"Commissary Sergeant Major Tucker, in Quonset hut behind headquarters. Good man. Answer all questions. Usually answer is 'yes.""
* * * *
Tucker was more than just a good man. He appeared that evening like a horn of plenty, playing a spirited version of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on a silver concert flute. He showed up in the shotgun seat of a roofless, antiquated Hummer, interrupting the men as they were setting up their tents in military rows.
"General's orders," Tucker shouted, pointing with his flute at his cargo. "Fresh bread, fruit and veggies just up from the Gulf. Spring potatoes, winter cabbage, first peas and even apples. We've got beer in cask, but before I can issue that, we need to see what kind of workers you are."
The men forgot they were in the heart of an enemy camp enough to start cheering as he handed out the bounty. Cured side meat lay in baskets revealed as eager hands took the food.
"Whee-ooh, y'all need the showers rigged pronto, boys," Tucker said. "Ever heard of field hygiene?"
"We've been on the road for three days," Valentine said, stepping forward to help hand out the foodstuffs.
"You're up from Louisiana, they tell me."
"Sergeant Tucker, the smell's unfortunate, I know. They need some washtubs and soap more than anything."
"Coming tomorrow, sir."
"I'm only about half armed as well. I'd like to see that rectified."
"Guns are a problem, sir. You'll get a few for marksmanship, to familiarize yourselves with our models, but we don't have enough to arm all your men at the moment."
"That's unfortunate. Suppose there's an emergency and the camp has to turn out to defend itself?"
"We have contingency plans, sir. When y'all are properly integrated into the general's command, you'll be outfitted, but there's too much work to do here for now. You'll be in reserve a few months at least..."
"Months! I thought the fight was coming sooner than that."
"I can't say, sir. Those were the general's orders; he was specific about it."
Valentine recovered his mental equilibrium. "I haven't been fully briefed yet."
"Sorry you had to hear it from me, sir. But be glad for it; you'll have a better time back here. Those boys up north are dug in like ticks on a bear; burning them off isn't going to be a summer picnic. If you saw the hospital you wouldn't be so willful about it."
Mondis. Valentine spent two hours trying to fall asleep, staring at the silhouette of the Quickwood center pole in his tent. Using Quickwood to form their tents seemed as good a way as any to hide the material in plain sight.
Such a small thing, the Quickwood beam. But it was the source of all Valentine's hopes. He saw some of the men touching it as they passed, some with a reverence that brought to mind odd bits of mental flotsam about medieval pilgrims and alleged pieces of the True Cross, others caressing it as though it were a lover in passing. Even Post, who'd never shown any other signs of superstition, would give the tentpole a double rap with his knuckles whenever he passed it in Valentine's tent.
The ruse might last six days, but more than a few weeks was out of the question. Sooner or later some fool would let something slip, a face would be recognized despite the shorn heads, an assumed identity would be dropped. There would be questions, and then, when he didn't have answers, more questions. From what he'd seen of the docks and warehouses, they were well guarded against any attack he could mount, armed as he was, even with his Bears. The Quickwood had to make it to Southern Command, where it would be used to kill Reapers instead of hold up waterproofed canvas. But if he simply decamped and marched across the river, his chances of ever seeing the Boston Mountains were negligible.
Realizing sleep was impossible, he rose, dressed and found an ax. He wandered around the camp, nodding to the men on firewatch, until he found piled cords of firewood. David Valentine split fulls into quarters and quarters into kindling until he could drop into his bunk, body soaked with sweat even in the cold night air, muscles aflame, fretful thoughts finally beaten into numbness.
The Arkansas River, February of the forty-eighth year of the Kurian Order: Part of the defense strategy of the Free Territory was simple inaccessibility. Southern Command tore up railroads leading into the Ozarks, broke roadbeds down, wrecked bridges, let forests grow over airstrips, and flooded bayous long since drained by the Corps of Engineers. As part of this strategy Southern Command rendered the Arkansas River unnavigable by destroying locks, sinking snags and pulling down levees, blocking invasion by water east from the Mississippi and west from the old river port on the Verdegris east of Tulsa. Four hundred feet of elevation from the Mississippi to Fort Smith were made impassible to anything other than shallow-draft traffic, thanks to the sand-clogged river and vigilant Guards at Arkansas Post and Fort Gibson. While both strongpoints changed hands several times over the course of the Free Territory's star-crossed history, they were always eventually won back.
Until now.
In their months of occupation the Kurians have opened the river to some traffic between Little Rock and the Mississippi; small barges are again making the ascent to supply the armies still fighting in the mountains. But Nature takes her part in the conflict as well: a wet winter, early spring and heavy rains have raised waters to levels not matched since the floods of the nineteen twenties. The last controls, hydroelectric dams at the Jed Taylor and Dardanelle Lock & Dams, were destroyed as Southern Command fled to the mountains, leaving the river open to flooding. Only the fact that the levees were destroyed years ago, siphoning some of the water away in secondary floods, has saved the new masters of the Ruins so far.
But the river is rising.
* * * *
The irony of the situation was not lost on David Valentine. He drove his men, enlisted and officers alike, in an exhausting war against the swelling Arkansas River. A wall of sandbags was the battle line. On the one side of the miles of sandbags, pumps and drainage ditches were the war materials of Consul Solon's military millstone, now grinding Southern Command into chicken feed. On the other side swelled a God-given natural disaster waiting to strike a blow for their Cause potentially more damaging than even batteries of heavy artillery with the town in their sights could hope to do.
Nonetheless he threw his men's bodies against the river. Even Ahn-Kha stood waist-deep in cold water, hardly stopping to eat, plunging his long arms again and again into the base of the levee, digging sluices for the pumps.
The endless labor inured his men to living hearth-to-hearth with the Quislings. When Tucker and his men handed out new AOT uniforms-a mottle of sea greens and browns, some with the look of reclaimed and redyed clothing about them- Post brought them in groups before Narcisse, who marked their foreheads in a vaudou version of the anointing of the ashes. She smeared them with a red paste and flicked them about the head and neck with a powdered white feather, chanting in her Haitian Creole. Even Styachowski submitted to it in good humor, after Narcisse explained to her and Valentine that it was just for show: The paste was winterberry with a touch of poison sumac to give it a tingle. Narcisse promised the men that the ritual would help them fool the enemy, guard their tongues and curse any who deliberately gave away their true allegiance so that any reward given by the Kurians would turn to ash and their hearts' blood to sand. Valentine watched M'Daw's face as he underwent the anointing; there would be a brass ring for him and land of his choosing if he were to go over to his old masters, and it would be so easy. So very easy. Just a word or two in the right ear at the wrong moment. The healthy respect for Narcisse's powers M'Daw had gained when she changed the old Quisling's bowels to the biological equivalent of a fire hose showed itself when he jumped at her touch as though she carried electrical current.