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"Where's the rest?"
"In boxes." Ahn-Kha rummaged around in the battle satchel that contained spare bullets and gear for his gun, and handed him the box.
Cookie and Gibson joined them and the legworm slid quickly down the hill to where the other riders were gathering. Cookie had his ear to a headset, coming from a handcrank-charged portable radio.
Another rocket exploded over the massive barn. Yellow-white sparks ran down the tin roof.
"They're good with the fuses over there. Probably been cutting them all day. So you're a brother rider now," Gibson added to Valentine.
"Seems like," Valentine said. Zak lined up his legworm behind another. Just behind them, in the center of the column of legworms, the Dispatcher waved a flashlight. The column turned and the legworms went single-file up toward the barn.
"If we go to battle line you, the girl, and the Grog can cling to the cargo netting," Zak said. "Keep your heads down."
Valentine learned what battle line was as soon as they crested the hill and turned their line north. Another sky-cracking explosion over the barn sent a legworm humping over from the other side of the hill, its riders hanging on for their lives. The line of battle-ready legworms twitched, but stayed in station front to back.
"They're coming. Flank facing offside," Cookie called, listening to his headset.
Zak and his team slid off the top of their worm, as did riders all along the battle line, digging their hooks, goads, and spikes into the thick patches of dead flesh. Women and teenage boys with rifles, hooks looped around their chests and attached to their ankles, joined the fighting line, adding their guns.
The column moved in the direction the fleeing legworm had just abandoned. Valentine readied himself for what would be on the reverse slope of the hill when they topped it.
Cookie slapped his thigh, headset to his ear. "Zak, we got 'em. They're in the field, not halfway across, in open order."
Cheers and foxhunting hallos broke out all across the Dispatcher's line of legworms as the news spread.
Zak's mount crested the hill and came down the other side, turning slightly as it followed the worm directly ahead.
Twenty or more legworms crept-or so it looked in the distance- in three columns across the contest field toward the Bulletproof camp.
Valentine took comfort in the thick length of legworm between him and the Wildcats. It was like shooting from a moveable wall. He thought of stories he'd read of fighting warships, their lines of cannons presented to each other. In naval terminology, the Bulletproofs were "crossing the T" against the oncoming Wildcats.
The Dispatcher's legworm followed theirs, and the one behind his let loose with a whooshing sound.
"The pipe organ's firing!" Gibson yelled. "Yeeeah!"
Streams of sparks cut down the hillside and exploded in the earth among the columns. The Wildcat legworms began to turn and get into line to present their own bank of rifles to the Bulletproofs, but the mounts kept trying to get away from the explosions.
Machine guns from the front Wildcat legworms probed their line, red tracers reaching for the riders. Another Wildcat firework burst above and Valentine felt the legworm jump, but it had overshot.
The Bulletproof column accelerated. Zak employed his sharpened hook to urge the legworm along and close the gap that opened between his mount and the one ahead. Zak still had his rifle slung; his job was to keep his beast in line, not fight.
Now the two masses of legworms, the Bulletproofs tightly in line and moving quickly, the Wildcats' in an arrowhead-shaped mob, converged.
Ahn-Kha sighted and fired. "Damn," he said, loading another shell. He shot again. "Got him."
A legworm in the Wildcats turned and others writhed to follow or to avoid its new course. Ahn-Kha picked off another driver.
"That's some kind of shooting," Cookie said. Ahn-Kha ignored him, fired again, swore.
The front end of the Bulletproof column began to fire. It had run ahead of the Wildcats; the marksmen got an angle on the exposed riders clinging to the right sides of their mounts.
The Wildcat column dissolved into chaos. Each legworm turned and hurried back toward their camp as fast as the hundreds and hundreds of legs could carry their riders.
Cheers broke out all across the Bulletproof line.
"That's how you win a scrap!" Gibson said. "Tight riding. Damn if Mandvi can't point a column."
"It's because we were ready for them," Zak said, nodding to Valentine.
