Narcisse put down her spoon and joined Valentine at the table. Someone had spent some time varnishing the oak until the grain stood clear and dark-the Free Territory had been filled with craftsmen. The pattern reminded him of grinning demon faces.
"I've never been a soldier, child. Spent a lot of time run-nin' from them, but never been one. The men, wherever they're from, even those ape-men... they believe in this fight too. They're not as different from you as you think. They don't follow you blind, they follow you because they know that if it comes to a fight, they want to look out for you as much as you want to look out for them."
"Think so? Narcisse, I ran outside of Bern Woods. I got up and ran."
"No. I saw Ahn-Kha dragging you away with my own eyes."
"I still left."
"Dying with them wouldn't have done your people any good. You saved yourself for the next fight. You saved the wood, at least some of it."
"That was an accident. A lucky accident. An officer belongs with his men. If he doesn't share their fate, he hasn't done his duty to them. It's the oldest compact between a leader and the led. Goes back to whatever we had for society before civilization."
Narcisse thought this over. "Was it wrong of them to surrender?"
"Of course not. It was hopeless from the start."
"But you fought, they fought."
"Couldn't help it. It was instinct."
"When you left, Daveed, that was instinct too, no?"
"Not the kind you should give in to."
"The past can't be changed, child. You keep worrying at it, you'll be doing the same thing as you did at the fight. Running away. Don't pick at a scab, or a new one grows in its place. Let the hurt heal. In time, it'll drop off by itself. Better for you, better for the hurt. If there's one thing I know about, child, it's getting over a hurt."
The Vaudouist didn't refer to her injuries often. She answered questions about them to anyone who asked, but Valentine had never heard her use them as a trump card in an argument before. Valentine let her unusual statement hang in the air for a moment.
"Narcisse, it sounds fine, but... a bit of me that isn't quite my brain and isn't quite my heart won't be convinced yet."
"That's your conscience talking. He's worth listening to.
But he can be wrong ... sometimes."
* * * *
Valentine half dozed in front of the field pack with the headset on. Ahn-Kha snored next to him, curled up like a giant dog. Like most Quisling military equipment, the radio sitting on the table before him was ruggedly functional and almost aggressively ugly. Late at night the Quisling operators became more social, keeping each other company in the after-midnight hours of the quiet watches. Someone had just finished instructions on how to clear a gummed condensation tube on a still. His counterpart was complaining about the quality of the replacements they'd been getting: "Shit may float, but you can't build a riverboat outta it." Valentine twisted the dial back to a scratchier conversation about a pregnant washerwoman.
"So she goes to your CO. So what? She should be happy. She's safe for a couple years now. Over," the advice-giver said.
"She wants housing with the NCO wives. She's already got a three-year-old. She wants me to marry her so they can move in. Over," the advice-seeker explained.
"That's an old story. She's in it for the ration book, bro. Look, if a piece of ass pisses you off, threaten to have her tossed off-Station. That'll shut her up. Better yet, just do it. Sounds to me like she's-"
Valentine turned the dial again.
"... fight in Pine Bluff. Put me down for twenty coin on Jebro. He'll take Meredith like a sapper popping an old woman. Over."
"Sure thing. You want any of the prefight action? Couple of convicts. It's a blood-match; the loser goes to the Slits. Over."
Valentine had heard the term "Slits" used by rivermen on the Mississippi. It referred to the Reapers' slit-pupiled eyes, or perhaps the narrow wounds their stabbing tongues left above the breastbone.
"No, haven't seen 'em. I'd be wasting my money. Over."
Valentine heard a horse snort and jump outside the cracked window, the way an equine startled out of sleep readies all four feet for flight. The sound brought him awake in a flash. A pair of alarmed whinnies cut the night air.
Ahn-Kha came awake, nostrils flared and batlike ears up and alert.