The backblast of the recoilless flared in a gray cloud, and the shell exploded by Post's wagon. Old Handy Sixguns and the machine-gunners disappeared in the blast. Nothing but body parts remained. Valentine's marines were crawling out of the cross fire, or throwing away their weapons and sheltering among the stumps in the clearing.
The precious quickwood was burning. Two wagons flamed, putting oily smoke into the colorless sky. Valentine clenched his teeth until his jaws screamed in agony, reloading and firing his gun with tears in his eyes. He saw a Quisling rider grasp Narcisse by the hair and jerk her from her saddle, ignoring the blows from the quirt fixed to her arm. Post gone, his Jamaicans cut to pieces. Nothing mattered now.
"Away, David, away!" Ahn-Kha shouted, waving at the approaching troops.
"The quickwood," Valentine said.
"No choice! The smoke is blowing this way-it will cover us."
A bullet hit the limp horse, its impact causing still-warm muscles to twitch. Horses dragging a wagon came around the shattered front of the column. A Jamaican lay in the bed of the wagon, working the reins from the shelter of the bed. Ahn-Kha dropped his gun. The Grog pulled Valentine to his feet-grabbing him by the collar like a disobedient child- and ran in pursuit of the wagon.
Bullets zipped through the air all around: insects buzzing in their ears for a split second and then fleeing. Ahn-Kha caught the back of the wagon with one long arm as he hauled Valentine in tow with iron fingers. He swung up in an apish leap. A bullet caught the Grog at the apex of his jump. He dropped Valentine as he tumbled into the wagon. The wounding of his friend brought Valentine out of his mental maze.
Valentine felt something pull at his sleeve. The bullet that cut through his clothing hit the back of the wagon with a splintering thwak. He locked eyes with Ahn-Kha as the Grog's ear flaps fell Ump. His friend toppled into the back of the wagon.
He ran. He jumped into the wagon just as one of the team was cut down by gunfire. Ahn-Kha lay groaning in his native tongue, hand pressed against his buttock.
"Sir! Sir!" the wounded Jamaican said, pushing a machine gun lying at the bottom of the wagon at Valentine with a bloody foot. "It's still got bullets."
Valentine took up the weapon. He rested it on the side of the wagon and turned it against Murphy's turncoats still burning and killing among the other wagons. The chatter of the weapon attracted bullets from all directions. Valentine waited for the inevitable impact. He would die with his mission, with the men he'd misled. Another flare landed by the wagon, spewing more purple mist. Mortar shells dropped, seeking his position.
Valentine heard hooves approach through the smoke, and turned the gun. Only a short length of bullets dangled from the belt.
"David!" Valentine heard a familiar voice call. "Captain Valentine! Men, find Captain Valentine."
Post came out of the purple haze, leading two horses. His clothes were in rags, and his eyes were bright in bruised sockets. Blood ran from a cut on his thigh. Another mortar shell exploded and the horses danced in terror, but Post dragged them on.
'Take Ahn-Kha with the other horse. He's hurt. I'm staying with the men."
"No use!" Post said, bringing the animals beside the wagon.
"Can't-," Valentine began, but Ahn-Kha's bloody fingers wrapped themselves around the snakeskin bandolier and pulled him bodily out of the wagon.
"My David, we go. I shall run. There's nothing else to do."
"No!"
The Grog hauled Valentine to a horse. He hopped on one leg, supporting himself with his other tree-trunk arm as though using a cratch. Post handed over the reins and helped the Jamaican into one of the saddles, then held the horse for Valentine to mount. Valentine saw blood running from Post's ear.
"No," Valentine said tightly, slinging his empty PPD and grabbing the horse by the throat latch. "You're hurt, you ride."
Post and the wounded Jamaican rode hard for the woods. A handful of others, including Ahn-Kha and Valentine, followed the two riders.
As they fled, a shell found the wagon. More oily smoke rose into the winter sky. Valentine ran with the rest, half-hoping his heart would burst from the effort. He ran from his enemies, from defeat, from his dead and wounded men. He wished he could ran from his failure, but it stayed with him all the way to the trees and beyond.
Behind him, the quickwood burned.
iney Woods, December of the forty-eighth year of the Kurian Order: East Texas is covered with timber, a wood-scape more extensive than all of New England. The pines stand as straight as Baptists on Easter Sunday, their evenly spaced branches ascending the trunk like ladder rungs.
Texas saw its first oil boom in this part of the state, but before that a timber boom brought white men to sculpt the land with its first roads and towns. After mankind's fall, the gently rolling landscape went fallow, and vigorous young forests have sprung up again from the old ranches and farms scattered around Lake Texoma to Sabine Lake in the Gulf.
The Texas Rangers are active here, as well, raising hell all along the informal border with the Kurian Zone that runs the length of the Neches River and along the road-and-rail "Sabine Corridor" the Kurians maintain from Shreveport to Dallas. The Lifeweavers are present to help the Texans in this part of the country. The Rangers have organized their own teams of Wolves, Cats, and Bears to hunt the Reapers, passing material and information to and from Southern Command through the network of Logistics Commandos.
The far north of the region, between the Red and Sulphur rivers, sees the least guerrilla activity. There is little human habitation to speak of. Southern Command proper patrols this area from its forward bases along the Red River. A few hunter-gatherer communities-usually Native American or Louisiana Creole-wander the area, pulling up stakes every few months to avoid the depredations of the Reapers
and Quislings raiding out of the Dallas Paramountcy. With fall in its death throes and winter coming, a wet, muddy hush falls over the land. Snowstorms are not unknown to the Piney Woods, and man and animal both retire deep into the woods to wait out the cold.
The pines smelled like home. The crisp aroma in the chill breeze of an East Texas December tickled his nose and brought back memories of winter camps in the Ozarks and Ouachitas. It marked his first breath in the lands of the Ozark Free Territory in over two years.