Duvalier unfolded a map Of the Old United States. "We know the General moves by train, right? They didn't raid into the Free Territory, which I kind of suspected they might do. Could be he doesn't have the muscle for that job yet. They were heading north out of Oklahoma City. The Kur don't have a reliable east-west rail line south of Iowa and Nebraska-your old buddies the Wolves raise too much hell between Kansas City and St. Louis-they don't even try to keep that line repaired anymore. In Kansas or Nebraska, they could have turned west, to hit Denver or one of the Freeholds in the Rockies. I can't believe they turned back east. Why come west in the first place?"
Valentine looked at the map. "North out of Oklahoma, they might have turned west at Wichita, Junction City, or maybe even Lincoln. Lincoln seems like a long shot, but if I were trying to recruit, Iowa might be the place to do it. It sounded like a long time ago, there was a pretty big army under that Twisted Cross banner. Maybe they're trying to do the same thing again. A lot of loyal Quislings have land in Iowa granted to them in exchange for services rendered. We used to draw a two-hundred-mile circle around Des Moines and call it Brass Ringland. I imagine these Quislings are raising families. Could be they want some sons and daughters to join up."
Duvalier looked at the map for a moment and thought. "Funny, I'm just not picturing these guys as leaders of a huge army. They seem secretive, more like a tight elite unit. In a way, if they had a huge army, it would be better for us. We could track-hell, even infiltrate. I feel like they're more the Kur's answer to our Bears: small teams of very serious badasses who crack nuts the Kur don't want to risk their own Reapers on."
"Reaper mercenaries? Okay, you've seen Reapers, I've seen men. Maybe it's their version of a tag team. The men guard the Reapers when they sleep away the day, and the Reapers do the killing at night."
"That system's in place already, Valentine."
"Perhaps they're just perfecting it."
"I still heard Reapers talking on the hill where we met. That means they weren't being operated by the same Master."
A Kurian Lord animated his Reapers through a psychic bond, the same bond that fed him the vital aura of humans killed by the Reaper.
Nothing made sense to Valentine. "How about if a group of Kurian Lords decided to spread the risk in destroying common enemies. They each contribute one Reaper, a flying strike force to .. . No ... damn, that makes no sense. A Kurian's hold gets weaker the farther the Reaper is from him."
Duvalier nodded. "That would mean the Kurians had to travel around the country. To much risk. Nothing, but nothing, gets them out of their little fortresses once they are established. They're the biggest cowards in creation."
"Yes, you're right. Doesn't make sense." His stomach rumbled at the smell of cooking food. "But I can understand my insides. Let's eat."
They turned to their bread and soup and concentrated on the hot food. For dessert they shared a bag of summer plums, seeing who could spit the pit most accurately. Valentine won on distance, but Duvalier expelled hers with bull's-eye control. They laughed at the wine-colored stains left on their faces and turned in, giggling like kids.
"How'd you get to be a Cat? Were you always a troublemaker, or is it just the training?"
"Both, in a way. I grew up under the Kur in Emporia, Kansas. It's a town about halfway between what's left of Topeka and Wichita. My daddy had been shipped off to some work camp God-knows-where. My mom made clothes, mostly for the labor. We call that part of the country the Great Plains Gulag. Gulag: I thought it was some kind of hot dish until someone told me it means concentration camps. My mom was a little too young and pretty, though. Some of the Society used to visit her. Society is what we called the Quislings. She got extra food and stuff out of it, but I hated Society calls."
"You don't have to elaborate."
"I have the high ground on you, Valentine. I've read your Q-file. But you don't know much about me, other than that I saved your ass, then recruited you.
"I started causing trouble, sneaking around, spying on the Society guys. They lorded it over the rest of the Labor, driving around in their cars. God, I hated them. I started lighting fires. A real dynomaniac."
"Pyromaniac," Valentine corrected and instantly regretted it. The habits of growing up in the Padre's schoolroom, where he helped teach the grade-schoolers, died hard.
