by E. E. Knight
In the early hours of the morning, Valentine left everything but the ordnance to Stafford. He personally supervised digging up the Company's reserve grenades and ammunition. Some of the explosives used black powder, and he wanted to make sure that in the rush, the volatile mixture was not mishandled.
"Mr. Valentine," said O'Neil, uncovering the last case of grenades from the shallow trench that had covered them, "gimme half an hour, and I'll set a little booby trap here. We leave behind a case, and the first Grog tries to shift it gets blowed into pieces that wouldn't fill a spoon."
"If we had time, we'd leave surprises everywhere, O'Neil. But they're going to be here any minute."
It promised to be a cloudy morning. As Valentine walked behind the load of ammunition, eyeing the balance of the load in the wagon bed as it ascended the first gentle slope toward the redoubt, a running Wolf broke cover from the tree line to the north. Valentine watched him disappear into the thick trees of Little Timber Hill, making for the new command post.
"Let's keep it moving, men. The Grogs are on their way. We want to have this load to shoot at them, not the other way round."
O'Neil quickened the pace of the four horses, and the last of Valentine's platoon soon disappeared into the trees at the base of the hill. Stafford waited there, with more horses ready to be hitched to the rest.
"Everything and everyone's up at the top, sir. The corral took no doing at all—there's a little hollow in the rocks that we just closed off at one end. The captain's going to use the other wagon to block the trail once we make it to the crest."
"Good work, Staff. Let's get a man at each wheel with a rock, ready to brace it up if the horses need a breather. Get a few hides between the crates, just in case the load shifts. I don't think even a bad bounce would set it off, but better safe than dead. Where's the platoon supposed to be once we get up?"
"We're to form a reserve. He wants the dependents armed, too. The rest of the platoon will cover the south and the saddle to the east where it joins the rest of the hills. First platoon is going to be on the main line, covering the trail. The captain figures if they'll come, they'll come up the trail, where the slope's gentle."
The newly double-teamed wagon ascended the hill, with men ready to prop the wheels with rocks when the horses could no longer take the strain. Even this, the "gentie" part of the hill, had an exhausting slope to the grade, running way up Little Timber Hill like a long ramp.
A little more than halfway up the hill, they came upon the fortifications. Whatever Valentine's other disagreements with the captain, he had to admire the planning and execution of the redoubt. Trees were felled at the crest of the steepest part of the slope, pointing outward with their branches shorn and sharpened into abatis. Earth-and-wood fortifications, complete with head-logs in many places, frowned down on the steep slope. If the Grogs wanted Little Timber, they would pay a steep price, as steep as the hill the wagon now climbed, exacted by the marksmen of Foxtrot Company. Valentine put himself in the enemy's canoe like sandals at the base of the hill. How would he go about the assault to minimize the cost?
He knew his men would fight like cornered rats, but Valentine disliked being in a corner in the first place. The Wolves lived and fought through their mile-devouring mobility, striking where and when the Kurians were weak and disappearing once the enemy concentrated. He dreaded the coming hammer-and-tongs battle, but what could he do in the face of orders?
"C'mon, men, push!" he shouted, throwing his weight against the wagon when the horses began to shift sideways in exhaustion. His Wolves hurled themselves against the wheels, sides—anywhere on the wagon where they could get a grip. The wagon and men groaned on up.
At the line of fortifications, Valentine braced up the wheels and passed out cases of ammunition and hand-bombs. The slope from here was easier to the crown of the hill. A little above them a small boulder-strewn spur off the crown marked Beck's designated command post. He saw the captain moving down the slope toward the trail.
"Keep it moving, Sergeant. I'm going to talk to the captain for a moment."
He found Beck, legs stiff as though rooted among the rocks.
"Nice work, Lieutenant. That was a big load at last."
"The ammunition took a while to dig up, sir. What's the word on the Grogs?"
Beck looked grim. "It's in the hundreds, at least. The scouts marked a dozen legworms. There're men with them, too, but they were too far away to see if it was Quisling regulars or just the supply train."
"Grogs don't move with much in the way of supplies. I think they eat rocks if it comes to it."
