AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They let the column pass, then fell in about twenty feet behind Sergeant Stock.
Valentine took a second look at the NCO as they passed, keeping his head down and some hair in his face. He had seen the sergeant's face before. Something about the heavyset brow and cool eyes.
Stock . . . Stock.
Stockard. Graf-a lieutenant in the old Free Territory Guard. Molly's husband, the father of her child.
Valentine hardly noticed the miles passing as he stared at the man's back. He'd never met him, just seen a picture or two when he visited Molly a few years back while hunting down Gail Post. He'd been missing in action since Solon's takeover, presumed dead. Molly was collecting a tiny widow's stipend of money, and since there was a child, food and housing benefits.
The Gray Baron's stronghold impressed Valentine, even as a work in progress.
Stronghold was the only word for it. It was larger than a stockade, but not quite a city. The old maps would have put it west of Kirksville in northern Missouri, but this stretch of country was one of the wildest in the nation, and the old infrastructure could only be traces between burnt farmsteads and overgrown towns.
The stronghold was nestled against a protective line of heavily wooded hills with the broken rooftops of a ruined town to the north. Dust rose from some workplace in the ruins and faint mechanical sounds carried in the dry prairie air.
Valentine thought the architectural style might be called "fire-base in skulls, with church behind."
A vast killing ground of a thousand yards or more yawned in front of a network of log bunkers and weapon pits covering a low rise of earth surrounded the complex of towers, buildings, water tanks, and chimneys the Grog column approached. A high, nearly bare tree with an observation post like an eagle's nest looked out over the road approach to the south, a sawed-off church steeple with a blockhouse of railroad ties and sandbags watched the land to the north. Valentine could only presume there were other pickets in the hills behind.
"No barbed wire?" Valentine wondered.
Ahn-Kha, who'd been talking to the Grogs at meals and breaks, gestured with an ear, sweeping the front of the stronghold: "There are hidden pits all along in front of the battlements. They might seem to give cover, but many have false bottoms. Tunnels lead back to the entrenchments. Warriors sneak down under any enemy caught or sheltering in the pits and stab up. Or they're built to be flooded with gasoline and set ablaze. They have many explosives to drive off legworms, or so they claim."
They fell silent as they passed through the "gate"-a wrought-iron trellis rigged for electricity. The officer leading their column paused to say a few words with a lieutenant who stepped forward. Presumably, anyone coming in at night was searched under the hundreds of LED spotlights. Valentine made a show of hesitating to pass under-as an ignorant Scrubman might-and Ahn-Kha sent him sprawling with a shove.
"Grog hittin' a man," a sentry said.
"Ain't like us," his corporal said. "Watch it, Goldie. Hey, Stocky, keep your camp follower in line."
The gate watchers, who seemed more like idlers than sentries, got a laugh at that. Valentine wondered if the Gray Baron kept his men deceptively undisciplined, or if this was an unusually free-and-easy Kurian Zone camp. Even the most backwoods Arkansas militia unit showed more discipline on winter exercises.
"Sergeant Stock, see to it our kite-tail gets properly billeted," the officer told Stockard. "Usual post-patrol liberty when you've turned them over."
"Sir," Stock replied. He picked up a field phone near the gate and scribbled something on a clipboard.
They waited, listening to insects and the buzz of conversation from the men at the gate, who treated their arrival as a chance to show off beautifully rolled cigarettes in virginal white paper. Valentine sat, dispiritedly, with his back to Sergeant Stock, but he walked around in front and took another look. He could see, up a little hill, a big structure but didn't want to lift his head and gape.
A man in a plainer, unstained uniform and two Gray Ones appeared. The man had a small bamboo pointer, otherwise none of the trio were armed. The Gray Ones wore cargo-pocket shorts and thick canvas vests with the same vertical prairie camouflage. The human entered into negotiations with Ahn-Kha, offering a four hundred silver-dollar bonus if he joined a group of "Baron's Own" Golden One warriors. Ahn-Kha did his humble trader routine and said he hoped to sell Valentine here rather than to "those Kansas double-talkers and lead-coiners."
"You give a good price, all prisoner come here," Ahn-Kha said.
"Such facility with English! I can almost guarantee a quick promotion to officer."
"Will think it over, chief. I wish to sell this one, then find a bed and food."
The recruiter for the Baron's Own, who held the nebulous rank "officer candidate" laid down the law for Ahn-Kha about visiting his kind. Without membership in the Gray Baron's forces, or swearing to the First and Second Understandings-it was with that casual remark that Valentine learned what the Golden One articles of surrender were called-Ahn-Kha would be treated like any other potentially hostile tribesman, Gray or Golden, who might wander in out of the grass.
Ahn-Kha agreed not to leave the Golden One sub-camp save under guard, to obey any command by one of the Gray Baron's officers that did not endanger his or another's life, and to refer any disagreements with his own kind to one of the Gray Baron's officers before matters escalated into violence.
"May I endure three more hells in life or death if I break my word," Ahn-Kha said, in the proper Golden One manner.
They walked through the stronghold, the officer and Ahn-Kha in front, the officer candidate beside him, still mentioning the honors and rewards that would go with membership in the Baron's Own. Valentine led on a line in the middle and the two Gray Ones trudging behind, with Sergeant Stock bringing up the rear, as usual.
At last Valentine had a chance to look around.
The stronghold was a great wheel, pivoting around a green, planted, and landscaped central campus made out of an old, heavy-timbered megachurch.
Valentine had seen his share of rural megachurches, but whoever had built this one was a visionary. It reminded him a little of a snapping turtle sunk on a muddy hillock with its nose raised high to catch a gulp of air. Two outbuildings formed the creature's legs; a sort of ski jump of a steeple rose between overlooking what must have been a courtyard with a fountain; and the worship area itself formed the plated arc of the turtle's back.
