The Golden One lowered one of his saddle-size shoulders and charged the closed garage door. He struck it with the force of a demolition charge going off, splintering the ancient wood.
Ahn-Kha spotted the sniper at the crotch-tree, just where Valentine described a moment ago, but now Ahn-Kha had a much better angle than he would have had shooting from the house. He loosed a burst that peppered tree and Grog alike, sending it reeling backwards. Ahn-Kha twisted to his right and fired another burst into the Grog covering the living room from outside as its clan-mates went in. The wounded Grog dropped the rifle it had just begun to aim in their direction.
As planned, his living battering ram turned and tossed the PPD to Valentine, who lay down with the gun pointed at the front door. Ahn-Kha loped out into the front yard, to the tree where the late sniper positioned himself. The fawn-colored Grog picked up where his distant relative left off, sighting on the doorway.
Valentine backed down the driveway, now pointing the gun at the corner leading to the backyard on the garage side. He heard something coming around that side. Half a face appeared, peeking around the corner. "Your eye ain't much good if it doesn't bring your gun along," a gruff old Wolf had told him once, and Valentine taught the Grog the same lesson by aiming a burst at the half-face. He missed, splintering the corner of the garage, and the face withdrew.
He turned to run, and heard Ahn-Kha fire the booming fifty-caliber at something in the doorway.
"Cover me!" Ahn-Kha urged, and Valentine slid to the ground again, this time with the gun pointed at the midpoint of the house. Valentine marveled at how he worked with this remarkable creature-a being that was technically an enemy he might have killed on sight until a few days ago. Ahn-Kha stripped the sniper Grog of a bandolier glinting with shells and reloaded the cumbersome-to a human-weapon. Valentine saw motion in the front window and gave the trigger a twitch. The bullets went in the window; whether they struck anything was a matter of luck. Hips never leaving the ground, he wiggled next to his companion and lay down behind the fallen Grog.
The dead Grog had a homemade "potato masher" grenade jutting out of its bag. He held the grenade up to Ahn-Kha. "Can you throw this over the house?"
"I can throw it over the lake."
Valentine pulled the fuse and handed it handle-first to the long-armed warrior. Ahn-Kha drew back an arm, putting the other forward in the classic javelin-throw pose, and sent the grenade spinning over the deadfall-covered roof.
They ran, Valentine in the lead, cutting away from the house at an angle in order to force their attackers to get them with a crossing shot. They went over a fallen log in the middle of the road, Valentine hurdling it and Ahn-Kha vaulting over it sideways, using his long left arm as a brace.
The grenade Ahn-Kha threw never went off; perhaps the fuse went out, the bomb malfunctioned, or some desperate Grog behind the house extinguished it in time. The pair sprinted southward. Shots thwacked into trees around them as they ran.
Six Grogs followed, loping into the young forest of the ruined suburban tracts. It became five when Ahn-Kha halted behind a tree while Valentine kept running and brought down the lead pursuer. After that, the chase proceeded with less speed and more caution, and when Valentine killed another from a rooftop Ahn-Kha had stirrup-lifted him onto, the pursuit broke off.
"We got away from them," Ahn-Kha said, breathing heavily and resting on all fours.
"You bet, old horse." Valentine marked the setting sun. "But they won't get away from us."
Ahn-Kha got his pick of weapons that night.
They swung around in a crescent, and Valentine left the exhausted Grog with his pack and gun well clear of the house while he went back to the brick ranch, approaching from the opposite direction from which they had fled. He took with him two grenades scavenged off the dead Gray Ones.
He crawled around the perimeter of the house in his black overcoat, listening to the grunts and barks within. The Grogs had gathered around their wounded, resting in the back room by the fireplace. He armed and activated the grenade as quietly as he could.
Gray Ones have good noses and better ears; one of them heard or smelled the fuse. It barked a warning, and Valentine let the fuse burn down two anxious seconds' worth before tossing the grenade through the window. While it was still in the air, he stuck his fingers in his ears.
At the explosion, he drew his sword and came in through the back door. It was a matter of killing everything that moved in the smoke-filled room that was not a part of him. The stunned and stricken Grogs might as well have played blindman's buff with a buzz saw-only one had the sense to run. It left a blood trail across the floor as it hurried to leap out of the gap where the front picture window had once been.
It didn't make the window. Valentine was after it like an arrow, opening it with a slash across the back.
Ahn-Kha returned to the house and ignored the carnage. He examined the various rifles and eventually selected one with a black-stained handle. The Grogs liked the butts of their weapons to be gnarled and burled and this one was no exception. "I must shape this before it truly suits me, but it is a good gun." He also pored over the finger-size bullets, sliding the formidable-looking rounds he selected into his bandolier.
Valentine lined up the Grog bodies according to Ahn-Kha's instructions, placing them on their backs with the left palm over the heart, the right palm across the nose and mouth, weapons laid to either side. Another patrol from the Wrist-Ring Clan, upon finding the bodies, might pause for the proper ceremonies. They would seed the bodies with the correct decomposing fungi, and perhaps be too busy mourning their dead to pursue.
"You men anger the Gray Ones when you just burn their corpses. They think you kill them not only in this world, but deny them the passage to the Hero's Woods their bravery merits. Better to leave them to lie on the battlefield untouched."
"Ever heard the expression 'When in Rome'? They wouldn't have their rites ignored if they weren't here in the first place."
"That's the fault of another generation."
Valentine thought of the wilds of western Missouri. Wolf teams could reach Omaha, find paths that more powerful forces could follow. "By working together, some of that generation's legacy might be wiped away."
"The Golden Ones have tasted the fruits of their alliance with Kur. We found them rotten. Then came the Twisted Cross. Many would be ready to join your fight."
"I wish we could find explosives more powerful than these grenades," Valentine said, rooting through the Gray Ones' equipment. "We could hit the Twisted Cross in their own backyard."
"I can help you in that," Ahn-Kha said. "There are men in the Old Market who can obtain anything you need."
To Valentine, anything pre-2022 was "old." But this part of the city, set against the river, was aged even by Old World standards as he understood them.