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"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."
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.
