"Technically I'm a captain now, Sergeant, though you'll have to go on faith for that. I couldn't prove it any better to you than I could prove why I'm out here with a Grog. His name's Ahn-Kha, and he also outranks you. I've been out of the Free Territory for better than two years. Sort of a Logistics Commando operation."
"The boy?"
"Just a refugee. None of us are out here for fun. I'm trying to find any kind of Southern Command organization. If you can turn us over to one, I'd be obliged."
Finner took his hand out of the sheath. "No longer a Wolf, eh? Ain't no such thing, Valentine. Once you've looked into the eyes of Father Wolf, you're one until the day you die." He pushed the cap back on his head, revealing a greasy forehead. "Hell, whatever you are, it's good to see you again, Captain, sir," Finner said, holding up his hand palm outward in the Wolf salute. "I'm running with what's left of Southern Command here in the Ouachitas. If you want to meet the boys, just say so. They're only a couple hilltops away."
"I'll say so," Valentine said. "Ahn-Kha, take Hank and find the others. Tell them to camp quietly for another day, and wait for me. This should be the end of our trail."
* * * *
"How did it happen, Jess?" Valentine said, as they walked in the loom of Magazine Mountain. The radio antennae Valentine remembered atop the rock-faced cliffs were gone.
Finner must have answered the question before to other fragments of Southern Command, searching for higher command like children looking for a missing parent. The words came out in a practiced, steady beat.
"Not sure. I was recruiting up in the Northwoods. Wisconsin this time, same's I do every year since you met me. It was August. Hottest one I can remember in a while, even up there. We had a little temporary camp south of La Crosse, where we picked up some food courtesy of the underground, and the boatmen said there'd been barges full of men brought across the Mississippi. Our lieutenant thought we'd better not try for the Free Territory until we knew which path was safe. He sent out scouts. Only one came back, and he said the riverbank south of St. Louis was crawling with Grogs. Captain Dorn finally showed up, and he left it up to us. We could scatter up north, or try to get through to the Ozarks. Most tried, a few recruits even. Well, they were right, the hills were crawling. We got picked up by some of those flying shit-eaters, and the harpies put the big ones on us. Legworms barreling through the brush like tanks with Grogs picking us off right and left as we ran. It was a massacre. No other word for it. I made it out, running south. Came across a week-old battlefield on the Crowley Ridge; our men were hanging in trees everywhere, getting picked at by crows. "Round there I think I got some bad water, picked up a bug. Woke up in a hayloft; some farmers had found me wandering. Said I had a fever, babbled. I was about twenty pounds thinner. This family said the Kurians were running the show now, but they'd heard there was still fighting in the Ouachitas down by Hot Springs. Let's take a break."
Firmer sat down and Valentine joined him, rubbing his tired left leg. Finner passed him a little stainless-steel flask. Valentine smelled the contents and shook his head, handing it back.
"I'd lost my blade and my gun while I was sick. When I felt well enough to move on they gave me a bagful of food and made me promise to say I got it in another village if I got caught. I ran into three deserters trying to make their way to the mountains in Kentucky, they said it was all over for the Ozarks. We'd been hit from everywhere-including up. They flew over at the beginning, dropping wild Reapers. Called 'em 'sappers." I guess there were hundreds of 'em loose at one point."
"I've seen them. They're still running these hills."
Finner wiped his brow. "Southern Command had to send out teams of Wolves and Bears to deal with the sappers. Not enough reserves when the real attack came, though they tell me it wouldn't have made a difference."
"So when did you reach the Ouachitas?"
"Last summer. Gotta warn you, we're an ad hoc unit. Every man's there because he wants to be there; no parades or drill or courts-martial. Not enough supply to do anything but keep us alive. The fighting we do is purely to keep from getting captured. I wouldn't throw that 'captain' title around; the General wouldn't like it, unless he puts you on his staff."
"General who?" Valentine disliked it when someone was known only by the title "General." It reminded him of the leader of the Twisted Cross.
"Martinez. Twelfth Guards, formerly."
"Don't know him."
Valentine felt the darkness coming on. The air took on a wet chill.
"He wasn't a general before. He was colonel of the Twelfth."
"They had the tiger-striped kepis. Orange and black, usually stationed in the Arkansas Gap."
"Yup. Got the hell knocked out of them by troops coming in from Texas. That's who's running the Fort Scott area and the Ouachitas. Texans and Oklahomans. They must've stripped the Dallas Corridor bare; they say the invasion was over a hundred thousand men."
"How are they feeding them? Aren't guerillas hitting the supply lines? When I was in Zulu that was supposed to be our catastrophe assignment."
"Can't say. I spend my time scavenging, not on ops or recon. I've seen low-draft barges coming up the Arkansas. Cattle and rice."
"I came through northeast Texas. I thought the patrols looked slim."
"Yeah, the Ks in Texas think big. They're supposed to get a chunk of the Ouachitas. But there's some new bigshot organizing things out of the ruins in Little Rock. That's who's really running things hereabouts now. A man, if you can believe it. Ol' Satan and his gang of Kurians."
"Satan?"
"Solon. Consul Solon, his papers say."
* * * *
Valentine's nose told him they were approaching the camp before they came across the lookouts. Latrine discipline wasn't a priority for this particular remnant of Southern Command.