Narcisse pursed her lips, then poked him in the breastbone with her maimed arm. "You already look better. Go now, or I cry some. Maybe I cry some anyway, but I don't want you around for that".
Valentine made Nancy's north of Tulsa in three days of round-the-clock legworm travel, arriving on the eve of the promised rendezvous. He'd made a deal with a driver from the Rabbit's Foot clan whom he silently called "Tic-tac" because the Grog's back-hide scars looked like a couple of drunks had started playing tic-tac-toe on it with hot knives.
Which wasn't out of the realm of possibility. Captured Grogs were sometimes cruelly treated to put the "fear of Man" in them before they were released. Of course captured men were often eaten when not enslaved, so cruelty was a matter of perspective.
They took turns driving the beast through day and night, skirting the UFR. Valentine hoped that the unofficial truce of the Missouri brush that had settled in when he'd first become a Cat was still holding, and that no wide-ranging patrols would risk a flare-up by potting what looked like a human small trader and his driver.
Difficulty showed itself in a six-man patrol. Three challenged him, and three more waited, kneeling in the brush. Five kids and a senior NCO. The kids were too young and the NCO was grizzled right to the hair growing out of his ears.
Valentine felt for the oldster, riding herd on a bunch of downy cheeks too young to know how easily they could die. But the Missouri bushwhack country would lend itself to giving the kids some experience without the risks that went with the swamps around New Orleans, the open plains to the west, or the alley between Crowley's Ridge and Memphis.
Valentine watched the rifles and picked out an escape route through the brush. If things looked bad, he'd topple off the legworm and run like a rabbit, twisting and turning across the mud through first spring flowers of the blackberry bramble.
"Hey, Freebies", Valentine called. "You boys looking for a little joy juice to keep out the nightly chill?"
"Check out that chair. Quite a ride he has on that legworm", one of the kids in the brush remarked to his fellows.
The NCO's rifle dangled in its sling, but the officer kept his hand hooked casually in his ALICE belt, close to the butt of his sidearm. "Just a friendly warning, Wally", the NCO said, using the Missouri slang for a trader who bartered with the Grogs. Valentine had been called worse. "You're about ten miles out of a UFR settlement. They'll panic at the sight of a worm and open up on you".
"Like a bunch of potato diggers could hit a legworm if it were on top of them", one of the kids in the brush said. The two backing up the NCO knew better than to add comment, but one kept swinging his rifle muzzle back and forth, making little figure eights in the air.
"Where you bound for?" the NCO asked, looking at the packs and accoutrements dangling from both sides of the legworm.
"South of Kansas City, Kansas".
"Top, he's traveling with a stoop - that puts him under suspicion", the twitchy kid said. "Stop and question".
"Question away, I'd like an excuse to get off this damn worm", Valentine said. "It's Tic-tac here who is on tribal-conference business. I just own the worm".
Tic-tac rocked nervously in his saddle, his anxiety evident, but kept his hands away from his long, single-shot varmint gun. Valentine doubted he even had any bullets for it. Instead he had a grip on his sharp-hooked worm goad. Valentine hoped Tic-tac wasn't getting any ideas about the worth of the kid's rifles and hair at the next tribal bragging session. If the kids knew just how quickly a Grog could throw a balanced utility ax like the one dangling from its leather thong on the saddle hook, they'd be back another ten yards or so.
Valentine tried to will the kid into slinging the gun and losing interest in the encounter, but the boy had either imagination or a grudge against men out of the Groglands.
"That's maybe a Kurian agent", the kid insisted. "He should be put under arrest".
"Not another word, Cadet", the NCO said. "If that Grog is a messenger, he'll die before he'll come out of that saddle. Then we'll have a feud with Rabbit's Foot and their allies".
Valentine's stomach sank. The kid was an officer candidate, looking to establish his record for initiative.
"Bury and buckle up, Top. C'mon", one of the kids quietly urged from the brush.
"And if he were a Kurian agent, we'd all be running to check out the sound of seventy legworms passing north of here, or shooting at each other", the NCO added.
Valentine felt a gurgle in his stomach, and took the opportunity to lean to his right and bounce a loud fart off his chair.
"Never could handle those Grog mushrooms", he said.
The NCO chuckled and the quieter of his two charges laughed.
"Pass wind, friend", the NCO said, stepping aside and gesturing with his hand to the west. The cadet glared at him.
"Don't worry, we'll be out of UFR lands by nightfall", Valentine said as they goaded the legworm into its rippling motion again.
The NCO pulled the boys out of the way of the legworm's antennae and nodded to Valentine as they passed. Valentine considered that the peacefully concluded meeting was an example of the differences between the Free Territory and the Kurian Zone. In the Free Territory an NCO could use his judgment. In the KZ they'd be kept waiting while the NCO called his officer, who called a higher officer, who would order them searched and then, when they found nothing of interest, would call a higher officer still, who would ask "Why are you bothering me with this?" and order them released anyway, provided there wasn't a Reaper breathing down his neck with an appetite that made starting a feud with a Grog tribe over a single wanderer's aura worth it.
The kids who were covering from ambush stood up as they passed, and gaped.
There was a time when the whole check in the Nomansland between would have been done by Wolves, who would probably have just observed them from cover and tracked them to see what they were up to, unseen and unheard unless the patrol leader decided they constituted a threat. Then Tic-tac would have been dead and Valentine