"Valentine, you and I both know what they eat. Let's just try to stay off the menu for a few days. I want your platoon covering that ravine to the south and the saddle where the rocky crown meets the other hills. Keep your best squad as a reserve, back up wherever they decide to hit us first. I've put a squad in reserve, too, and we're going to shift them as needed. Twenty or so extra guns will make the difference wherever they come."
Valentine did some quick mental math. Beck's deployment put a man every ten feet or so in the tree-trunk fortifications on the crest of the little hill. Maybe a little more to the west and on the saddle, a few less at the steep ravine on the south side. Lt. Caltagirone and his twenty men would be a godsend, if they would just return. The two flying squads would be very busy.
He jogged up to the crown of the hill, a windswept expanse of rocks on the heavily timbered rise protruding from the trees like a callused spot on an ox's back. Stunted specimens of scrub pine grew among the rocks, in what looked like just a few handfuls of dirt. A goat bleated from a little depression in the hill's crown. The stock drank from a muddy pool of rainwater caught in a basin like depression. The camp casuals stood by, armed. Everything seemed to be in place here. He found a moment to smile and nod at the Meyer girl—or rather Mrs. Poulos now, the baby still in her arms, and tried not to mink about their fate if the Grogs overran the hilltop. He turned to the men taking their positions at the breastworks.
Sergeant Stafford had already arrayed the men, stretching them painfully thin at the ravine to the south, and clustered them in two groups on the saddle that connected Little Timber Hill to a larger ridge to the east. Beyond that line of hills to the southeast stood the comforting mass of the Ozarks, blue in the distance.
Valentine made only one improvement in the Sergeant's defenses. He had the men drape a few hides, hats, and bits of clothing over appropriately shaped saplings. The Grogs were remarkable long-range snipers, and a few extra targets to absorb potshots during an assault might save the life of a real soldier.
The Wolves took to making scarecrows with a will, even going so far as to naming them Fat Tom, the Hunchback, Mr. Greenshoots, and other colorful monikers. As a few aged felt hats were being fixed atop the faux Wolves, shots echoed up from the west side of the hill.
"Looks like they found us," Valentine announced, seeing his men stiffen at the sound. "Keep your heads down, gents. Let them shoot, and mark them. Then shoot when they reload their pieces. Or when they psyche themselves up for a charge."
Valentine fought the urge to go to the other side of the hill for a glimpse of the opposition. His place was with his men.
"Gator, I'm putting you in charge of the reserve squad at the top. That'll be the final line if this one goes. Get the ammunition in there with the stock, and fill every bucket and canteen with water. Understand?"
"Ahead of you, sir, at least as far as the ammunition goes. I'll get first squad to work up there. Whistle if there's trouble?"
Valentine extracted a little silver whistle on a lanyard from beneath his buckskin jacket. Stafford winced at the sight; the whistle had belonged to Valentine's predecessor. It would have been buried with him, too, if Stafford hadn't rescued it from before sending the body on to the field morgue. "We might be in for a long fight. Work the men in shifts."
A leaping figure raced up the hill from Beck's spur. It was the Aspirant, Nishino.
Valentine checked his carbine and pistol while he waited for the racing teen.
"Lieutenant Valentine, sir," Nishino said, again out of breath. "The captain wants you in charge of the flying squads. He says to assemble them behind the command post. They found us, and it looks like they're coming up the hill!"
"Thank you, Nishino. Tell the captain I'll be there at once," he said, granting the boy the formality of a salute.
He turned to Stafford. "I guess that leaves you in charge here, Gator. Put Corporal Holloway in with the dependents and the livestock at the last line."
"Yes, sir."
"The Grogs should be a while probing the hill. If they come in your zone, it'll be across the saddle. Put two men with good ears on the other side of it, and tell them to make sure the Grogs don't get between them and the crown."
"Good luck, Val." Gator shook his hand, hung on for an extra moment.
"You, too, Gator."
"See you soon."
"Soon."
Valentine trotted up the hill, feeling liberated. He'd done all he could. The Wolves would do the fighting now. All he could do is offer to stop a bullet like the rest of them. The day might see him as a hero, a coward, a fool, or a corpse. Like a drunk anticipating a hangover, he knew that the fear would come later, leaving him shaking in a cold sweat and nauseated.
