by E. E. Knight
Valentine felt guilty lazing on the porch. He should be doing something. Arguing about the nature of promises with Hoffman Price, wandering through the barroom asking for stories about Kentucky—instead he was looking for another heart so he could lay down a flush and take the pot of sixteen wooden matches.
Two men wandered up from the riverbank, one bearing a dead turkey on a string. They wore timber camouflage, a pattern that reminded Valentine of the tall, dark, vertical corpses of buildings that he'd seen in the center of Chicago. The one with the turkey turned inside with a word about seeing to a scalding pot. The other, a pair of wraparound sunglasses hiding his eyes, watched their game. Or perhaps them.
"What manner of Grog is that?" he asked.
"We call ourselves the Golden Ones," Ahn-Kha said.
The bird hunter took a step back, then collected himself. "The who?"
"Golden Ones."
"Golden Ones?"
Ahn-Kha's ears went flat against his head. "Yes."
"Didn't know there was them who spoke that good of English of your sort."
"Likewise," Ahn-Kha said.
"Definitely see you later," he said, staring frankly at Duvalier. She ignored him. The hunter followed his friend in. Ahn-Kha squeezed out a noisy fart, Golden One commentary on the stink left behind by unpleasant company. Valentine heard a couple of welcoming hallos from the inside.
"The mosquitoes are getting bad," Duvalier said, putting down two pair and taking the pile of matches.
"I'll see about dinner and DEET," Valentine said, rising.
Greta's generator ran two lighting fixtures, both wall-mounted, both near the bar. One was the lit face of a clock—someone had broken off the plastic arms, and whether the remaining stubs still told the time Valentine couldn't say—and the other a green neon squiggle of a bass leaping out of the water, a bright blue line projecting from its mouth. Perhaps a dozen customers sat in the gloom, save for the two huntsmen, who were looking at a wanted poster under the clock-light.
Valentine felt the stares of the company. Because they were outsiders?
"You wouldn't have a bottle of bug repellent, would you?" he asked the slighter version of Greta at the bar.
She shook her head. "No, sir. You and your girl could come inside. The tobacco keeps them out."
"If you don't like the skeeters, you could relocate off-river, tag," a shaggy woodsman suggested. "Take your pet and go."
"Earl," the bartender warned. "Goat stew and biscuits will be up soon, mister."
A third man joined the other two by the clock, getting a light. He joined in the inspection of the bill.
"I'll buy four servings," Valentine said.
"There's only three of you."
"The Grog's got a big appetite."
"We've only got goat. No spitted youngsters," the man called Earl said. Valentine didn't like the way he kept his hand near his open-topped holster.
"You won't even get goat if you keep that up," the bartender said. "Greta hospitalitied them herself."
Valentine walked away.
"Hey, tag!" Earl called as Valentine walked away. The bar went quiet. "Tag!"
Valentine went out the door, glad to have the pile of sandbags and a cedar wall between himself and Earl.
"I think we'll spend tonight on the porch," Valentine said.
"See you in country, tag," Earl bellowed.
"Hey, Earl!" someone inside called. "Come over here and roll one. Calm down."
"Everready should have hooked us up with guerillas," Duvalier said.
"They're up in the mountains east of Nashville, for the most part," Valentine said.
"It's a place to get across this river," Ahn-Kha said. "Perhaps there are no Kur this near. Even a Reaper would have trouble with the crowd inside."
The crowd inside chose that moment to spill out the door. The two turkey hunters and Earl came out of the bar, pistols drawn. Duvalier made a move for her shotgun.
"Hold it," a voice barked from the repaired section wall. "I've got two barrels of buckshot on you."
Valentine stood up, hands up and away from his weapons. "Now hold on. I don't want—"
"You got a warrant on you, tag," Earl said, a flashlight clipped to his pistol shining into Valentine's eyes. "You and this lady here."
"Mister and Missus David Rowan," the turkey hunter read, despite his sunglasses. "He's even got that scar. It's two-year-old paper out of New Orleans, but a warrant's a warrant."
