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The Warriors cheered.
"Fuck Doublebloods up," Whitefang said in English, winking at Valentine. Then he laughed long and loud into the night.
* * * *
The Mississippi, wild and untended since 2022, had carved little islands along its banks for most of its length. Within twenty-four hours of his promise Soka-coli to Whitefang, Valentine was swatting mosquitoes and trying to keep from being splashed by the paddlers.
Grogs paddle as though they were at war with the river.
Grogs had an instinctive knack for warfare. Once they made up their minds, they did everything at the hurry-up. After a conference that lasted long into the night-most of it taken up by definitions of geographic points-Valentine sent Callaslough back to Rally Base with a written report. Whitefang called for his warriors, and Grogs loped off in every direction.
They left a substantial reserve at the camp, perhaps still fearing a human trick, and a core of veterans set off with the youngest warriors on the Doubleblood hunt.
The Grogs were proud of their weapons. They displayed their prowess to Valentine, sending steel-tipped arrows through entire trunks of trees from bows made out of truck leaf springs (Valentine couldn't even string the bow, let alone draw it, and felt very much like a sham Odysseus) or driving spears through practice dummies made of old kegs and barrels. The tall young Grog Whitefang's daughter had made eyes at had a big Grog gun and ten bullets probably donated by his entire family. The .50 caliber rounds were scarce on this patch of riverbank, and Valentine suspected they represented an investment of his whole family in the warrior's future.
He used one to shatter an old bowling pin at a distance of a kilometer, making Valentine stand within ten paces of the target to show that no tricks were involved. For a split second between the shot (Valentine saw the Grog take the recoil) and the pin's destruction, he wondered if he'd be dead before he heard the sound of the report.
With the young males gathered, their chief led them to war, leaving the old fellow with the slingshot and the hand grenades behind.
Valentine felt like a war correspondent watching them hike off in loosely grouped bunches, formed into a diamond shape if you plotted them on a map at any particular point. A poor sort of war correspondent at that, because he could get only a vague sense of their intentions. At first he feared they were just going to plunge into Southern Command's territory and make straight for the Doubleblood trail, but they proved craftier than that and took big war canoes down a stream to the Mississippi.
The Grogs watched him sit down in the canoe and unroll a condom over the business end of his carbine. A warrior with six feet of lethal, single-shot steel-and-wood showed Valentine how he protected his piece: Valentine recognized a leathery testicular sack, undoubtedly human, closed by a tight drawstring.
The Grog had left the hairs intact, probably to help it bleed water.
Then, with a call from Whitefang, they paddled as though chased by living fire. One hundred and eightysome Grogs moving fast with the current, canoes swerving and crossing like a school of excited fish.
They reached the islands opposite Cairo by dark, and Valentine saw smaller scout canoes hook to either side of Whitefang's. Valentine's canoe waited with several others under the metal remnants of an old interstate bridge.
They spotted the pulled-up canoes and flatboats and hulled pleasure boats and houseboats floating at anchor, shielded from Southern Command by a long strip of muddy island, tree roots fighting the Mississippi for possession of the soil.
With their objective in sight, Whitefang let his Grogs rest and feed, waiting for the moon to go down. Valentine found himself dozing, resting against a big warm Grog who smelled like brackish water.
Owl hoots from Whitefang's canoe woke him. Grogs slipped into the summer-warmed water.
Most of the canoes huddled against the banks, while scouts swam, or crawled, or slithered forward, depending on the depth of water.
Valentine's Cat-sharp eyes picked out a shadowy shape, glistening wet in the darkness, climb onto a sailboat and merge with something that looked like a bundle of canvas leaning against a mast. Others of the Whitefang tribe emerged from the riverbank and stalked into the trees.
Evidently the Doublebloods hadn't counted on an attack from upriver.
A flaming arrow, looking like a bum-winged firefly as it turned tight circles along its parabolic arc into the Mississippi, announced that the scouts had done their job.
Valentine splashed ashore with the veteran Grogs carrying belt-fed machine guns and laced-together Kevlar over their broad frames. Valentine felt sorry for anyone going against this contingent. It was hard enough to get a bullet through Grog-hide around the shoulders and chest. Add Kevlar to the mix and you had something resembling a living tank.
The younger Grogs were showing each other gory trophies taken from the Doubleblood sentries.
The remaining unblooded Whitefangs prepared to win their own bloody prizes. The Grogs caked themselves with mud, dead leaves, and bracken. It would conceal them from the eyes of their enemies and be an earthy burial shroud should they die.
By dawn Doubleblood message runners showed up at the Southern Command bank.
Valentine got a good look at one. She looked a little like a bloodhound, with short dark hair, lots of loose skin about the face, and a gangly, underfed look compared to the gray Grogs. But the Doublebloods could run like deer and climb like spiders-even with an arrow through her leg that one Grog shot through the brush on the riverbank like a snake.
Valentine didn't care to watch the questioning of the captured messengers, but it amounted to bringing the bigger boats around the south end of the island and setting up boarding ramps big enough for young cattle and pigs.
The Whitefangs happily followed the plan. They were setting up the inviting-looking boarding ramps (and brush blinds for snipers and archers flanking the landing) when a brown-water river patrol motored upriver and turned in to get a good look at the operation, covering the Grog boats with what looked like 20mm cannon while a squat mortar boat watched over matters from mid-river.
Valentine slipped into the water off the side of one of the Doubleblood boats, just in case the Quislings stopped to search. He felt the deep Mississippi mud, cool and gritty, around his toes. But the patrol recognized the Whitefang warrior tattooing and gave the chief some boxes of ammunition and a case of incendiary grenades in the interest of bringing a little extra misery to Southern Command and staying friendly with Whitefang's people.
