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They liked the sound of that. Bared heads of all skin tones and hair colors, sharing a common layer of sweat and dirt, lifted, nodded, turned to each other reassuringly.
"Every town Southern Command takes is liberated partly by us ... though at the moment we're doing nothing here but having the occasional mortar shell dropped in our laps.
"Unless we're lucky, the fifty-three here are going to have more company as the days and weeks go by. It could be that we'll all end up on this hill with them. If that's our fate, I hope we cost the TMCC as much as they did. If any of you want to say anything, now's the time."
"I've something to say," Yolanda, the woman who had mutilated the captured guards back at the prison camp, began. "It is not right for such men to go into the ground without a flag to be under. They are soldiers. Soldiers are their flag."
Free Territory flags weren't stocked in the warehouses we raided , the overtired part of him said.
"So I made them one. The men who came in to get us, I thought of them as I made this. Styachowski helped me with the wording, and Amy-Jo on the mortar team drew the animal."
She held it up. It was not a big flag. The base of it was red, rimmed with blue and gold roping ... probably from a curtain somewhere in Solon's imperial Residence. In the center was a silhouette of a tusked Arkansas razorback in black, pawing the ground angrily and lowering its head to charge. Blue letters stood out against the red as if luminescent, don't feed on me read the block-letter slogan.
The men laughed, not at the amateurish nature of the flag but at the pithy sentiment it expressed. They liked it. Valentine felt a little electricity run through the men as she turned it so everyone could see. It was a fighting flag: black and blue set against red, the colors of a brawl. A team could rally round the image of an animal-that was part of the Lifeweaver Hunter Caste appeal-and a savage boar was as good as any. Wily, tough, stubborn, a brute that would gore any animal that dared hunt it-and ugly as its mood when challenged-it suited the dirty funeral attendees.
Valentine went to Yolanda's side, and Styachowski came forward to admire the flag in the sun. Three parallel wounds, probably Reaper claw marks, stood out on her forehead.
"Let's have it up," Valentine said. "Ahn-Kha, where's the pike Hurlmer got that one with?" Ahn-Kha walked along the graves until he found the aluminum conduit pipe.
It took a few minutes to rig wire through the grommets and fix it to the pole. Valentine recognized Yolanda from the prison yard, but he only knew Amy-Jo as one of the heroes from the hospital fight. She'd snatched up the infant Perry and barricaded the babe and his mother in a bathroom, holding the door shut as the Reaper pried it off its hinges before it was swamped by pursuing men.
"Where do you want it, sir?" Yolanda asked.
"Here at the graves," Valentine said. "You said they deserved a flag above them. Can you think of a better place?"
"Make some more," Ahn-Kha said. "Or at least another, for the headquarters. This battalion needs an emblem."
"Hell, with the prisoners, we're a regiment," Styachowski said.
"Valentine's Razors," Post suggested.
The phrase passed up and down the ranks and more cheers broke out.
Valentine looked at his feet, embarrassed for the tears in his eyes.
Styachowski dug the pole into the ground and Amy-Jo and Yolanda found rocks to pile about its base. It wasn't a big flag, nor was it high off the ground, but every eye was on it as it flapped in the fresh spring breeze.
* * * *
"What kind of shape is the battery in, Hanson?" Valentine asked, after the memorial service dispersed.
"Is 'piss-poor' an appropriate military description?" the new lieutenant asked.
"Can you quantify it a little more?"
Hanson scratched the growth on his chin. "Those Reapers that came up the cliff, half of them made straight for the guns. That suicide mission into the ready magazine-I lost men there. Ives, Lincoln and Lopez bought it in their gun pit. We found Streetiner in a tree. Smalls is missing, Josephs-"
"Smalls? Hank Smalls?"
"Yes. He was a designated as a messenger. When I heard the firing at the base of the hill, I sent him to tell the mortar pits to start preregistered fire missions. He never came back. There's still some woodland that we haven't searched yet. Maybe he ran and hid, and has been too scared to come out yet. Can't say as I blame him."
Valentine tore his mind away from Hank. He feared for the boy, but had to keep the rest of his command in mind. "How many guns can you have in action?"
"I'm jimmying the lists so I can keep three firing, sir. It won't be quick fire, and I'd like another twenty men to start training."
"We're thin as it is. But ask Lieutenant Post about it."
"Thanks, sir."
