Winter Duty (27 page)

Incredibly, within a few hours of the blast the Assembly had reconvened.

“They are ready to vote,” Brother Mark said. “They’ve excluded all non-Kentuckians from the Assembly.”

Valentine saw the Evansville delegates decamp en masse for the beer halls and wine gardens of Owensboro—if you called a wood- paneled interior with a couple of potted palms a garden, that is.

“Which way do you think it’ll go?” Valentine asked.

“Our, or rather, freedom’s way, praise God. You know, that bomb ended up being ironic. It was obviously meant to blow the Assembly apart, but it ended up pulling them together. Another foot stuck well into mouth on the part of the Kurian Order. The one man killed was named Lucius F. B. Lincoln, by the way—a delegate from Paducah. A good name for today’s entry into Kentucky history. He ended up doing more for the Cause by dying than we’ll ever do, should we both live out our threescore and ten. The Assembly’s all talking to each other again. I think they know those shaped charges would have torn through the Old Dealers or All-Ins without discriminating according to political belief.”

“That’s a hard way to put it,” Valentine said.

“It’s a hard world. I tell you, Valentine, that bomb couldn’t have worked better if we planned it and one of our Cats had done it herself.”

“You don’t think we did, I hope,” Valentine said.

“I don’t know that we’re that clever.”

“I’d say ruthless,” Valentine said.

“Oh, mass manipulation isn’t all that hard,” Brother Mark said. “I had whole seminars devoted to it. We’re herd animals, Valentine. One good startle and we flock together. Then once you get us going, we all run in the same direction. There’s a lot of power in a stampede, if you channel it properly.”

“Perhaps. But it can also send your herd right off a cliff,” Valentine said, “the way our ancestors used to hunt buffalo. Saved a lot of effort with spears and arrows.”

“You’re a curious creature, son. I can never make out whether you’re a shepherd or a wolf.”

“Black sheep,” Valentine said.

“No, there’s hunter in you.”

Valentine nodded to some relief sentries, and said to them, “When the post has been turned over, head over to the diner and get some food. Kentucky is buying our meals, for once.”

He turned back to the old churchman. “When I was inducted into the Wolves, the Lifeweaver warned me I’d never be the same. I’d be forever sundered from my fellow man, or words to that effect. I was too keen to get on with it to pay much attention.”

“It’s a bargain most of the men in your profession make, and it’s a very, very old one. War changes a man, separates him from someone who hasn’t seen it. You’re both exalted and damned at the same time by the experience.”

“What about you?” Valentine asked. “You’ve seen your share of fighting.”

“Oh, I was damned before I saw my first battlefield.”

Valentine was organizing his soldiers to block nonexistent traffic two blocks away from the convention center, using old rust buckets dragged into position as roadblocks.

Mr. Lincoln, the only man killed, had been running to jump in the river when the charges in the legworm went off. There was some bickering when his underage daughter, who had accompanied him to the Assembly, was given his place in the voting. Some said her sobs swayed a few critical votes.

He heard the commotion, the yells and firearms being discharged after the vote was tallied.

Some security. There weren’t supposed to be firearms in the conference center. Well, Valentine’s men were responsible for the streets; it was the sergeant at arms of the Assembly who’d been negligent. That, or after the bomb attack, they’d allowed the delegates to arm themselves.

Valentine sent a detail under a formidably tall Texan to get the delegates to unload their pieces and opened up a line of communication to Lambert at Fort Seng, which could radio relay to Southern Command.

Tikka herself was the first out of the convention center. She had a red streamer tied to the barrel of her rifle. The streamer matched the flame in her eyes.

“The vote was 139 to 31!” she said, leaping into Valentine’s arms and wrapping her hard-muscled legs around his back. Her lips were hot and vital. “Five blanks in protest,” she said when she was finished kissing him. “Cowards.”

“For the Cause?” Valentine asked.

“I wouldn’t have run otherwise,” she said. “I want to fuck, to celebrate. You had a hand in this.”

“That’s all I can afford to put in at the moment. I’m on duty.”

“Isn’t part of your duty to maintain close contact with your Kentucky allies?”

“The closest kind of cooperation,” Valentine said. “But we’ve just had a bomb explode, and no one seems to have any idea who brought a forty-foot legworm into town and how it was parked next to the Assembly.”

She slipped off. “Too bad. May I use your radio? I want to communicate with my command.”

Energetic Tikka. Denied one piece of equipment, she’ll requisition another
.

