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"You've got a long drive ahead of you, prance, if you want my boy," Cleo Bloom called from the back of the crowd. "He's six hundred miles away."
The chair rose and spun toward the sound. The mouthpiece fixed her with a baleful eye.
"No matter. We'll simply take one from a town between here and Kantuck. We will let the mother know the willfulness, the arrogance, the insolence that demanded his sacrifice."
"Twisting tongue of the evil one, begone!" a commanding voice said in a timbre that matched the amplified speakers. Every head turned, and Brother Mark stepped forward.
Brother Mark stared at the head on the front of the hood and Nowak's features fell still and dead, the eyes dry and empty.
The chair descended again, sweeping forward just a little. The men next to Brother Mark retreated to avoid being knocked over. The two stared at each other, the mouthpiece's hand on the hilt of his dagger. Valentine sidestepped to get nearer to Brother Mark.
"Don't let this one fill your ears with pieties," the mouthpiece said. "He's expecting you to die for a cause. Futility shaped and polished to a brightness that blinds you to the waste.
Honor. Duty. Country. How many millions in the old days marched to their doom with such platitudes in their ears? Wasted potential. It is for each man to add value to his life. Don't let wastrels spend the currency of your days."
The crane elevated him to its maximum extension.
"Our divine Prophet's Moondagger is still sheathed," the mouthpiece boomed through the speakers. The drums in town sounded in time to his pauses. "Do not tempt him to draw it, for it cannot be put away again until every throat in this camp is cut."
"We're volunteers," Valentine said. "We've all seen how lives are counted when Kur is the banker."
The crane lowered the mouthpiece.
Valentine stood, arms dangling, relaxed. He opened and closed his right fist, warming his fingers.
"Your face will be remembered. You'll regret those words, over and over and over again, tormented in the living hells."
"Can I borrow that?" Valentine asked. He whipped out his hand, raked the mouthpiece under the chin, came away with the silver pin-and a good deal of bushy black beard.
"Outrage!" the mouthpiece sputtered, eyes wide with shock. Blood dripped onto his white shirt.
Valentine, keeping clear of the extended crane arm, cleaned his ears with the silver pin and tossed it back into the Last Chance's lap, where it clattered against the curved dagger.
"Thanks," Valentine said.
"You'll writhe on a bridge of hooks. You'll roast, slowly, with skin coated in oils of-"
"Is that part of the living hells tour, or do I have to pay extra?" Valentine said. He called over the shoulder at the brigade: "That's how it always is, right? They hook you in with the price of the package tour, but all the worthwhile sights are extra."
The soldiers laughed.
"Here's my moon. Where's your dagger?" someone shouted from the back of the mob.
Because of the crowd, Valentine couldn't see what was on display.
"You have until dusk to decide," the mouthpiece said, pulling his chair back toward the truck. The drumming started again.
The mouthpiece's flatbed rumbled to life. It backed up, turned, and rocked down toward the picket line. Some stealthy Southern Command hooligans had hung a sheet off the back of the flatbed, with ASS BANDIT-PUCKER UP! written on it in big block capitals.
The rest of the assembly laughed the Last Chance out of their camp.
Had this Last Chance ever ridden off to the sound of raucous laughter? Valentine doubted it.
Outside of the color guards and bands, no officer had ever quite succeeded in getting any two Southern Command soldiers to look alike in dress and hair, even for formal parades. They etched names of sweethearts in their rifles, sewed beads and hung tufted fishing lures in the caps, dipped points of their pigtails in tar, and stuck knives and tools in distinctly non-regulation snakeskin sheaths. But David Valentine had never been more grateful their mulish contrariness.
Decision: One of the vexations with writing histories concerning the Kurians and their intentions is the lack of records as to their thoughts and plans. In previous wars, there were government archives, speeches, even laws and commands that offer some insight into enemy intentions. Debriefings of the captured and memoirs written after passions had cooled also offer particular, if limited, insights.
The Kurians left nothing like that.
