AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"We walked for days and would have died, but a rainstorm saved us. We hid for a while in a Turncoat village. An old man who was kind to us arranged for my mother to move into eastern Texas where his son lived. My mother lived with his son and had a child with him, but she never loved him as she did my father, even though he was very good to us. She gave him two daughters, but when I turned sixteen, she said, "Victor, you must leave this land, for the people here have forgotten themselves and God." We heard rumors about a place in the mountains where the Hooded Ones could not go, and I found this place on my own, but I fear it went bad for my stepfather, who let me ran away. But I know my madre still lives because I still live; her prayers protect me and keep me alive. With what I have seen, I cannot pray as she does, so when she dies, I will die, too."
Valentine told his story next, leaving out the fact that his father had been a Wolf. He described the cool beauty of the Boundary Waters' woods and lakes, and the challenge of living through a Minnesota winter.
"I hadn't seen much geography until I became a Wolf," Harper began. "I was born to a big family near FortScott. My pa was an officer in the Guards, and he tried to keep me in school, but I wouldn't have it. Everyone made fun of this eye of mine; you know how kids are. At nine, I tried to be an Aspirant, but they wouldn't let me. I hung out in Wolf camps whenever I could; my pa was away a lot, and my ma-Well, she had her hands full with the other children. They let me become an Aspirant at thirteen, finally. I was invoked when I was fifteen, and I was in the middle of it at Cedar Hill and then BigRiver. They made me a sergeant after all that. I was a champion distance runner, so I got put in the couriers. I made a trip to the Gulf in 'sixty-three, and did the run to Lake Michigan twice last year. I crossed Tennessee this spring going to the Appalachians, and that's the worst run I've ever been on. Took me forever to find resistance people in the Smokies. These trips should be run by just couriers, but we've lost so many out West over one thing and another that Command is short on messengers."
"I was wondering why you showed up with two empty saddles," Valentine said.
"Well, I'm grateful of your company. Mr. Valentine, you seem to be a right smart officer, afraid of all the right things, if you'll excuse me for saying so, sir. And Gonzalez-you, sir, have the most righteous set of ears in the Free Territory. I'm glad you're along to count the mouse farts, you know?"
Gonzalez proved just how good his hearing was somewhere east of Galena, Illinois. They had been traveling for a week when someone began trailing them.
"There are three or four riders coming up behind," Gonzo reported. "Haven't caught sight of them yet, but you can hear them. I don't know if they're right on our trail or just keeping with the old road."
The three Wolves rode parallel to an old road, now overgrown but still too far from tall timber for their purposes. Valentine debated the choices. An ambush would be easy enough to set up, but he balked at shooting down strangers in cold blood. Anyone close enough for the Wolves to hear would probably have cut their trail by now and would know someone was ahead. The idea of being trailed worried him.
"Do you know who lives around here?" he asked Harper.
"This far off the river? A few farmers scratch a living out here. On other trips we've crossed the trails of pretty big groups on horseback. I don't like thinking worst case, but this is just the kind of area a pair of Reapers might hunt."
"Yes, but they wouldn't be on horseback. And they wouldn't make enough noise for Gonzo to hear them," Valentine argued. As usual, someone else's opinion helped him form his own, for better or worse. "Let's go up the bluffs. If they're casual travelers, they won't follow. If they come up after us, we can get a good look at what we're taking on before we start shooting."
With that, the Wolves made a sharp turn east, moving into the wooded hills away from the overgrown road. Valentine removed his lever-action rifle from its sheath. Soon they were struggling up a steep slope, leaning far forward in their saddles to help the horses' balance.
As they ascended the hill, Valentine searched right and left. No rock pile or fallen trunk presented itself. Valentine cursed his luck at riding for the one uneroded hill covered with uniformly healthy timber in all of western Illinois.
Gaining the summit, the Wolves at last found a deadfall they could hide behind. The breeze blew fresh from the west hard enough to whip at the horses' manes and make the men clutch at their hats. They rode past the fallen log and looped back; tracks heading straight for an ambush spot would be investigated more cautiously. Valentine asked Harper-to hold the four horses out of sight behind the crest of the hill.
Dismounted, with weapons in hand, Valentine and Gonzalez walked back to the fallen log. Gonzalez held an arrow to his bowstring. With luck, the trackers had a single scout out front who could be silently dispatched with a feathered shaft.
"Keep your bow ready, Gonzo," Valentine said in a low tone. "I'm going to get in that oak above our trail. If there's just two scouts, I'll drop on one. When you see me leap, try for the other with the bow. If it's three or four, I'll let them ride past, and I'll backshoot them."
"Let me go up the tree, sir."
"I'm not much with a bow, my friend. I doubt I could hit a horse at this distance, let alone a rider. Just stay cool and wait for my signal."
Valentine scrambled to his perch among the thick limbs of the grandfather oak. He hugged the tree limbs like a lizard, pulling a leafy branch toward his face for concealment. Whoever the trackers were, they had four scouts ahead on horseback. Valentine listened with hard ears past them, but his nose helped even more. A large group of horses and men were somewhere out of sight, upwind to the west. He smelled some tobacco, and cannabis, as well.
As the scouts walked their horses up the slope and into view, Valentine decided this was no Quisling patrol. The shabbiness of man and beast, from worn-out boots to collapsed felt hat brims, indicated either the worst kind of Quisling irregulars or simple bandits. They carried rifles, but some of the guns looked like black-powder muzzle-loaders.
Whatever their deficiencies in equipment, the four scouts knew their jobs. One concentrated on the trail, two a little behind him searched the terrain ahead, and the fourth stayed far back in case of trouble. One of the middle scouts didn't like the look of the hilltop, and they pulled up to a halt. Binoculars and small telescopes emerged from their patched overcoats.
One of the four Wolf horses, scenting those below, let out with a high, questioning neigh. The scouts spun their horses and plunged down the hill.
Valentine mouthed obscenities.
A good second line of defense, Valentine maintained, is running like hell. He jumped from the tree and, waving to Gonzalez, ran up toward the four horses.
"It's border trash, I think. A lot," he explained to Harper as they mounted.
Valentine led them at something less than a flat-out gallop along the ridgeline. Their horses had covered a lot of miles in the past week, but perhaps were of sterner stuff and in better health than the beasts of the ragamuffins below.
He reveled in the mad inconsequence of it all. Their pursuers might catch them; he and the two Wolves might die, and the world would change or care not a whit. But it felt glorious to pound through the woods on a running horse, his legs tight in the stirrups and hands far up the horse's neck. Clods of dirt kicked up by the horses' rhythmic gait flew up behind like birds startled at their passing.
Harper is having trouble with the spare horse, the sane part of his mind reminded him. Valentine spotted a clearing on a prominence ahead and turned his horse toward it, slowing the pace to a trot and then a walk. Reaching the bare spot, they saw a ruined house, roofless and empty.
"We covered some miles," Gonzalez gasped. "Where the hell is the road?"
"Somewhere down to the west of us," Valentine said, waving vaguely at the descending sun. Trees obscured the road's probable location. "Let's take a breather and see how our friends are doing."
