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Something splashed into the water near Valentine. Grenade, mortar shell, or flung rock?, his brain wondered for a split second, waiting for an explosion.
It didn't come.
Seeing their salvation float away took the heart out of the Doublebloods. They broke and scattered for the riverbank, abandoning their prizes.
The Doubleblood rear guard stayed together, fighting as they turned north instead of south after the boats. Whitefang sent his most experienced warriors after them. Valentine emerged from the river, shimmied up a thick trunk and got a chance to observe a Grog assault from the rear, with warriors avoiding superior firepower by exploding from cover to cover in short hops.
Whitefang shook his head in disgust at the slaughter of livestock. He kicked a shrapnel-scratched youngster to his feet and set him to work hanging and dressing some swine who'd been caught in the cross fire.
Someone had tossed an incendiary grenade in his excitement and started a small brush fire.
Valentine gesticulated and pointed and a few Whitefangs stamped and kicked dirt on the smoldering wood.
It gave him a chance to go to the captives. Using his utility knife, he started cutting ropes and unhooking yokes.
"Much obliged, son," a man with four days of beard croaked.
"He's a renegade. He's with these other stoops," another said. "We're just out of the frying pan and into the fire."
Valentine showed the beat-up militia tag on the shoulder of his half-wet tunic. "No, sir.
This is a joint operation, of sorts. Southern Command will be along in a bit to offer assistance."
"A bit" turned out to be about fifteen minutes. Valentine marked the approaching troops flitting from tree to tree up the trail of the departing, exchanging shots with the last of the Doubleblood rear guard, a pair of sappers so occupied in shooting at the humans and keeping from getting shot themselves that they probably didn't even feel the arrows striking between their shoulder blades.
Valentine stood among the freed captives, waving one of the men's grubby yellow cotton shirt.
Luckily someone recognized him from Rally Base and waved him forward as the Grogs collected and organized their loot.
"So you're the Grog lover," a corporal said.
Valentine heard the expression with a pang. He'd had it shouted to him now and then as he rode next to Ahn-Kha on the long drive into Texas after Archangel had freed the Ozarks. It had angered him then, Ahn-Kha being worth any three of Southern Command's men. Now it just made him miss Ahn-Kha.
He'd spent months in eastern Kentucky chasing rumors. No time to think about that, or the possibilities Highbeam presented . . .
"You call me sir, Corporal," Valentine snapped. "The Whitefangs just saved Southern Command another small war."
Someone snorted.
Valentine added, "This was just a raiding party. If the Double-bloods had come across the river with a couple of their warrior regiments, Rally Base would have been scratched."
"Sorry, sir," the corporal said, smart enough not to show that he doubted Valentine.
Of course, that younger Valentine who'd watched Nishino fall might have doubted this road-worn, tired Valentine too. He had willow leaves in his hair and his boots were drifting down the Mississippi on the flatboat.
A captain came up and Valentine gladly turned to captives over to him. Southern Command and the Whitefangs watched each other over a few dozen yards.
The smell of a roasting hog brought the two groups a little closer together. Valentine filled a birch-bark platter with a cooked haunch and presented it to the Ozark boys with the compliments of White-fang. A few soldiers cautiously traded.
"Excuse me, son. Can I buy that off you?" Valentine said as he saw a private extract a bottle of RC from his sack, smacking his lips at the scent of hot pork fat and crispy skin.
"Dunno, sir. You don't look like you got-"
"Just give it to him, dummy," a sergeant said.
A Grog veteran probably would have grabbed the younger warrior by the long hair on his shoulders and given him a shake, but Valentine recognized correction when he heard it.
"Carry it all this damn way . . . ," the private said, handing it over.
