AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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.
Valentine could just hear the quiet rattle of their tails as she moved, if he really sought the sound.
After the dance came a combat display, Grogs wrestling, fighting with sticks, and finally swordplay. Valentine wondered if on their home world they used swords or if they'd adopted the weapons from machetes and such captured after 2022. Their fighting style, at least in this theatrical display, involved cuts and parries in precise, ever increasing tempo time. The Gray Ones in the audience became increasingly excited as the more furious blows and parries drew accidental blood.
After that came a bloody sacrifice.
Animals were slaughtered, starting with chickens and moving up to an ox and a captured eagle. They made a great show of presenting the eagle's feathers to Danger Close.
"A few deaths prove that they're serious about getting on the good side of all the invisibles," Stock said. "Don't let it scare you."
He glanced closely at Valentine. Valentine looked down to see that some of the spray from the sacrificed ox had struck his shirt, peppering it in red.
By now the crowd was excited.
They brought a huddled line of shorn men and a few Gray Ones out onto the pulpit projection. Two of the proposed victims were brought in on stretchers.
"Bad head injuries," Stock said. "Sometimes they're considered prophets, but if they're only barely responsive, they're done away with."
Men with riot guns stood behind, and the Baron's three pet Reapers flanked the column and stood at its head.
Valentine recognized one of the sacrifices. It was Beach Boy, from Hole Three. He hadn't seen him since the fight with Fat Daddy, though he'd heard he'd been put in another hole to stave off further fighting.
The Baron stepped forward, carrying a bamboo cane. A string with some weighted feathers hung from the handle end. He grabbed it by the base, and held it up over the first man in line. The feather just touched the top of the convicted man's hands as the two Reapers held him, one at the ankles and one at the elbows, with the third behind.
"Raminov, knifed a man over cards," Stock said to his party.
There was some hooting from the Gray Ones. A voice cried out from the balcony: I'd knife a man who was cheating at cards too!
Some applause and whistling broke out from the men, with a faint boo or "open him" shouted.
