"I hate to miss out on a fight if my Bears are involved."
"I'll bring them back to you, if I can," Styachowski said.
The transfusion took place within the hour. It was done under fire; the Quislings launched a probing attack to see what sort of defenses the defenders still had. It left Nail drained, and after a tiny meal-by Bear standards-he drifted off to sleep.
As it turned out, they weren't able to try Valentine's plan that night anyway. The day's clouds dissolved and it was a clear night for the half moon. They'd be spotted on the river too easily. Valentine looked down at the bridge, and saw the white Kurian Tower beyond, shining under its spotlights like a slice of the moon fallen to earth.
The Quislings cleared the roads and brought armored cars up the hill. They prowled the edges of the ruins like hungry cats at rat holes, shooting at anything that moved. Styachowski and the Bears went out and buried what was left of the mortar shells where they had driven before. The next day they managed to blow the wheels off of one. It sat there, looking like a broken toy in a rubble-filled sandbox.
Then came the quiet dawn. The harassing fire slacked off, and the men were able to dash from hiding hole to hiding hole without anything more than a sniper bullet or two zinging past. Valentine was watching Hank sleep. He felt strangely relaxed. Perhaps it was because of the color in Hank's cheeks and his deep, easy breaths. The boy was on the mend. He worked out a final plan. His last throw of the dice, in the strange table run that had begun with Boxcars.
He talked it over with Ahn-Kha, Nail and Styachowski at the nightly meal. Post had been briefed early and would assume command of what was left of the Razors-mostly a noisome aggregation of wounded sheltering in dugouts and the basements of Solon's headquarters.
"It's worth a try," Nail said, looking at the weird, question-mark-shaped assault path Valentine had mapped out. He had a little of his energy back. "They won't be expecting it, after all this time, with them so close."
"It could take the heart out of them. Even more than the loss of Xray-Tango," Ahn-Kha said. The Golden One's ears drooped unhappily. He'd been tasked with his supporting role.
"The only heart I'm after is in that tower," Valentine said.
* * * *
Nail joined them despite his weak state. Valentine wanted to leave him and Styachowski both back at the camp, but they presented a strangely united front, and he couldn't argue with both.
Their chosen path to the river was down the cliff face above the quarry. Valentine had only rappelled once, long ago, in an exercise as a trainee. Valentine, Ahn-Kha and the Bears crept out of the trenches and moved west, where they fixed ropes to tree stumps.
"I would like to come on this, my David," Ahn-Kha said.
"Sorry. I need your muscles to haul us back up this rock," Valentine said. "Don't stay here and die. If you get overrun, try for the swampy ground to the north. Go back to your people."
Ahn-Kha looked over his shoulder at the shattered walls and missing roofs. "My only people are here, now. I will wait. Unless a bullet finds me, I will wait here, yes, even through another winter and another like that."
Valentine gripped arms with his old ally. "I'll be back sooner than that." He looped a line through a ring on a harness improvised from an AOT backpack, and dropped over the edge.
Naturally, he burned his hands.
The Bears loaded their gear onto an inflatable raft as Valentine applied antiseptic and dressings to his hands. The raft was a green thing that rose at each end like a sliced quarter of melon. A box containing four of them had been on the first train brought to Big Rock Hill. With a little luck and a little more dark, they might be able carry the Bears to the other side without being observed.
They waited by the riverbank as they half inflated the boat. It only needed to carry their gear, and the lower its profile the better. A warm breeze blew down the river for a change. Summer was coming on, and the frogs were welcoming it with creaky voices. Bats emerged from their riverside lairs in the quarry and hunted mosquitoes with meeping calls Valentine's hard ears could just pick out.
Valentine and the men were nervous. Even Rain, who had started a second set of slanted brownish scars on his left arm, shifted position and mumbled to himself constantly.
The Bears huddled together as they worked the little bellows that inflated the raft, keeping watch for patrols at the riverbank. The AOT had lost men on this side of the hill to snipers and had given up trying to occupy the narrow strip of ground between the cliff face and the river, but they could never be sure there weren't dogs loosed at night.
"What's going red like?" Valentine asked. He'd heard various stories, including one from ex-Bear Tank Bourne, but he was curious if different men felt it differently.
"You can't control it too well," Red said, patting the belt-fed gun on his lap. "All that has to happen is a gunshot and over I go. You get all hot and excited, like you've just won a race or something. Everything seems kind of distant and separated from you, but you have perspective and everything, so when you chuck a grenade it lands where you want it, not a mile away. Pain just makes you hotter and ready to fight more. It wears off after everything's all over, but once in a while Bears drop over afterward and don't wake up. Their hearts burst."
"You feel like you can run, or jump, or climb forever."
Hack put in. "Sometimes you have to scream just to give it all somewhere to go. Here's something they don't talk about at the bar, though. Most Bears piss themselves over the course of it. Every single red nick I've got on my arm means I've come back with a pantload of shit."
Nail nodded. "I always go into action with an extra diaper under my pants. The guys in Force Apache wear kilts- actually, more like flaps-that's another solution."
"Glad I'm a Cat," Valentine said. "What about you, Styachowski, what do you want for a handle?"
Styachowski looked up from where she sat, knees hugged to her chest, one hand wrapped with a leather wrist guard for her archery. "I'd like to be named by my team."
"How about 'Guns'?" Nail asked. "From the cannon. Plus, she's got the arms for it."