"It's the dancing. Works your core."
She'd gone impossibly wet, running like the spring where he'd seen her dance in the moonlight. He gave her his all.
"Fuck yeah," she squeaked.
He had to agree.
Now they were both moving, grinding together, a steady meeting of hips like some obscene musical instrument.
The lavender must have been mostly pollen. Valentine gave a soft sneeze.
He pulled her off him, for some reason needing to taste her. He hugged her salty mount with his mouth, savoring her.
Suddenly she bucked and scooted away from his tongue. When her eyes opened again, he reentered her, aroused by her climax, and in a few brief strokes it was his turn.
His mind cleared in the afterglow.
"Work, work, work," she said into his arm. "Dawn to midnight." Then she seemed to relax into sleep.
Now he could think. A rough count of the armed Grogs made him wonder if an uprising by the Golden Ones could even be successful, given the forces the Baron had. A force two or three times that of the Baron's would be required to smash this feudal Grog-human war machine.
The Baron would have plenty of warning and the advantage of rail-fed interior lines of communication on that arc he patrolled between the Mississippi and Oklahoma. No such army existed north of the Missouri, even if he could somehow unite the Gray Ones running wild north of the Missouri valley.
No, the destruction would have to come from within. The Kurians had managed the trick any number of times. Could he manage it here?
Not on his brown sugar.
After a day's work in the fields that no longer seemed quite so delightfully mindless, he was rinsed and brought to the little trailer park enclave again. This time, he thought he saw a shadow watching him from the woods sheltering the trailers from prying eyes.
It was laundry day. There were bedsheets drying on every line. She showed him a tub of iced beer. "Present from the med staff. Doctor says it's the right time in my cycle, so you've got me for the next two nights. Let's enjoy ourselves."
"Sure. But later, let's talk. Alone. Quiet," Valentine said, still not sure of her.
"If your tongue's not too tired. And don't go getting lovelorn. You're here because the Baron wants it so. Don't be surprised if when you're done with me, they move you on to another, or get you jacking off into a cup. They'll make use of those balls while you still have 'em. Soon as you knock a couple of us up, you're getting snipped high and sewn up tight. Washtub gossip says you're going to be guarding the officers' harem."
ern Missouri: The Iowa Kurians and Brass Rings, mindful of the importance of their fertile land and rail corridors, cannot put any more physical distance between themselves and Southern Command's forces in the Ozarks, so they do the next best thing. They put difficulties in the path of any move north and do all they can to add to the psychological distance.
The first layer of their defense is the free Grogs. While a few clans have been subverted by Kurian agents to launch raids and counterraids against Southern Command's forces-David Valentine experienced one in his last year as a Wolf-in order to keep bad blood between man and Gray One, most are doing what tribal communities always do. They tend their herds, gather their crops wild and planted, and guard their territory from all comers as fiercely as needs must.
The Iowans keep these Grogs well supplied with weapons matching their formidable size and voracious appetite for heads taken in battle, accepting surplus legworm and mutton (the Gray Ones are fond of sheep and lamb for their meat and wool) and the wood and leather gewgaws the females and youngsters produce at a great disadvantage. But if the Gray One traders cackle over the canniness of their trades, they are oblivious to the manner in which their lives are being sold cheaply in skirmishes with Southern Command.
The next layer of defense is the Missouri River. The wide-ranging River Patrol with their fast, shallow-draft boats traveling between the kudzu-chocked banks, backed up by artillery barges towed into position when and where necessary, make life miserable for any incursion in strength. With every bridge demolished and the riverbanks full of hostile Gray Ones, keeping a large supply of boats for crossings or rebuilding a bridge becomes a near impossible object.
Between the Missouri River and the Iowa heartland is the brushfilled expanse of Northern Missouri. This is the realm of the Gray Baron.
It's hard to say why men choose service as military advisors to the Grogs. Freedom from the strictures and Reapers of the Kurian towers, the Universal Church lectures, and the endless "volunteering" for timewasting make-work projects can be found in the brush as an Officer of Nonhuman Forces. The capricious Gray Ones are good friends in victory, but after a defeat are likely to place the blame on allies and assuage the sting of humiliation with the ONF scapegoat's brain-basted liver. The Gray Baron is unusually adept at keeping his allied Grogs in line, perhaps because his savagery matches their own.
His Grogs roam the lands between Omaha and the Mississippi, running their own railroad (the "Grog Express" runs the chord of his protective arc between Saint Joseph and Hannibal). They provide a backstop for any in-strength incursions from Southern Command and do what they can to stop the raiders and cattle thieves of the free Grogs south of the Missouri River.
Finally, there is the formidable military organization of the Iowa Guard. Able to draw on the sons and daughters from Kur's most privileged Quislings, the wearers of the coveted Brass Ring, these scions of aristocracy get to "prove their brass" in keeping Iowa fat and contented. When the Grogs in Omaha cut the key rail line running to the west, they started a long, hard-fought campaign to evict the rebel Golden Ones. After a costly frontal-assault disaster and an even bloodier attempt at an envelopment, they settled into a siege that eventually broke the Golden Ones with heavy artillery and fearsome flame-spewing vehicles.
The Golden Ones still refused to surrender, and fled into the wild tangles of Northern Missouri for shelter. There they were eventually run to earth by the Gray Baron and bargained for what autonomy they could in exchange for giving up the fight.
Picking up with the rest of their unhappy history in this fateful year begins with the Force Light team's venture into the Missouri brush from the Wolf outpost.
Brostoff's airy tent still smelled of leather and rank sweat, the old odor Valentine was all too familiar with from his days in the Wolves.
Long ago, Valentine had served with Brostoff as a lieutenant. He was still obnoxious but a decent enough man when sober, who looked after his Wolves as though they were his own sons. Carefully guarding their health and blood, he made sure each of his team was equipped and ready before sending them out into the brush.