Valentine knew from fifteen years of regret what sort of abyss yawned before the boy. Agony rose and washed through him along with a gorge he fought to keep down, all the pent-up emotional muck of his losses breaking in his roaring ears and wet eyes. Maybe if he'd been tending to his ax and the kindling as was his duty that day, instead of corn collecting, he would have warned Mom of the trucks coming up the road to the house; she would have grabbed his sister and baby brother and gotten his father from the lakeshore-
Regret might haunt Hank, grind the child down, or drive him to God-knows-which bitter lengths to compensate for an imagined fault. Valentine couldn't allow that to happen to the boy-or man, rather. If anyone on the hill exhibited the manly virtues Valentine had listed when he sent Hank off to the guns, it was the septic boy in the cot.
Being able to forgive himself was a cause as lost as the Razors'.
* * * *
There was still plenty of hot cocoa; it came in tins with little cups inside so all that was needed was a glass and hot water. He, Ahn-Kha, Post, Styachowski, Nail, Brough and Hanson met one final time. Their conference room was filled with wounded, so they gathered in the last artillery magazine. A few dozen mortar rounds stood, interspersed with sandbags, where once there had been hundreds stacked to the ceiling.
"You know what's always pissed me off about this operation?" Valentine asked.
"Your haircut?" Post asked. The officers had enough energy left to laugh.
"That railroad bridge. We never were able to bring it down."
"Isn't that in the 'too late to worry' file?" Nail asked.
"Not necessarily. If we get the men up and moving, we could punch through. Some of us would make it to the bridge. I doubt they've got reserves massed everywhere in case of a counterattack. Once we got off the hill it's only a mile."
"I'll go with you, my David," Ahn-Kha said. "I don't want to die like my father, in a burned-out hole."
"What happened to tying down as many troops as possible as long as possible?"
"Aren't you all sick of this?" Valentine said. "The dirt, the death? Sitting here and taking it?"
Styachowski and Nail exchanged looks. "If we do it, I imagine you'll need Lieutenant Nail."
"Of course I'd need him."
"Then I can't try my plan to save Hank," Dr. Brough said.
"What's that?"
"The boy, the one with the gangrenous arm. I've been curious about the resiliency of the Bears. I put some of Lieutenant Nail's blood in a dish with a bacterial culture. It killed it, like his blood was full of chlorine. I thought I'd try a transfusion; he and the boy have the same blood type. But it would take time for him to recover."
"You may not have that, Doctor. They'll attack again. I don't believe we're in any kind of shape to hold them off."
"Hank can't hold off the gangrene. It's system-wide."
Valentine finished his cocoa. "Nail, would you turn over your command to Styachowski? She's always wanted to be a Bear."
Nail tried walking on his wounded, mangled leg. He was still limping.
"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."