"Hard to say. It's been showing up lately, so I did some checking. That symbol can be found on temples in the Asian subcontinent, on Buddhist artifacts, as well as over here in American Indian cave paintings. It appears in the ruins of Troy, on Egyptian walls, even in China. I will say this: whoever used it in prehistoric times sure got around."
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?"
"I need to see your orders," the sentry said, holding out his hand.
"They're verbal. The Wolves don't use much paper, Bluff."
"Then I can't let you through. We can send a message to get one of your Wolves in for escort, but I don't have authority to let you through."
More like too much authority and too little brain, Valentine thought. A good empiricist, he decided to test the theory. "Is that so? What's up the road that a man with a single-shot rifle on an old horse might take out, anyway?"
The soldier patted his rifle stock.
"Maybe you're a spy, come to look at the arsenal. Count the machine-gun posts, map out the tanglefoot paths. Maybe you're going to set fire to a barge full of black powder and blow up everything on the dock-"
"Enough of that, Johnson," a stern female voice called from the bunker. "If he is a spy, he can turn around now. You just told him all he needs to know." A middle-aged, uniformed woman came out of the bunker and approached the road in the measured, confident stride of NCOs the world over. "We heard a Wolf was coming in from downriver. I figured you'd be on foot by now; any horse old Gregory would part with has got to be on its last trip. Is there news?"
"Not that I'm aware of. You're wrong about the horse, he's a nice ride, long as you don't ask more than he wants to give. Good thing, too, since I'm bareback," Valentine said.
"You'll find LeHavre up the road a few miles, just into town proper. The Wolves always camp at Old Harbor Woods, right at the north bend in the river. There's a brick entrance off the road, says it was a golf course. Still is, actually, on the sheep meadow. Don't have time for the game myself. You'll see your little tepees around the old clubhouse. Tell Captain LeHavre that Brit Manning says hi. We were at Webber's Falls together."
"You were a Wolf?" asked Valentine, not even knowing in what state to look for Webber's Falls on a map.
"No, but owing to your caste, we were ready for them when they tried to push into Fort Smith. Exactly ten years ago May. We bushwhacked them from the north while they were in the middle of ferrying across. So many Grogs ended up in the river, they say the Arkansas ran red. It didn't really, but it was still pretty hot there for a while. Two companies got caught on the wrong side of the river, and his Wolves saved our auras. You might say I thanked him personally after-wards," she reminisced, a sly smile crossing her weathered features.
"I'm sure he'll remember."
"You want some coffee, son? Just chicory, but it's hot. I'd offer you some lemonade, but my four boys here drank it all first two days we were here, and the rinds haven't soaked long enough to make another batch."
"No, thank you, Sergeant Manning. At my horse's pace, I'll be lucky to make the town by dinner." Valentine offered a true salute, crisply returned. "Thank you for the directions."
Captain LeHavre's steady green eyes evaluated Valentine from his pulled-back hair to his stained knee-high moccasins, fingers drumming against his thigh. The company commander wore the look of a busy man who accepted only efficiency.
The captain and Valentine both stood in the sole leak-free room in the old Harbor Clubhouse. Its dark paneling hinted at a previous existence as either an office or a small library. Two comfortable armchairs and a table, piled above and below with a honeycomb of plastic milk crates, almost filled the warm little room. Black-and-white photographs, most bearing the marks of poor film stock, hung in rough frames.
LeHavre flaunted the swarthy good looks and heavy mustache of a romance novel pirate or ruthless western outlaw. His athletic build, spoiled slightly by the hint of a paunch, set off his forest green buckskins, so dark they looked almost black in the dim light of the windowless office.
Offering Valentine a warm handshake in the worse-for-weather main entrance to the clubhouse, LeHavre invited his new Wolf to the "records room." Both men sank into the armchairs with the appreciation of the rarity of such comfort.
"You might call this our cave," LeHavre explained with a casual wave toward the laden table. "These papers are the closest thing we have to a headquarters. The milk crates just make moving easier. The rest I leave to the clerk. Coffee, tea, beer?"