"Call it a survey, call it a reconnaissance in force, call it a recovery operation. Call it anything you like. It's my intent to have a mobile force of some strength who knows how to deal with Reapers. With the legworm clans encamped for the winter, they'll be so many sitting ducks for whatever vengeance Missionary Doughnut is talking about."
"Goodwill tour it is," Lambert said. "Our friend out front has never made much sense. Seeing some Southern Command forces in Kentucky's heartland will do the Cause some good, in any case. And let's not forget our outgoing president's letter. If I go myself, I'll consider my duties discharged."
"Can I go with my Wolves, sir?" Frat asked. "I'd like to see a little more of Kentucky."
Valentine looked at Lambert, who nodded. "Glad to have you along, Lieutenant. Thanks for volunteering. You'll save me a lot of legwork."
Duvalier snickered at that. Valentine wondered why she was so merry this morning.
Alarm.
Valentine came out of his sleep, heart pounding, a terrible sense that death stood over his pillow.
The Valentingle.
He hadn't called it that at first. If he thought about it, he might have remembered that he once called it "the willies" or "the creeps." The name came from his companions in the Wolves, who learned to trust his judgment about when they were safe to take refuge for the night-what hamlets might be visited quietly, whispering to the inhabitants through back porch screens.
Whether it was sixth sense, the kind of natural instinct that makes a rabbit freeze when a hawk's shadow passes overhead, or some strange gift of the Lifeweavers, Valentine couldn't say.
But he did trust it. A Reaper was prowling.
Valentine slipped into his trousers and boots almost at the same time, tying them in the dark.
He grabbed the pistol belt hanging on his bedpost. Next came the rifle. Valentine checked his ammunition by touch, inserted a magazine, chambered a shot. He slung on his sword. Oddly enough, the blade was more comforting than even the guns. There was something atavistic in having a good handle grip at the end of an implement you can wave about.
Duvalier would say that it wasn't atavism. . . .
Valentine hand-cranked his field phone. "Operations."
"Operations," they answered.
"This is Major Valentine. Any alerts?" He swapped hands with the receiver so he could pull on his uniform shirt.
"Negative, Major Valentine."
"Well, I'm calling one. Pass the word: alert alert alert. I want to hear from the sentries by the time I get down there."
The communications center lay snug in the basement.
Valentine looked out the window. The alarm klaxon went off, sending black birds flapping off the garbage dump and a raccoon scuttling. Emergency lights tripped on in quick succession. They were perhaps not as bright as Southern Command's sodium lights that illuminated woods on the other side of the parking lot, but they had precise coverage that left no concealing shadows on the concentric rings of decorative patio stones. The old estate house had quite a security system.
A shadow whipped across the lawn, bounding like a decidedly unjolly black giant, covering three meters at a stride, a dark cloak flapping like wings.
Reaper!
Could it be their old friend from the Ohio? The clothing was different, it seemed. The other one hadn't even had a cloak and cowl when he'd last seen it, and it seemed doubtful that a wild Reaper could attain one.
Valentine, in more of a hurry to throw off the shutters and open the sash than ever any St. Nick-chasing father, fumbled with the window. He knocked it open at the cost of a painful pinch to his finger when the rising pane caught him. He swung his legs out and sat briefly on the sill like a child working up the nerve to jump, rifle heavy across his thighs.
Valentine had no need to nerve himself, but he did want one last look at the Reaper's track from the advantage of height. Would it angle toward the soldiers' tents or the munitions dugout? Kurians had been known to sacrifice a Reaper, if it meant blowing up half a base.
It did neither. It headed straight for the woods south, toward the river.
Valentine jumped, felt the cool night air rush up his trouser legs. He landed on his good leg, cradling the rifle carefully against his midsection as though it were a baby.
With that he was off, settling into his old Wolf lope, the bad leg giving him the port-and-starboard sway of a tipsy sailor or perhaps an off-balance metronome.
He cast about with a coonhound's frantic anxiety at the edge of the woods. The tracks were there, hard to see in the deep night of the woods. Only the Reaper's furious pace allowed him to find the tracks at all.