Valentine nodded and led her to his radio operator. Tikka almost bodychecked him out of his chair in her eagerness to put the headset on. Valentine knew he should really get it confirmed and look at an official roll count for his own report, but he trusted Tikka.

Valentine noted the time and vote on his duty log, and carefully covered the page so the cheap pencil (taken from the narthex of a New Universal Church, where lots are available to write “confessions,” which were, in practice, accusations against a relative or neighbor) wouldn’t smear. You never know what might end up in some museum case.

“Yes,” Tikka said over the radio. “Put Warfoot into effect and open up the training camps.” She pressed her earpiece to her head. “Oh, that’s a big affirmative. Couldn’t have gone better. Lost one delegate, but every cause needs a martyr.”

Valentine, when he later considered her words over the radio, wondered just how large a role Tikka had in Mr. Lincoln’s martyrdom. He hoped Tikka was just being her usual, brutally direct self. What he’d seen of the birth of the Kentucky Freehold was bloody enough, without adding deliberate political murder to the tally.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
he Kentucky Freehold: Births are messy endeavors, biological or political
.

Fort Seng was full of new arrivals.

Valentine thought he was dreaming when he met the first of them as he led his companies back from Owensboro. A handsome young black man in Wolf deerskins emerged from cover at a good overwatch on the highway running east from Henderson to Owensboro.

“Frat,” Valentine said. “You can’t be—You’re Moytana’s replacement?” It wouldn’t do to hug in front of all the men, so he settled for an exchange of salutes and handshakes.

Valentine hadn’t seen him in years, since he’d discovered him in Wisconsin living with Molly Carlson’s family. Though they’d never served together beyond the events in Wisconsin, Valentine’s recommendation had won him a place in the Wolves.

The commission Frat had earned on his own.

“Major Valentine. Welcome back. We’ve heard the good news about the vote,” he said in a deeper voice than Valentine remembered. He wore lieutenant’s bars, and had dark campaign stripes running across the shoulder fabric on his ammunition vest.

Valentine hopped out of the truck, tossing his diaper bag on the seat. He’d decided he liked the bag; he always seemed to be carrying paperwork, and it also comfortably fit a couple of spare pairs of underwear and an extra layer or two in case it turned colder.

Frat eyed the bag. “Heard you were dead, Major.”

“I heard the same about you,” Valentine said. “Frat,” Valentine said again. It wouldn’t do to stand dumbstruck, so he fiddled with his glove as he pulled it off. “Lieutenant Carlson, I mean.”

“Good to see you, sir.”

“Wolf replacements arrived, then?”

“My platoon, from the reserve. We were part of the regimental general reserve. We scouted for the Rio Grande operation, came home dog-tired and thinking,
Job well done
. Got the bad news once we reached Fort Smith. Men still wanted to go back and volunteered—but they sent us here instead.”

“Moytana was a good officer. You can learn a lot from him, even if it’s just by a quick changeover briefing and by reading his paperwork. I’ll see if I can get a few of his Wolves to remain behind to orient your Wolves.”

“Thank you, sir. Actually, I was glad to hear I’ll be serving with you. Not exactly again, but . . .”

“I know what you mean. It’s good to see you too, Lieutenant.”

Valentine wondered why Frat was still only a lieutenant. Of course, he was very young, and the Wolves had nothing higher than colonel, so there were only so many spaces on the rungs to climb.

“I stopped in to see Molly on my way to Jonesboro,” Frat said. “She sends her regards. I have a letter from Edward, but, well. . . you know.”

“I know.” Valentine found himself looking forward to reading it. Strange, that. He had a biological connection to a girl who barely knew he existed, and an invented fiction connecting him to another man’s son. Life liked playing jokes with his feelings, rearranging relationships like an old magnetic poetry set.

“I’m not the only new arrival. My platoon guided in some civilians. Well, quasi-civilians, but I’ll let herself explain it to you.”

Valentine and Frat swapped chitchat the rest of the way back to Fort Seng. Frat made a few inquiries about Valentine’s command. There were the most incredible rumors floating around Southern Command about his organization: They were all convicted criminals under death sentence, choosing service instead of the rope, or Valentine had an all-girl bodyguard of legworm-riding Amazons, or he was building a private army of freebooters who were stripping Kentucky like locusts of everything from legworm egg hides to bourbon.

“Southern Command scuttlebutt,” Valentine said. “How I miss it.”