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Karas had the same strong face, long hair, and impressive build, though the hair was stringier and the build wasn't enhanced by camera angle. He wore a big-pocketed waxed canvas coat that hung to midthigh and rather striking pants that were legworm leather on the inside and what looked like corduroy on the outside. His soft brown boots, with just a hint of felt showing at the top, made Valentine rather jealous. They looked durable and comfortable.
Followed by deputations from the six clans supporting him and by Brother Mark, who looked pleased for the first time since Valentine had known him, Karas approached an old pasture tree that had been butchered just that morning for firewood. Earlier in the morning Valentine had watched two men working a long saw cutting it off, but had wondered at why they went up the tree and sawed off limbs instead of simply felling it in the first place.
Valentine recognized the honey-colored hair of Tikka among the tribal dignitaries. She'd apparently assumed some role of importance within the Bulletproof.
Karas mounted the stump with the aid of a ladder. Valentine wondered how he'd look to the men in the pasture or on the lower slopes of the hill-a statue atop a column?
The breeze died down as if by command.
A leathery worm rider stepped forward. "Let the Kentucky Alliance take heed," he called in a formidable bass baritone. "Our chief is about to speak."
"This is a sight I've dreamed of for a long time. You all don't know how happy you've made me, marching to these quiet hills. It's been a long time since the Stars and Stripes has been carried openly, pridefully, across these hills. Let me formally welcome you as friends. A mite more valuable: as allies."
Southern Command's troops cheered that.
"Some of you went to school. I only had one teacher my whole life. A simple man. A plumbing contractor, before 2022. That man was my father. He taught me to ride. He taught me to shoot. He taught me to tell the truth.
"One day I was looking at pictures of animals of the world. I liked big cats, lions and black panthers and tigers. He told me that one tiger needed to eat as many as three hundred deer in a year. Three hundred! Of course, the tiger must eat them one at a time. No tiger kills three hundred deer at once."
The spring breeze contested the voice again, but Karas could project, though the men upwind were cupping their ears to catch his words.
"Imagine, though, if those three hundred deer could talk as we do. If they could take the tiger's tally. If they could organize against this tiger. If three hundred deer together hunted the one tiger, threw themselves against it, biting and goring and kicking, I reckon that tiger would never hunt again.
"We have one great advantage over the Kurians. Human beings naturally come together, the way water droplets find their way to pools. The Kurians like to remain individual drops.
"Divided, all we can do is crawl to the Kurians and lick their boots, begging not to be killed. Their tigers are the master of any one of us. United, we will hunt the tigers."
"I'm going to ask you to follow me east into the mountains. There we'll start the biggest tiger hunt you've ever seen. Then with the forces that are meeting there, we'll come back and start taking over town after town, county after county here in Kentucky. Can I count on the men of Arkansas, of Texas, of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri? We're pledged to you, Wildcats and Gunslingers, Coonskins, Bulletproof and Mammoths, and of course my own Perseids."
Valentine cheered along with the rest of him. If he understood it right, Javelin was now the largest operation against the Kurians since Archangel.
Lambert and Brother Mark and the rest had told them they'd have support of some of the legworm ranchers in Kentucky. He thought they meant foodstuffs and fuel; he'd never dreamed they'd be fighting at their side.
Why had they kept so much secret from the officers involved? To avoid disappointment if Karas turned out to be a windbag, full of bluster and promises? Or did Lambert feel it necessary to keep this from Southern Command's own higher-ups?
Valentine laughed at himself as Bee thumped him on the chest, not really understanding the reason for the cheering but enjoying the mood. As the men and women roared their lungs out, thrilled that Kentucky wasn't just supporting their advance but coming to their side, he was considering the possibility of informants high up in Southern Command's officer list.
After the speech ended men and women of the Alliance handed out coins of brightly polished nickel, it looked like. They bore an imposing stamp of Karas in profile. The reverse had a five-pointed star with a 10 at the center and "TEN DOLLARS" written around the edge.
"The king's coin," the boy who handed Valentine his coin said. "Lot more where these came from."
"Long live the King of Kentucky, then," Ediyak said in reply. "What do you s'pose we can buy with it?"
Valentine examined the engraving. A faint halo had been etched around the profile. "A whole lot of trouble, if this man wants us calling him king."
through, western Tennessee, March: Operation Javelin and Colonel (later General) Seng's march to the Virginias, later to studied and debated-turning point or footnote?-with good arguments on both sides, began with a masterstroke.
The thousand foot Kurian tower at Mississippi Point had stood for two generations. Every now and then Southern Command would bring some heavy artillery forward and shell it for an hour or so, just to see the light show as mysterious rippling bands of violet rose and detonated the shells a mile from target. The scientists from the Miskatonic attending these shows tried to study the effect with their poor collection of instruments but always left flummoxed.
The Kurian in that tower controlling the Mississippi between Memphis and Paducah is called "the Goobermaker." Even the best Hunter, sneaking into the woods around that tower, slowly becomes confused and disoriented. The more cautious, or maybe luckier, staggered away, underwear sometimes loaded like a sopping, sagging diaper, wondering what their name is. Most recover their sensibilities and memory eventually.
The Miskatonic consider the Goobermaker a powerful Kurian, feudal lord to sub-Kurians stretching from the outskirts of Nashville to Memphis and into southwestern Kentucky. He makes claim to the river as well, extracting tolls for water traffic, and ever more exorbitant fees in auras for cargo cutting across his territory to the Ohio or the Tennessee when Southern Commmand gets the upper hand against the gunboats of the river patrol.
David Valentine always chuckled and dismissed his participation in the assault as being
"on the bench-when I wasn't sitting in the bus with my helmet."
* * * *
