That was the real danger in contacting opposing forces. Valentine had heard stories of surrendering men being shot outright, if the opposition didn't feel like taking the trouble to secure, feed, and transport prisoners.
Ahn-Kha checked his weapons, squatted and stretched, and cleaned each ear with his tiny end finger. "My teeth clean?" he asked Valentine, showing his prominent near-tusks of a well-matured Golden One.
"I remember the dentist visiting the old Razorbacks and saying he needed machine tools to do you," Valentine said. Ahn-Kha rinsed his mouth with wet sand morning and night, if he could find it, and used baking soda and a brush when it could be had. "Yeah, they look great."
"Nothing puts my Gray Cousins off like a bad set of teeth," Ahn-Kha said. "Let us empty tracks."
"Make tracks," Valentine corrected. Ahn-Kha was more nervous than he let on, he only flubbed his English when preoccupied.
Ahn-Kha hailed them.
Valentine wondered what they would think. A scarred, bitten Golden One with shorn hair leading an equally scarred human dressed in Scrubman rags.
"Peace, peace, I call peace," Ahn-Kha said, approaching the soldiers. He carried his rifle by the barrel so that the butt faced the troops, a friendly gesture to Grog eyes.
Valentine waited for the order to deploy or ready weapons, nerving himself for a wild flight, but it didn't come.
The officer turned up the corner of his mouth under his kepi brim and Valentine relaxed. A little. Perhaps the officer found this an interesting diversion in a dull patrol. Valentine noticed that both he and his sub-officer, and the two human NCOs, all had full beards or mustaches. Strange for Kurian Zone troops. They were usually fit and trim and cleanly cut as a recruiting poster.
Now that he could get a better look at the horses, he decided the duns were Kiger Mustangs, a tough breed, surefooted, agile, and durable. After 2022, a good many horses had gone feral and multiplied on the plains, and over the generations the cream of those rebroken to saddles were called "Kigers."
"I don't know you," the officer said, from under an impressive walrus mustache. "But come in peace."
"A rhapsody in your name, chief," Ahn-Kha said. "I have been years south of the Missouri River and in S'taint Lewee. I hear my relatives now live under the protection of the one called the Gray Baron."
"Your English is excellent, civilized one," the officer returned.
"Thank you, chief. You call the Gray Baron your chief?"
"I do."
"I understand there has been fighting. I wish to be among my kind and see if any of my family still live. Will you allow me foot-pass upon your lands?"
"Fortune blesses you, civilized one," the officer said. "We're on our return trip. Feel free to follow."
"Another stanza to your rhapsody, my chief," Ahn-Kha said, pawing the earth in front of the officer's horse to clear his way.
"One request, however," he said. "No shooting. Makes the geros nervous."
"I'm sorry my chief, what is this word, 'geros.' Your warriors?"
"Yes, them. Oh, what's the word in your language? Gray Ones."
"Of course. Geros. I shall remember that, chief. If we do see game-"
"This is a patrol, not a hunting party. Leave it be. Discipline, civilized one."
Ahn-Kha flashed his teeth. "No shooting, chief."
"That slave armed?" the other officer asked.
"He has a small knife. He can be trusted."
"Don't cuff him about where the geros can see. In the Baron's command, no one is struck except by punishment after trial. Understand?"
Ahn-Kha nodded.
"Follow on, then. The man in charge of the tail is Sergeant Stock. If you have trouble, go to him."