March in Country (39 page)
Authors: EE Knight
Only one of the Baron’s patrols came in during the process, and they were taken prisoner by armed Golden Ones before they comprehended the changes to the fortress. Thanks to the Warmoon Festival, there had been only a few patrols out. Every Gray One wanted to take his part in the rites to enhance his chances in the coming season.
Ahn-Kha thought it best if the experienced Golden One fighters stayed with their people and the “Express” was stuffed with Gray One warriors. The Golden Ones would be at ease with their families and the familiar command structure of their elders around.
The Golden Ones’ commander-in-chief was a meaty, shrapnelscarred veteran named Wu-Dkho—no human could say his name on the first try. Valentine thought of him as “Napoleon.” He was a little shorter than most of the Golden Ones, and he wore a heavy, pocket-lined coat with his chin tucked into his chest in a manner that made Valentine think of a painting he’d seen of Napoleon retreating from Moscow. Ahn-Kha explained that his stance was a little intimidating to most Golden Ones—to them that body language was more Gray One than Golden, indicating an angry bull-Grog ready to head-butt.
Valentine made contact with
Cottonmouth
and told them
Buffalo
would be on the move. He hoped to cover the forty air miles with his advanced elements overnight, and have the rest of the Golden Ones to Muddy Landing in three days.
Cottonmouth
and told them
Buffalo
would be on the move. He hoped to cover the forty air miles with his advanced elements overnight, and have the rest of the Golden Ones to Muddy Landing in three days.
“Muddy Landing,” Captain Coalfield’s voice crackled back. Valentine couldn’t tell if there was relief in his voice. “Seventy-two hours.”
“From dusk tonight,” Valentine said.
They held a final meeting in the command caboose of the fast train. A chalkboard with a tracing of the eastern spur of the Grog Express was filled with the latest information about the expected schedule and the distribution of the population and soldiers between the trains.
On a sideboard, the Gray Baron’s expensive array of ports and whiskeys had been cleared away and replaced with heartroot, nuts, and strawberries, plus the inevitable instant lemonade common to every Kurian Order organization Valentine had ever visited.
Old sweat clung inside his uniform. He wanted a shower, badly, but a sponge and a basin would have to do, and even that could wait until the Express was moving.
Duvalier stood in front of the chalkboard, looking like a small mannequin displaying the wrong-sized coat, examining the time-tables with her arms crossed.
“Forty miles in three days with this bunch is pushing it,” she said. “We’ll be crawling at foot pace.”
Frat was there, along with a human engineer who wanted out at Saint Louis, Ahn-Kha and a messenger Golden One, Duvalier, Stockard, and Pellwell, the last because she and her ratbits were already designated to ride in the command car.
“Who cares if we’re slower than shit,” Frat said. “With those big bastards properly armed, nobody’s going to mess with us, at least nobody who can concentrate in time.”
“We’ll move in shifts,” Valentine said. “Apart from those riding full-time, we’ll stop every three hours to let a few hundred rest.”
“A drop in the bucket when you’re talking about ten thousand—,” Duvalier said.
“Nine thousand two hundred and seven, though we might see a birth very soon,” Ahn-Kha corrected. “With enough water it can be done. Water is the key.”
Which led to a technical discussion about the conversion of a pair of ten-thousand-gallon diesel tank cars to carry water.
Pregnant females, mothers of infants would ride in some comfort in the barracks cars.
“One problem remains,” Valentine said. “Already, there are probably phones ringing in various Iowa headquarters about the silence from Gray Stronghold. If we could keep up some radio chatter, the usual business traffic between here and Iowa ... I wouldn’t want to be in the coms bunker when the next Grog patrol comes in, under the Baron’s officers.”
“I’ll do it, sir,” Stockard said. “I’ve been trained on coms procedure.”
“Thought you wanted to come with us, Captain? Get back to your son?”
“Yes. Very much. But having someone staying back, manning the radio will increase your chances that much more. They know my voice in Iowa. I’ve pulled my share of shifts in the com bunker.”
“As long as you don’t flip back to the Iowa side,” Duvalier said. “A guy could win a brass ring, letting them know what happened and where we’re headed. Once a Quisling—”
“Enough of that,” Valentine said.
“You’re too quick to judge,” Frat said, glaring.
“I’ve been my own judge, jury, and executioner out there often enough,” Duvalier said. “I don’t trust. That’s why I’m still around.”
“Time is fleeing,” Ahn-Kha said. “Perhaps we can bicker once we are on the waters of the Mississippi.”
Valentine was tempted to ask Duvalier if she’d stay. Of all of them, she could be relied on to press, but not extend her luck. She knew Missouri well, and could either make a fast break for the Mississippi, get to Saint Louis, or take the short route back to the Wolves in the hills to the south and then make her way back to Kentucky at leisure.
Provided her health held up. She’d been limping, and her stomach wasn’t keeping much down.
Then again, she didn’t know radio procedure, and there were few women in the Gray Baron’s command. Best to leave it to an experienced hand. But Valentine still wanted to give Stockard an out.
