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Gunfire broke out all along the line, sounding like a sudden heavy rain striking a tin roof.
Screams sounded from the ranks of the Moondagger assaulting column.
Valentine saw a field pack radio antenna, an officer crouching next to it on the slope.
"Bee," Valentine said, pointing. "That one."
Bee swung her hockey stick of a rifle around and dropped him. Good shooting, that. Uphill fire took a good eye.
Rand reported in. Bloom had sent Valentine's old company up to support the line with Glass' machine guns.
Valentine issued orders for them to create a fallback line at the stream cut as though on autopilot. His mind was on the assault. The first lines fell under withering fire, hardly shooting back, and a second wave, better dispersed and disciplined, came forward.
Grenades exploded, deeper thuds that transmitted faintly through the ground.
The Moondaggers broke through and it was rifle butts and pistols along the line. Valentine realized he'd put his gun to his shoulder without thinking about it and fired burst after burst into the second wave, knocking them back like target cans. He ducked and slid along the stream cut as he reloaded.
Bee grunted and the hair atop her head parted. Valentine saw white skull. She ignored it and kept shooting.
"Medic," Valentine called.
Bear teams at the assault's flanks, like tiny tornadoes at the sidelines, bit off pieces of the Moondaggers that Valentine's line chewed up.
The Moondaggers fell back, tripping over their own dead as they backed away, shooting and reloading.
"Keep the heat on!" the captain called.
"Send back to Bloom: Repulsed. For now," Valentine ordered.
A medic was wrapping up Bee's head. He gave Valentine a thumbs-up. "Good thing this old girl doesn't set much store by hairstyle. She's gonna have a funny part."
"You all right, Bee?" Valentine asked.
In response she handed him four shell casings. Her tally, evidently. The ever-observant Bee was picking up habits from Duvalier.
Valentine sent Rand's company forward to fill the gaps in the line, just in case. He went up, keeping at a crouch behind the brush as he moved along the line. Snipers were trading shots across the battlefield as what was left of the Moondaggers' second and third waves retreated back across the south hill.
"We killed enough of'em," a soldier said, looking at the carpet of dead from the first wave; the second wave wounded were still being hunted up from the brush.
"Yes," Valentine said. "Old men. Kids. Women even. The Moondaggers put some cannon fodder up front, and when the gamble didn't pay they kept the rest of their chips back. Those two don't even have guns. They gave them baseball bats with a railroad spike through the top."
"Those shits," a Southern Command soldier said. Another picked up one of the bats and examined it.
"Let's get a couple of their chips. To the ridgeline, men. Send back to Bloom: Have her put everything she's got on the other side of that ridge-that's where their real strength is."
Valentine felt a Reaper up on the ridgeline. It was probably assigning blame for the failure even now.
New gunfire erupted in the distance to the east as the Moon-daggers and Coonskins attacked. The lines of legworms looked like fighting snakes, spread out on the hillside.
He sent word back to Bloom, asking for permission to attack. She gave it, enthusiastically.
It was good to have Cleo Bloom in charge. She'd recovered some of her old spirit.
"We've busted up their face. Let's kick 'em in the ass," a sergeant called as the orders passed to advance.
Southern Command's soldiers went forward with their yips and barks like foxhounds on a hot scent. Gamecock saw what was happen-ing and sent his Bears forward, flushing the snipers like rabbits.
Mortars fell on the other side of the hill, their flashes dimmer in the growing light.
