"So, the Gray Baron has a taste for human prisoners," Valentine said.
"We must endeavor to bring him some," Ahn-Kha said.
"Like the first time we went into Omaha," Valentine said.
"Only this time, you get the cuffs."
"You'll need a woman along," Duvalier said. "I'm still young enough that they won't put me to digging ditches."
"We'll establish two camps," Valentine said. "A far one and a close one. Frat, you'll be in command of the far camp. We'll probably need to stockpile Grog trade goods to ease the journey across Missouri. Like the Scrubmen said: sweets, liquor, weapons. Some fireworks and matches might not go amiss, either. Grogs love fireworks at their celebrations. A chief that can put on a good fire show has many friends."
Frat nodded. "Yes, sir."
He turned to Duvalier. "Ali, I want you to set up a close-camp. Hopefully Ahn-Kha will be free to do a little roaming. Make contact with him and set up a communication chain back to Frat."
"Sure."
"Keep Pellwell and the ratbits with you. I may need them," Valentine said.
She made the same face she made when he had a bad case of morning gas."You're kidding, right? Her? She'll get us both killed."
"You've had it in for me from the first, Red. What's that all about?"
"You big-idea college fucks get people like me killed, that's why. Running down rumors, looking for docs that don't exist, counting baby legworms when we should be setting charges."
Ahn-Kha, with his shorn hair and wounds from the fight with the Scrubmen, looked the part of a Grog trader. He wore a pair of saddlebags on each vast shoulder with his most valuable "merchandise." Valentine, weighted down with simple trade goods on a carrying pole and wearing filthy rags taken from dead Scrubmen, followed. As a token of belonging to Ahn-Kha, Valentine wore an old license plate painted white and hanging from his head vertically. Ahn-Kha had made himself a leather wristband with the letters and numbers burned into it.
"Good to be working with you again, old horse."
"I could say the same, my David."
"If this goes to shit, you beat out of here, okay?"
"I'll run with you on my back to the Missouri River if that happens."
At first, Valentine thought the distant smear might be a legworm. Then he saw heads bobbing among the brush, appearing and disappearing through the gaps like targets in a carnival shooting gallery.
"Our Baron's guys, do you think?" Valentine asked.
"Almost certainly," Ahn-Kha said. "A band of Gray Ones would not stay so tightly in line."
Valentine watched the bobbing heads for a few more minutes. There were men at the front and the rear of the column, it looked to be no more than two or three, with a hundred Grogs or more in between. Two of the men, presumably the officers, rode horses. Valentine couldn't tell the breed with certainty at this distance, but they looked like tough, squat mustangs.
The men wore a vertical-striped camouflage, ranging from a buttery tone at the lightest to a rabbitty brown. He'd seen the pattern a few times on his previous trips into Iowa, when he'd wandered as a rather vengeful exile shortly after Blake had been born and relocated to Missouri. It was equally effective in light woods as prairie. Instead of helmets, gray kepis with another band of the camouflage material running around the brim sat on their heads.
The Grogs wore smocks or vests made out of the camouflage as well, probably ponchos or tenting repurposed for oversized Gray Ones' heads and shoulders. Big, bolt action rifles proportioned like Kentucky squirrel guns with oversized stocks hung by short straps around their necks in the human stock-up, muzzle-down fashion, allowing the Gray Ones to use all fours on the march.
Valentine noted that their rifles had some kind of latch attachment and rest so they didn't bump and chafe on the march. Good officers, these.
"At least this Baron grants them their stride," Ahn-Kha said. "Remember in New Orleans, the way men were always trying to make them walk upright when marching? They can do it, but it is not a natural gait and is fatiguing."
"They cover more ground per minute this way. Those officers are really puffing to keep up. The Baron should put his men on bikes."
"Perhaps you can suggest that when you meet him," Ahn-Kha said.
"If we're lucky, he won't ever notice us," Valentine said. "Your call, old horse."
"I see no signs of wounds or fighting," Ahn-Kha said. "They seem well fed and well rested. Dirty, looks like. See the pollen crusted into the sweat stains. I would say they have been out a few days. Perhaps they are on their way back in any case."