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He followed the cords up the stairs and to the roof, where the main signals team was working. Seng's chief of staff, Nowak, was throwing orders like hand grenades. She was a rather willowy woman with baby-soft skin, though that too was obscured by tinfoil.
Valentine brought up his binoculars, focused on the torchlike flicker six or seven miles away.
The Goobermaker's turret-snail tower, topped by what looked like a broken minaret, was aflame, sending a long spiral of smoke like a question mark into the sky.
Artillery shells landed somewhere in the hills well south of the tower, looking like distant lightning in the growing dawn, big horizon-shaping flashes punctuated by smaller bursts.
Someone was putting up a steel curtain between the Goobermaker's lands and Memphis.
Southern Command was apparently giving everything it had in the eastern approaches to start them off.
"They did it?" Valentine asked, astonishment making him ask self-evident questions.
"Really and truly," Nowak said. She told the person at the other end to stand by. "Chatter says they've captured a Kurian alive. It may be the old bastard himself. They've sealed him inside a glass fish tank, and a couple Cats and a Bear team are hauling ass back for the river."
"Has that ever happened before?"
"If it had, guys like us wouldn't have heard of it," Nowak said in a tone that indicated she was smiling. "Of course, they're yakking about it almost in the clear. Might be a diversion trying to sucker in a big effort to recapture him, catch the patrol under our guns."
The sun was visible.
Valentine smelled food cooking. He suspected that if they moved out again, his troops, in their uniforms designed to confuse identification, might have to lead the way again. Best see if they could be relieved and get them fed, to keep their strength up for the next lap.
Valentine organized the distribution of hot chicory coffee and sand-wiches for his strung-out platoons. Jolly had a quick meeting, showing the next route that they'd take as soon as a few more companies of Guards arrived, and set the next leg of the march to begin at noon in any case. Seng wanted everyone through the Goobermaker's lands and out the other end, heading for Kentucky, as soon as possible.
A tired-looking figure in black rode into camp on a lather-streaked mule. It was Brother Mark under a thick coat of dirt and dead twigs. He dismounted stiffly, handed his mount to groom, and tottered to the field kitchen.
Valentine found a folding camp stool and brought it to him.
"You have my profound gratitude, son," he said, seating himself. "You wouldn't know if my baggage has been unloaded?"
"You need a change of clothes?" Valentine asked. Brother Mark smelled of sweat and smoke.
"My goosedown pillow. I've been on my feet or in my saddle since ... is it Sunday already?
Since Friday morning. I feel as though I could sleep propped up against that wall over there."
"I thought only the Wolves went over before Saturday night."
"Oh, I was well ahead of them. Meetings to attend. You can remove that ridiculous tinfoil now, young man. Not that it ever provided anything but psychological comfort."
Valentine would have liked nothing better-his skin felt itchy and he had sweat in his eyes-but decided to wait for official orders.
"Meetings?" Valentine asked, since Brother Mark seemed in a mood to answer questions.
He dipped a doughnut in his coffee and ate half of it. "Yes, concerning the settlement of the estate of the late Ri-Icraktisus. I beg your understanding-the Goobermaker, you boys call her. The Goobermaker's estate."
Valentine felt the ground beneath his feet tilt. "Who attended this meeting?"
"Some of the local Kurians," Brother Mark said, pulling off his boots and socks. "He was quite unpopular with the Nashville clan, and Memphis only just tolerated him because of his military acumen. When she switched over to female and started budding off her own clan, that was the last straw. The feel went out that Memphis was willing to withdraw her support...."
He rubbed a finger between his toes, sniffed, and made a face. "If I were in the old bishop's palace, after a night like that I'd take a steam with pair of flexible fourteen-year-olds scrubbing me down. I'm reduced to cleaning my own feet. I wish I could indulge my humanist patriotism in a more comfortable manner."
"You're saying the Kurians ganged up on one of their own?" Valentine wasn't sure what he had a harder time believing: Southern Command helping other Kurians bring down the Goobermaker or Brother Mark, ostensibly a high Church renegade, meeting with other Kurians and returning alive to tell.
"Not so much ganged up as withdrew their minds from her contact, leaving her rather alone at a key moment. Once the conspiracy started, everyone wanted to join. There's an old proverb from the Silk Road: A falling camel attracts many knives."
"So the tinfoil was pointless?"
