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Some squatted. Valentine's bad leg ached if he did that for more than a minute or two, so he settled uncomfortably into the mud.
"Go on with your story," Bloom said to Dool.
"Here, sir?"
"We've got little else to do," Jolla said.
Except get the camp moving. Forward, back just somewhere other than where the Kurians expected them to be. Valentine could hear the engine noise growing-a single prop, by the sound of it.
Observation planes. The herald of coming trouble.
Moytana was gnawing on the back of his hand again.
"Where did I leave off?" Dool asked.
"Karas's speech," Jolla said. "Do they really call him King Karas?"
"King of the Cumberland, some of those legworm fellers say, sir. It was a real good speech, I thought. Real good. He was just going on about mankind saying 'enough,' and there was this bright blue flash from the podium and he was just gone. Like lightning struck him, only there wasn't no bolt.
"Then the town square just sort of exploded, sir." Dool thought for a moment, as though trying to describe it. "Like a minefield wired to go off or something. Anyway, they blew up like mines. One went off right under the colonel's chair. I've always had decent reflexes, otherwise that grenade I tossed from the squad at the rail line would have been the end of me.
Gunfire then, a real sweeping fire, and they started cutting down everyone. Women with serving trays and beer mugs-everyone. Only now that I think back on it, the guerrilla leaders clustered around the podium, they weren't blown up or shot; they were sort of clear from it in this little cement area with benches and a fountain. I think they all jumped in that old fountain.
Wish we could have put a shell into it. The top half of the colonel was still sitting in his chair, tipped over, like. You know, like when you're at the beach and the kids half bury you in the sand, only it was real. I tried to drag Roscoe into some bushes but he was dead."
He paused for a moment. Valentine looked away while Dool wiped his eyes.
"All clear," Nowak called down into the hole.
Valentine noticed that the engine noise had died. They picked themselves up and returned to the headquarters tent.
Gamecock was there in full battle array, a big-handled bowie knife strapped to one thigh and a pistol on the other. Black paste was smeared on the exposed skin of his face and each bare arm. He had his hair gathered tightly in a food-service net.
"The whole Bear team's ready to go into that town, suh," Gamecock said. "I got twenty-two Bears already halfway up. We'll get the colonel back safe."
"Too late for that," Jolla replied. "I'm afraid he was killed in an ambush."
"Treachery, you mean," Bloom said.
"Then we'll pay them a visit to even the score," Gamecock said. "Just say the word."
Jolla tapped his hand against his thigh. "No, they're probably fortifying the town now."
"Sir, they told me to tell you what I saw," Dool said. "There wasn't anything like an army in town that I saw, just maybe a company of these bearded guys and the guerrilla turncoats."
Dool spoke up again. "The ones that surrendered, they took the prisoners and chopped their heads off. That big gold Grog was taking off heads with this thing like a branch trimmer. I thought I was gonna get chopped but it turned out I was the only one left from the brigade.
Colonel Gage drew his pistol and was shooting back and they gunned him down, and a sniper got Lieutenant Nawai while he was wrestling with a redhand for his gun."
"And they told you we'd hear their terms in the morning," Jolla said. "I think we should wait."
"Wait?" Valentine said, unable to believe his ears.
"Way I see it, the fight's started," Gamecock said. "I think we can guess what their terms will be."
"Javelin's almost four hundred miles from Southern Command," Jolla said. "The locals were supposed to support us, and now we've found that they're hostile. How long can this expedition survive without the support of the locals?"
Gamecock sat down in a folding chair, took out his big bowie knife, and started sharpening it on a tiny whetstone.
