Winter Duty

by E. E. Knight

  “I don’t know about that,” Silvertip said. “I don’t think the old world’s ever coming back. Good riddance to it.”

  Chieftain stood up. “Not this speech again. I’m going back for seconds. I’ll have fourths by the time he’s done.”

  Silvertip gave him an elaborate double-index-finger salute. “You just don’t know wisdom when you hear it. I say it’s all got to come down. Everything: Kurian Order, the Free Territories. Let’s say we beat the Kurians—we’re not just restoring the United States as it was. There’s Grogs settled all across in their bands from the swamps in North Carolina through Indianapolis, St. Louis, the Great South Trail and then up Nevada and out to Oregon. We just going to put them on reservations? Exterminate them? The Kurians have ruined half of mankind and impoverished the rest. Southern Command’s handed out land right and left. Suppose some relations show up with old deeds saying it’s theirs?

  “It’s all gonna get burned down, and then maybe the decent folks will rebuild civilization. The honest and diligent and talented will find others of like mind and start setting up again. It’ll be ugly for the Kurian herds, but maybe their kids or their grandkids will be human beings again. That’s why your legion’s bound to fail, beg your pardon, Major.

  “In the end, we’ll be thanking the Kurians. They gave us a challenge and we’ll end up better for it, the way a forest fire helps the trees thrive. Gotta burn away the rubbish once in a while.”

  Valentine disagreed but knew better than to get into a heated argument with a Bear. Most of Valentine’s command would be “rubbish” in Silvertip’s taxonomy. Time would tell.

  Chieftain returned with a piece of newspaper filled with honey-dipped apple slices. “He give you the world’s got to burn down speech?”

  Valentine bedded down with the sounds of music and celebration still echoing from the hillside.

  Duvalier shook him awake in the predawn.

  “There’s something brewing across the river. Can you hear it?”

  Valentine went to the riverbank. There was still enough night air for the sound to carry; his Wolf’s ears did the rest. A steady crunch and soft clatters and clanks like distant, out-of-tune wind chimes sounded from the screen of growth and trees across the river.

  Frat was already at the riverbank, on his belly with a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Valentine asked.

  “We’re about to get served by the Host,” Frat said.

  “Run to the A-o-K headquarters and tell Tikka that they’re coming.”

  Frat passed the binoculars to Valentine and took off.

  Flashes of light, like distant lightning, lit up the eastern riverbank ridge. Valentine saw the red lines of shells pass overhead.

  They landed among the mortar tubes and wagons parked on the hillside.

  “Those rotten bastards,” Silvertip said, roused by the smell of action. “May they all rot in Kurian innards, or whatever happens when they dine.”

  “I have a feeling it’s about to become unhealthy in these trees. We’d better fall back to the hill,” Valentine said.

  He made sure of Duvalier and his weapons and pulled everyone out of the woods, turning them south so they moved parallel to river and hill until they made it outside the box of artillery.

  The Host executed their attack well. Valentine grudgingly granted them that. Artillery shells exploded in the vehicle park and all along the artillery line, sending up plumes of black-rimmed gasoline explosions. Smaller secondary explosions from readied mortar shells added to the dirt in the air.

  Branches and undergrowth up and moved on the opposite bank, as though the Birnam Wood suddenly decided to move a few yards toward the Ohio.

  Boats shot through the gaps in the riverbank growth. Lines of the Host—it looked as though most were Moondaggers—splashed into the water and then fell into the boats, where they picked up paddles and began to paddle madly across the river.

  The pontoon boat seemed to spark, and suddenly smoke began to pour out of its windows and lower doors. Strange gray smoke, to be sure, but it did its job obscuring the river.

  “I know that smoke,” Valentine said. “Ping-Pong balls and match heads. Like ten thousand or so.”

  The smoke billowed and spread under the influence of the wind, advancing toward them at an angle like a flanking army.

  Valentine was of the opinion that many battles were won or lost before the first shot was fired. One side just did a better job of getting more force into a position where it could strike than the other. Such was the case here.

