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While Eveready stood guard, the four Wolves overturned the heavy canoe and slid it down the gentle gravelly slope. Hernandez pushed a driftwood log out of the way and hooked his hand on to the bow of the canoe as the team heaved then-transportation into the Mississippi.
"Hey, did you see this?" Hernandez asked.
Valentine peered through the blue-black night at the bow of the canoe. An insigne had been branded into the wood, scarring the delicate grain with four black bent bars. Something about the spiderish design tickled Valentine's capacious memory...
"That's a swash-sticker, I think. Only it's backwards," Al-istar said, in a hushed tone.
"The Germans and Japanese had them on their planes and stuff in World War Two, right?" Burton added, uncertainty in his voice. His schooling, like that of his comrades with the exception of Valentine, had been sporadic.
"Just the Nazi Germans," Valentine said. "But Alistar is right, it's the wrong way around."
Eveready came down from his post. "Into the boat, boys. Try not to splash around when you row. I don't like being this close to the bank."
"Eveready, this mean anything?" Valentine asked, pointing at the palm-size design on the bow.
Eveready squinted his aging eyes at the swastika. Good as his distance vision was, he struggled with his "reading eyes." For the first time in the entire summer, the big Cat looked afraid. "It means trouble. Let's not waste time; we don't want the owners to find us." He clicked the safety off on his ancient gun. Another first, and far more unsettling.
They clambered into their allotted places and took up the oars. A few lusty strokes took them away from the bank. The canoe seemed to glide on a sea of oil.
"Breathe and row, breathe and row," Eveready half chanted, kneeling in the center of the canoe. Valentine glanced at him from the right forward seat. He and Burton, the most muscular of the Wolves, provided the power for Al-istar and Hernandez at the back. Eveready searched the sphinx-shape to their right, rifle at his shoulder.
Valentine relaxed into his breathing and rowing. Reducing lifesign was a matter of falling into yourself, concentrating on a single tiny point in the center of your being, like a candle glimmering in the middle of an enormous lake.
The candle flickered.
He felt his hackles rise, a curious corkscrew electricity running up his backbone, as if Death had run a playful forefinger up his vertebrae. A cold, hard spot appeared in his mind, coming from the head of the sphinx. Unable to say what it was, he knew only that he feared it.
"Eveready," he said, voice low in his concentration. "The very top of the hill. Maybe by that big windfall trunk... I think something's up there."
The matchless night vision of the Cat searched the hilltop peak as the boat shot toward open river. Valentine dug his oar blade into the water as if trying to dig a hole for the boat to hide in.
"Val, I think you're right. It's up there, but not moving. A Reaper. Hard ears, boys. This is a sound you need to know."
Fingernails on the blackboard. The cry of a stricken hawk. Sheet metal squeezed in a compactor. Each would remember the banshee wail differently, loud and fresh and terrifying, to their dying day.
"Madre de Dios," Hernandez gasped, missing a stroke. "Shit!" he added, "I'm sorry, I dropped my oar."
"Use your rifle butt!" barked Valentine.
Other, distant wails answered the ghostly cry.
"Five," counted Eveready. "One for each of us. Hope that's luck, not planning."
The clouds thickened and dropped, bringing the horizon to a few feet from their faces. Aghast, Valentine brought his palm to the sky, barely able to see its outline.
"How the hell... do they do that?" Burton asked, puffing between strokes.
"I'd rather know how they knew we were going to hit this stretch of the river," Valentine said as he paddled.
Even in their current perilous situation, Eveready had lessons to teach. "They're disrupting your minds, not the weather. This could even mean a Kurian himself is around or working us from his Seat of Power. I've heard they can make a city seem to go up in flames, or a building catch real fire, just by willing it.
"They're reading us somehow. One or more of you might be giving off lifesign. While the swamp is full of it, if one of them were close to us, they might have picked up on ours, kept their distance, and just plotted where we were going. We'll never know for sure. The good news is that while they can swim the river, it'll take 'em a while. We can be across and separate, and head for the New Arkansas Post like hell. They'll go after whoever they can pick up on, and with luck the rest of us will make it back."
"Jesus, that's cold," Burton gasped.
"Makes sense to me," Alistar said.
Valentine swallowed his fear. "Can't do it, Eveready. We're Wolves-"
