunslinger hospitality was meager with all the visitors in camp and the holidays emptying larders.

Everyone was talking about the peace conference between the Gunslingers and the Coonskin-Moondaggers northeast of them in the Bluegrass proper. The idea that Kentucky might be allowed to just let the bodies lie and stop the raids and counterraids that had been going on ever since the Moondaggers marched across Kentucky, burning and kidnapping, gave everyone hope for an early spring without gunfire exchanged in Kentucky's tangled dells.

Valentine had the disquieting feeling that their hopes would be in vain. This cease-fire might be the final calm before the storm.

The reinforcements were already pulling out of the Gunslinger winter camp to join the others to the north. Tikka's Army of Kentucky were dressed like scarecrows in everything from denim to black-dyed sports uniforms, but most sported new winter hacking coats in a uniform deerskin brown, A-o-K stenciled on the shoulder. Behind them were guns and commissary wagons. Valentine hadn't seen such a mule train since the campaign in Dallas. The animals looked fresher than the men.

Tikka greeted Mrs. O'Coombe's lined-up staff and Valentine's Southern Command additions. She and a few members of her staff took a quick appreciative look at their bikes and vehicles.

"How are you keeping these beasts fed in the backwoods?" one of the men in a new-looking uniform with a coonskin on the outside of his muffler-style field-jacket collar said.

"We burn organic," Stuck said.

Someone on the staff muttered to a friend about outsiders buying corn oil when there were hungry mouths this lean winter. The comment wasn't meant for him, so Valentine didn't react.

"I don't suppose we can count on that APC up at the peace conference," Tikka said to Stuck.

"We've got a few of our own wounded to take care of. It's mostly a hospital truck."

"Then how about lending your doc and that medical wagon, in case there's a fight."

"I'll ask Mrs. O'Coombe," Stuck said, and walked off.

Habanero was pointing out modifications to the suspension as Tikka walked Valentine back toward the road north.

"You want to join us and see the fun?" Tikka asked.

"The man I'm looking for is up there already. Yes, I'm glad to accept your invitation."

Tikka faked a stumble and knocked into Valentine with her shoulder. "On duty again, I'll bet."

"I'm not sure how to categorize what we're doing at the moment," Valentine said. "Civilian liaison, I suppose."

"Figures. I wouldn't object to a quick liaison under a blanket, but this time I'm the one with a bunch of men expecting me to have my pants on at all hours. Besides, your redhead's looking at me like I'm selling New Universal Church Bibles door-to-door."

Valentine turned around and saw Duvalier sitting cross-legged on the hood of the Chuckwagon, warming herself on the engine. She threw her leg over her sword stick and rubbed the handle in an obscene manner.

"Thin little thing," Tikka said. "I remember her now; she's the one who comes and goes. You should buy her a good Kentucky ham."

"She's always looked like that, but she still puts in thirty miles a day of walking when she has to." Valentine wanted to change the subject. "You know, I don't think I've congratulated you on your new post."

"I delivered one big victory, and now I get cheered everywhere I go. They keep saying they're going to appoint a general-in-chief for the A-o-K, and I wish they'd get on with it. I'm shooting from the hip from the time I get up until the moment I pull off my boots-when I get a chance to sleep, that is. I was brought up to keep the Bulletproof 's worms from getting rustled and our stills from getting stolen, not to do this commanding general stuff. Speaking of which, if the men don't see me in my command truck, they won't keep closed up properly. I'll see you on the banks of the Kentucky, David."

Stuck remained at the Gunslinger winter camp. Where Mrs. O'Coombe went, so did he, a hulking shadow. At the moment he sat pillowed between Longshot's thighs as she rubbed oil into his scalp and massaged his temples, looking like a monkey grooming her mate.

"What's that all about?" Duvalier asked Valentine.

"Bears get twitchy if they don't let off steam somehow. That's how brawls start: Bears with nothing to use as a way to vent."

"Like chopping wood?" Duvalier asked.

Valentine stared at her. He'd never thought of it beyond satisfying exercise.

"You sure you don't want to come up to the peace conference?" he asked.

Duvalier poked him with her elbow. "Snore. There's an interesting craft market in Danville, they say. Maybe I'll visit that. I picked up some real gold braid in Indiana. I'll skip a few days of you making goggle eyes at your bowlegged worm rider."

Valentine decided not to ask how she'd acquired the braid. "I'm not sure how to make 'goggle eyes,' " Valentine said, and then regretted it instantly. A lot of times Duvalier said nonsensical stuff just to provoke him.

