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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.
Valentine saw wild worms running off to the east, and the Bulletproof harrying the Coonskins.
Hard luck for the Coonskins. Their halfhearted cover for the assault had aided in the repulse as much as the Southern Command's grenades and mortar shells.
Valentine looked behind. Bloom had better than half the camp moving up the hill.
They met strong fire on the ridge as the sun appeared, but the Bulletproof turned from their rout of the Coonskins to the east and put a fleshy curtain of gunfire against the Moondagger flank.
Valentine's assault expended the last of their grenades, pitching them over the hilltop.
They captured two big 155mm guns which were being brought forward to complete the camp's destruction, complete with communications gear and a substantial reserve of ammunition.
Southern Command's forces secured the crest line, guns, and few prisoners who didn't blow themselves up with grenades and planted themselves. On that glorious reverse slope where the Coonskins had been camped, picked out for its suitable field of fire, they found the Moondaggers in disarray and falling back.
Valentine watched machine-gun tracer prod their retreat, leaving bodies like heaps of dropped laundry on the slope. Moondagger trucks, crammed with men hanging off the side, pulled off to the south.
If only they'd had real cannon instead of light mortars. The Moondaggers would have been destroyed instead of just bloodied. Valentine did what he could with what he had, sending shells chasing after the retreat, dropping them at choke points in the road.
Moytana's Wolves would give them a nip or two to remind them that they were beaten and running.
It wasn't a catastrophe for the Moondaggers. But it was enough. Valentine felt the odd, light, post-battle aura. He'd survived again, and better, won.
Seng's expeditionary brigade had fought its first real battle and emerged victorious.
They buried their dead, slung their wounded in yolk hammocks hanging off the side of the legworms, and pressed on. This time with lighter step and more aggressive patrols, half-empty bellies or no. It was still a retreat, but a retreat from victory, with honor restored.
Crisis, August: Javelin's support slowly dribbles away as it passes through east-central Kaitucky. The Alliance clans shift their families and herds away from the area of Southern Command's column as though they carry bubonic plague. The Mammoth depart to settle a private score with the Coonskins.
Only the Gunslingers and the attenuated Bulletproof remain at a reasonable level of strength, the Gunslingers grudging the Kurians the loss of their dispatcher at the ambush in Utrecht, and the Bulletproof through the force of Tikka's personality and a twinkling affinity for Valentine as a member of Southern Command.
The Moondaggers reappear, reinforced after their successful destruction of the Green Mountain expedition in Pennsylvania, this time in motorized column, hovering just at the edge of the column's last rear guard's vision.
* * * *