  The Kentucky Alliance could see it as easily as he could and decided to get while the getting was good, as a few of their own artillery shells fell blind into the mass of smoke.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Frat shouted.

  “Bastards. Let me at ’em,” Chieftain said.

  “You’ll fall back with the rest of us,” Valentine said, grabbing the giant by the shirt collar and dragging him back.

  Silvertip, not yet full of battle fury and able to think, yanked Valentine so hard in the tug-of-war with Chieftain’s anger that the potential daisy chain broke. Valentine had to check to see if he left his boots behind. Bee did a three-limb galumph up and into the smoke.

  As Silvertip dragged Valentine up the riverbank slope, he observed that the Moondagger artillery fire must have been heavy and accurate. The smoldering Alliance vehicles had been burned beyond belief.

  With a scattering of fleeing Gunslingers, Valentine joined the route away from the riverbank, running as though hell itself followed.

  Another Kentucky disaster to add to his list. At least Southern Command wasn’t involved with this one, and at best it would be a minor, two-paragraph notation in the newspapers.

  Valentine made it over the hill, and suddenly the trees were thinner and he was into pasture.

  He pulled up. A long line of foxholes and headlogs and machine-gun nests stood before him. Behind there were piles of logs and the A-o-K’s few armored cars.

  This was no slapdash last line of defense but a prepared position. It was obviously quickly done. The fire lanes were imperfectly cleared and the knocked-over trees didn’t have their branches trimmed as they should have, but it provided ample if imperfect cover for the reserve.

  An A-o-K sergeant took Valentine back to Tikka’s headquarters. Valentine heard regular reports of strength and direction coming in from observers on the ridge—she’d scared up a field-phone system from somewhere. Probably captured Moondagger equipment.

  The Host came over the ridge in three attacking waves with a skirmish line trotting hard out in front, whooping and yelling. Their cries of victory as they drove the last few Alliance members like rabbits turned into confused alarm as they realized what they’d just stuck their head into.

  An old trainer had once told Valentine that firefights won by just putting more SoT—shit on target—than the other guy. With the lines of riflemen backed by machine gunners, who were backed by light cannon and .50 calibers on the trucks and improvised armored cars, the Kentucky Alliance was throwing a pound of shit for every ounce hurled back by the dismayed Moondaggers.

  The Gunslingers and Tikka’s A-o-K had a deadly effect. Valentine saw limbs of trees and entire boles fall in the holocaust sweeping across the Kentuckians’ front. What it did to the enemy could only be imagined.

  They fell in rows, replaced by more men pouring up and over the hill.

  “Get on up there,” an Alliance captain shouted, pointing at the advancing Moondaggers.

  “Go on then,” Valentine called to Chieftain.

  “About fuckin’ time. Aiyeeeee!”

  The Bear ran forward, spraying with this double-magazined assault rifle. When he emptied both ends of ammunition, he planted the gun on its long bayonet and drew his tomahawks.

  Valentine settled for employing his Type Three. Duvalier, hugging a protective tree trunk like a frightened child gripping its mother, used Frat’s bin
oculars to spot for him. Valentine squeezed shot after shot out, picking out officers for the most part.

  Duvalier also seemed to be going by beard length.

  They weren’t men; they were funny targets in dark uniforms and hairy faces. A beard on a field radio fell. A beard firing a signal flare—down. A beard setting up a machine gun on a tripod to return fire—knocked back into the grass.

  Shouts and whoops started up from the Gunslinger and A-o-K lines, and a second wave of riflemen went up and forward, passing through and over the first wave, who covered them with fire laid down on the retreating Host.

  Chieftain raged among a group of Moondaggers who’d found a wooded dimple in the landscape from which they returned fire. Pieces of men flew this way and that as he swung and stomped and swung again.

  The forward motion stopped at the crest of the hill. The Kentuckians threw themselves down and began to pick off retreated targets.

  “Let ’em have it,” yelled Rockaway into his field radio from his new hilltop post.

