As his men dusted the area around the spring with crushed red pepper, Valentine approached the frightened families.
"They found us?" asked Fred Brugen, the patriarch of the group. Valentine smiled into their dirty, tired faces.
"We heard something behind us. Could be they cut our trail-could be a dog got the wrong end of a skunk. But as I said, we have to play it safe and move to a better place to sleep. Sorry to cut the halt short."
The refugees winced and tightened their mouths at the news, but did not complain. Complainers disappeared in the night in the Kurian Zone.
"The good news is that we're really close to a place we can rest and get a hot meal or two. Personally, I'm getting sick of corn bread and jerky." He squatted down to the kids' level and forced some extra enthusiasm into his voice. "Who wants hot-cakes for breakfast tomorrow morning?"
The kids lit up like fireflies, nodding with renewed energy.
"Okay, then," he finished as he filled his canteen, forcing himself to go through the motions nonchalantly. "Everybody take one more drink of water, and let's go."
The aspirants somehow got the pack mules moving, and the column trudged forward into the darkness. With curses matching the number of stumbles brought on by confusion and fatigue in the night, the column continued north. Valentine led the way. A rope around his waist stretched back to Sergeant Patel at the tail end of the file. He bade the families to hold on to it to keep everyone together in the dark.
One scout guided him, and a second brought up the rear, in close contact with two fire teams shepherding the column's tail, their phosphorous candles ready. If the enemy was close enough for their dogs to be heard, the Reapers could be upon them at any moment. Valentine resigned himself to the orders he would give if they were set upon in the open: he would abandon his charges and flee north. Even a few Wolves were more valuable to the FreeTerritory than a couple of dozen farmers.
Valentine, continuing on that grim line of thought, decided that if he were a battle-hardened veteran from the campfire stories, he would stake the farmers out like goats to a prowling tiger, then ambush whatever took the bait. The death of the defenseless goat was worth getting the tiger. Those win-at-all-costs leaders from the Old World history books would never be swayed by sleepy voices repeatedly asking, "Is it much farther, Momma?"
"Close up and move on. Close up and move on," Valentine said over his shoulder, hurrying the column. Wolves picked up tired children, carrying them as easily as they bore then-weapons.
They found the farm exactly as Lugger had described. Her Wolf's eye for terrain and detailed memory of places and paths would astound anyone who did not know the caste.
The barn was a little bigger than Valentine would have liked with only twenty-two guns. No time to be picky, not with the Reapers on our trail, he thought. Anyplace with the trees cleared away and walls would have to do.
Garnett entered with blade unsheathed, covered by his comrades' hunting bows and rifles. The parang-a shortened machete used by the Wolves-gleamed in the mist-shrouded moonlight. A few bats fluttered out, disturbed from their pursuit of insects among the rafters. The scout appeared at the loft door and waved the rest in. Valentine led the others inside, fighting a disquieting feeling that something was wrong. Perhaps his Indian blood perceived something tickling below his conscious threshold. He had spent enough time on the borders of the Kurian Zone to know that his sixth sense was worth paying attention to, though hard to qualify. The danger was too near somehow, but ill defined. He finally dismissed it as the product of overwrought nerves.
Valentine inspected the sturdy old barn. The water trough was full, which was good, and there were shaded lanterns and oil, which was better.
Patel posted the men to the doors and windows. Cracks in the walls of the time-ravaged structure made handy loopholes. The exhausted families threw themselves down in a high-walled inner corner. Valentine trotted to the hayloft ladder and began to climb. Someone had repaired a few of the rungs, he noticed as he went up squeaking wood. The barn's upper level smelled like bat urine. From the loft he watched his second scout, Gonzalez, backing into the barn, rifle pointed into the darkness.
"Gonzo's got wind of 'em, sir," Garnett reported from his perch at the upper door. "He always gets bug-eyed when they're around."
Three Wolves from downstairs joined them in the loft and took positions on each side of the barn. Valentine glanced down through a gap in the loft floor to the lower level, where Patel talked quietly to Gonzalez in the dim light of a screened lantern. Both glanced up into the loft. Gonzalez nodded and climbed the ladder.
"Sir, the sarge wanted me to show you this," he reported, extending a filthy and stinking piece of cloth drawn from his pocket.
Valentine reached out to take the rag, when a chorus of shrieks sounded from down the hill in the direction of the old road. He spun and ran to the wide loft door.
Gamett cursed. "Ravies, goddamn Ravies!"
The banshee wailing out of the midnight mists turned the back of his neck into a bristle-brush. They're here! He bent to the gap in the floor and called out to the Wolves. "Keep to your posts, look to your fronts! The Ravies might be a ruse. They could be on top of the hill already."
He ran to the ladder and clambered down the rungs two at a time, driving a splinter into the flesh opposite his thumb in his haste. Wincing, he unsnapped the leather strap of his parang sheath and drew his revolver.
"Uncle, the flares!" he shouted, but Patel knew better than to wait for an order. The veteran sergeant already stood at the gaping southern door, lighting one. A Wolf opened a lantern door so he could thrust it in. The high-pitched shrieking grew louder, until it filled the night.
The firework burst into flame, illuminating the barn with blue-white light and sharp black shadows. Patel wound up and threw the burning flare down the slope they had just traversed. Before it landed, he lit another and hurled it into the darkness, as well. Other Wolves copied him, tossing phosphorus candles in each direction.
Valentine stared down the hill, transfixed by a mob emerging into the glare. Running figures with arms thrashing as. if trying to swim through the air swept up toward the barn. Seemingly endless supplies of wind powered their screams. Their siren wail was paralyzing. They were human, or what amounted to human, considering their minds burned with madness, but with the wasted look of corpses and sparse streams of unkempt hair. Few wore more than tatters of clothing; most ran naked, their skin pale in the light of burning phosphorus.
"Don't let 'em in close enough to bite. Drop 'em, goddammit!" Patel bellowed.
Shots rang out in the enclosed lower level of the bam. Ravies fell, one rising again with blood pouring from his neck, to stagger a few paces and fall once more, this time for good. Another had a bullet tear through her shoulder, spinning her around like a puppet with tangled strings. She regained her balance and came on, screaming all the while. What looked like a scrawny ten-year-old boy stepped on one of the flaring candles without a glance.
Valentine watched as the human wave approached, dribbling bodies as the Wolves' bullets struck. He knew the Ravies served as a distraction for something else lurking in the night. He felt the Reaper stalking his mind, approaching from the darkness, even if he could not see its body.
The Reaper came, full of awful speed and power. A cloaked figure charged into the light, seeming to fly over the ground in a blur of motion.