Choice of the Cat

by E. E. Knight

  Graf has been recommended for Lieutenant—I think he's going to ask me to marry him if he gets the promotion. It may mean leaving the village but Mom is doing much better. Mary is old enough now where she can take over a lot of the chores and the Hudson brothers help out with the hardest. My mom and dad pretty much handle everything to do with veterinary work for the town livestock, if someone's having trouble with a calving they run and get them. With Mom better Dad's going to take a larger place in the Village, there's talk of him becoming a Director. To think when he first got here the town gave him a cow and two piglets and some chickens, and now we've got eight good milkers. Of course, in a way our start here is because of you. I should just say it, we owe everything to you: getting out of the badness in Wisconsin and everything that happened in Chicago.

  Your letters are very cheery and polite in the way you ask about Graf. But you always are very casual and polite when you are upset. David, you're one of the finest men I've ever known. I still love you in a way, but a different way than I feel about Graf I think you have a Purpose. I know we talked that our futures were woven together at one time, but something in me associates all the badness back there with you and every time I see you I remember. I should not say it was all wrong, before Chicago our time was wonderful, and precious, but I've sealed up everything that happened with Chicago, it's kind of like a memory of an old nightmare, not very clear. You were so patient with me all that winter, God did I even talk at all while we were in Minnesota? I think you need to be free of me to become whatever it is you are going to become (as you are all bound up with the Lifeweavers and Mr. Bourne says it is a hard way and the choice to follow them doesn't make for a normal life) I need to be free of you to start here with a clean slate. We tried last spring and it was just bad, I was cold—God it was the last thing you deserve!— and you were distracted.

  The way things are now is for the best, I'm sure of it. You've written that you think it's great that I have a man like Graf and those words meant a lot to me and I hope they weren't painful to write. I suppose we both have mixed feelings for each other. One thing is certain though, you will always have a home among the Carlsons in Weening no matter what happens to you. You've been my friend, my love, my protector, my healer, my guide, and now I hold you as a dear brother in a Very Special Place in my heart. I look toward your next letter, and pray that your duties will allow you to visit soon.

  Yours truly and always,

  Molly

  * * *

  Molly was a bright young woman, and painfully right about them. Valentine returned the letter to his dispatch bag. He played a mental slide show of the Molly he had known: from when he first met her in Wisconsin when her family hid him at great personal risk from the Kurians, to his trip to Chicago to rescue her from violent public death after she had killed a Quisling official. They'd escaped by ship to the Minnesota shore, near where Valentine had been born and grew up, and stayed a season at his adoptive father's house.

  Valentine and the old priest sat up night after night, discussing what he'd learned of the Kurians. It was the Padre who'd first taught him about ancient civil war that divided the Lifeweavers and led to the Kurian Lords, who— through their vampiric Reapers—killed sentient beings to harvest the energies that sustained their endless lives. They'd been thrown off Earth long ago, the interstellar gateways sealed and destroyed, but they'd come again in 2022, and won.

  Valentine made no attempt to renew the intimacy that had briefly existed between himself and Molly, concentrating instead on feeding everyone. Each night he read to Molly by the light of a single candle out of the Padre's collection of old books. Books that had become his family, in a way, after his orphaning. They'd taken him out of his misery, and he'd hoped they could do the same for Molly.

  That spring, Valentine was determined to rejoin Molly with her family, although he had no idea if the Carlsons had even successfully escaped to the Ozarks with his fellow Wolf, Gonzalez.

  Molly strengthened and blossomed on the journey in the spring sunshine of the north. Valentine had a good nose for trouble, and skirted wide around areas controlled by the Quisling servants of the Kurians. They reached the outskirts of Southern Command on the first day of May, and the young pair caught up to Molly's family at one of the small fortress posts in the hills watching the old roads and trails up from St. Louis. That reunion on the soil of the Ozark Free Territory was perhaps the proudest moment in his life. As if some silent bargain had been fulfilled, he and Molly renewed their intimacy that night, making love with giddy, laughing abandon.