  Mortar shells whistled down into the trees at the riverbank, detonating in showers of splinters or foaming splashes of water.

  A Kurian machine gun opened up on Rockaway’s position, guided by his antenna. Valentine dropped to a knee and returned fire with the Type Three.

  “Silvertip, try to do something about that gun” was the only order Valentine gave that day that had anything to do with the progress of the battle. He felt like a bit of a fraud, watching shells detonate on the western riverbank among the Host’s boats. Maybe Southern Command needed Kentucky more than Kentucky needed Southern Command.

  “Pre-ranged fire missions,” Rockaway said. “Hope they brought a lot of tweezers.”

  The Kentuckians ended up with a few prisoners and a lot of big canvas-sided motorized riverboats.

  As the battle sputtered out, Valentine found Tikka.

  “Brilliant retreat and counterattack,” Valentine said.

  “Oldest trick in the book,” Tikka said.

  “I didn’t know you’d studied Scipio Africanus, Tikka.”

  She frowned. “I’m not big on astrology. No sir, I learned all my tactics reading Bernard Cornwell. It’s an old Wellington maneuver: Get on the reverse slope out of the line of fire, and then blast away when the Frenchies come over the crest, and advance to throw them back. We just didn’t blast them quite as much as they approached; we wanted them to scatter a little bit as they advanced.”

  “So you swapped out the artillery and vehicles last night during the party,” Valentine said.

  “Too noisy for you? That was the idea. To cover sound while we were building the fortifications. We parked old wrecks and set up black-painted fence-post mortars to replace the real ones.”

  “Would have been nice to be let in on the secret. I might have been able to offer a few suggestions. We have some experienced snipers in our group. They could have trimmed the Moondaggers down by a few more.”

  “I’m sorry, Valentine, but after Utrecht I’ll never trust Southern Command’s security again.”

  Valentine must have had an air of command about him, because all through the day members of the Gunslingers who’d fought with Javelin across Kentucky kept coming to him for orders, probably out of habit more than anything. Whether to bind prisoners or just march them with their hands up. What to do with captured weapons and equipment. How to organize a search party for a missing officer. Valentine issued advice rather than orders and sent a constant stream of problems to Tikka’s headquarters on the ridge.

  For just being an observer, he had an exhausting day.

  That night he found Boelnitz scribbling away with the remains of a meal around him as Chieftain and Silvertip told war stories about the fighting in Kentucky.

  “You should know better than to ask Bears about a fight,” Valentine said to Pencil. “To hear them tell it, the rest of us are just there to keep the fried chicken and pie coming while they do all the fighting.”

  Boelnitz chewed on his pencil, apparently not hearing.

  “So, how’s the story coming, Boelnitz?”

  Valentine had to repeat himself before the journalist looked up from his leather-covered notebook.

  “Story? Not the one I was expecting, Major.”

  “You’re getting some good tall tales out of these two, I hope.”

  “Kentucky’s been interesting enough, but I don’t know if my editor will want travelogue. I wish I had the guts to go inside one of those legworm tangles and get a few pictures, but the locals say that until the worms are born, it can be dangerous.”

  “That’s right,” said a nearby Gunslinger who’d plopped down to listen to the Bears spin their yarns. “Make any kind of disturbance and they’ll snip you in half easy as you might pull a weed.”

  “To be honest, Major Valentine, I was expecting you to be a little different, more of the legend and less prosaic. Where are the raids into the estate homes in Indiana? You haven’t even interrogated any of those Moondaggers or the Kentucky Host or whatever they call themselves to see what’s in store for Kentucky.”

  “The Kurians never tell their foot soldiers their plans. They like to keep everyone guessing, including the other Kurians. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason they’re so desperate is because they’re afraid Atlanta will just end up taking over Kentucky the way they have much of Tennessee.

