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With the Moondaggers broken across Kentucky and perhaps beaten at last, a fatal crack in the foundation of the Kurian Order had been opened. Like any fault in a structure's foundation, it might not be easily seen or the danger recognized at first. But that first crack would allow more to appear, branching out until the whole edifice crumbled.
Even such an awful pyramid as Valentine had spoken of back at Rally Base could be undermined and brought down, in time.
Valentine hoped he'd live to see the fall.
anks of the Ohio, October, the fifty-fifth year of the Kurian Order: The long retreat ended somewhere southeast of Evansville.
The events of the first week of October 2077 are still a matter of dispute among historians.
Clever shift or desperate flight? The Moondaggers juggled their forces with the energy and ferocity for which they were famous, cutting off each sidle by the spent Javelin brigade, shifting troops down the Ohio or up the Tennessee until the retreat ground to a halt near a small heartland city that seemed to grow more by virtue of nothing else within an easy distance than any particular advantage of situation or resource.
The Moondaggers accomplished all this even with their supply lines snipped and chewed, responding with harshness that to this day leads to a fall blood-moon being called a "Daggers moon" all across Kentucky.
In a last gambit, the column turned almost due north, hoping they Moondaggers would not expect a movement toward Illinois. But the ploy failed and the Moondaggers found the brigade trapped on the south bank of the Ohio. Both sides dug in and prepared for the inevitable.
The camp is not well-ordered. Sandwiched in a fold of ground hiding them from both eyes in Evansville and the Kentucky hills, the only advantage to the position is that both flanks are more-or-less guarded by the river, and the rear is a long stretch of muddy ground pointed like an extended tongue toward Evansville between the loops of the Ohio.
A pair of the city's dairy farms are now under occupation. One serves as headquarters and the other as a field hospital. The previous night the brigade was lucky enough to catch a barge heading upriver. A quick canoe raid by the Wolves later, the barges engine was in their possession, along with the cargo. The raiders were hoping for corn and meat; instead they found a load of sorghum, sugar, and coffee.
So the morning camp now smells of fresh coffee, well-sweetened and creamy, thanks to the dairy cows. The chance to get the brigade across in the darkt and confusion of their arrival evaporated as Evansville's tiny brown-water navy took up positions and shot up the tug. So the men went through the tiresome task of building breastworks and digging ditches. Each man wondering if the long chase is done, if this is the last entrenchment.
Not enough are in any condition to care.
* * * *
The men joked that they weren't in the last ditch, simply because the last ditch was full of muddy Ohio river water and collapsed every time they tried to deepen it.
This bit of river had one advantage, however. The Kurians who ran Evansville evidently feared attack from their neighbors up the Ohio or across the river in Kentucky, for the river loops in front of the city and the waterfront were a network of mines, obstacles, booms, and floating guard platforms that constantly shifted place. Only Evansville pilots knew the route that would take watercraft safely through the maze.
According to Valentine's Kentucky scouts, this was the one stretch of river where they wouldn't encounter artillery boats and patrol craft. The Kurians of Evansville clung tenaciously to their ownership of these river bends, squeezing every advantage they could from their control of the loops by exacting small tolls for passage up to the Ord-nance or down to the Mississippi.
He thought it might just be possible to slip across the river and disappear into the woods and hills and swamps of poorly controlled southern Illinois, where at least he and the Moondaggers would be met by equally hostile Grogs in the form of the Doublebloods. But Evansville's flotilla of tiny gunboats and the news that more craft of the river patrol waited on the far bank downriver stifled that hope.
Touring the defensive positions with Colonel Bloom, exhausted and bloodless in the passenger seat of her command car and able to do little more than nod, he found himself giving in to despair. Their situ-ation grew worse, practically by the hour.
The Moondaggers had reinforced their left, ready to defend his most likely breakout alley, and the Wolves reported sounds of troops being gathered for a knockout blow from the right.
A boxer's stance, poking him from the left as the right readied to lash out.
* * * *
Valentine was woken from a sleep that wasn't amounting to much and requested to report to the command tent.
He entered, still buttoning his uniform coat thrown over his leg-worm leathers.
Several Guard officers had already gathered, and more were com-ing. Tikka and another grizzled legworm rider were taking turns slicing hunks of cheese with a knife and alternating bites of the cheese and hard biscuit.
All eyes were on a boy of thirteen or fourteen, stripped down to his underwear, who stood drinking a steaming beverage and shivering, with blankets wrapped around his bony shoulders and feet.
"Thought you'd like to hear this kid's story," Rand said. "We pulled him out of the river when we were setting fish traps."
"Pulled nothing," the boy said. "I swam the whole way."
"Story time," someone guffawed.
"When are you boys comin'?" the wet and muddy boy asked. He'd slicked his body with Vaseline or something similar to ease the swim.
"Coming?" Bloom asked.