  But it was not the same. The desperation and danger of their situation in Wisconsin was absent, and Valentine felt the pull of duty. He had been posted missing and presumed dead, and upon hearing of his safe return to the Ozarks, Gonzalez and a few other Wolves of Zulu Company showed up to welcome him back. He settled the family with old friends in the little borderland settlement of Weening in northern Arkansas near the Saint Francis River and returned to his duties.

  It was a frustrating return. Southern Command read, and promptly forgot, his report on the mysterious Kurian operations in the hills of southern Wisconsin he and Gonzalez had stumbled upon, and shrugged their shoulders at Valentine's suggestion of a new organization under a reversed-swastika symbol Valentine had heard called the Twisted Cross.

  Zulu Company had replaced him, and Valentine was assigned to Captain Beck and Foxtrot Company, mostly freshly invoked Wolves who had never seen a live Reaper and knew Grogs—the variegated, semi-intelligent beasts bred to aid the Kur in their subjugation of humanity—only by their oversize footprints.

  Constant training drained him, and he found it impossible to visit Molly in far-off Weening; they exchanged letters less and less frequently. Molly was young and beautiful, and soon found herself under the attentions of a sergeant in the regulars, the well-turned-out Guards who formed the main body of Southern Command's armed forces. Twinges of jealousy vied with genuine hope for her happiness on the unstable emotional teeter-totter that described his feelings for her.

  Valentine shifted his weight on the hard boards of the wagon, causing the springs to squeak in complaint. That trail of thought led to a dead end. He returned to present problems, reviewing Cooper's ravings. He still knew little of the Twisted Cross. Only that its members were human, at least some of them, and that they were objects of dread in the Kurian Zone and on its borders. He had briefly met one in the bizarre garden of unholy entertainments of the Zoo in Chicago while searching for Molly. A man who talked like a soldier and acted like a Reaper, even to the extent that he thirsted for blood. And whoever they were, they were now somewhere just outside the no-man's-land separating the Free Territory from the KZ.

  Despite that unsettling thought, he finally slept. Above his hard bed, the stars whirled away in the bright clear night.

  "Grogs, Mr. Valentine. Hundreds of'em. Five miles off and coming hard," a pubescent voice intruded on Valentine's deep predawn slumber.

  Valentine woke like a startled animal, instantly alert, and the boy ceased shaking his shoulder. It was Tom Nishino, one of the teenage Aspirants who traveled with the Wolves and performed assorted camp duties in the hope of someday joining their ranks. The youth almost danced with excitement beside the wagon. Captain Beck had taken Nishino, the brightest of Foxtrot's teens, under his wing and used him as a messenger.

  "Whose are they?"

  Nishino looked puzzled at the question. He'd never served down south, where Governer Steiner had his unique and independent enclave of humans and Grogs. So far, Steiner had never let his militias off his lands, which formed a buffer in the south between Kurian Louisiana and the Free Territory. Valentine had always hoped to hear of closer cooperation—he'd played a small part in that alliance his first year as a Wolf.

  "Don't know, sir. They're coming out of Oklahoma."

  "Are we supposed to sound assembly?" Valentine asked, letting his ears play across the campsite for sounds of the tents being struck and
men gathering.

  "The captain asks that you have your platoon turn out with full weapons and equipment, and you're to report to his tent, sir," Nishino reported.

  "Thank you, son. Please walk, walk mind you, back to the captain and tell him I'll be there in five minutes. Sprinting in the dark is a good way to turn an ankle, or have a sentry put a bullet into you. Take it easy, boy." "Sir," the boy said, showing his best salute, and turned neatly to begin a stiff-spined walk back to the captain's tent. Valentine tried to remember if he'd acted like that when he'd first joined the Cause at seventeen. The Wolves sharing the wagon with Valentine still lay in their bedrolls. The pose was deceptive—Valentine had seen them lay hands on their rifles at the first hint of action in the air.

