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Valentine sat in the headquarters tent, eyes closed, listening to a news broadcast from Louisville. They were interviewing an author who'd just completed a new study on drug use among youth in the old United States. The main news had to do with a record harvest in the Dakotas, where farmers had overfulfilled their goals by sixteen percent. Locally all they reported was the opening of a new facility for freeze-drying legworm quarters.
He'd started listening because one of communications techs reported hearing a blurb that train service between Nashville, Louisville, Lexington, and Knoxville had been suspended due to flooding. Militia units were being called up and deployed to save communities from the rising floodwaters.
The fall weather had been the one thing that had been kind to the brigade in their trip across Kentucky. Such an obvious lie gave Valentine hope that the legworm riders were attacking the lines.
They hadn't repeated the announcement.
Then Duvalier was tapping him on the shoulder.
"You know your plan to have the legworm ranchers fight the Moondaggers?"
"It's more of a hope than a plan," Valentine admitted.
"Well, maybe the Kurians are waiting for the same thing to happen to us. Or their generals, high Church people, whatever. A lot of them believe their own propaganda. They probably think we're stealing ev-erything that isn't nailed down on this march. When we're not doing that, we're chopping down trees so we can stomp the baby worms."
"How did you come by this?"
"I sat in on a Church question night. Ever been to one of those?"
"I don't think so."
"They're pretty interesting. You write down questions and a priest picks them out of a box and answers them."
"That's a foolproof system," Valentine said.
"The questions smacked of being preselected. Right after a ques-tion about our column was another one asking what was being done about it. You haven't killed a bunch of Strongbows, did you?"
"No. We've been out of their territory for days. I don't think we even talked to any."
"Well, the Church is blaming it on you. Also some kidnappings in Glasgow."
"We never even saw the town. The Moondaggers had it occupied before we even got there. The kidnappings-they wouldn't be young women, by any chance?"
"Yes. They're kinda worked up about it."
Worked up. What would it take to push them beyond worked up?
He got an idea. An ugly, hurtful idea.
Are you a doer or a shirker, Valentine? What's the price of your honor? Is it worth more than the survival of your comrades?
Within an hour he was where the medical staff had un-hammocked the patients and unburdened their worms.
Valentine looked at the three fresh bodies, good Southern Command men who'd traded in all their tomorrows for the Cause, hating himself. They gave up their lives for their comrades in the brigade. Would they object to their bodies being of further use?
"Doctor, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you for the use of three bodies."
"What do you have in mind, Major?"
"Nothing you want to know about, Doctor. They'll be treated respectfully, don't worry."
* * * *
The Moondagger patrol never had a chance.
Reports from the legworm liaison said they were being supplied by the Green River clan.
Valentine chose the spot for the ambush well. He used legworm pasture along the most open stretch of road he could find, just east of a crossroads where other patrols might see and investigate smoke from three directions. A collapsed barn and an intact aluminum chicken coop stood opposite his position, off the road by about fifty yards.
