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-Meeyao
and had not returned.
Valentine found himself a minor celebrity in the camp. As he limped around on his sore ankle, Bulletproof children came up and bumped him with their fists and elbows. He explored the camp with Price, trying to stave off the coming stiffness by keeping his muscles warm. He looked at some of the carts and sledges the legworms towed. Many held loads of fodder, or sides of meat, but one, under guard near the Dispatcher's tent, had a generator and racks of military radio gear.
"There'll be a party tonight," Price said. "Weather's nice and the herders will disperse."
"The little contest this morning," Valentine said. "Does anyone ever not pay up when they lose?"
"That's why they bring together as much of the tribe as they can. Sort of like wearing your gun at a poker game."
Valentine and Ahn-Kha did laundry at the washtubs. The other Bulletproofs doing washing insisted on giving them soap flakes and the outside lines for drying their clothes. A woman carrying six months of baby under her tie-front smock hinted that Valentine would be getting some new clothes that night. "They're going round for donations," she said.
By nightfall a raucous throng of legworm herders surrounded the barn like a besieging army. Their rein-pierced mounts stood along the road ditch in lines, eating a mixture of grains and hay dumped into the ditch.
Valentine didn't feel much like joining. His legs had been filled with asphalt, his ankle had swelled, and his shoulder blade felt like a chiropractor had moved it four inches up. He stayed out in the warm night and ate beans from a tin plate, scooping them onto a thick strip of bacon, and watched Ahn-Kha make a new pack for Bee out of a legless kitchen chair the Golden One had traded for somewhere.
"Everyone wants to see you," Zak said, coming out of the darkness. "Dispatcher himself asked for you."
"I'm tired, reiner."
"Just for a moment. You're Bulletproof now. You've got to have a sip."
"A sip?"
"It's where we get our name. What did you think it meant, Kevlar? We've got some char-barrel-aged Kentucky bourbon."
Valentine scraped off his plate into the legworm-feed bucket.
EVERY BITE ADDS AN INCH was written on the side. "You should have opened with that, Zak. I'd have been up there already."
Inside the barn, a wood-staved cask big enough to bathe in stood upon two sawhorses near the band, each of whom had a sizeable tumbler tucked under their chair as they scraped and strummed and plucked away. Tikka, in a fringed version of her brother's leathers, gave him a welcoming hug that allowed Valentine a whiff of leather-trapped feminine musk, then took Zak's hand and pulled him away. The Dispatcher poured drinks into everything from soup bowls to elegant crystal snifters, with the help of Cookie at the tap.
Valentine entered to applause and whoops. He kept forgetting he was supposed to hate these people. Perhaps they'd bred the legworms that destroyed Foxtrot Company at Little Timber Hill. But they'd carved out a life, apparently free of the Reapers. He had to give them credit for that.
"Our man of the night," the Dispatcher said, his nose even more prominent thanks to its reddish tinge. "How do the victory garlands feel?"
"They're turning purple," Valentine said, accepting a proffered thick-bottomed glass from Cookie. A quarter cup of amber liquor rolled around the bottom.
"Some Bulletproof will take the edge off."
"Just a splash, please, sir. I-don't hold my liquor well."
"It's that cheap radiator busthead you flatties brew in the Midwest, is why," Cookie said. "Bulletproof s got aroma and character."
"It blows your damn head off," Tikka said. "That's why we called it 'bulletproof in the first place."
"Enjoy," the Dispatcher said, raising his own glass and bringing it halfway to Valentine.
"Bad luck not to finish your first taste," someone called from the audience.
Valentine touched his glass to the Dispatcher's, and several in the crowd applauded.
The liquor bit, no question, but it brought an instantaneous warmth along for the ride. Cheering filled the barn.
"He's Bulletproof now," the Dispatcher called to the crowd, noticing Valentine's wince. "Bring out his leathers!"
A parade of Bulletproof wives and daughters came forward, each holding a piece of leather or armor-a jacket with shoulder pads sewn in, pants, boots, gloves, a gun belt, something that looked like spurs . . .