"You know, Val, you're just a big plaything to her. A doll with really nice hair and a dick."

"What a shame I missed Christmas morning."

"That's it. I am coming along, if only to keep you from embarrassing us."

The banks of the Kentucky were thickly wooded at the slight bulge that passed for a lake designated as the border between Gunslinger and Coonskin territory. Behind the banks were the river-cut hills, scarred with limestone cuts and patched with tufts of wood like an old man's hairline.

They could see on the other side of the river the observation positions of what was presumably the Coonskin force, no doubt here to safeguard their own negotiators.

Valentine's binoculars weren't much better than his eyes at that distance, but with the help of one of the A-o-K's telescopes, he could get a look at individual figures. He recognized the dark battle dress and red dagger sheaths of the Moondaggers.

"The Coonskins have formally united the Moondaggers," Brother Mark said. "May they live to see the error of their ways and have regret come to wisdom."

Frat took a long look at the foes he'd heard so much about. "Religious nuts, huh?"

"If you call worshipping Kurians a religion," Valentine said. Frat turned the eyepiece over to Boelnitz. He turned the knob back and forth, sweeping across the camp, and then made a few notes in his leather journal.

"Some of 'em like the lifestyle, I guess," the Gunslinger observer said. "No tobacco, booze, or red meat but all the wives you want."

"They've been calling themselves the Kentucky Loyal Host lately," a Gunslinger in an officer's slouch hat said.

"Fancy-sounding word for 'traitor,' " Silvertip observed.

Their long search ended in a matter-of-fact fashion. Valentine and Frat were escorted to Corporal Rockaway, raised O'Coombe, where he was setting up mortar positions on the hillside above the river.

"Your boy Rockaway-or O'Coombe, or whatever his name is-he's involved in this. He may be on one leg and be wearing a diaper, but he's a heck of a fire director and trainer for our captured Moondagger artillery," one of Tikka's captains said as he walked them along the ridgeline.

And making a bad job of it, too, to Valentine's mind. The artillery's position could be observed from across the river.

Valentine remembered Rockaway as soon as he saw the face, but there had been changes. He limped worse than Valentine and seemed to have lost weight everywhere but his midsection. He was a rather plain-looking, freckled young man with sandy hair and a delicate chin like his mother's. He seemed lost in the big service jacket the A-o-K wore, but he still had his Southern Command helmet. Valentine was surprised someone hadn't talked him out of it when he was left behind. Javelin ran short on helmets long before they hit Evansville.

"Did you pick out these emplacements?" Valentine asked as others kept trotting up to Corporal Rockaway for instructions.

"Orders," Corporal Rockaway said. He had some of his mother's Texas accent too. "We're supposed to show our teeth so there won't be any funny business like at Utrecht. Hey, Doc. What the heck are you doing all this way?" O'Coombe's doctor stepped forward. "We've come a long way to bring you home. I'm glad to see you well. When we'd heard-"

Rockaway smiled, which much improved his face. "Hell, Doc, well's a relative term. You put my first diaper on me, and I'm here to tell, I'm back in diapers now and will be for the rest of my life. Some emergency patching to the digestive tract, they said. And I have to drink lots of water to help things along. But I can still fight; I just leak a little doing it. I like fighting these Moondagger sons of bitches. If everything-Well, tell Mom not to worry."

"You can tell her yourself when this is done. She's back with the Gunslinger camp," Valentine said.

"She came all this way too? Devoted of her. When the news came about my older brothers, she just tightened up her mouth and hung black crepe around their pictures and made big donations in their names to the Rear Guard Fund."

Valentine had no business getting involved in family dynamics. He jerked his chin at Frat, and they excused themselves.

Once they were out of earshot, Frat said, "Heart's in the right place but the kid doesn't know much about setting up a battery. If anything goes down, he's making it easy for the Moondaggers. They're not all cross-eyed and stigmatic, I don't suppose."

"Not hardly," Valentine said, remembering the sniper's bullet that had sprayed Rand's brains all over headquarters.

Valentine spotted Tikka emerging from a knot of hilltop woods, walking the ridgeline. Corporal Rockaway limped up to her, and they spoke for a few minutes. Tikka pointed as she spoke, both toward the ridge on the other side of the river where the Coonskins and the Moondaggers were encamped, and behind, where the rest of her train was presumably approaching and deploying.