Other bounty hunters came out of the bar, forming a rough semicircle around the porch. They didn't pull their weapons.
"Fifteen thousand dollars Orleans each, it says," sunglasses continued. "Five thousand per bonus for live delivery. Payable at any Coastal Marine station. There's one in Biloxi!"
Valentine did a quick count. There were sixteen men around, if he counted the one covering them from inside.
"That's real good money," one of the leather-clad bikers said.
"Forty thousand dollars is," Valentine agreed. "If you're in New Orleans. How many of you have been there?"
None of the men said anything.
"Okay, you've got us. Let's say you take us to Biloxi, and collect your two thousand five hundred each, barring any bribes you might have to pay."
"Shuddup and face down, tag," Earl said. "We ain't all collecting this."
"Says who? Let him talk, Earl," one in the semicircle said, his hand resting on his gun belt.
Valentine continued. "Let's say you get us down there without soldiers hoping for a promotion taking us away from you. Biloxi'll pay you alright, in New Orleans dollars. They print that stuff like toilet tissue. It can only be spent in New Orleans, unless you want to trade it into a hard currency exchange at a third of the value. Boat fare Biloxi to New Orleans was four hundred dollars when I was down there. A bad bottle of Orleans gin was sixty dollars. A room's over three hundred, if you don't mind cockroaches. How far's that two thousand five getting you now?"
"It's not getting shared sixteen ways," Earl said. "Now—"
A gunshot from just behind the doorway interrupted him.
Greta stood in the door, her shotgun pointed to the sky. Valentine's ears rang from the shot, and he wondered what it had done to Earl's hearing.
"Earl, you owe me one shell and these people an apology. Nobody serves papers at my Shack. Nobody."
"They ain't warrant-men," Earl said.
"He's right, Greta," one of the spectators said.
"I knew that when I gave them my hospitality."
Greta lowered the gun and placed it against the back of his ear. The turkey hunters got out of the way of the potential blast. "Earl, holster your piece and say your good-byes. You're off my peninsula permanently."
Earl put away his gun. "I'll pay up and go." He stared at Valentine. "But you three can't retire here." He raised his voice. "Any man wants to call himself a warrant-man, kill the Grog—he ain't subject to hospitality. Later we'll track down these two and share the reward. Meet me at the old county sign."
"You just do that, Earl. You just do that," a deep voice called from the darkness. Hoffman Price stepped forward, his Kalash-nikov tucked under his arm so his hands were free to work his pipe. He got it lit and sent out a puff of smoke.
"And another Grog-lover sounds off," Earl said. "You throw down on me, you skunk, and Charlie'll blow you in half with his ten-gauge."
"Bee!" Price called.
Valentine heard wood shatter and turned to see a warrant-man crash headfirst through the repaired section of wall, ten-gauge bent around his neck like a dress tie. Bee swung out through the hole, treading on the unconscious Charlie, and extracted a pair of sawed-off shotguns from her boot holsters.
"Earl, you better shut up before I've got your whole rig for damages," Greta said.
"Didn't you hear, Earl?" Price said. "These folks hired me for a little trip to Chattanooga. They're under my protection." He raised his voice. "Any man comes to serve papers on them will interfere
with my ability to earn my fee. Bee's my accountant when I'm in country. I refer all financial difficulties to her."
"Let's everyone calm down. We're leaving right now," Valentine said. "Pretend none of this happened."
Greta lowered her shotgun. "You ordered four meals, Black. You and Red and your big friend eat first, then you can leave. You might as well—Earl's picking up the tab."
* * * *
The warrant-men, save for Earl, trickled back inside.
They ate at the riverside. "Lots of bad blood gets built up in this business," Price said. He posted himself downwind of Valentine and Duvalier, but it didn't help much.
After some head bobbing and a mutual dental exam, the two Grogs sat down next to each other. Ahn-Kha ate a few bites of his stew, then passed her the bowl.
"She speaks northern slope dialect," Ahn-Kha said. "I only know a few words."
