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She had a broke-brim felt hat pulled down almost to her knees and looked lost in her ratty old overcoat.
The leaders of the assorted clans of the Kentucky Alliance arranged themselves behind Karas. His handsome face smiled down at them.
Valentine saw Tikka again, standing next to her adoptive brother, Zak. Zak had a welt at the corner of his eye, but then it was a rare day when there wasn't a good fistfight in the Alliance camp. Kentucky men fought the way New Universal Churchmen golfed, as both a recreation and a social ritual.
"The major first," Karas said. "Congratulations on your brilliant fight."
"Brilliant" wasn't the world Valentine would have chosen. Brilliant commanders bagged their enemy with a minimum of shooting back.
Karas stood up. "A presentation is in order, I think. Bravery must be rewarded, just as treason must be punished."
"Bow," Tikka urged in a whisper that somehow carried.
Valentine wanted to tell her that the only time a Southern Command officer bowed was as sort of a preamble before asking a lady for a dance (Captain LeHavre used to say that it gave you a last chance to make sure your shoelaces were tied), but decided to cooperate in the interest of keeping the new allies happy.
"I dub you a knight of the New Kentucky Homeland," Karas said as he looped the medallion over Valentine's head. Valentine notice that Karas' hands smelled like a cheap Kurian Zone aftershave called Ultimate, strong enough to mask a hard day's body odor in an emergency. Valentine liked Karas a little better. No one with royal pretentions would walk around smelling like a blend of gasoline and window cleaner.
Valentine straightened again.
"Kentucky thanks you, son of both Southern Command and our own Bulletproof."
Kind words, but Valentine hoped he wasn't using the word Ken-tucky the way the Kurian in the Pacific Northwest used to be called Seattle.
While Moytana, Gamecock, and the Guard captain got their ribbons and medals, Valentine examined his decoration.
It looked like a piece of old horse show ribbon with a brassy circle at the end. Valentine looked closely at the medal. It was an old commemorative quarter glued facedown on a disk of brass-the Kentucky state design, rather nicked and scratched, but as clean and polished as elbow grease could make it.
Karas must be some kind of coin enthusiast. That or he was a student of the little common details that built a culture and a community.
Zak gave Valentine a discreet wave. His sister winked and moist-ened her lips.
* * * *
The rest of the march had its share of difficulties. Valentine lost two soldiers of his company, whether through desertion or simple loss he never learned-they took bicycles into a town that allegedly had a good, safe market and never returned.
Seng was moving too hard to the northeast for Valentine to delay in searching for them.
He led a detail in civilian clothes into town but could learn nothing.
Bee slept outside his tent like a dog. Duvalier brought home grisly trophies now and then-Quisling scouts, an unfortunate pimp who tried to drug her at trans-Appalachian Inn, a Reaper who'd lost a foot to a bear trap.
Word of Red Dog's Reaper-sensing powers spread, and Seng attached him to brigade headquarters as scouting and detection gear. The dog went out with Wolf patrols and nighttime picket checks. Red Dog's cheery enjoyment of his excursions rubbed off as they neared their goals.
There certainly were pleasures to the march. Valentine loved the vistas of this piece of country. The old, round, wooded mountains had a tumbledown beauty, and seemed to keep secret histories in the silent manner of aging former belles.
Valentine visited the Bulletproof camp and learned some of the ins and outs of the Kentucky Alliance. All the clans were powerful orga-nizations, powerful enough so the Kurians kept watch on them and sometimes started feuds to prevent any one from getting too powerful. At least that's what Zak thought, expressing his opinion over some well-diluted bourbon at one evening's camp.
After a final pause that allowed Brother Mark and a pair of Cats to attend a meeting with the guerrillas and the underground, they marched to a map reference point and made camp on a defensible hillside. It was well watered, with a nasty rock pile to the north on one flank and a swamp to the south. Below, just visible between two lesser hills, was the town of Utrecht, seemingly chosen for its misty, moun-tain environs and the echoes of history in its name.
The representatives of the guerrilla army guarding the town seemed woefully undermanned, tattered but well-armed. The leg-worm ranchers mixed with them more freely than the Southern Command troops.
With Bee leading the cart horses and Ediyak sitting beside with the company fund, Valentine took a barter cart down into the valley and saw a better ordered group of men, perhaps in reinforced regiment strength, camped on another hill to the northeast of town.
Thinking that this was the partisan army proper, he turned the cart onto a road skirting town and toward their pickets, and received yet another surprise when he saw tattered flags identifying the men as belonging to Vermont and New Hampshire.
"Who the hell?"
"I'll be damned. Those are the Green Mountain Boys," Ediyak said. "Jeebus, all that's missing is a complement of Kee-bec Libertay for us to have every Freehold east of the Mississippi represented here."