Once again, she made a show of strength, putting some of her vehicles and horse wagons in plain view on the hill.

She was kind enough to invite Valentine to accompany her to the peace conference. All she asked was that he wear one of the A-o-K field jackets and a hat, and keep to the back with his mouth shut.

Duvalier managed to work her way into the party too. Boelnitz tried to get permission to come along, but Tikka insisted that he stay back on the riverbank.

"Remember what happened the last time we were invited to a conference?" Valentine said.

Tikka grinned fiercely. "As a matter of fact, we're very much hoping for an encore."

"Without legworms? Won't you be at a disadvantage?"

"They'll be assuming that, yeah."

VIPs arrived in cars and passenger trucks; the Gunslingers and Bulletproof and a smattering of other old Alliance soldiers on horseback or in wagon trains. Many arrived via old-fashioned shoe leather.

They met out on the small lake, a widening in the Kentucky River separating Coonskin land from the Gunslingers.

Valentine felt like he'd read about a peace meeting like this before, but he couldn't place the exact circumstances.

The two sides rowed out to a pontoon houseboat anchored midlake. There, on the sundeck atop the houseboat (after both sides verified that neither had filled the living quarters with gunmen), they met.

Their forces lined the tree-filled banks to either side of the river. Valentine didn't understand the fascination. There was little enough to watch.

He wasn't important enough to go up on the top deck with the Kentucky or Coonskin principals. But he could listen from the base of the ladder facing the west side of the river.

There were introductions, neither side being particularly gracious beyond the grace required of opponents who were used to shooting each other on sight. If the Gunslingers were colder in their formalities, it was because they'd suffered more outrage at the hands of the Moondaggers.

In many more words than the Reaper's avatar used, they offered the representatives of the Kentucky Assembly essentially the same status as Jack in the Box had spoken of: a neutral Kentucky, running its own domestic affairs but leaving the outside world to the Kurians. The Agenda and Tikka were no more inclined to welcome the proposal from some Moonskin mouthpiece and a few traitors than they were through Valentine's birdlike Reaper.

"Glad to see you admit we whupped you out of Kentucky," Tikka said.

"We stayed only long enough to chase Southern Command out," a Moondagger responded. "Then we returned to our allies."

"Formerly our allies," Tikka said. "They turned on us; they'll turn on you someday. Remember that."

"You are the traitors," an educated Kentucky accent said. "The Kurians indulged you, and you paid them back by aiding terrorists and wreckers and murderers-"

"There is a reckoning coming!" one of the Moondaggers began to shout thickly. Valentine recognized the voice at once, their old blustering friend Last Chance. "A reckoning! This land, long peaceful-"

Ha! Valentine thought. Last Chance wasn't at the battle between the Bulletproof and the Wildcats a few years back.

"-needs to be cleansed of the filth that has washed into it. Intruders! Interlopers! Troublemakers! Trouble they brought, and death will be their reward-or something worse than death."

Duvalier made a fist and flicked out two fingers toward Last Chance with her thumb slightly up-the American Sign Language version of "asshole."

"That's not how you go about negotiating in Kentucky, beardy," the new Agenda for the Assembly said-the previous one was too sick to make the journey to the river. "You want to deal with us, you tell us what you offer and you let us make up our minds. You don't threaten."

Valentine liked the new Agenda already. Later he learned he was a man named Zettel, though most called him Mr. Zee. Formerly the clan chief of the Gunslingers and a friend of Karas, Mr. Zee, Valentine had been told, came from a family who'd once owned quarries and he'd grown up covered in limestone dust.

"We'll consider your offer and give you an answer tomorrow. Here, on the boat again. Shall we say noon?" Agenda Zettel said.

"There can be only one answer," the educated voice said. "The other doesn't bear thinking about. We both love Kentucky too much to see it turned into a graveyard."

Duvalier looked up at the sky, shivered. She edged closer to Valentine and stuck her hands in his pocket.

"We could go up there and kill all of them," she whispered. "Pay them back for Utrecht."

Killers who don't like killing never last long. They become drunks or careless. Duvalier liked it, as long as her targets were Quislings, the higher up in the social hierarchy the better.

Valentine had a dark part of him that liked it as well. The shadow that lurked inside him chose its time and place to be satisfied.

"The Assembly can make up its mind. It's their choice. Let's not make it for them."

A few more words were exchanged upstairs about day and night signals.

