"Pick one up."
Valentine knew something was different as soon as he lifted up a box of bullets. He raised an eyebrow at Lambert.
"Yes, it's Quickwood. Testing found that the .45 shell was less likely to tumble and fragment. Only a couple of thousand rounds, but if you distribute the Reaper rifles to your good shots . . ."
She didn't have anything to say about the explosives Valentine uncovered next. They'd loaded him up with what was colloquially known as Angel Food, a vanilla-colored utility explosive that was notoriously tricky to use. The combat engineers used to say working with it kept the angels busy, thus the name. You could handle or burn it without danger, but it was quick to blow when exposed to spark. Even static electricity was dangerous.
For preserved food there was a lot of WHAM. Probably captured supplies taken off of Quisling military formations and now being repatriated to its native land. The WHAM had probably logged more time in service than many of his soldiers.
As to the training materials, they were mostly workbooks on reading, writing, and arithmetic: useful to many of the lower-level workers who escaped the Kurian Order functionally illiterate but not particularly useful to his troops.
For entertainment they had cases and cases of playing cards with the classic depiction of a bicyclist.
Valentine lifted one of the boxes and opened it. Inside, the cards were wrapped up like a pack of cigarettes.
"Strip poker?" he asked Lambert.
"Stakes aren't worth it, not with your face looking like that."
They laughed.
Valentine would have found it hard to put into words to say how relieved he was Lambert was joining them in Kentucky. She was the sort of person who did a good deal without drawing attention to herself. He'd come across an old quote from one of the Prussians, von Moltke something or other, that perfectly described her: accomplish much, remain in the background, be more than you appear.
But had she ever stood under shellfire before? History was full of leaders who were fine organizers but couldn't face what Abra ham Lincoln called the "terrible arithmetic" of sacrificing some men now to save many in the future.
To be honest with himself, Valentine had a little trouble with his sums as well.
Later that night, as he fell asleep, he felt a slight, ominous tickle in his throat.
Valentine, thick-headed and sneezing on the flatboat trip downriver with his new charges, observed that you could mark the deterioration of civilized standards the closer you drew to the Mississippi by the signs along the Arkansas' riverbank.
He liked leaning on the rail, watching the riverbank go by. Mantilla had put them all in oil-stained overalls even dirtier than his crew's and beat-up old canvas slippers with strips of rubber sewn in for traction.
"Only because it's not barefoot weather, unless it's a sunny day," one of Mantilla's crew explained.
Back in the better-served counties with functioning law enforcement, there were polite notices not to tie up or trespass, bought at some hardware store.
Farther down the river, you had hand-painted boards up.
KEEP OUT! THIS MEANS YOU!
or
I'M TOO CHEAP FOR WARNING SHOTS
Then closer still to the Mississippi, the ownership left off with writing entirely and sometimes just nailed up a skull and a pair of crossed femurs at their jetty.
They left the last of the gun position and observation posts guarding the mouth of the Arkansas River at night and turned up the wide Mississippi with all hands alert and on watch.
Mantilla's men were experts with paint and brush and stencil and flag, and within a few minutes they had transformed the old barge with Kurian running colors.
Valentine stood on the bridge, drinking the captain's excellent coffee with Mantilla. They had a shallow draft, so the captain kept close to the Kurian east side as part of his masquerade. There were monsters on the river six times as long as Mantilla's little craft.
"You should have a little honey for that cold. Honey's the best thing. Colds are a real suka."
Valentine accepted some tea and honey. As usual, he was in for another surprise. The tea was rich and flavorful; it made much of the produce in Southern Command taste like herb-and-spice dust.
"That's Assam, all the way from Sri Lanka," Mantilla said.