Valentine reached for a handful of nuts. His stomach was gurgling and suspiciously unhungry. “Nothing has to go down on paper about the circumstances of you rejoining Southern Command, Graf,” he said. “On the report you’ll be just another prisoner of the Grogs who was brought out with the Golden Ones.”
“My son thinks his father’s a hero,” Stockard said. “If I make it back to him, I’d like to do it being able to call myself that as well. I’ll stay. Leave me a bicycle?”
“Frat, scare him up some transport and fuel. Double- and triple-check it.”
“No, a bike’s fine,” Stockard said. “I was in the bike troops in the Guard, back in the day. I still do it for exercise. Motors get noticed by our Gray friends on both sides of the Missouri River.”
Ahn-Kha leaned over and whispered something in Stockard’s ear. His homely face took on a shy smile.
“I’ll stay as well. Two can travel more safely than one,” Frat said, trying various field jackets of the Baron’s troops. “I took a good look at your prisoner and heard a few words from him. Short of one of them showing up in person, I should be able to confuse the issue for those wandering into camp.” He pulled a slouch hat on low and stared into Valentine’s eyes. For just a second, he shimmered and Valentine saw the Baron’s eyes and Pancho Villa mustache.
“Neat trick,” Valentine said. “Teach me, sometime, when you get back.”
“I would, if I only knew how I did it,” Frat said.
By nightfall they were loading the trains with the riders. Supplies, weapons, and ammunition were distributed among the cars.
Valentine put the Baron in the first train. There were several grim, barred cars designed for transporting captives. Only one showed any sign of recent use, the rest were badly rusted. The Kurians were all too used to shuttling bodies around on rails in their aura-based economy, where humans served as currency.
It looked biblical, like something out of Exodus. The Grog elders organized their march so all the herders were on the outskirts, the craftspeople and food makers in the center, the very old, sick, pregnant, and very young on the train with their doctors and attendants, and the youths expending their energy running messages between the groupings.
Valentine wondered if Moses organized the Exodus with a headache and a mild case of cramps.
He suspected he picked up a nasty amoeba in the food or water. Both the Golden Ones and Gray Ones had good toilet habits—they dug shallow pits and buried, like cats—but their hand washing left much to be desired and the tufts of thicker hair at the knee and ankle joints would get befouled.
Had he been feeling better, he would have taken the scout glider up and tried the Missouri air. There was a fresh spring breeze the wide, nearly weightless wings could ride.
It was a fascinating device occupying its own flatbed on the command train. When the train was up to full speed, the glider could be launched into the wind at the end of a tether, rather like a kite, and rise and rise in altitude where a tiny ultra-lightweight electric motor could be turned on or off for extra power. The sailplane could easily scout for an hour or two then return to the train for recovery.
Valentine had done a good many hours while learning to fly with Pyp’s Flying Circus in the Southwest, where gliders were towed to an appropriate altitude by a larger plane so new pilots could be trained without risking a precious aircraft.
Well, it would be dangerous to fly at night, or, more accurately, land at night.
At last the Express pulled out, with Valentine giving himself a sponge bath in the caboose and grateful for the built-in toilet.
The company of Gray Ones, the new Headring Clan, whined for action like hounds waiting to be shipped. Valentine did not know if they enjoyed fighting or were eager to prove themselves to their new master, but as the Express pulled out they hooted and yowled out their eagerness for action.
Bee, always eager to be of use, ululated her excitement with the rest.
“Rest now. Eat now. Fight later,” Valentine told them as the train lurched into motion behind the armored diesels.
Everything depended on seizing control of the two strongpoints between the Baron’s monuments and the Mississippi. There was a third strongpoint at the terminus on the river, occupied jointly by the Grogs and the Iowa Guard.
The strategic plan reminded Valentine, far too closely for comfort, of an allied disaster from the Second World War.
Valentine had studied the Market Garden—called by some of the soldiers “Hell’s Highway”—operation at the War College. The plan, unfortunately, resembled his own in that everything depended on maintaining control of the rail line and seizing the strongpoints, rather than bridges, along the line.
The Allied Forces had managed to take the first fairly easily, had a bitter fight for the second, and never made it to the third, where the British Paratroopers lost eighty percent of their forces by the time their withdrawal was completed.
Valentine would have to do much the same thing, only without benefit of paratroops.
One predictable, but unplanned for, consequence of the Train March amused Valentine as mile after mile of train track twisted and burned behind his rear guard. With the Gray Baron’s army decapitated and divided, every tribal chief called on his cousins to hurry and raid into the rich Iowa estates before control of Northern Missouri could be reestablished.
Valentine would sit and listen on the Iowa Guard shortwave channel and the AM stations in the larger cities, sending out muster orders for emergency home-county defenses.
Valentine stopped the car twice to run assault debarkation drills, once with unloaded weapons and then again with bullets in their guns.
When he was satisfied with the performance, he let the Grogs have the fun of knocking some cans off sticks with their weapons on fully automatic.
“The Baron didn’t trust Groggies with full auto. Too much ammo for too few hits.”
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