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Valentine reached for a handful of nuts. His stomach was gurgling and suspiciously unhungry. "Nothing has to go down on paper about the circumstances of you rejoining Southern Command, Graf," he said. "On the report you'll be just another prisoner of the Grogs who was brought out with the Golden Ones."
"My son thinks his father's a hero," Stockard said. "If I make it back to him, I'd like to do it being able to call myself that as well. I'll stay. Leave me a bicycle?"
"Frat, scare him up some transport and fuel. Double- and triple-check it."
"No, a bike's fine," Stockard said. "I was in the bike troops in the Guard, back in the day. I still do it for exercise. Motors get noticed by our Gray friends on both sides of the Missouri River."
Ahn-Kha leaned over and whispered something in Stockard's ear. His homely face took on a shy smile.
"I'll stay as well. Two can travel more safely than one," Frat said, trying various field jackets of the Baron's troops. "I took a good look at your prisoner and heard a few words from him. Short of one of them showing up in person, I should be able to confuse the issue for those wandering into camp." He pulled a slouch hat on low and stared into Valentine's eyes. For just a second, he shimmered and Valentine saw the Baron's eyes and Pancho Villa mustache.
"Neat trick," Valentine said. "Teach me, sometime, when you get back."
"I would, if I only knew how I did it," Frat said.
By nightfall they were loading the trains with the riders. Supplies, weapons, and ammunition were distributed among the cars.
Valentine put the Baron in the first train. There were several grim, barred cars designed for transporting captives. Only one showed any sign of recent use, the rest were badly rusted. The Kurians were all too used to shuttling bodies around on rails in their aura-based economy, where humans served as currency.
It looked biblical, like something out of Exodus. The Grog elders organized their march so all the herders were on the outskirts, the craftspeople and food makers in the center, the very old, sick, pregnant, and very young on the train with their doctors and attendants, and the youths expending their energy running messages between the groupings.
Valentine wondered if Moses organized the Exodus with a headache and a mild case of cramps.
He suspected he picked up a nasty amoeba in the food or water. Both the Golden Ones and Gray Ones had good toilet habits-they dug shallow pits and buried, like cats-but their hand washing left much to be desired and the tufts of thicker hair at the knee and ankle joints would get befouled.
Had he been feeling better, he would have taken the scout glider up and tried the Missouri air. There was a fresh spring breeze the wide, nearly weightless wings could ride.
It was a fascinating device occupying its own flatbed on the command train. When the train was up to full speed, the glider could be launched into the wind at the end of a tether, rather like a kite, and rise and rise in altitude where a tiny ultra-lightweight electric motor could be turned on or off for extra power. The sailplane could easily scout for an hour or two then return to the train for recovery.
Valentine had done a good many hours while learning to fly with Pyp's Flying Circus in the Southwest, where gliders were towed to an appropriate altitude by a larger plane so new pilots could be trained without risking a precious aircraft.
Well, it would be dangerous to fly at night, or, more accurately, land at night.
At last the Express pulled out, with Valentine giving himself a sponge bath in the caboose and grateful for the built-in toilet.
The company of Gray Ones, the new Headring Clan, whined for action like hounds waiting to be shipped. Valentine did not know if they enjoyed fighting or were eager to prove themselves to their new master, but as the Express pulled out they hooted and yowled out their eagerness for action.
Bee, always eager to be of use, ululated her excitement with the rest.
"Rest now. Eat now. Fight later," Valentine told them as the train lurched into motion behind the armored diesels.
Everything depended on seizing control of the two strongpoints between the Baron's monuments and the Mississippi. There was a third strongpoint at the terminus on the river, occupied jointly by the Grogs and the Iowa Guard.
The strategic plan reminded Valentine, far too closely for comfort, of an allied disaster from the Second World War.
Valentine had studied the Market Garden-called by some of the soldiers "Hell's Highway"-operation at the War College. The plan, unfortunately, resembled his own in that everything depended on maintaining control of the rail line and seizing the strongpoints, rather than bridges, along the line.
The Allied Forces had managed to take the first fairly easily, had a bitter fight for the second, and never made it to the third, where the British Paratroopers lost eighty percent of their forces by the time their withdrawal was completed.
Valentine would have to do much the same thing, only without benefit of paratroops.
One predictable, but unplanned for, consequence of the Train March amused Valentine as mile after mile of train track twisted and burned behind his rear guard. With the Gray Baron's army decapitated and divided, every tribal chief called on his cousins to hurry and raid into the rich Iowa estates before control of Northern Missouri could be reestablished.
Valentine would sit and listen on the Iowa Guard shortwave channel and the AM stations in the larger cities, sending out muster orders for emergency home-county defenses.
Valentine stopped the car twice to run assault debarkation drills, once with unloaded weapons and then again with bullets in their guns.
When he was satisfied with the performance, he let the Grogs have the fun of knocking some cans off sticks with their weapons on fully automatic.