Duvalier was already mopping up her remains with a biscuit. Valentine marveled at her appetite. "You really taking us on, or was that just show?" she asked Price.
"I'm taking you."
"Not through Chattanooga, I hope," Valentine said.
"That was just in case Earl gets the second big idea of his life and goes to the authorities, such as they are."
"What changed your mind?" Valentine asked.
"I got to thinking that I don't have too many more years in me to pay Everready back. If I have to step off, I'll do it clean. Plus Bee got a look at your big friend when he came down to the river to hit the shitter. She got excited. Bee gets lonely for her own, I think."
"I've had my mating," Ahn-Kha said. "She is dead. Besides, we are not dogs. Our strains do not mix."
"But you share some customs, looks like," Price said.
"I've been among her kind. Do not misunderstand me. She is well formed and agreeable." Ahn-Kha broke a biscuit in half and gave it to her. "I just could no more be a male to her than you could."
"I want to put a few miles on across the river before dark," Price said. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth three times. "I have a mule. Bee and I will go load him up."
Valentine kept the food close to his nose as he ate his stew. "Is there a chance that you'll take a bath before we set out?"
"What, and spoil my camouflage?"
Duvalier looked up. "You're hoping to pass as a feral hog, perhaps?"
"No. Everready explained it to me years ago. I never could hide lifesign for shit. All the critters interfere with the Hoods. I don't read as human at any kind of distance." He walked up to the back doorstep and returned his plate.
"You want your other biscuit, Val?" Duvalier asked as Price disappeared into the stable.
"You got used to him faster than I did," Valentine said. "How did you keep your dinner down?"
"Greta in there gave me a bottle of clove oil. It's good for more than mosquito bites. A dab'll do you—provided you put it under your nostrils."
Chapter
Nine
The Kentucky Bluegrass, September: The bluegrass itself is only blue in the mornings, and even then for the short season when the grass is flowering. The rest of the time it is a rich, deep green.
Poa pratensis arrived in Kentucky by accident, used as padding for pottery on its way west to be traded to the Shawnee. Once thoroughbreds thrived on it. They have been replaced.
Land of the dulcimer and bourbon (invented by an itinerant Baptist preacher), home to the most soothing of all American accents, Kentucky raises more than just champion livestock. Perhaps it's something in the water, for the state produces fiercely individualistic, capable folk under its chestnuts and between its limestone cuts. Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were born there, approximately the same distance apart as their future capitals of Washington, DC, and Richmond.
In its earliest days, the wooded hills of Kentucky were called a "dark and bloody ground." That appellation applies to Kentucky of the Kurian Order as well. The state is divided into three parts, somewhat resembling an O between two parentheses. The western parenthesis is the usual assortment of Kurian principalities bleeding the country from their towers along the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers. The eastern parenthesis is the mountains of Virginia, home to a scattering of guerrilla bands at war with each other when they're not fighting the Kurians or those in the center of the state.
The center is the most unique of all. Clans of legworm ranchers, some comprised of Grogs, some of humans, and some mixed follow their flocks- They cannot herd them; the legworms are too obstreperous and powerful to be herded, but they can be tamed and controlled under the right circumstances.
The same might be said of the riders.
* * * *
"I've never seen growth like this before," Valentine said.
"You're looking at snake trails," Price said.
They stood in southern Kentucky, on a little knob of a hill looking out over a meadow. Price knew about moving cross-country. Bee usually took the lead, walking with her eerily careful grace. Then the three humans, taking turns with the compass and map to avoid getting trail-stale, followed by the mule. The mule was unusually cooperative for its breed, perhaps owing to a jaunty knit Rasta cap it wore, complete with fly-scaring dreadlocks. Valentine didn't dare look to see if the dreadlocks were simply sewn in or if they were attached to a scalp, and the mule wasn't telling. Ahn-Kha brought up the rear. At least once a day they zigged on a different course, heading north the way a sailing ship might tack against the wind.
