by E. E. Knight
"Wha-awk," the General managed to get out, before
Ahn-Kha wrapped his viselike fingers around his throat. The angry titan picked up the General, swung him at the shocked aide.
Valentine's chair fell over in the struggle, but he still could see the unique sight of a man being beaten to death with another man used as the murder weapon. With six blows, Ahn-Kha reduced both the General and his aide to bloody pulp. The General proved to be a poor choice of club; he began to fall apart after the third swing.
The bodyguard Grogs shrank away from the twitching corpses, as though the General might rise again in demonic fury. But it was just reflex of muscle and broken bone making wet sounds against the floor. The bodyguards exchanged a few tremulous words with Ahn-Kha and then embraced him.
The Golden One breathed hard after his exertion. "You do not look yourself, my David. Let me help you."
The bearlike face hovered over his. As the world slipped, Valentine tried to stay conscious.
Back. Feel the pain. Smell the blood. Hear the—gunfire. There's gunfire?
"What did you say to the bodyguards?" Valentine asked weakly. A few shots sounded from the hall.
" 'If you do nothing, all is forgiven.' It is a little more poetic in my tongue. I hope this does not hurt you further." The Grog's arc of muscle at his arms and shoulders tensed, and the handcuffs snapped in two.
The door opened, and Alessa Duvalier stood silhouetted in the frame, encased in Twisted Cross assault armor. The gear made her look a little absurd, like a turtle in too big a shell. She held a rifle to her shoulder, covering the hallway, and her naked, blood-smeared sword stuck blade-up in her waistband. A sweat-soaked headband kept flame-colored hair out of wild and hungry eyes.
"No time for kiss and tell, boys. Heat's on."
Valentine wondered if he were in some wild dream brought on by loss of blood. "Ali?" he said, "What are you doing here?"
She reversed the magazine in her gun, quickly substituting the full one for the empty one taped to it. "I'm milking a male ostrich! What does it look like, Val? I'm taking point for your pointy-eared friend."
Ahn-Kha scooped Valentine up in his arms and followed the female Cat out the door and down the hall. At an intersection ahead, Valentine saw another Golden One with a machine gun at his hip, spraying the corridor with fire. They turned at the corner opposite to where the Grog was firing, and Valentine got a brief glimpse of a corridor littered with bodies. Valentine felt himself being carried up some stairs, thinking that perhaps it wasn't so bad to be partnered with a mentally disordered woman—sometimes. Then he passed out.
"The hardest part was figuring out where you were," Duvalier explained the next day.
Valentine lay in his hammock in some thick woods on the Missouri River well south of the Twisted Cross base. Ahn-Kha was sleeping soundly, Valentine's PPD cradled in his arms. Valentine sipped some willow-leaf tea to ease the pain. According to Duvalier, he had the blackest black eye she had ever seen.
"I caused a little trouble with the column that hit the Eagle's Wings, but I mostly wanted to learn where their base was. It was just a matter of getting into camp and keeping my ears open. The stunts you pull are the type of thing only Bears are stupid enough to try—I'd just as soon stay out of the way of bullets, thank you very much. Not that I don't admire your balls."
She kissed the bandage over the left side of his cheek.
"Maybe I can introduce you to the twins and their big brother when I can walk again," he suggested.
"Dream on, Valentine. So I go to the rendezvous and wait, and naturally you don't show. So I leave a note and come hunting around the south end of Omaha. I pretty much mapped out the base, got an idea of the numbers the Twisted Cross had, and found out that oversize perimeter wasn't too well guarded. The General was planning for the future, I suppose. But his present couldn't do the job.
"So one day I'm checking out the west side of the wall, and I see this ugly ape trying to move through the brush, real sneaky-like but making more noise than a bulldozer in a bottle factory. I'm about to do him in from ambush, when I see this ugly, drum-fed gun in his hands. It's just too much of a coincidence for there to be two of those in Nebraska, so I stick my blade to his throat and start asking questions."
Ahn-Kha opened an eye and snorted. But he didn't disagree.
"It turns out you've disappeared into the camp, they heard an explosion from a mile off, but then you were MIA the next day. He sent his buddy off for reinforcements and had just about decided to try to bust down the main gate to go looking for you when I showed up.
