AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"He's alive."
It was torture to his skin to be lifted and carried. Sensibly, his consciousness fled.
He later heard about the scattering of troops from the Kurian Tower as Reapers ran amok, and the confusion that allowed Lieutenant Nail to carry him and lead the Bears back to the river, and how Lost & Found swam across with Valentine tied to an empty five-gallon jerrican to keep him afloat. As he heard the tale Valentine felt as though he'd lived it, but couldn't remember much except for vague impressions of floating. He rememberd shelling but no further large-scale attacks, just endless probes. He remembered Post's daily reports of units observed moving east through New Columbia, and the gun resting in the swimming pool running out of ammunition so that all the hilltop forces could do was watch. He remembered walking again, and giving up his bed to another wounded man and sleeping on a blanket on the concrete floor near where Narcisse worked the hospital kitchen and rubbed him with oily-smelling lotion.
Then came sounds of more trains in the distance and vehicular traffic around the base of the hill, and he managed to go outside. He'd meet the inevitable standing, even if he stood in bandages.
"Sir, you're needed on the west side." One of the pregnant women, in a man's service poncho which gave her belly growing room, reported from her station at the field phone.
Valentine made a stiff-legged journey. His bad leg ached all the time now, throbbing in sympathy with the healing burns. Ahn-Kha helped him up a set of stairs and they reached the observation point, what was left of Solon's grand balcony. Three soldiers knelt, sharing a set of binoculars, staring up the Arkansas River, a blue ribbon between the green Ozark hills.
"What in God's name is that?" Valentine asked.
The river was three deep in beedes. A flotilla of craft, none larger than thirty feet. Many towed everything from rowboats to braces of canoes.
"Reinforcements?"
"Depends on your point of view. Look-the mortars are shooting at them."
The tubes of Pulaski Heights were dropping shells into the mass of speeding boats, with little effect but wetting those inside.
Styachowski ran along the rubble-strewn base of Solon's Residence beneath them, tripped over a log and sprawled flat. She picked herself up, but didn't bother to wipe the mud from her chin.
"They're pulling back, sir," she called up, her voice squealing like a schoolgirl's in excitement. "Not the boats, the Quislings. They're coming off the hill."
"To oppose the landing?"
"They're just running," Styachowski said. "Running like hell for the bridge. A train just pulled out east, packed with men."
Valentine looked down the river, caught a familiar pattern. He snatched the binoculars out of the hand of the man next to him without apology, and focused on the boat trailing the leadmost pilot vessel. There was a flagstaff above the outboard motors. The State Hag of Texas flapped in the breeze.
* * * *
The boats were a surprise to the Quislings as well. They abandoned the weapons on the Pulaski Heights and fled with the rest toward Pine Bluff. When Valentine was sure the hilltop was clear he brought up the wounded from their dreadful holes into the fresh air and sunshine. There were the dead to be sorted from the living, and sent on to the swollen, shell-tossed graveyard.
The Texans found him among the corpses, burying his dead.
"That's him. I met him in Texas," he heard a voice say. Valentine looked up and saw a Ranger he recognized, Colorado. The youth's shoulders had broadened, and what Valentine's nose told him was that motor oil stained the Ranger's uniform.
Colorado brought forward a bearded man. Valentine suspected that when the campaign started the colonel of the Texas Rangers was clean shaven.
"Nice to finally meet the famous Ghost," the colonel, whose nametag read "Samoza," said.
The idea of a famous Cat struck Valentine as a bit absurd, and he fought down a laugh. If his nerves gave way now he'd fall on the man, laughing or crying or confessing, and none were appropriate to the moment.
"We've come all the way from Fort Scott for you," Samoza continued.
The words took their time in coming. Valentine's shocked brain had to inspect each one as it came out.
"Thank you. Southern Command couldn't even make it fifty miles," Valentine managed, looking out over the graves.
"Southern Command opened the door for us. Archangel was a joint operation from the start. The Kurians sent troops up from Texas to take you boys down. We figured if they didn't want it, we'd like it back. We got more besides."
It all hit Valentine like a warm wave. Intellect gave way to pent-up emotion like the dike that had swallowed Styachowski, and he found himself shaking, with tears in his eyes. He hoped his brain remembered it all and would be able to sort it out later. "What's that, sir?" he finally said.
"We linked up with Southern Command just outside Hope. Ironic, wouldn't you say? Then it was north into Oklahoma, and down the river to you."
"What made you come all this way?"
