by E. E. Knight
Six Grogs followed, loping into the young forest of the ruined suburban tracts. It became five when Ahn-Kha halted behind a tree while Valentine kept running and brought down the lead pursuer. After that, the chase proceeded with less speed and more caution, and when Valentine killed another from a rooftop Ahn-Kha had stirrup-lifted him onto, the pursuit broke off.
"We got away from them," Ahn-Kha said, breathing heavily and resting on all fours.
"You bet, old horse." Valentine marked the setting sun. "But they won't get away from us."
Ahn-Kha got his pick of weapons that night.
They swung around in a crescent, and Valentine left the exhausted Grog with his pack and gun well clear of the house while he went back to the brick ranch, approaching from the opposite direction from which they had fled. He took with him two grenades scavenged off the dead Gray Ones.
He crawled around the perimeter of the house in his black overcoat, listening to the grunts and barks within. The Grogs had gathered around their wounded, resting in the back room by the fireplace. He armed and activated the grenade as quietly as he could.
Gray Ones have good noses and better ears; one of them heard or smelled the fuse. It barked a warning, and Valentine let the fuse burn down two anxious seconds' worth before tossing the grenade through the window. While it was still in the air, he stuck his fingers in his ears.
At the explosion, he drew his sword and came in through the back door. It was a matter of killing everything that moved in the smoke-filled room that was not a part of him. The stunned and stricken Grogs might as well have played blindman's buff with a buzz saw—only one had the sense to run. It left a blood trail across the floor as it hurried to leap out of the gap where the front picture window had once been.
It didn't make the window. Valentine was after it like an arrow, opening it with a slash across the back.
Ahn-Kha returned to the house and ignored the carnage. He examined the various rifles and eventually selected one with a black-stained handle. The Grogs liked the butts of their weapons to be gnarled and burled and this one was no exception. "I must shape this before it truly suits me, but it is a good gun." He also pored over the finger-size bullets, sliding the formidable-looking rounds he selected into his bandolier.
Valentine lined up the Grog bodies according to Ahn-Kha's instructions, placing them on their backs with the left palm over the heart, the right palm across the nose and mouth, weapons laid to either side. Another patrol from the Wrist-Ring Clan, upon finding the bodies, might pause for the proper ceremonies. They would seed the bodies with the correct decomposing fungi, and perhaps be too busy mourning their dead to pursue.
"You men anger the Gray Ones when you just burn their corpses. They think you kill them not only in this world, but deny them the passage to the Hero's Woods their bravery merits. Better to leave them to lie on the battlefield untouched."
"Ever heard the expression 'When in Rome'? They wouldn't have their rites ignored if they weren't here in the first place."
"That's the fault of another generation."
Valentine thought of the wilds of western Missouri. Wolf teams could reach Omaha, find paths that more powerful forces could follow. "By working together, some of that generation's legacy might be wiped away."
"The Golden Ones have tasted the fruits of their alliance with Kur. We found them rotten. Then came the Twisted Cross. Many would be ready to join your fight."
"I wish we could find explosives more powerful than these grenades," Valentine said, rooting through the Gray Ones' equipment. "We could hit the Twisted Cross in their own backyard."
"I can help you in that," Ahn-Kha said. "There are men in the Old Market who can obtain anything you need."
To Valentine, anything pre-2022 was "old." But this part of the city, set against the river, was aged even by Old World standards as he understood them.
The closely packed, square brick buildings had new windows where they weren't simply closed by masonry. The west and south faces of many still showed burnt-black smudges, lingering evidence of the airbursts that had destroyed the city and the old air force base to the south.
They came to the district walking along the Missouri. The river rolled south past the city, redolent of silt and algae, with only a hint of the sewage that Valentine smelled from many of the old storm drains. In the distance, a rust-colored dredger worked between the pillars of the rail bridge, bringing up masses of mud. Just upriver from the dredger, a few barges rested against a wharf. There were overturned canoes and even a few small sailboats sharing the riverside with the trim barges, baby versions of the huge transports Valentine had seen from a distance on the Mississippi.
