He opened a footlocker and began sorting through long, slightly curved shapes wrapped in blankets and twine.

"Which sumbitch is it? Here we go," he said, extracting a shape. He handed it to Valentine.

Intrigued, the would-be Cat unwrapped it. As soon as he saw the hilt, he recognized it as a samurai sword of some kind. His brain searched for the term.

"Called a katana, Valentine. That's a helluva piece of fighting steel. Looks old, but it's actually from this century. We'll have to fit you with a new hilt, but that won't take too long. Only twenty-four inches of blade."

Valentine drew it experimentally. The blade carried a few cryptic ideograms etched in the metal.

"Can you cap the scabbard like mine?" Duvalier asked.

"Easy enough, missy. You should use it two-handed, boy, lets you put your whole back into it. But you can use it one-handed, from horseback, say, or if you want to parry with those damn fighting claws.

"I like it," Valentine said. "What's the cost?" he asked, wondering where he would come up with the money.

"That's Southern Command's problem, not yours, Valentine. You and little missy here will just have to sign a chit for what you take."

Duvalier wrinkled her freckled nose. Valentine could tell that the missy was getting under her skin.

The claws, he learned the next day, were a pair of metal hands held to his palms by thick leather straps. They arced out like a second skeletal system from there, ending in sharp talons that capped his fingers.

"You can climb a tree with'em, and they do gruesome in a fight if you use'em right," Duvalier explained. She put on her slightly smaller pair and looked around for a tree. "It takes a little practice," she said, stepping to the bole of a mature oak. She jumped up the side of it, reaching around either side until her palms were opposite, and began climbing. She was among the branches in no time.

Valentine imitated her and learned to his chagrin that if he failed to grip the trunk with his legs, a single set of the claws weren't enough to hold him up. He arrested the slide before falling off, then managed to hump his way up the trunk neither as quickly nor as gracefully as Duvalier. But he succeeded.

He also learned about putting a new hilt on his sword. A craftsman named Eggert showed him how to encase the naked tang in a wooden handle shaped more or less to fit Valentine's hands. Then he wrapped it in wet pigskin, applying a series of small bumps to the blade side in fastening the leather. "They used to use skin from stingrays and sharks, but those aren't too common hereabouts," Eggert explained. Finally a fine cording was wound round and round the hilt. Duvalier insisted on tying the last knot herself.

"For luck," she said, planting a tiny kiss on the newly reconstructed hilt. They worked on the scabbard together, fitting an old rifle sling to the mahogany wooden tube. Valentine decided he felt most comfortable carrying it over his shoulder.

"We can add a spring to the bottom-it'll help you draw faster," she observed, after watching him pull the sword a few times.

They moved on as soon as Valentine's sword was finished. They shouldered their packs one more time, newly laden with food supplied by the generous and Southern Command-compensated Cobbs.

"Now for home," Duvalier said, turning on the road east once more.

The Ozark Mountains, May: The Free Territory had its genesis here, among the river-cut limestone, caves, sinks, and thick forests of Americas oldest mountains. Like the armadillos and scorpions found in these timbered, rocky hills, the residents here are scattered, alert, tough, and dangerous. They know the stands of oak and hickory, trout-filled lakes and streams, and each other. But one area they avoid out of respect for its inhabitants, more wary and hermitlike than the most remote woodsmen. That is the ground around the headwaters of the Buffalo River, home to a cluster of Lifeweavers.

The locals call them wizards. Some fear them as a branch of the Kurians and their otherworldly evils. When the residents come upon a Lifeweaver, perhaps among the beeches running along the river as he fills a cask with water, they gather their children and avert their eyes. The Lifeweavers draw trouble like corpses draw flies. The Reapers, when they break through the border cordon to stalk and slay amongst the Freeholders, gravitate to this area in the hopes of killing Kur's most ancient and bitter foe: their estranged brethren.

Perched halfway up Mount Judea, a stoutly built A-frame lodge stands in a thick grove of mountain pine. The foundation of the building was cut from the old seabed a few miles away, thick slabs of varicolored stone that support the massive, red-timbered roof. Two monolithic lodgepoles of granite, etched with obscure designs that suggest Mayan hieroglyphs, gradually narrow toward the peaked roof. The building dwarfs any other house in the area; you would have to travel to the old resorts of the Mountain Home region to find a larger construct.

The Cats of Southern Command call it Ryu's Hall or just the Hall. They also call it home.

Valentine liked the look of the building from when he first set eyes on it, in the afternoon of the day after leaving Cobb Smithy.

"I was expecting another cave," Valentine said as they walked up the hill-cutting switchback leading to the Hall. 'This part of the Ozarks is full of them."

"The Wolves like to lurk in their holes. We Cats like shared solitude and comfort," Duvalier said, leading the way with her swordstick used as a staff.

"Shared solitude? Sounds like 'fresh out of the can' to me. Or 'military intelligence.'"

"Watch it, Valentine. What 'military intelligence' Southern Command has feeds you now."

He didn't need his Wolf's nose to scent pine trees and wood smoke. They were cheery and welcoming odors after their days on the road.

The pair walked across a pebbled path to a metal-reinforced door. A cylinder of wrought iron with a thin steel bar hanging down the epicenter hung next to the door, and Duvalier rang it until the hills echoed.

A face appeared at a high, horizontal window. Female, amber skinned, with sharply slanting eyebrows. "Duvalier! You made good time with your new boy. Let me get the door."

Tags: E.E. Knight Vampire Earth Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net