  “Besides, if you were expecting a war in Indiana, you need men for that kind of job. Our ex-Quisling recruits need training. Most of them are experienced in handling weapons and vehicles and equipment due to a smattering of law enforcement or military duty, but they’ve got to learn to act as a team somewhere less predictable than a city street. More important, learn to trust each other and their officers. Trust doesn’t come easy to someone brought up in the Kurian Order. They’re so scared of making a mistake that they all stand around waiting for orders, and then for someone else to go first. There’s a story for you.”

  “Problem is,” the neighboring Gunslinger said, “they ain’t even human in anything but shape. All the spunk’s been bred right out of them, the way a team horse reacts different from a Thorough-bred lead mare or a wild stallion.”

  Valentine spent the next forty-five minutes on and off the radio. Frat had returned by then, having volunteered to scout across the river, looking thoughtful. After he secured his rifle and gear, he sat down by Valentine, eager for news.

  “Where’s the Kentucky Host?” Valentine asked. “Run out for more ice?”

  “Left the party early,” Frat said, milking the joke. He became serious. “Are we going down an evolutionary blind alley, sir?”

  “Where does that come from?”

  “They left some of their literature behind. There was a magazine I hadn’t seen before, comparing various kinds of testing before and after the Kurians came. Of course the article proves there’s been improvement in human mental acuity after their arrival.”

  “An article saying it doesn’t make it true. Don’t read Kurian intellectual porn; it’s all lies anyway.”

  Frat dug around his satchel and tossed the magazine at Valentine’s feet. “Well, I thought it was interesting.

  “We’re more moral than the enemy, right?” Frat continued. “Isn’t that a hindrance? They’ll do anything to win. We won’t. Doesn’t that make them the ‘fittest’ in a Darwinian sense?”

  “Fittest doesn’t mean strongest or most brutal. Loyalty confers an evolutionary advantage. So does sacrifice. You get all this from those traditional morals the brutes dispense with. Mountain gorillas trample strangers. That’s about as brutal as you can get. For all I know, mountain gorillas no longer exist.”

  Frat looked down. For a moment he seemed to be summoning words, but they never made it out.

  They convinced Rockaway to leave his guns and return to the Gunslinger camp. Now that the A-o-K had arrived, there were some experienced artillerymen to take over the mortar sections in any case, but he was still strangely reluctant, even th
ough he admitted he hadn’t seen his mother in years.

  Tikka finally ended up ordering him to leave. “Show some consideration for your poor mother,” she said.

  So they rode back with Doc and his nurse in the Boneyard. The medical workers were more exhausted than even the Bears, having worked on the wounded of both sides in the late Battle of the Kentucky River.

  They were not the first to arrive back at the Gunslinger camp, so the news of the victory on the riverbank, and the losses, had already been absorbed, celebrated, or mourned.

  Valentine, wanting to be a bit of a showman, had the driver back the overloaded Boneyard back toward the little circle of Mrs. O’Coombe’s convoy. Valentine and Duvalier hopped out of the cab, and he opened the doors for the assembled Hooked O-C staff.

  “Mrs. O’Coombe,” Valentine said, “your son.”

  The effect was spoiled somewhat by the fact that Chieftain and Silvertip were dressed only in their rather worn-through underwear.

  “We’ve come some way to find you, Corporal Rockaway,” Valentine said. “I’ve brought a familiar face.”

  The corporal jumped down out of the back of the ambulance medical truck.

  “What’s the matter, Mother?” Corporal O’Coombe said. “Sorry to see me still breathing?”

  It wasn’t the reunion between a son who served under his mother’s name and his devoted parent that Valentine had imagined.

  Mrs. O’Coombe stiffened. “You know I’m pleased to see you alive, Keve. Please be civil in front of your fellow men in uniform. Don’t disgrace the uniform you wear.”

  “Respect the people beneath the uniform too, Mother.”

  “If you’re going to be this way, perhaps we should talk in private.”

  “Do you have something you want me to sign, Mother, now that you’ve recovered from your disappointment that I’m still alive? Produce it. You know I’m not interested in running a ranch, however large.”

  “I’m glad your father isn’t alive to hear this.”