Ahn-Kha told him a little about the settlement. Though all of Omaha and its surroundings had been given to the Grogs, the Golden Ones and Gray Ones still needed to trade—especially for tools and weapons. They invited a few humans to set up house, giving them protection for activities that were outlawed elsewhere in the Kurian Zone, and a little patch of land next to the riverside fields and C-shaped lake. The black marketeers flourished, and as the Quisling society in Iowa and parts of Kansas grew, they became semi-legitimate even in the eyes of the Kurians.
Old Omaha had no walls. Once past the reeking piles of trash and the masses of feral cats sleeping in the sunny blown-out doorways and windows north of the wharf, Ahn-Kha led him to clean cobblestone streets. Every windowsill and rooftop supported a garden. Goats and calves grazed in open lots. The animals were marked with splashes of dye.
"The traders here run 'houses.'" Ahn-Kha explained. "When I came here, there were three. I am told it has been that way for years. The three tolerate each other, but no more. They share the common land but mark their animals. The gardens on the land of the house are their own. They tell me there are groves across the river for apples and cherries and chestnuts, but I have not been there to see how they divide it."
Men, most of them armed with gun belts, lounged here and there on the corners. Some rose from benches and made a show of standing in the sidewalk so Ahn-Kha had to step into the street to pass.
"You just take that crap?" Valentine asked.
"It is easier to receive an insult than a bullet."
Valentine saw the wisdom in that, but it still irked him.
"Which house do you wish to try?"
"House Holt. For the most part, they were good friends with the Golden Ones. It is run by the Big Man."
"What's he like?" Valentine wondered what to expect. He hoped it wasn't an Omaha version of the Duke in Chicago, alternately bluff and frightening.
"He was always evenhanded to me, though not friendly. He looked always to the future; I admired him for thinking, and speaking, in terms of decades rather than days."
"Not many can afford to do that."
"Here is his insignia. It hangs outside his house, and his men carry it as his token."
Valentine looked at the sign. He'd seen broken versions of it here and there; it was circular, green and white and black, featuring a serene long-haired woman surrounded by stars. Above the projecting sign on the second story, fans set in the window turned behind inch-thick iron bars.
"Electricity here?" Valentine asked.
"Yes. The three houses share the maintenance of a coal generator. Long ago I tried to get them to put one in for the Golden Ones. I failed."
As they approached the door under the sign, a man next to the door rose from his seat on a wooden locker and put his hand on his pistol. He had long hair and a longer stare.
"What's your business?"
"A meeting with your Executive," Ahn-Kha said.
"You let your Grog do your talking for you, kid?" the door warden asked Valentine. "Usually with you Black Flag types, the man's the mouth and the Grog's the muscle."
"I'm the bodyguard," Valentine said.
"That so. Put your weapons in this box, and I'll let you in. Whether you see the Big Man or not will be up to him."
Ahn-Kha gave Valenti
ne a nod. The warden opened the box. Ahn-Kha leaned his captured rifle against the door-jamb; the gun was too long to fit inside. Valentine placed pistol, parang, sword, and claws within, and covered it with his bedroll and submachine gun.
The warden shook his head. "More iron doesn't make you more tough, kid. I've got to check your pockets and pat you down. Anything sticks me, we'll float you back to your General on crutches. Anything else?"
Valentine removed a short clasp knife and tossed it in with the rest. It wasn't much of a weapon anyway. "Clean now. Enjoy."
The warden searched both of them from head to foot. "Strangers call," he shouted into the door.
"Opening for strangers," came the response after a moment. An older man, white at the temples, wraparound sunglasses worn against the glare outside, lowered a shotgun when he saw Ahn-Kha.
"Ankle! It's been years."
Valentine was glad he looked genuinely pleased.
The man nodded to Valentine, then shook Ahn-Kha's hand. "Thought you bought it in the Big Burn."
"I've been in hiding, my Ian. Please to meet my new brother, David."