He stole over to the command post, crabbing carefully between the rocks. Grog snipers could already have a view of the spur, and he wanted to avoid a rendezvous with one of the fifty-caliber bullets fired from single-shot rifles they favored.
Beck was scanning the bottom of the slope with his binoculars, listening to the popping of sporadic rifle fire, turning his head at the shots like an owl following mouse scratches.
He glanced once at Valentine and returned to the binoculars.
"Lieutenant, scouts are back. The legworms will be up this slope in a few minutes. They're lining the damn things up now in the camp. We've counted only ten. They'll have to do some winding to get around these trees, so they can't come up at a rush. Take the flying squads, and reinforce at that wagon. If I want you to pull out for some reason, you'll hear three short blasts from my whistle."
'Three blasts—yes, sir," Valentine repeated.
Beck put down the binoculars. "Give'em hell, Val. Captaincies grow from days like these."
"Yes, sir."
Valentine hurried up to Yamashiro and his squad, wondering what sort of stress Beck was under, to make him think his lieutenant would fight harder if he thought there was a set of captain's bars in it. He had served with Beck for nine months, and his superior still had no idea what kind of man his senior lieutenant was. It was a disturbing thought on a day that already had many other unsettling mental threads unraveling.
He gained the tree where Yamashiro waited with the most veteran of the squads of Second Platoon. The expectant, confident expressions on the men's faces were a tonic to Valentine.
"Here's the story, gentlemen. We're going to have about ten legworms in our laps in a few minutes. But this isn't the open prairie; those big bastards are going to have a tough time in the woods. Corporal, do you have two reliable catapult teams?"
"Sure, sir. Baker can hit the strike zone from center field, and Grub is pretty near as good."
"Very well. I want one team just below the CP."
"Just below the command post—yes, sir."
"There's a pair of boulders kind of leaning together above the line of fortifications on the south side of the road—the other team should be posted there. Take a sack of bombs, men, and make them count. Remember, the brain on a legworm is buried in the middle."
The Wolves began putting together the catapults. They were improvised weapons for hurling the baseball-size grenades of Southern Command. Essentially larger versions of the classic childhood slingshot, they consisted of a broad U of one-inch lead piping, with thick surgical tubing attached at the top. The grenade rested in a little hardened leather cup at the center of the tubing. Two men held the U while a third pulled and aimed the catapult, launching the grenade twice as far as it could be thrown, often with uncanny accuracy in the hands of a skilled puller.
Valentine took Corporal Yamashiro and the other four men down to the breastworks. He looked around the makeshift "gate" in the trail, made up of a wagon with rocks and timber piled around it.
"Sergeant Petrie, you in charge here?" Valentine looked up at a man kneeling with two others behind a long log stretched across the length of the wagon.
"Yes, Lieutenant Valentine."
"Nice job spacing the men. Pass the word, Wolves— we've got legworms coming. It does no good to shoot the damn things; they won't even feel it. Knock the Grogs off the top. And don't be afraid to use the grenades. We've got a whole summer's worth." The last was not quite true, but Valentine wanted to encourage their use. Explosions had been known to make legworms reverse themselves and creep away as quickly as they came forward.
A few of the men had bundled bunches of grenades around a hefty branch, making a throwable stick bomb.
Valentine moved up and down the line, checking the men's positions and equipment. Most gripped their rifles and stared down the hill with hard, alert faces.
Valentine let his hearing play all along the bottom of the hill. Muted light from the cloud-filled sky gave the woods an eerie, shadowless uniformity. A woodpecker beat a tattoo on a distant tree, as if drumming a warning of what was to come.
"C'mon, apes, if you're gonna bring it. . . let's get it over with," a Wolf said as he peered down the leaf sights of his rifle to the base of the hill.
The answer came: a distant horn sounded a hair-raising call of three blasts, each slightly louder and higher than the preceding: awwwk Awwwwwk AWWWWUUK! It made Valentine think of trumpeter swans he had heard in his Minnesota youth. A few of the newer soldiers looked at each other, seeking reassurance from their comrades after hearing the otherworldly sound.
"Good of them to let us know they're on the way," Valentine said. "Let's return the favor." Then more loudly, "Stand to your posts, men, and let them know that Wolves are waiting!"
