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The tall young warrior who'd caught Whitfang's daughter's eye was able to fill his bandolier with .50 rounds, and stick extras behind his ears, braided in his long unmated warrior's mane, and up one cavernous nostril.
The patrol sped away, not wanting to draw more attention to a Grog raid than necessary.
Valentine could still hear their motors from upriver-they were making for the Ohio, seemed like-when the first of the Doublebloods arrived.
Valentine stayed in the water with his carbine, waiting in the shadows beneath the gangplank, battle harness with his ammunition wrapped around his neck and shoulders to keep it out of the water. The bullets were supposed to be water-resistant, but Valentine had an old soldier's mistrust for allowing muck and gear to mix.
A panting line of warriors loped up, waving to a couple Double-blood bodies on the flatboat nailed to wooden staves, gruesome puppets already thick with flies. Grogs hidden behind the gunwales worked the arms with bits of cattail.
Valentine slipped the condom off his gun barrel. He'd used more of the things keeping water out of his barrel than he'd had in sexual assignations. Not that one of Southern Command's rough-and-ready prophylactics could compete with the artfully wrapped, gossamer-skinned little numbers smuggled in from Asia at great expense that he'd tried in Fran Paoli's well-appointed bedroom back in Ohio.
The advance party fell to a hail of arrows. Two in the rear who figured out what was happening and shouldered carbines to shoot back were brought down with well-placed shots.
Valentine knew Grog sniper checkdowns all too well: obvious officers, then anyone giving signals of any kind, then machine gunners. Sometimes they wouldn't even use their precious bullets on ordinary soldiers.
One of the Doublebloods spun as he fell, and Valentine thought of young Nishino on Big Rock Hill.
The time and miles that yawned between made him feel as old as one of the riverbank willows.
Things went badly as the Grogs cleared away the bodies. The main body of Doublebloods were close behind their guard, driving herds of cattle, geese, and swine. Blindfolded human captives, linked by dowels and collars at the neck, staggered under yokes with more bags of loot attached or pushed wheelbarrows.
The west bank of the Mississippi went mad as the bullets began to fly, with animals fleeing every which way and the humans getting tangled, falling, dragging their fallen comrades, until they too tripped and fell hard.
More and more Doublebloods arrived, seemingly from all points west, and the arrival of their rear guard gave the Doublebloods the advantage. Now it was the Whitefangs who were pinned. The Doublebloods even managed to set up some knee mortars, raining shells on the riverbank.
Grogs hated artillery. Many of the younger warriors crept back to the water.
A crossbow bolt whispered past Valentine's ear and struck the transom of the flatboat with a loud kunk.
As the skirmish progressed a group of Doublebloods forced their way toward the boats, using cattle as bleeding, lowing shields, splitting the Whitefangs.
Valentine laid down a steady stream of single shots at the shapes moving in the cow dust, but the Grogs on the boats had a better plan. They cut the anchors and sent the boats nearest the bank off downstream.
Something splashed into the water near Valentine. Grenade, mortar shell, or flung rock?, his brain wondered for a split second, waiting for an explosion.
It didn't come.
Seeing their salvation float away took the heart out of the Doublebloods. They broke and scattered for the riverbank, abandoning their prizes.
The Doubleblood rear guard stayed together, fighting as they turned north instead of south after the boats. Whitefang sent his most experienced warriors after them. Valentine emerged from the river, shimmied up a thick trunk and got a chance to observe a Grog assault from the rear, with warriors avoiding superior firepower by exploding from cover to cover in short hops.
Whitefang shook his head in disgust at the slaughter of livestock. He kicked a shrapnel-scratched youngster to his feet and set him to work hanging and dressing some swine who'd been caught in the cross fire.
Someone had tossed an incendiary grenade in his excitement and started a small brush fire.
Valentine gesticulated and pointed and a few Whitefangs stamped and kicked dirt on the smoldering wood.
It gave him a chance to go to the captives. Using his utility knife, he started cutting ropes and unhooking yokes.
"Much obliged, son," a man with four days of beard croaked.
"He's a renegade. He's with these other stoops," another said. "We're just out of the frying pan and into the fire."
Valentine showed the beat-up militia tag on the shoulder of his half-wet tunic. "No, sir.
This is a joint operation, of sorts. Southern Command will be along in a bit to offer assistance."
"A bit" turned out to be about fifteen minutes. Valentine marked the approaching troops flitting from tree to tree up the trail of the departing, exchanging shots with the last of the Doubleblood rear guard, a pair of sappers so occupied in shooting at the humans and keeping from getting shot themselves that they probably didn't even feel the arrows striking between their shoulder blades.