  Valentine pulled on his boots. "Benning, find Sergeant Stafford, please. Tell him to get the platoon together, ammunition and two days' rations. Gabriel, please go and get the draft animals together on a line. We may be moving fast without the wagons. Thank you."

  He hopped out of the wagon as the men exchanged knowing looks. They'd already seen through his facade. Whenever their young lieutenant spoke in that crisp, politely affected manner, action was in the air.

  Valentine walked to the command tepee, unconsciously registering the clatter and curses in the night air as the camp came to life. Grogs were significant. The battle-bred warriors of the Kurians were rare in Oklahoma; Kur relied on Quisling troops in the plains. Might be they'd been brought down from Northern Missouri, and that could mean an attempt to thrust into the vitals of the Free Territory. Valentine ticked off the possibilities in his brain: a raid, an attempt on the Fort Smith region, or perhaps a thrust northeast to link up with others pushing south into Missouri, catching the forces and populace in that corner of the Free Territory in a meat grinder. Or most likely of all, it was a rushed-up retribution for the recent raid by Foxtrot Company. If that was the case, the Wolves could do what they did best: skirmish and ambush. They'd lead the Grogs on a chase until they could be decoyed into the Ozarks and cut off.

  Captain Beck stood outside his tepee in the pink dawn, his hands behind him in the at-ease position.

  Valentine came up beside him. "What's the situation, sir?"

  "Pickets spotted the Grogs crossing the lake about midnight, five kilometers north of here. Tango Company might have picked them up; that's getting up in their area. They turned south right away, moving along the banks of the river. I sent the camp squad out to keep an eye on them— they're freshest. They'll bushwhack any scouts if they can. That'll slow the Grogs some."

  "Strength?"

  "Probably won't have any idea of numbers until daylight, but they're on those legworms—it's how they crossed the river so quick and easy. Pickets said they spotted harpies above the treetops. No sign of them here, so I'm hoping it's just their imagination."

  "Coming here or just trying to raid into the Ozarks?"

  "They're after us, no doubt about that. Maybe some Kurian is down to his last Reaper thanks to you, Valentine. We're going to make them sorry they caught up to us."

  "How's that, sir?" Valentine asked, adding a silent prayer. It wasn't what he thought.

  "I've already tele'd to Decatur for reinforcements and put the sick and wounded in the trucks you captured. Oh, and the children. There's a cavalry regiment of Guards in the area, and more behind them. The Grogs have got to be planning to burn this camp and maybe catch us pulling back toward the Free Territory. They've moved fast, so it can't be a well-planned assault. If we pull up onto Little Timber Hill, we can hold out there for days. It would take more artillery than the Grogs have in Missouri to blast us out of those rocks." Beck reached for the waxed linen packet in which he kept his cigars. With his usual courtesy, he offered one. Valentine shook his head, gathering the right words.

  "Sir, there's nothing here worth fighting for. There aren't any of our farms within twenty miles at least. Let the Grogs bum some wagons and barrels of pork. If they follow us toward Fort Smith, the farther they go, the fewer will get back alive."

  Beck's dark brows dueled like bighorn sheep. "Dammit, Valentine, you know how I feel about that kind of crap. Until we start making those Jaspers more afraid of us than we are of them, they're going to keep pushing into us whenever they feel like it. Besides, you're forgetting Lt. Caltagirone. He's still out with his short platoon. I don't want him coming back to a camp crawling with Grogs."

  "I know that sir, and I agree. But we're Wolves, not Guards. Even a couple of our men are worth more to us, worth more to Southern Command, than every Grog in that column is to the KZ."

  "Are you suggesting I'd throw away men's lives? Because if you are—"

  "No, sir, certainly not, sir."

