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Valentine wondered if she'd obey a direct order. Technically, Cats bore the rank of captain, but he suspected she'd tell him to get stuffed and bring her up on charges. "All right, how about a job more in line with your tastes?"
"I hope it doesn't involve climbing back on that bike."
"No, I want you to scout out a good, covered route away from the rails and up this ridge.
Take Ediyak with you and show her it. If a Reaper starts sniffing around in our rear, take care of him, or warn me."
"That's more my style," she said, fixing a button on her coat. "Want some of this bug jerky?
It's not half bad. I think these guys use molasses."
Valentine stomped down his vexation with Duvalier. "Ediyak, go with Smoke here. Don't worry, she's just marking out a line of retreat. She'll keep an eye on you out in the dark."
"Two eyes," she agreed, smiling at his clerk. Ediyak was rather good-looking at that. But then the kind of Quislings who ended up in the Order's services had better access to nutrition and grew up well-formed.
A soldier trotted up.
"Sir, Red Dog is acting really weird. He's hiding under the sheep and whimpering. Harmony says they used to have a hound that acted just the same way when there were Savio- mean to say, Hoods around. He told me to get you. "
Valentine still felt disquieted.
He turned to Duvalier. "You'd better make your exit now, or you won't have an option anymore."
She gestured to Ediyak. "Direction is the better part of valor," she said. Ediyak picked up her rifle and checked it.
Valentine was beginning to suspect Duvalier liked to misquote Shakespeare just to bug him. He reached into a cargo bag and extracted a flare pistol on a lanyard and a pouch of flares.
"Don't get yourself taken," she said to Valentine. "One is my limit for heroic rescues." She gave him a quick buss on the ear, standing on tiptoe to reach, kissing lightly enough that Valentine felt like Peter Pan brushed by Tink's wings.
Then the Kentucky night swallowed her.
They were right about the dog. Valentine tried to tempt him out from under the train engine, but the dog bobbed his head and whimpered, tail tucked tightly between his legs.
"I know just how you feel, ol' buddy," one of the company said.
Valentine nodded and reached, opened a Velcro flap on his canvas ammunition harness.
He extracted one of the blue-taped magazines, loaded it, borrowed some camouflage gun tape, and married a regular 9mm magazine to the Quickwood bullets.
Valentine walked up to his foremost pickets. He knelt, sent them creeping back to the main line, relieved in more ways than one.
They were out there. Reapers. Valentine's heart began to hammer.
Use it. Use the fear.
It woke him up with a capital awake. Each insect in the Kentucky night hummed its own little tune with its wings.
Valentine saw brush move. A peaked back, like an oversized cobra hood, rose from the brush.
Valentine felt its gaze. Every fiber, every nerve ending, came alive. He felt as though he could count the blood capillaries in his fingertips and the follicles on his scalp. Individual drops of sweat could be felt on his back. He opened the front grip on the gun, put the machine pistol tight to his shoulder-
The attack came from the hillside. Valentine heard a flap-laundry on a line. The gun went up without Valentine willing it and the muzzle flash lit up a falling, grasping parachute of obsidian-fanged death.
The next one was up to him before he could even turn to face it.
WHAM and the gun was gone, spinning off into darkness. Valentine fell backward, rolled, came up holding his sword protectively in front, noted coldly that the Reaper he'd shot was clawing at its chest, foot-long barbed tongue extended and straining.
The unwounded Reaper advanced at a crouch, a thin sumo wrestler scuttling insect-like in its squat. The inhuman flexibility of its joints unsettled. Your brain locked up in frozen fascination, trying to identify a humanoid shape that moved like a fiddler crab.
