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Valentine had no more words in him. He caught his breath, waited. The three exchanged looks.
"I want all this written up on paper with some signatures," Vole said. "And I want us to keep all our light weapons and sidearms. It's got to say that too. Every man gets a choice: join you, surrender, or walk out."
"Save us the effort of finding guns for you," Valentine said.
* * * *
Valentine left a platoon of his company under Ediyak and Patel to organize the surrendered Quislings and returned across the river in a small boat, heartened. A barge would follow, laden with food, mostly preserved legworm meat rations marked "WHAM!-hi protein" in cheery yellow lettering. The barge would bring the wounded back, where the Evansville hospital could give them a bed and rest at last.
"That Last Chance feller payed us another call while you were across the river," Tiddle told him outside the headquarters tent as Valentine scraped riverbank mud from his boots.
"Said he was giving us one more chance to give up before turning us into charcoal briquettes."
He called a staff conference and gave the good news to Bloom, trying to stay awake and alert. When it was done, he felt as tired as Bloom looked. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. "We can get home."
He took a breath. Decisions like these were always easy, when, as Churchill said, honor and events both pointed in the same direction. "Hell with that. We've got a secure base in this country and they don't. Let's go on the offensive."
"With the brigade worn to pieces?" Bloom asked, looking as though Valentine had reopened her incisions.
"Now's our best shot. Colonel. If we can buy some peace and quiet to get things organized to support us in Evansville, we can cut river traffic or the Ohio and give some real help to the uprising in Kentucky."
"What happened to going home?" a Guard captain asked.
"Every time we've had a chance to run, we've run, and where's it got us? Javelin ends with a whimper as the men pile onto barges and motorboats under shell fire. If Javelin's going to die, I want it to die hard, trying to do what it was designed for: to establish a new Freehold. If we can take the Moondagger main body with us, Kentucky has a chance. We've got the technical people, even if they've lost a lot of their gear on the retreat. We've got the Wolves and Bears, even Smoke and a Cat or two."
"I wouldn't want to be up against this brigade," Gamecock said.
"Fingers around the enemy's throat and teeth locked on hide," Bloom said. "God grant me the strength to get out of this chair one more time. Valentine, will you help me draw up a plan for your clutch hit?"
"In this situation it'll be a simple one, sir," Valentine said. It was hard to say which emotion dominated, relief that they were turning at bay like a wounded lion, or anxiety over this last throw of the dice.
"If you do this, what's left of the Kentucky Alliance will be with you," Brother Mark said.
"Believe it or not, we've still got riders from all the five tribes. Most are either Bulletproof or Gunslingers. Tikka's worked out some kind of command structure. Bitter-enders all. They want their ton of flesh from the Moondaggers."
I shot a javelin into the air, it fell to earth, I knew not here....
Valentine kept the doggerel to himself. They could hardly move any more, so they might as well fight. Where Javelin finally landed would-must!-be remembered. One way or another.
Javelin's camp was buzzing with rumor.
"I've got a message from Colonel Bloom, men," Valentine said, breaking in on breakfast.
The men sat on their sleeping mats in neat rows, eating. He nodded to the commissary boy, and some of the kitchen boys brought out fresh hot coffee.
A few heads turned. Some in groups at the back kept eating. Others held out mugs for more coffee.
He climbed up onto the roof of cranky Old Comanche, the sole remaining truck. "We crossed the Mississippi to help the locals create a new Freehold," Valentine said.
"I don't know how you feel about it, but we came here to do a job. We ran hard across Kentucky on the way there, and then fought our way back. Our trail is marked by graves-some of ours, lots of theirs.
"Headquarters just received some startling news. Evansville's been taken by the local resistance. They've got barges full of grain, pork, medical supplies-everything we're short of.
They're short of training and guns.
"On this side of the river Kentucky's as sick of the Moondaggers as we are. The legworm clans between Bowling Green and the Appalachians are fighting, hard. Not raiding, not burning a few bridges to give them some negotiating leverage with the Kurians. They're in it for keeps."
They stopped eating the keyed tins of legworm meat marked WHAM. That was something.