  "The toughest decisions are always where to fight. I appreciate you speaking your mind, Valentine. That takes a kind of courage, too. Just because we disagree, it won't be held against you."

  He waited, as if expecting a thank-you, then continued. "Someday you'll get a company of your own. When you get it, command it. No councils of war. This is a screen of Grogs who are about to get their noses lopped off. And even if it isn't, we can hold them until the regulars arrive.

  You know how long I held outside Hazlett, Val? Five days. By the second day we were low on ammunition, and by the third even the Grog guns were empty."

  Valentine had heard the story of those five days several times. Versions from the senior surviving Wolves of Foxtrot Company did not match the commander's account exactly, but this was not the time to bring that up.

  "Your orders, sir?"

  "Your platoon is going to haul as many supplies as possible up Little Timber Hill. We've already got trees down all around the hill, we've been working on the fortifications since we got here. Fill a couple wagons, triple-team them if you have to, and get them up that hill to Rocky Crown. Water's not a problem this time of year, but I want food and ammo. And every hand grenade we have. Drive the livestock up, and make a pen."

  Valentine took the orders like bitter medicine. Now he had to decide how to carry them out, quickly. Grogs on leg-worms ate miles, skirmishing pickets or no, and with daylight they would move even faster.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good. Clear the camp as soon as you can."

  "And the spouses?"

  "Some left with their kids. The others have to get up the hill, too. Any further questions, Valentine?"

  "No, sir," Valentine said, already wondering if he could even get the wagons up that slope, triple-teamed or no.

  The whole camp was stirring now as the Wolves gathered their weapons and equipment. Valentine returned to his platoon to find Stafford sitting on top of a wagon, issuing orders and equipment to the assembling men.

  "We'll be ready to pull out in fifteen minutes, sir," Gator reported. "If we aren't moving the wagons, some of the women can ride on the draft animals. We'll make good time, probably hit the outskirts of the Territory by sundown."

  "Good work, Staff, but we're not leaving. We have to hitch up some wagons and fill them from the stores. We've got to get the ammo and food up to the redoubt."

  Stafford's face fell, lacking only an audible thud. "The captain wants to fight it out?"

  Valentine hid his own misgivings with his best airy smile. "Gator, it's probably just a screen of Grogs to flush us. The Guards are already on their way if it's not. And besides, Caltagirone is still out with his men. We can't abandon them to the Grogs. Get the men moving; they've got fifteen minutes to get something in their stomachs—then we have to hitch up a couple of wagons, fill them with food and bullets, and haul up that trail. Minutes count, okay, Sergeant?"

  "Yes, Lieutenant."

  Gator turned and began bellowing orders. Poulos's new bride, her mother, and a few of the other camp casuals were already passing out ersatz coffee and the morning's biscuits. The men squatted around their NCOs, cramming food into their mouths while they discussed how best to get the supplies up that hill. The smell of bacon frying brought saliva to Valentine
's mouth, and he moved over to the cooking fire. A seven-year-old girl, the daughter of Corporal Hart of First Platoon, scuttled past him in a flutter of tangled dark hair chasing a chicken.

  Valentine swore under his breath. She should have left with the trucks. Hart and his wife must have decided to keep the family together despite the risks. The girl got the chicken and hurried off to the coops. Valentine tried to put her out of his mind. It was too easy to imagine a Grog loping after her.

  By the time he had eaten two heels of bread dripping with bacon fat and a pair of still-sputtering strips of meat, the platoon had the outlines of a plan. Stafford and the other NCOs decided to run two wagons, one from the camp to the base of the steep hill that served as the Company redoubt, and a second double-teamed one to run light loads up the hill. Valentine watched the first group of men move off with axes and two small horses toward the hill. They would improve the trail and check for deadfalls, then improvise a corral at the rocky top of the hill. The camp dependents would follow, bringing a few necessities and driving the goats, geese, and cows that made up the Company's livestock.