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"Cease fire," Cookie shouted, radio headset still to his ear- though no one but Ahn-Kha was shooting. The Wildcats retreated in disorder.
Valentine hadn't used a single bullet.
* * * *
More rounds of Bulletproof were being issued as riders danced jigs. Other legworms, still with armed riders, circled the barn at a distance, though the scouts had claimed that the Wildcats were decamping and heading for higher ground to the east.
"Zak, I take it you're willing to give our friends a ride north, now," the Dispatcher said. "And if you aren't, I'll make it an order."
"Of course I'm willing. I'm willing to dig a hole to hell if that's where they want me to drive my worm."
"Your sister can go watch your string," the Dispatcher said.
"Wormcast." Tikka kicked a stone.
Duvalier hung on Valentine's arm, but it was play; she felt stiff as a mannequin. "Better luck next time."
"What's your destination over the Ohio?"
"We're trying to find an old relative," Valentine said. "She's come up in the world, and we're going to see if she'll set us up."
"Take Three-Finger Charlie, Zak," the Dispatcher said. "He's got connections with the smugglers. Tell him to trade egg hides if he has to, I want these folks set up so they can pass through the Ohio Ordnance in style."
Hoffman Price led his mule into the circle of revelers. "I was scavenging for mule shoes. He found a mess of wild carrots, and they were fat and sweet so I pulled up a bushel."
"You missed-" Zak began.
"I know. I saw it from a couple miles away. You Bulletproofs throw one hell of a party. Fireworks and everything."
Price looked at the bourbon-sloppy smiles all around. "What? Don't y'all like carrots?"
entucky Bluegrass, September: The bluegrass itself is only blue in the mornings, and even then for the short season when the grass is flowering. The rest of the time it is a rich, deep green.
Poa pratensis arrived in Kentucky by accident, used as padding for pottery on its way west to be traded to the Shawnee. Once thoroughbreds thrived on it. They have been replaced.
Land of the dulcimer and bourbon (invented by an itinerant Baptist preacher), home to the most soothing of all American accents, Kentucky raises more than just champion livestock. Perhaps it's something in the water, for the state produces fiercely individualistic, capable folk under its chestnuts and between its limestone cuts. Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were born there, approximately the same distance apart as their future capitals of Washington, DC, and Richmond.
In its earliest days, the wooded hills of Kentucky were called a "dark and bloody ground." That appellation applies to Kentucky of the Kurian Order as well. The state is divided into three parts, somewhat resembling an O between two parentheses. The western parenthesis is the usual assortment of Kurian principalities bleeding the country from their towers along the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers. The eastern parenthesis is the mountains of Virginia, home to a scattering of guerrilla bands at war with each other when they're not fighting the Kurians or those in the center of the state.
The center is the most unique of all. Clans of legworm ranchers, some comprised of Grogs, some of humans, and some mixed follow their flocks-They cannot herd them; the legworms are too obstreperous and powerful to be herded, but they can be tamed and controlled under the right circumstances.
The same might be said of the riders.
* * * *
"I've never seen growth like this before," Valentine said.
"You're looking at snake trails," Price said.
They stood in southern Kentucky, on a little knob of a hill looking out over a meadow. Price knew about moving cross-country. Bee usually took the lead, walking with her eerily careful grace. Then the three humans, taking turns with the compass and map to avoid getting trail-stale, followed by the mule. The mule was unusually cooperative for its breed, perhaps owing to a jaunty knit Rasta cap it wore, complete with fly-scaring dreadlocks. Valentine didn't dare look to see if the dreadlocks were simply sewn in or if they were attached to a scalp, and the mule wasn't telling. Ahn-Kha brought up the rear. At least once a day they zigged on a different course, heading north the way a sailing ship might tack against the wind.
What caught Valentine's eye about this particular meadow was the strange furrowing. Lines of thickly weeded earthen banks meandered across the field like a drunken farmer's tilling. The banks were perhaps a foot high at most, ran down little open spaces clear of smaller trees.
"That's sign left by legworm feeding."
Tchinktchinktchink-behind them Duvalier knelt over a spread out Byrdstown Clarion. The newspaper, a weekly melange of property and equipment for sale and lease, with a few stories about the achievements of local NUC youth teams, wasn't being used for the articles. Duvalier was pounding together two ancient red bricks pulled from a collapsing house, collecting the fine dust on the paper to be poured into an envelope and used as foot powder.
Bee snored next to her in the sun, her short-but-powerful legs propped up on a deadfall. The mule, a cooperative beast named Jimi, cropped grasses and tender young plants.