The men cheered and began howling, imitating the cries of the canine predators. The cries were picked up and amplified by other Wolves up and down the thinly held line until the hills echoed with them. Valentine spotted skinny young Nishino a little way above in the rocks of the command post, red-faced from yelling his lungs out.
A steady rustle, like a wind through dry fall leaves, came from the base of the hill. The cheers ceased. Valentine brought up his carbine, comforted by its reliable weight and smell of gun oil.
The pale-yellow legworms advanced, slinking up the hillside like gigantic centipedes. Each individual limb rippled one at a time along the thirty-foot length of their bodies, faster than the eye could follow. The motion fascinated Valentine; it reminded him of quickly falling dominoes. He tore his gaze away from the hypnotic sight of the legs. A probing maw ringed with catfish whiskers waved to and fro, finding the way for the rest of the creature between the tree trunks. Gray troll-like figures, proportioned like huge apes, sat astride the long, tubular legworms. They held metal shields in cordwood-thick arms, with long-barreled rifles resting in eyebolts projecting from the side. Each leg-worm in the assault carried six of these Grogs, already firing up into the Wolves' breastworks. Their shooting was worse than usual, owing to the unsteady motion of their side winding mounts.
A few shots rang out from the Wolves as bullets zipped overhead. Explosions tore through the trees when grenades fired from the catapults detonated on the hillside. One Wolf whirled a stick bomb on a short lanyard, sending the grenades bouncing down the hill and into the approaching line.
Between the legworms, Grogs on foot jumped from tree to tree, covering each other with steady rifle fire. A few shots told among the Wolves. But the infantry Grogs could not keep up with their mounted comrades.
A stick bomb rolled under a legworm's middle. The grenades detonated, sending black dig
its flying. The creature collapsed at the middle, dead, but both ends still writhed on reflex-driven legs.
Another grenade exploded close enough to one's nerve center to send it into convulsions, throwing or crushing its Grog riders and trees alike as it whipped and rolled like a scorpion stinging itself to death. A legworm on the northern end seemed confused, moving sideways, forward and back amongst the trees as if looking for an escape, giving the Wolves a chance to pick off its riders. Freed of their control, the legworm moved back down the hill away from the chaos. Two more followed it despite the frantic efforts to control it on the part of its simian riders.
"Pour it into them, men, pour it on," Petrie yelled above the din, blood spilling down his face from a gash across his temple. The bullet that nearly killed him had taken his hat. White bone glistened red under a ragged flap of skin.
Valentine squeezed off shot after shot at the lead Grog on the nearest legworm, but the bullets seemed either to miss or bounce off the piece of armored shield it held in its hand.
Vexed, he knelt to reload. Grog snipers put bullets where his head had been a moment before. He noticed the Wolf to his right had the whole right side of his head torn away, as if sawn off with a precision tool.
Carbine ready, Valentine rolled and came back up behind the breastworks at the dead man's notch. He squeezed off three shots into the same leading Grog from the shield's off side. This time his shots found their mark; the Grog toppled off its mount. Its fellows tried to grab the reins, but the leg-worm already began to arc off to the right. At the rate of a Grog a second, the Wolves dropped the other five riders like ducks in a shooting gallery.
Cordite filled Valentine's nostrils. Another legworm thrashed in tree-cracking pain, badly wounded by a grenade. But two more were atop the breastworks, forcing their way through the abatis, ignoring the sharpened branches, which first impaled, then broke off in their soft, puffy skin.
Valentine saw the flash of a fuse and heard a faint, wet pop. A legworm's mouth exploded, leaving a greenish-yellow wound open across the whole front of its body. The thing reeled and sped back downslope, shaking its riders like a bucking bronco. One of the catapults had managed to put a grenade right down its throat, using the basketball-hoop-size maw as a target. But the remaining legworm was up and over the head-logs in a flash, and the Grogs dropped off it and onto the men below, closely followed by a second yellow giant. As it climbed onto the logs, heavy and pulsing above Valentine's head, he ignored his own advice and fired shot after shot into its belly at the approximate middle. The bullets left green-goo-dripping holes, but the thirty-caliber shells fired muzzle-to-skin found nerve ganglia. The legworm collapsed; as it fell, he threw himself out of the way, but it still trapped him below the knees. A few legs hammered against his thighs as they twitched out their final spasm.
