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One more body turned up. A young woman from the Mammoth, stripped of her leathers and wearing a plain smock, dead from what was probably a self-inflicted wound to the abdomen. She'd gutted herself with one of the curved knives of the Moondaggers.
"Whoever lost his knife didn't want it back," someone observed.
Valentine wanted another talk with the Last Chance. Might be fun to chain one end of him to his flatbed and use his crane to yank pieces of him off.
"Try not to let it get to you, men," he said as the company reformed after disposing of the bodies. He sent word to headquarters that the brigade could move up the road again. "They did this to put a scare into you."
"Hope we get a chance to get scary on them," DuSable said, wiping ash from his forearms with a wet rag.
"Amen, Sab," Rutherford added.
"Remember the Cause," Valentine said. "We're the good guys. You're better than that."
DuSable straighted a little.
You're better than that, Sab, Valentine thought. He wondered how long he could keep the angry monster inside bottled up and channeled into duty.
* * * *
Brother Mark, with the lower ranks dismissed from the officers' meeting, sat down wearily.
"I tried three different clans. They're terrified of helping us. Won't even take guns. The Kurians are promising destruction to anyone who gives us so much as a rotten egg."
"It's the reputation of the Moondaggers," Moytana said.
"Maybe we can tarnish it," Valentine said.
"The clans can get away with not resisting us. Claim they don't have guns and so forth,"
Brother Mark said. "But trade? Never. The Moondaggers are promising to obliterate right down to the infants any clan who helps us. All legworm stock is to go to whichever clan reveals their 'treachery.' They're filling wells with dead dogs and cats as we approach."
"A little boiling will take care of that," a Guard captain said. "It's food I'm worried about. I believe we've got rations for the rest of the week. Then we're eating grass like the horses."
"Two weeks on short. That's not enough to get us home. At least not intact," Bloom said.
She sounded beaten.
"So that's it, then," Valentine said. "We can't go on. Not without food."
Brother Mark shook his head. "That's what they count on, my son. Despair. A victory comes so much easier when you are the one defeating yourself."
"An army marches on its stomach," Moytana said. "What do you propose to fill my men's bellies with?"
"They must march on hope."
"That's not much butter to put on a long slice of bread," Moytana observed.
* * * *
The next day they woke to harassing gunfire from far-off batteries of the Moondaggers. The shots weren't being observed; they were falling wide by a half mile or more and not being corrected. But it unnerved the men, made them jumpy and scattered the way a coming thunderstorm puts rabbits underground.
Valentine gave orders to put a reserve on alert and hurried to the headquarters to find a medical truck parked there and his staff silent and nervous. Even Red Dog panted and crisscrossed from man to man, seeking reassurance.
"Colonel Jolla's dead, sir," the staff agronomist reported.
"Who can tell me what happened?"
"It's like this, sir," Tiddle, the headquarters courier, said. "I had the communications duty.