They departed. Valentine put one hand in his pocket and gripped Duvalier's with the other, making sure she accompanied him to one of the boats heading back for the Gunslinger shore.

They waited in line and ate like the rest of the Gunslingers and A-o-K troops. Chieftain and Silvertip were going back for thirds when Tikka interrupted and asked for a moment with Valentine. They stepped out of earshot.

"Mr. Zee's meeting with the Assembly representatives is civilians only, so I thought I'd track you down and talk to you."

Her dark good looks were suited for a chill Kentucky night. She sparkled like a bit of Kentucky's bituminous coal. Valentine knew that all you had to do was touch a match to her and she could generate a whole evening's worth of warmth.

"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.

Chieftain raged among a group of Moondaggers who'd found a wooded dimple in the landscape from which they returned fire. Pieces of men flew this way and that as he swung and stomped and swung again.

The forward motion stopped at the crest of the hill. The Kentuckians threw themselves down and began to pick off retreated targets.

"Let 'em have it," yelled Rockaway into his field radio from his new hilltop post.

Mortar shells whistled down into the trees at the riverbank, detonating in showers of splinters or foaming splashes of water.

A Kurian machine gun opened up on Rockaway's position, guided by his antenna. Valentine dropped to a knee and returned fire with the Type Three.

"Silvertip, try to do something about that gun" was the only order Valentine gave that day that had anything to do with the progress of the battle. He felt like a bit of a fraud, watching shells detonate on the western riverbank among the Host's boats. Maybe Southern Command needed Kentucky more than Kentucky needed Southern Command.

"Pre-ranged fire missions," Rockaway said. "Hope they brought a lot of tweezers."

The Kentuckians ended up with a few prisoners and a lot of big canvas-sided motorized riverboats.

As the battle sputtered out, Valentine found Tikka.

"Brilliant retreat and counterattack," Valentine said.

"Oldest trick in the book," Tikka said.

"I didn't know you'd studied Scipio Africanus, Tikka."

She frowned. "I'm not big on astrology. No sir, I learned all my tactics reading Bernard Cornwell. It's an old Wellington maneuver: Get on the reverse slope out of the line of fire, and then blast away when the Frenchies come over the crest, and advance to throw them back. We just didn't blast them quite as much as they approached; we wanted them to scatter a little bit as they advanced."

"So you swapped out the artillery and vehicles last night during the party," Valentine said.

"Too noisy for you? That was the idea. To cover sound while we were building the fortifications. We parked old wrecks and set up black-painted fence-post mortars to replace the real ones."

"Would have been nice to be let in on the secret. I might have been able to offer a few suggestions. We have some experienced snipers in our group. They could have trimmed the Moondaggers down by a few more."

"I'm sorry, Valentine, but after Utrecht I'll never trust Southern Command's security again."

Valentine must have had an air of command about him, because all through the day members of the Gunslingers who'd fought with Javelin across Kentucky kept coming to him for orders, probably out of habit more than anything. Whether to bind prisoners or just march them with their hands up. What to do with captured weapons and equipment. How to organize a search party for a missing officer. Valentine issued advice rather than orders and sent a constant stream of problems to Tikka's headquarters on the ridge.

For just being an observer, he had an exhausting day.

That night he found Boelnitz scribbling away with the remains of a meal around him as Chieftain and Silvertip told war stories about the fighting in Kentucky.

"You should know better than to ask Bears about a fight," Valentine said to Pencil. "To hear them tell it, the rest of us are just there to keep the fried chicken and pie coming while they do all the fighting."

Boelnitz chewed on his pencil, apparently not hearing.

"So, how's the story coming, Boelnitz?"

Valentine had to repeat himself before the journalist looked up from his leather-covered notebook.

"Story? Not the one I was expecting, Major."

"You're getting some good tall tales out of these two, I hope."

"Kentucky's been interesting enough, but I don't know if my editor will want travelogue. I wish I had the guts to go inside one of those legworm tangles and get a few pictures, but the locals say that until the worms are born, it can be dangerous."

"That's right," said a nearby Gunslinger who'd plopped down to listen to the Bears spin their yarns. "Make any kind of disturbance and they'll snip you in half easy as you might pull a weed."

"To be honest, Major Valentine, I was expecting you to be a little different, more of the legend and less prosaic. Where are the raids into the estate homes in Indiana? You haven't even interrogated any of those Moondaggers or the Kentucky Host or whatever they call themselves to see what's in store for Kentucky."