Ian shut the door and sent a thick bolt home.
"You no longer run your route?" Ahn-Kha asked.
'The routes are drying up. Even north. Those of us who still want to draw food work carrying guns now. The General's giving us the squeeze."
"Then perhaps we can do business. We wish to see the Big Man about the General."
"Lost cause. That rat's got muscle from here to KC. Keeps trying to get us to come on base, wear his damned cross. Doesn't sit right with me—lots of us—going down there just to salute and put new heels on Reaper boots. This is House talk only, but immyho, the Big Man says that's the only alternative to just pulling up and leaving for God knows where. He's down to trying to get us a good deal and keep us off base."
* * *
Within fifteen minutes, they were speaking to the Executive of House Holt.
The Big Man wasn't big, or even of average size. Valentine guessed him to be about four feet nine inches, and a bantamweight to boot. He had lush black hair falling back from the crown of his head to his thick beard. An open-necked shirt, silver-buckled belt, and cuffed pants over pointed-toe boots. He was bowlegged, pigeon-chested.
Valentine guessed his age to be mid-forties. When Valentine was training to be a Wolf, he heard a senior Wolf talk about a generation the veteran called the "children of chaos." In the years of what the Free Territory called the Overthrow, many babies were born underweight and malnourished as a rule, and in the tumultuous years that followed, they never had a chance to catch up. Valentine had known only a few from those hard years, compact-framed like the man before him, but generous spirits. Extreme hardship, it seemed to Valentine, had polarized that generation to extremes of magnanimity or selfishness.
Valentine hoped for magnanimity.
Their host stood at a window on the third floor, surveying Old Omaha from a floor-to-ceiling window, the layered panes somewhat distorting the view. He stood resting against a chair; the chair and its mate sat to either side of a wooden chess table with gold and silver pieces arranged on the board and beside it. The office was opulently furnished around an immense wooden desk and bookcase, but it seemed crammed—with everything from statues to rugs to paintings to vases and urns—rather than arranged, especially when compared with Roland Victor's in Kansas.
The corner nearest them, separated from the Big Man by a folding screen, was occupied by a squint-eyed assistant. She wrote in a ledger resting upon a drafting table. The Big Man's burled desk had nothing on the top except a lamp and a leather blotter.
"Ahn-Kha." The Big Man had a flat voice, a trifle reedy. "What brings you and your 'bodyguard' to my house?"
"My compliment on your promotion," Ahn-Kha said. "What became of the Big Man?"
"Ravies. Some rats they'd released, I suppose on the Ozarks to the south, made it into one of our barges. Bad luck; he was checking incoming cargoes and stuck his hand into a bag of rice without wearing gloves."
"You took the name along with the Executive title?"
"Sort of a joke. I don't mind."
The Big Man walked around to his desk and sat down. He moved stiff-leggedly, with the aid of a pair of canes. The canes disappeared as soon as he sat.
"Shall we leave right now?" Ahn-Kha asked.
"Without introducing your friend?" the Big Man asked.
"His name is David."
He swiveled his gaze to Valentine. "I should explain. Ahn-Kha and I have had our differences in the past. I didn't care for our house trading weapons with his kind." He returned to Ahn-Kha. "I accused you of eating human babies, as I recall. Ten years ago I... anger tended to get the better of me. Anger that had nothing to do with the Golden Ones."
"For my part, I challenged him to combat," Ahn-Kha added. "Aggravating insult with greater insult."
"Was there a duel?" Valentine said when neither offered an end to the story.
"No," the Big Man said. "Calmer heads interceded. Unless you wish to take up the challenge?"
Ahn-Kha closed his eyes, opened them. "No."
Valentine felt some of the tension seep away. "We need your help. House Holt's help."
"What do you offer? We're traders. Smugglers, to some. Quislings to others. I saw you take off a Wolf parang."
"My company was destroyed this spring," Valentine said. The truth, even shaded, was preferable to a plausible lie. "Our request is unusual."
"January, please get our guests some sandwiches and lemonade." The woman behind the screen slipped out.
