The Gray Ones, for the most part, filled the lower level. The church's pews had been turned into benches to better accommodate them. A few clan leaders of the Deathring Tribe had their own furniture brought in, or perhaps it was permanently placed there, waiting for them, great perches like oversized Roman chairs.
The human soldiers inhabited the balconies, emblazoned with painted battalion symbols and specialist patches. The iconography was fierce, colorful, and oddly Midwestern, featuring hawks and foxes and coyotes and an out-of-place cobra. More humans sat upon the old altar riser, which projected out into the pews, though that part of it was empty for now.
Valentine marked the Gray Baron from his seat off to the Baron's right on the main floor. He sat in a plain, high-backed chair, flanked by two flag bearers, human and Gray One, the Grog with what looked to be a red-and-black checkerboard design with a few spiky icons stitched in the square's contrasting color, and the human holding the other, the modified tricolor of the Iowa State flag, featuring a pair of sharpened parentheses crossing each other-the locked bull horns, he'd heard them called, but it might also be stolen from a pre-2022 Chanel handbag.
Valentine thought he looked like something out of another age. He could see this man sitting on a smoky Tatar's throne or commanding some cut-off Victorian regiment in Afghanistan.
He had a heavy, sloping forehead and a mountain spur of a nose hooked like a hawk's talon. But even the oversized nose was nothing compared to the Pancho Villa mustache. It was like a curtain obscuring his upper lip and the sides of his mouth. It made his expression rather difficult to read; Valentine couldn't tell if he was smiling or frowning.
A network of scars crisscrossed his face as though a maniacal game of tic-tac-toe had been played with an assortment of scalpels. Valentine had enough battle wounds to know they couldn't have been accidental. Unless the Gray Baron had stuck his head into an oversized lamprey's mouth, someone in his past had made a point of cutting him up into shreds.
Flanking him, discreetly behind the flags, were three Reapers.
Valentine had never seen Reapers like this. They were fleshy-he thought fat Reapers didn't exist, it seemed the Kurians drained off calories along with the vital aura the Reapers transmitted. Despite the bellies and love handles, their faces shone hard and alert, yellow eyes watchful of the few empty square yards in front of the Gray Baron's throne. Rich red, white, and black war paint striped their bodies in a series of Vs, and their claws and a band across their eyes were a deep blue.
The Gray Baron had a woman next to him, a rather hard-faced brunette with an athletic build. Her hair was piled up tight atop her head, bound together by a pair of stilettos in Asian hairstick fashion. Valentine wondered if the blades were just for show. She had her own stool, but chose to drape herself over the back of his chair, playing with his hair.
Next to the Gray Baron on the stage was a feeble-looking old Grog gone white and bent-Danger Close, Valentine guessed. He tried counting bullet wounds in the thick old hide and stopped after nine. He was attended by a bevy of six she-Grogs, wives, daughters, concubines, or some combination. They all carried little ceremonial working blades, like the skinning knives native tribes of the Arctic north use to separate seal blubber from skin.
A few Golden One representatives watched the celebration, stone faced. They stood apart from both the humans and the wild Grogs. The celebration was like some fantasy of a black mass. Grog warriors ran up with linked bags of netted heads, tossing them so the line hung over the massive cross at the front of the church.
A gong sounded, and the auditorium began to go quiet. From somewhere behind the curtained "stage" Valentine heard kettledrums pound slowly, a deep and thrilling sound that touched you in the pelvis. It grew louder, or perhaps the crowd grew quieter, and then the Gray Baron led Danger Close out on the platform projecting near the center point of the auditorium.
"My brothers ..." he began.
Danger Close repeated the words in a Gray One dialect Valentine more or less understood.
The Gray Baron kept it brief. The most auspicious season for war had begun.
Danger Close translated, but not exactly. He expressed the same sentiments, but in a Gray One idiom.
This would be another year of building and training. They would venture regularly to Springfield and the Missouri River, even to the outskirts of Saint Louis, yet fighting only when another sought to fight. Otherwise they would be peaceable, friendly, even helpful. A Gray One clan with a broken water tank? Fix it! Illinois bandits stealing cattle or goats? Drive them off and return the livestock. In time their legion would be thought of as a two-headed dragon, not just because one head was human and the other Gray One, but because one head was smiling upon friends, the other biting and rending enemies. Then would come a time of alliances, and in a very few years, the strength to whip the true enemies, the humans of the Ozarks. Addled by fevers, radiator-still whiskey, and backwoods religious monomania, an army with patience to gather and strike would crumble them like a hollowed egg.
They finished to applause and Grog stomps of approval.
Then some Gray One storytellers spoke, giving anecdotes of the importance of treating the seasons with respect. Not all could fight even at the best of times, and those who'd already won great glory fighting might wish to take a season off and enjoy their wives and increase their herds and teach youngsters the stern tasks of warfare so that they might survive to win their own glories and wives.
The storytellers met more approval from the main floor than from the balcony.
The Gray Ones had several stomping patters, and Valentine's quick mind enjoyed puzzling them out. There was one for hearty approval, and another that might be characterized as a nod, and a quick one-two that asked for more of the same.
Then there was a display of captured weapons and torn-off service patches. Valentine felt a pang when he recognized a Zulu-Company patch and a Logistics Commando wagon wheel on a helmet, but he applauded with the rest of the humans.
"Trophies are great indicators of luck, to the Gray Ones," Stock explained to the boy from Buffalo. "A poor year for trophies one year will make them more conservative about what they attempt when the next spring's warmoon rolls around. A good year means they'll be more aggressive."
"Last year was a good one?" the kid asked.
"No, but it wasn't our fault. Southern Command quit trying to supply Omaha or move into Kansas, and the days of them slipping recruiting teams up to Minnesota or the Dakotas are long over. The Baron thinks that Southern Command's lost the will to fight, and wants to take advantage of it, but the Gray Ones will be hard to convince."
Hoots and yelps broke out. Valentine saw Snake Arms step into the open space on the main floor. She had a rattlesnake wrapped around each arm.
"Snakes are big juju with the Groggies," Stock said.
The kettledrums started up again along with something that twanged and the familiar scraping of a well-played fiddle. She began to dance.
It was a fascinating routine, as most of it played out from beneath her rib cage down. Her arms stayed statue-steady so as not to disturb the serpents, heads pointed out at the crowd, black eyes glittering. Her head moved as though on a gimbal-mount with her lower limbs, but the torso and arms opened and closed only occasionally.
The Gray Ones watched in silent reverence. Even the emotionless Golden Ones leaned forward in their seats.