Duvalier didn't seem to mind. "Pyro-maniac. It started with the uniform of one of the Society. I swiped it while he was with Mother and torched it in a culvert. I used to watch them burn off fields when I was little, and after a fire everything was clean and new for the spring, and the bean sprouts coming up were always so bright green against the black. The uniform just started me. Ever afterwards I liked to see things go up in flames, especially if they belonged to Society. One time I burned up a police van that had a bunch of equipment in it. They hauled twelve people off to the Reaper, one every twelve hours, waiting for a confession. I knew old Mrs. Finey saw me do it, too, but she didn't turn me in. I've always wondered why not. I felt so bad about it, I told my mom.... I mean, people were being taken off to be killed because of something I did. My mom about died on the spot. She sat down and put her head between her knees and started crying. She had been sick a lot that year-I think now she had syphilis. She grabbed my baby brother and went to the phone-the phones worked in that part of Kansas. I figured she was going to call one of the Society guys and turn me in. I ran out of the house with just the clothes on my back.
"I lived for nearly a year on my own. I got picked up by the law once, pretty early on. An old guy and a young guy in a car." Her voice got low and monotone. "The young one convinced the older one to pull off the road so he could haul me into the woods and rape me. The old one just opened a bottle of beer and said, 'You have ten minutes.'
"He took me into the woods, I can't imagine why-I was dirty and thin, didn't look much different from a boy at that time. My boobs had shrunk from not eating to practically nothing. I had handcuffs on. He bent me over and got my pants off, then threw me down on my back. He was getting set on entering me, fumbling around with his prick, I think. I got my teeth around his Adam's apple and bit for all I was worth. Then blood was everywhere, and he was making this weird wheezy sound. He tried to get up and was drawing his gun when he tripped over his own pants. I stood up and started just kicking into him, right in the face, with my heel. He was stunned and about half bled to death, and I jumped in the air and landed with both feet right on the side of his head. His jaw broke, but he might have been dead already, I couldn't tell.
"I knew what a handcuff key looked like, but it took me forever to find it and then get it into the cuffs. I was doing everything by touch behind my back, and I was shaking so bad, I kept dropping the key. It seemed like it took hours and I kept thinking his partner was going to show up and kill me.
"I got the cuffs off finally and picked up the gun. It was a revolver with this really nice white handle and scrollwork on the barrel plating. He had probably stolen it somewhere. It had bullets in it. I sat there for five minutes, hiding in the bushes with the hammer of the gun pulled back, waiting for the partner to show up. Finally I hear him honking his horn on the car.
"I got up and left my pants off, and wiped the blood off my face mostly. I pretended I still had my handcuffs on and came running out of the woods up onto the road with my hands behind my back holding the pistol. I was screaming and crying, which wasn't too hard to do given what had just happened.
The old guy was looking at my crotch when I ran up to the car, and he said something like 'Where the hell's-' or 'What the hell's-' and I never heard the deputy's name because I shot him right in the face from three feet away. I shot him twice more just in case through the window of the car, even though his brains were all over the place.
"I got a nice leather jacket, some food, blankets, a compass, camping stuff-all kinds of things I needed from the car and the dead Society men. Guns-pistols, a shotgun and a rifle, too, but I threw the rifle away after the first day because it was so heavy to carry all the shooters and my other stuff, too. I burnt the car with them in it, which was a dumb idea because it attracted a lot of attention and I only just got away by crawling through a swamp. I knew from when I was little that there was a place in the mountains to the southeast where they didn't have to live like us, and I decided to go. I made it just as winter was setting in. A nice family named the Duvaliers took me in. They didn't know what to make of me: I talked almost nonstop. You'd think I would have been quiet, but no. The poor bastard who had to take my statement had a lot of writing to do. I had a good eye, noticed a lot of things: where there was militia, what kind of vehicles they had.
"So the next spring they had this raid planned into Leavenworth. There are all these prisons there that the Reapers use. They needed scouts and guides, and my name came up. I was young, but they put me out ahead of the column. I got pretty chummy with the other scouts; one was a Cat named Rourke. He liked what I did, and before I knew it, I was his disciple. I've been back to the Free Territory only four times in the eight years since then. Five now, if I count this time with you."
Valentine woke early with a plan. While Duvalier slept, he turned it over in his mind.
"We ride the rails," he said as they split what was left of the fresh bread for breakfast.
"Hmmm?" Duvalier said. Valentine had learned that she was something of a bedbug; it took her a while to wake up.