"Lemonade?" Valentine asked, going over to the chess set.
"Thanks to the Kurians, they grow fine in some of the more sheltered parts of the Missouri Valley."
Valentine stared down at the pieces. The gold king was in trouble—nothing but a castle and a pawn protected him from a knight, two pawns, a bishop, and the silver king.
"Do you play?" the Big Man asked, turning his chair.
"A little. My dad taught me. I used to play it with my adopted father—neither of us were very good."
"Do you see a way out for the black king? I'm trying for a draw."
"Black meaning the gold one?"
"Yes. Sorry. Convention requires black and white no matter what the color of the pieces are."
Valentine looked, thought. "No. I think mate in three moves."
The Big Man sighed. "Two. The king can attack."
"How about a game? While we have the sandwiches."
Their host looked eager again and rocked his way back to the table. "You're the guest. White or black."
"Silver."
Valentine moved a pawn.
Eight moves later, behind leaping knights, the black queen came forth. "Checkmate," the Big Man said in his in-flectionless voice.
Valentine shook his hand. "What's the General to you, Executive? An enemy bishop, or your king?"
The Big Man rested his chin on his cane. "An opposing king. I give him tribute, barges of food. He'd rather I were one of his pieces. My position isn't that different from the way the pieces were before our game. Though I don't have a castle. Just three floors of odds and ends."
The sandwiches arrived, pulling Ahn-Kha from an examination of oil paintings in dusty frames.
"January, I won't need you for a bit. You can go home for the afternoon if you wish," the Big Man said.
Valentine saw a look pass between them. "It's all right— I'm perfectly safe. They're not Twisted Cross." He began to put the pieces back in their starting positions. "Care to switch chairs for the next?"
This time the Big Man's silver bishops eviscerated him like a pair of dueling swords. Checkmate in eleven moves.
"What did you come here for?"
"Guns for the Golden Ones. Explosives," Ahn-Kha said, as Valentine and the Big Man switched chairs again. "My people would use them against the Twisted Cross."
"I'm only crippled physically, Ahn-Kha."
Valentine moved his queen, taking a knight. "Southern Command would help, too. Perhaps in a few months, we could have Bear teams up here. You know what they are, don't you?"
"A kiss and a promise. I'll believe it when I see the teams. Besides, I don't have that much time. The General has given me an ultimatum. Join, leave, or... be burnt. Your move."
Valentine saw it coming this time—the Big Man had sacrificed a knight to draw out his queen. He lost a bishop, and then it was, "Checkmate."
"Let's play again. No switching chairs, I like silver."
"Very well."
This time they were silent. Valentine lost a knight, and when the bishops came forward again, his pawns occupied them until his queen had space. She took a castle, a pawn, and a bishop before falling. Then his castles came forward. The Big Man let out a small noise, wrinkled his brows, moved a knight back. Valentine sent a bishop forward, took a pawn, lost his bishop, and brought out his last knight.
Valentine checked.
The Big Man moved his king, a smile on his face.
"Checkmate," Valentine said.
The Big Man offered his hand. "My compliments. I saw it two moves ago, but went through the motions. You deserved the gratification."
Valentine arranged the pieces the way they'd been when he first approached the table. "Sir, in your quest for a stalemate ... suppose you could have gotten that pawn to the white side and converted it."
"Unlikely."
"Suppose the unlikely happened."
"Reliance on the improbable is a bad strategy."
"Even so," Valentine said.
Ahn-Kha's ears pointed forward, listening.
"The whole balance would change. I could get the draw. Depending on the white bishop, I might be able to squeeze a victory."
"If you got enough arms to the Golden Ones, in the ghetto, on the base, that lonely pawn could become a terrible weapon."
"No. I won't put my house's future in jeopardy."
Ahn-Kha's ears drooped as he stood. "Thank you for the sandwiches. I am glad we have put the past behind."
The Big Man nodded. "Good luck with your own future."
"What there is of it," Valentine said. "Thank you for your time."