"That night I went into the Cave and acted like a Cat— instead of a one-man army, please make a note of that Valentine—just looking and listening and hearing what was being talked about. It turned out that you were in the basement medical center below this Train Hangar. I saw the General return from Omaha, with what was left of his force after his Reapers mysteriously started dropping in the middle of the assault on the Grogs. He said something about wanting to meet the man they captured, and I knew you were still alive. I also found out you were going to be interrogated the next day.
"I got back to your big friend here, and he has a hundred armed-to-the-ears Grogs, wanting Twisted Cross blood. And you. And then more blood."
Ahn-Kha carried on the story. "The Big Man came to our aid after all. He hid a few pistols and grenades in the food going to the Golden Ones the General had hostage on the base. It was not much. But it got them out of their pen.
"I told them to start tearing the place down. After that, it was just a matter of sneaking in with your uncle over there and waiting for our chance to get you and the General both."
"What happened at the base?"
"They still had a lot of firepower. There were losses. It was really two rescue missions, a little one for you and a big one for the Grogs still on the base. I don't think we'll have to worry about the Twisted Cross for a while. They don't have many of those Reapers left. Maybe they can put the operation back together, but it'll take some time. Their underground is intact. We couldn't even get near that Cave of theirs. We'll need to get Bear teams up here to blow that."
Ahn-Kha yawned, showing off his tusklike teeth. "Ha! Not if the Golden Ones had anything to do with it. Whatever we built, we know how to destroy. Even now we use the great construction machines to build a cairn for our dead. On top of the Twisted Cross bunker, of course."
"Old horse," Valentine said, "I think the balance of gratitude has shifted back in your favor. Now I am in your debt."
The Grog's eyes were closed in his dozing, so Ahn-Kha settled for the human gesture of shaking his head. "I told you there could be no talk of debts between brothers, my David. I always wanted to see the wider world."
"We could learn from you, too. That heartroot could be grown on every farm in the Ozarks. Wherever people are, there's moisture and, uh, fertilizer. The idea might take some getting used to, though."
"I have pieces of spore-pod in my pack. No Golden One travels without it. This I can do."
"What about it, Ali, shall we go home?"
"You need to rest a little. Why do you always have to rush things?"
Valentine smiled. "Because life is short. Thank God."
She furrowed her eyebrows at him and went back to re-bandaging his leg.
He felt sleep coming on him again, and he looked over at Ahn-Kha. He wondered what would have happened if the Cat and the Grog had not shown up. His conscience pained him more than his face. Did they rescue him from a quick death—or endless life? He remembered the knot in his stomach, fearing his life had run its course. His words had been brave enough, but they were just words, stiffened by pain. When he felt the cold barrel of the pistol at the back of his head, what would have been his choice? A question for the philosophers, as the General said.
Eight weeks later, in the rich colors of autumn in the Ozarks, Valentine limped right into an ambush. Of course, since he saw the men watching and waiting, it could ha
rdly be called an ambush, but the young Wolves were clearly proud of their work, hallooing to each other once they had the trio dead-bang. He, Ahn-Kha, and Duvalier put up their hands.
"Where the hell do you think you're going, Grog-licker?" the leader of the close fire-team asked, squinting at them from under woolly eyebrows and a notched felt hat. Valentine would have handled the ambush differently were he in charge, letting the far fire-team make contact and keeping the close team hidden to provide a nasty surprise in case things got hostile.
"My code name is Smoke," Duvalier said, stepping forward. "This is my partner, Ghost. Verification November: five-oh-three. Take us to the nearest post—we're coming in with a priority report for Southern Command."
The sergeant in charge of the patrol pushed his coonskin cap back on his head. "That so? Well, Cats or no, we'll have to put you under guard. Unload your weapons and sling them, and we'll oblige right quick. What's that with you, a prisoner? Don't think I've ever seen a Grog like that before. Where'd you capture long-legs?"
"That's not a prisoner," Valentine corrected, leaning on his walking stick. "He's my brother."
"Hell's bells," one of the Wolves in the background said to his comrade out of the corner of his mouth, "what was his old man thinking? I've heard of a guy being desperate, but there are some things that just ain't right."
The Wolves, pointing their weapons away from the three, gathered around their charges, positioned to guard as well as to guide.
The Hunters turned and headed home.
