"Not so much that," she said, blinking fast. "They know what to do. Before, it was all play in old warehouses and apartments and school offices. One of them gets caught down there, it isn't just a loud no and a spell in isolation. They'll get stomped on and scraped out into the garbage."
Valentine had his own anxieties. He'd heard nothing from Gamecock's Bears.
The only blemish on the operation was that they couldn't destroy the foundation of the Kurian tower. No one wanted to venture in to get the explosives and face the fangs of that locked-up, anxious Reaper.
Valentine nearly had the prisoners organized for the ride back. Thanks to the armored cars, some utility trucks, and a personnel transport bus, everyone would be able to ride.
As dawn came up, Valentine thought he heard gunfire in the distance, but he couldn't be sure. His ears sometimes played tricks on him when he pressed them.
A Bear messenger rumbled in on a captured motorcycle. He reported that Gamecock's radio had "crapped out" before they even hit the crossroads blockhouse, and the Bears had successfully executed their ambush. Gamecock would pursue the Georgia Control Company south for an hour or so to "keep up the skeer" and then turn back north and head for the rendezvous.
The Gunslingers came in on their legworms and picked through the camp. Valentine was giving them advice on keeping well clear of the explosives dump when Pellwell returned. She gave him a salute.
"You don't have to do that, you're a civilian."
"Oh, sorry ... I was excited. Major Valentine, my guys are back from the prison. They searched the whole thing. They counted three soldiers there, four other men total, one other."
"One other what?"
"They're not sure. Big like her, they say."
"Like Bee?" Valentine asked. "You sure they didn't mean scared of them or something like that, but 'big'?"
"I think they might mean even bigger."
"You think they mean a legworm? What's bigger than Bee?" Frat asked.
"We're going down there to find out," Valentine said.
As the Wolves came in the front the guards ran out the back. Valentine decided to let them go. They were ordinary security types, by the look of them, not soldiers. None ran off with anything larger than a pistol. They wouldn't even give the Gunslingers any trouble if they decided to turn and fight.
The prison had only one wing cleared for human habitation, the rest still had much of its moldering infestation, with thick slimes growing in all the drainage fixtures, revived by the recently repaired water system.
A few of the cells were occupied with backwoods Kentucky folk, probably rounded up by patrols while hunting for their families. Valentine felt a wash of achievement. There was nothing like the look on a man's face when he stepped out of a cage.
The "other" was not in a cell. In fact, he startled Bee into an excited yelp as he emerged from a dank stairwell.
Seven feet tall without even drawing himself up to his full height. Golden faun-colored fur, darker on the back and lighter toward the belly and beneath his manhole-cover pectorals. Well-scarred, crudely stitched, missing a piece of ear, with fur patchy over his wounds and fresh blood, sticky and spiky, about his muzzle.
He carried a short aluminum pole threaded to take a variety of tools. In this case, the handle was capped by a small shovel blade, bright at the edges where it had been recently sharpened and so bloody and covered in dripping shards of viscera it looked as though it had been used to stir a vat of grue.
"Well, my David," Ahn-Kha said. "This saves much explaining in both directions. Could you offer me a detachment? A few skulkers fled into the woods, and there may be one or two more in the basements. I might need some assistance in rounding them up."
The Cutthroat's Room, Fort Seng: It would appear that once Valentine's bedroom suite in the old mansion house belonged to someone named Cuthbert. THE CUTHBERT ROOM is carved in elegant letters on the door lintel.
Southern Command's soldiers, being who they are, defaced the beautiful woodwork in such a way that it now reads THE CUTTHROAT ROOM.
Many of Fort Seng's soldiers are better at fighting than spelling, it seems.
His quarters are sparse but not quite Spartan. Military billets were the only home he'd known since leaving the Northwoods at seventeen. He's done what he can to make this unusually lavish room his own.
Apart from the gun rack with his ready weapons, that mean-looking type three Atlanta Gunworks battle rifle and an unusually elegant 1911 Model .45, plus his blade and pick, legworm leathers, issue helmet, and combat harness.
A neat little .22 isn't visible, just as it is when he wears it. But it's in easy reach between the mattress and box spring.
Sketchwork covers the walls, picturesque ruins of old public buildings and burned brick structures around Evansville and Owensboro with new growth in the windows and feral cats lounging. They're not his art, they're the work of his Bear chief, the Carolinian named Gamecock.
There are also photos. A surprising number decorate the room on a byway of a big bulletin board salvaged from some office. To those who do not know him well, the little collection of pictures hung in protective plastic baggies-the experienced might recognize the plastic polymer as Ordnance ID sleeves-might seem bewildering. It's hard to gauge who those depicted are and how old Valentine was when he met them because he's featured in so few of the shots.