Instinctively, he turned around to see who’d thrown the rock or whatever had hit him, and he locked eyes with Duvalier.
“Oh shit,” he said. His face went white. He looked like he was about to faint.
She really should kill him. He was a colonel, and by the look of the fabric and cut of the uniform, someone well cared for by the Kurian Order.
But there was something about his rotund shape and pop eyes that made him a figure more to be laughed at than hated. She was picturing him lying on a lily pad with legs comfortably crossed and fingers clasped. Where did that image come from? Maybe that was how he survived in the snake pit of Quisling rivalries, by making those who might be enemies discount him on appearances. If he’d only make a move to a weapon…
Let this cog in the Great Machine live, Kansas girl, she thought. She drew her sword. “You’re not on the Control’s list. You have five seconds to disappear.”
He hesitated for half a second, a full ten percent of his allotted time.
Valentine had once moved an ornery mule by doing a spastic dance. She lifted her sword above her head and stamped forward, raising a thin ripple of stable-yard chaff with her boot. He took the hint and ran off in his light-stepping manner, leaving the map case and the briefcase half connected to the motorbike.
Good thing, too, or she would have had to run him down and probably kill him. Perhaps her spycraft on this operation wouldn’t be a complete waste. She was rather proud of herself for working in the mention of the Georgia Control, the biggest and best-organized Kurian Zone in the eastern half of the old United States. A little extra confusion about who did all the killing wouldn’t hurt.
She carefully looked his luggage over for hidden triggers or other gadgets that might destroy the contents—and her—and decided they were safe to touch. Still, it took a conscious effort of will to pick them up and tuck them under her arm. They were heavy enough, loaded with paper. She hoped she wouldn’t have to lug this crap back across the Ohio on foot. That would be just her luck.
Of course, the solution was munching alfalfa all around her. Now that she had time to think about it, a horse was the best way to make her getaway—especially if she took off in a direction a fleeing Quisling might take. If she headed north, she’d be in very tall timber in no time.
While a vehicle missing from the motor pool would attract attention to her escape, there was always the possibility of a horse not being noticed, or disappearing from its paddock out of fright over the noises echoing around the hill from the hotel. She might make a clean getaway, with no one looking for horse tracks until all the survivors had been interviewed.
A few minutes in the stables led her to choose a hardy-looking small thoroughbred gelding. She had a good deal of distance-riding experience and he seemed suitable. Though no one would call her a born horsewoman, she’d found that smaller horses often had more endurance in them than the big, impressive ones. He seemed like he had a nice temperament, too. He gave her a friendly rub as she hooked a lead line to him.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t heard anything from the hotel in a while. Half the Ordnance in Indiana would be converging on the hotel now—and, not incidentally, giving up on the pursuit of the Fort Seng column retreating toward the Ohio.
As she saddled the horse and tied on some bags of grain, she heard a few explosions—possibly booby traps left behind by the Bears to strike the unwary.
She carefully bagged the captured papers and maps from the colonel’s motorcycle and hurriedly set them on the back of the horse. She threw the colonel’s overcoat over her duster and put a rag in his hat to make it fit her head. In one of the overcoat pockets she found a very nice pair of sunglasses with real glass lenses. They were a little large for her head but she could bend the bows a little. From a distance, she might be mistaken for an Ordnance scout or courier.
She found a patch of springtime mud and made a generous application of it to her face. Between that and the colonel’s sunglasses, and with the overcoat buttoned high, she was barely recognizable as a woman.
Satisfied, she walked the horse out of the stables. She probably should have ridden him a little before loading him; it would be a tedious process to saddle another one if he turned out to have a bad hoof, but he seemed fit enough. She turned due north and pointed his nose at the heart of the Hoosier forest.
There was one highway to cross and she’d be safely out of the French Lick area. She paused the horse on the edge of the highway to listen, then kicked him across.
He wanted to trot alongside the road; she could tell. It was probably what he did out riding with the convalescents. She found a walking trail and turned his nose up in.
A muddy, cloaked figure appeared in front of her. Dead gray leaf fragments clung to it like camouflage. Reaper! How did they do it?
Her hand reached for her sword-stick.
The Reaper held up an arm. She noted there was nothing but a tarred stump where its foot had been. Her friend from the hilltop.
“colonel?” it asked. “why are you not on a motorcycle?”
Duvalier never minded a case of mistaken identity. The more confusion, the better for her, usually. “Change of plan. What are your orders?”
“i am told to help a colonel escaping on a motorcycle.” It must not be in direct contact with its Kurian at the moment. Conversing with a Reaper as if it came naturally was no easy matter. She gulped down her fear. “You don’t look like you can run.”
That was a puzzler for the thing. The answer required it to think about its own physical condition. “it is difficult. i fall frequently.” The mud, leaves, and burrs in its cloak attested to the truth of the statement.
How would that colonel talk? Would he be ingratiating? Haughty? “I might be pursued. They might even be in Ordnance uniforms. Scare them off, and if they don’t scare, take one prisoner. We need prisoners.”
“prisoners,” it repeated.
“Were you told who I was?” She didn’t like the idea of leaving a Reaper who had seen her alive, but then it clearly wasn’t in contact with its Kurian. How much would its memory retain when it reestablished contact? Well, the briefer she made this encounter, the better. She went into a fake coughing fit that would let her use a raspy voice less likely to be remembered.
“chief of staff, force integration,” the Reaper said.