"The Kurians never tell their foot soldiers their plans. They like to keep everyone guessing, including the other Kurians. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason they're so desperate is because they're afraid Atlanta will just end up taking over Kentucky the way they have much of Tennessee.

"Besides, if you were expecting a war in Indiana, you need men for that kind of job. Our ex-Quisling recruits need training. Most of them are experienced in handling weapons and vehicles and equipment due to a smattering of law enforcement or military duty, but they've got to learn to act as a team somewhere less predictable than a city street. More important, learn to trust each other and their officers. Trust doesn't come easy to someone brought up in the Kurian Order. They're so scared of making a mistake that they all stand around waiting for orders, and then for someone else to go first. There's a story for you."

"Problem is," the neighboring Gunslinger said, "they ain't even human in anything but shape. All the spunk's been bred right out of them, the way a team horse reacts different from a Thorough-bred lead mare or a wild stallion."

Valentine spent the next forty-five minutes on and off the radio. Frat had returned by then, having volunteered to scout across the river, looking thoughtful. After he secured his rifle and gear, he sat down by Valentine, eager for news.

"Where's the Kentucky Host?" Valentine asked. "Run out for more ice?"

"Left the party early," Frat said, milking the joke. He became serious. "Are we going down an evolutionary blind alley, sir?"

"Where does that come from?"

"They left some of their literature behind. There was a magazine I hadn't seen before, comparing various kinds of testing before and after the Kurians came. Of course the article proves there's been improvement in human mental acuity after their arrival."

"An article saying it doesn't make it true. Don't read Kurian intellectual porn; it's all lies anyway."

Frat dug around his satchel and tossed the magazine at Valentine's feet. "Well, I thought it was interesting.

"We're more moral than the enemy, right?" Frat continued. "Isn't that a hindrance? They'll do anything to win. We won't. Doesn't that make them the 'fittest' in a Darwinian sense?"

"Fittest doesn't mean strongest or most brutal. Loyalty confers an evolutionary advantage. So does sacrifice. You get all this from those traditional morals the brutes dispense with. Mountain gorillas trample strangers. That's about as brutal as you can get. For all I know, mountain gorillas no longer exist."

Frat looked down. For a moment he seemed to be summoning words, but they never made it out.

They convinced Rockaway to leave his guns and return to the Gunslinger camp. Now that the A-o-K had arrived, there were some experienced artillerymen to take over the mortar sections in any case, but he was still strangely reluctant, even though he admitted he hadn't seen his mother in years.

Tikka finally ended up ordering him to leave. "Show some consideration for your poor mother," she said.

So they rode back with Doc and his nurse in the Boneyard. The medical workers were more exhausted than even the Bears, having worked on the wounded of both sides in the late Battle of the Kentucky River.

They were not the first to arrive back at the Gunslinger camp, so the news of the victory on the riverbank, and the losses, had already been absorbed, celebrated, or mourned.

Valentine, wanting to be a bit of a showman, had the driver back the overloaded Boneyard back toward the little circle of Mrs. O'Coombe's convoy. Valentine and Duvalier hopped out of the cab, and he opened the doors for the assembled Hooked O-C staff.

"Mrs. O'Coombe," Valentine said, "your son."

The effect was spoiled somewhat by the fact that Chieftain and Silvertip were dressed only in their rather worn-through underwear.

"We've come some way to find you, Corporal Rockaway," Valentine said. "I've brought a familiar face."

The corporal jumped down out of the back of the ambulance medical truck.

"What's the matter, Mother?" Corporal O'Coombe said. "Sorry to see me still breathing?"

It wasn't the reunion between a son who served under his mother's name and his devoted parent that Valentine had imagined.

Mrs. O'Coombe stiffened. "You know I'm pleased to see you alive, Keve. Please be civil in front of your fellow men in uniform. Don't disgrace the uniform you wear."

"Respect the people beneath the uniform too, Mother."

"If you're going to be this way, perhaps we should talk in private."

"Do you have something you want me to sign, Mother, now that you've recovered from your disappointment that I'm still alive? Produce it. You know I'm not interested in running a ranch, however large."

"I'm glad your father isn't alive to hear this."

"Yes, yes: The good sons died, the bad one lived. God must have a plan; all we can know is that he gives burdens to those strong enough to handle them."

