AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Valentine reversed the gears on the train one more time, clamped the pedal of the deadman's switch shut with a heavy wrench left for that purpose, and sent the engine puffing back down the tracks after the freewheeling boxcars, more to open the field of fire from the rock pile than anything. He paused in the doorway, suddenly tender about jumping, and leaped so that he landed on his good leg. He scrambled back toward the rock slide as sheep bleated in alarm at the engine picking up speed through their midst.
Valentine wished he'd thought to set some explosives in case a hero tried to jump into the cab to stop the engine before it collided with the boxcars.
The Quisling rail soldiers came up the cut one more time, but Glass and Rutherford and DuSable poured fire down the cut as the rest of the company took positions in the rock pile.
More sheep and goats fell than men, but the return fire was inaccurate in the dark. Mortar shells began to explode on the hillside. The fire corrected, and a shell dropped into the rocks.
Valentine heard a scream and he saw Cabbage run forward toward the blast, the big medical pouch bouncing on his hip.
Valentine drew his sword. The Reapers would come now, with the whole company listening to the sound of a man screaming his life out. Or they'd kill the men high on the hillside and then come tumbling down the grade like jumping spiders.
But he didn't feel them. The only cold on the back of his scalp was from the chill of the Kentucky spring night.
"They're coming! Brigade's coming," he heard Ediyak shriek from somewhere above.
Valentine felt a lump in his throat. He heard horse hooves and a motor from somewhere up the cut. The mortars shifted fire, sending a few rounds exploding back along the ridge, and then went silent.
Valentine saw a wave of soldiers pour over the ridgeline to his right, taking up positions to fire down on the railway Quislings. Every yard the enemy had fought for now meant a yard they'd have to fall back under fire from support weapons on the hillside. Valentine saw hands go up or men stand with rifles held over their heads, hurrying toward the rock slide to surrender.
His company ran forward to group the prisoners and relieve them of their weapons.
Valentine saw one officer carrying the machine pistol he'd lost; he recognized the colored tape holding the magazines together.
Harmony relieved the prisoner of his souvenir.
Valentine felt dazed, half awake, with the smell of gunfire and smoke and livestock and sweat in his nostrils. The weird elation that settled on a man when he starts to believe he'd survived, won, picked him up and floated him back toward the foremost troops to report.
Seng, frowning, sat in the passenger seat of his Humvee, issuing orders into a headset.
"You caused me at least two days' delay, Major," he said in response to Valentine's salute.
"More likely three."
"Yes, sir," Valentine said, wondering if he was in for a dressing down.
"I'll take it," Seng said. "Gamecock's Bears and the legworm outriders are hitting the support train now, and the Wolves are raising hell with some artillery tubes at the crossing they set up where you destroyed that bridge. A captured prisoner says their Kurian Lord's in a panic, disappeared into some secret area of his command car."
One of Valentine's company trotted up and presented him with his recovered gun. It now bore a nice set of scratches on the barrel just behind the foresight, a souvenir of the Reaper's power.
Valentine begged off from the questions and congratulations to check on the wounded.
Which reminded him: "I've got wounded, sir. Can we set up a field hospital here?"
"Of course. This ridge is good defensive ground. I'll establish brigade HQ here until all our, ahem, stray sheep and goats are rounded up."
The fight already had a name-Billy Goat Cut. Valentine heard one of his corporals relaying the details to a Guard sergeant deploying his men for a sweep of the battlefield to look for enemy wounded or hiding.
Duvalier wandered out of the hills with Ediyak trailing behind, his clerk looking like she'd just been through the longest night of her life. Duvalier carried a Reaper skull by its thin black hair.
"Found him lurking on the ridge, all dazed and confused," she said, sticking the skull on a rail grade marker with a wet squelch that sounded like a melon being opened. "I thought I'd solve his problem for him."
Just like a Cat. She did everything but leave it on the back step.
"Don't mess with that," a corporal warned a curious Guard. "You'll seize up and die if you get some of that black gunk in you."
"It's safe once it's dried," Duvalier said, rubbing some on her index finger and making a motion toward her mouth. Valentine slapped her hand down.
"Cut it out, Ali. What's the matter with you?"