What caught Valentine's eye about this particular meadow was the strange furrowing. Lines of thickly weeded earthen banks meandered across the field like a drunken farmer's tilling. The banks were perhaps a foot high at most, ran down little open spaces clear of smaller trees.
"That's sign left by legworm feeding."
Tchinktchinktchink—behind them Duvalier knelt over a spread out Byrdstown Clarion. The newspaper, a weekly melange of property and equipment for sale and lease, with a few stories about the achievements of local NUC youth teams, wasn't being used for the articles. Duvalier was pounding together two ancient red bricks pulled from a collapsing house, collecting the fine dust on the paper to be poured into an envelope and used as foot powder.
Bee snored next to her in the sun, her short-but-powerful legs propped up on a deadfall. The mule, a cooperative beast named Jimi, cropped grasses and tender young plants.
"I've known ground like this," Ahn-Kha said. "Older, though, more evenly grown up."
"You see, Val," Price explained, passing Valentine's binoculars back. His odor lingered on them, but Valentine pressed the sockets to his eyes anyway—after a critter inspection. "Legworms move in small herds; I've never seen over a dozen together. They pull up the sod with their mouths. They eat everything, leaf, stem, and root, and of course mice and voles and whatnot that get pulled up, then they crap it out the other end more or less constantly. The waste is pretty sweet fertilizer, and their digestive system isn't all that thorough, quantity over quality, so in the wormcast there's a lot of seeds, living roots, stuff that comes back. It grows extra lush and you get these little walls of vegetation."
"They don't mess with big trees," Valentine observed.
Price pointed at a thick oak. "They'll climb up and take some low branches. That's why some of these trees look a bit like umbrellas."
"Those trails will lead us to them, if we find fresher leavings," Ahn-Kha said.
"Sure," Price said. "Except with legworm tracks it's hard to tell which direction they're going. If you're lucky you'll come across a partially digested sapling. The way the branches get pressed down makes it like feathers in an arrow, only reversed."
Valentine wondered if it would be like Nebraska, with different "brands" sharing the same area. "How do they feel about trespassers?"
"Depends if they can make a profit off you," Price said.
* * * *
They cut fresh worm sign two days later. After picking at the less-digested branches and shrubs, everyone a
greed that the wide end of the cone was heading northeast.
"Five worms," Price said, counting the tracks. "Two big on the outside, three lesser in."
"Legworms mate in pairs?" Ahn-Kha asked.
"No, more like big orgies in the winter. Seriously," Price said, as Valentine raised an eybrow. "A legworm dogpile's a sight to see."
"What are we looking to get out of a bunch of worm-herders?" Duvalier asked.
Price whistled for Bee. "This is their land. I want permission to cross it. If we're lucky, they might bargain us up a mount."
"We don't have much to offer," Duvalier said.
"Your body is already spoken for," Price said.
"I've got some strong soap in my bag," she said. "Use it and I'll keep up my end."
"I thought humans made love face-to-face," Ahn-Kha said. Valentine wasn't sure he'd heard right until he looked at his friend. Even Price knew him well enough by now to know that one ear up, one ear out meant he was joking.
Catching up to the legworms wasn't as easy as having a clear trail made it sound. When moving without eating, a legworm goes at a pace faster than a horse's walk, similar to the Tennessee walking horse's famous six to twelve miles per hour run-walk. According to Price, they could pull up turf at a good three miles an hour, a typical walk for a human. A human on a sidewalk who isn't loaded down with pack and gun.
So they moved as fast as they could through the warm fall day, sweating and swearing at each new hill. Price and Valentine decided the course was arcing somewhat northerly, so they took a chance and tried to cut across the chord of the arc.
They never picked up the trail again. Other riders found them.
Bee pointed them out first. She dropped down on her haunches and let out a blue jay-like cry, pointing at a tree-topped hill. It took Valentine a moment to recognize what he saw. The legworm's pale yellow color was surprisingly effective camouflage in the shade of a stand of elms and oaks. Two figures sat astride it, probably human.
"Everyone wait here," Price said.
"Feels too much like a standoff," Valentine said. "Why not all go?"