Rockaway turned to Valentine. "My mother probably left out a few details. Like that the ownership of the ranch was willed by my father to his sons, and Mother only would own it if we were all dead. What is it, Mother? Do you want to sell off some of the land, or riverfront, or water rights?"

She extracted some surveys and a blueprint from her bush jacket. "I am building a home for the disabled in the Antelope Hills, on the Canadian River. I need to deed the necessary acreage to Southern Command."

Rockaway didn't even look at the papers.

"I'll do you one better, Mother. I'll sell you the whole ranch-lock, stock, and the old man's cutest little whorehouse in Texas-for a grand total of one dollar. I'll accept Southern Command scrip if you aren't carrying your usual smuggler's gold."

"That's very generous of you, Keve, and I am happy to accept. The problem is that you'll have to do this in a UFR courtroom, in front of a judge. My beloved husband's will was most specific on points of ownership."

She turned toward Valentine and the others. "You probably think I'm a grasping, conniving woman. Nothing of the sort. It's just extremely hard to run a business interest of this size when you can't enter into contracts without the owner's approval, and the owner is seven hundred miles away from a lawyer, a notary, and witnesses. My son, as you can see, is uninterested in a business that provides a quarter of all Southern Command's meat and that employs a permanent staff of over a thousand and seasonal help three times that."

"I'm only sorry I didn't sign it over to you two years ago," Rockaway said. "But I was seeing Arbita and she didn't want me to give it up, and for my sins I listened to her. But I'll sign it over to you now, Mother."

"So you'll return to the UFR with us?"

"If that's what it takes for me to be able to live my life in peace, do my job, and marry who and where I choose, I'll take the trip."

So the happy reunion wasn't quite so happy, at least as far as Mrs. O'Coombe and her son were concerned.

Brother Mark needed a ride back to Fort Seng. A wounded Gunslinger named Thursday was also going that way, as he wanted to recover over the winter at home with his family in a town called Grand Junction on the road back. His brother-in-law was supposed to drive out to the Gunslingers and pick him up, but his brother-in-law had flaked. Again. O'Coombe and Valentine's command had passed near it on the way up, and Thursday promised it was just over a ridge from their route home, on an old federal route in reasonably good condition.

They packed up the four vehicles. Valentine made sure Bee had all her odds and ends. Traveling with a Grog was a little like taking a child or a pet on a journey: You needed to make sure you remembered favorite toys, snacks, and clothing.

Thursday wasn't much of a guide. He spent a lot of time examining map, compass, and map again before giving instructions that proved to be guesswork. Valentine could have done just as well with an old road atlas. Thursday's wound was a piece of shrap nel to the buttock, or so he said, and he rode on a special pillow. Valentine wondered if he wasn't really suffering from aggravated hemorrhoids.

His instincts improved once they crossed a small river and he claimed to be in home territory.

"Grand Junction's not even an hour away, now. Three more big ridges and we're there. We could use a garrison of you Southern Command boys, now. There's a marketplace and even a bank that trades Karas' old currency for the new government scrip. Some riders came in a while back and tried to rob the town, but we shooed them off."

Valentine said, "Most of Southern Command's back across the river. All that's left are some training and technical personnel."

"That's Southern Command all over. They claim they swing the biggest dicks but always come up short when belts hit the floor."

A flake struck the windshield like a bug. A big piece of almost-sleet, it sledded down on its own melt.

"I guess winter's here," Valentine said, by way of breaking the tense silence.

In his winters south of central Missouri, Valentine had softened in his attitude toward cold weather. Winters weren't a matter of life-or-death survival, with desperate, predawn to post-dusk fall efforts to stock up on enough fuel, food, and fodder to get yourself and the livestock through to spring-an almost unimaginable span of time away. Winter was a season of rest, refit, and relaxation.

The horizon closed in as the real snow started, following behind the big flakes like a wall of Napoleonic infantry advancing behind their pickets.

Valentine didn't like the look of the big, soft flakes. When they first appeared they fell idly, spinning and drifting in the wind, but minute by minute they thickened, aligning themselves in a single, southeasterly direction.

"Better slow down," he told the driver. "Turn on the running lights. I think we can quit worrying about aerial observation."

"Hope we don't have to do too much off-roading in this," the driver said. "Wish the locals took better care of the roads."

"Legworms make their own roads," Thursday said. "We like it nice and run-down. The Ordnance doesn't risk their axles bothering us." He chuckled. "This is Kentucky. We just don't get that hard weather. Even the sky takes it easy here. This'll blow over in no time."

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