Burton looked back into the river. "I don't believe it. He's still coming."
The Reaper swam on, using a sidestroke motion. So bullets were useless, after all. Valentine suppressed an urge to press the barrel of the rifle under his chin and blow his own brains out in defiance.
"Let's get ashore," he said, defeated.
The others carried their packs in one hand, rifles in the other. Valentine pushed the canoe off into the current and climbed up a short ledge to the riverbank proper. Burton was already heading toward a fallen tree.
The Wolves knelt down behind the log, too tired to run. Two single-shot breechloaders and a full magazine in Trudy, Valentine thought. Plus our parangs. Enough?
The Reaper paddled toward shore, leaving a wake that aimed at their tree like an arrow.
The haze dissipated into a cloudless morning. The sun shone yellow and bright, inching above the horizon.
Valentine looked at the sky in wonder. Only rarely, outside of winter, was it this clear overhead.
"We're saved. Saved by the sun," Valentine breathed.
The Reaper reached shallower water. It, too, raised its head to the sun, but in pain rather than praise. Thin black hair lay plastered over its chest and shoulders. Bullet holes formed a reverse question mark shape on its chest, and one arm hung askew.
Valentine stood up, copying Eveready's taunt. The Reaper cocked its head, shutting its eyes to squeeze out the daylight.
"Are you coming for us?" Valentine shouted.
The Reaper straightened. Its ears were working better than its eyes. It staggered, hammered by naked sunlight.
not today, it seems, but some night, in a lonely place, you'll be taken, it hissed.
"But not by you," Valentine said, raising his rifle.
The thing dived backwards, disappearing beneath the water.
In some ways, Valentine thought, it's almost better than killing it. It ran. It was afraid.
They made New Arkansas Post in four days. The little wooden fort on a bare hill overlooking the Black River was built like something out of an old-time western, right down to the sharpened logs serving as crenellated walls. More supply depot and stable than actual fort, it still contained the welcome sight of a cantina.
Eveready was waiting for them on the cantina's porch in a rocking chair, happily munching an apple, finishing everything but the stem. Two new fangs hung from his necklace. He chided Valentine about not finding the time to properly oil Trudy's stock after exposing her delicate wood to water.
Lewand Alistar was posted as missing a week later. His family received notification the following spring, during the recruiting swing through the Council Bluffs area of Iowa.
Pine Bluff, Arkansas, fall of the forty-first year of the Kurian Order: At the beginnings of the fertile, flat corner of southeastern Arkansas, the crossroads town of Pine Bluff thrives. Strategically located on the chord of an inhabited arc covering the borderlands in that quarter, a permanent garrison regiment of Guards frequently offers its hospitality to Wolf patrols into Louisiana and Mississippi.
Independent farmers from as far away as DrewCounty come to barter with the Southern Command Commissioners. The town itself boasts eight churches, a high school, blacksmiths and boatwrights, teamsters and tailors. The Guards stable their horses at the old Livestock Showgrounds, and no less than a full regiment known as the Bluffs protects the Old Arsenal, the largest and arguably the best munitions plant in the FreeTerritory. The Old Arsenal produces everything from bullets to bombs, protected by the heaviest concentration of pre-Overthrow machine guns in Southern Command. In town, the Molever Industrial Wood Products plant has switched from making pallets to sturdy wagons and river barges, and numerous craftsmen exhibit their wares each weekend at the Sixth Avenue Street Market. On evenings each weekend, the Saenger Theater Players sing, dance, and act out famous scenes from old movies and plays. The aged theater's cool limestone and Florentine decor make an opulent break from the meanness of everyday life. Shakespeare makes an occasional appearance on the billboard, but more often a tear-streaked heroine shakes her fist at the sky against a fiery red backdrop, vowing never to be hungry again, or a pair of lovers affirm deathless devotion as they cling to wreckage behind billowing sheets meant to represent an icy sea.
There is a sense of stability, order, and permanence to the place that the settlements on the other borders lack. The tracts of relatively empty Louisiana and Mississippi wetlands protect it from quick forays, and the Guards are experienced at fighting river-borne incursions. Their clothes are a little better, the food is a little more varied, and the buckchits are more welcome here than in the remoter regions of the FreeTerritory. There is a regular newspaper and more regular mail, and even a social stratification of sorts has taken hold, for better or worse. The complacency here is a true achievement, one paid for in blood on the other borders.
David Valentine received orders to join Zulu Company at Pine Bluff shortly after making his report to the officers at New Arkansas Post. With the gift of an aged horse from the post commander, a haversack of food from the supply sergeant, and a parting bag of apples from Eveready, he rode west up the scenic, if broken-down, western highway. Once known as US Highway 65, now called the Arkansas River Trail, it is one of the better all-weather pikes of the FreeTerritory. Making easy stages out of respect for his slow-stepping mount, Valentine reached the shores of LakePine Bluff.
Valentine smelled the sentries before he saw them. The tobacco and wood-smoke odor meant there were men in the little earthen bunker even if nothing could be seen in the gloom beneath the head logs. A pair of horses stood side to side swishing flies in the morning breeze inside a little split-rail corral overlooking the broken road. Valentine sniffed again and suspected halfhearted enforcement of latrine discipline in what, to the Guards anyway, must seem wilderness.
Head bobbing and ears forward, his horse quickened its walk. The roan gelding was old and wise and knew the smell of horses on a good diet.
A slight figure in a charcoal-gray uniform, comfortably barefoot with riding boots off, appeared from the dugout and waved. Valentine turned his horse with a gentle nudge of his moccasined heel.
"Good morning, stranger," said the youth, teal blue kepi and neckerchief proclaiming his membership in the Bluff Regiment. "What's your business up in town?"
Valentine brought up his forearm, palm outward, in the old Indian greeting. Not quite a salute, but friendly enough.
"Good morning," responded Valentine, but as most of his mornings began at the first pink of dawn, it seemed a little late for the salutation. "I'm three days out of New Arkansas Post with orders to report to the Commanding Wolf. Whereabouts can I find Captain LeHavre?"