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"I think we should tell them to make like a frog and boil. I'm sure they want us to disarm, get complacent, and then they'll give us the works anyway."
"It's happened before," Valentine said, meaning both throughout human history and in relations with the Kurian Order.
That night the reunited elements of the Kentucky Alliance held a celebration. All along the hillside impromptu bands started up their fiddles and guitars, or raucous parties rolled out the barrels of beer and casks of bourbon.
The locals knew how to live well. Any excuse for a celebration. The sentries and flankers were out and paying attention to their duties, so it wasn't all revelry.
Valentine didn't join in. He was tired from the trip and worried about what the Kurians were hatching in their towers, and he was in no mood for carousing-especially with negotiations at an impasse and an enemy army just across the river.
Chieftain and Silvertip were content to load up with food and settle down by Valentine and Duvalier.
"In another time," Duvalier said, "all we'd be worried about now is keeping New Year's resolutions. High-carb or lo-carb diets." Duvalier had the pinched look of someone on a no-food diet, but then her stomach gave her difficulty under the stress of field cooking.
"I've plenty of resolve. I just hope I'm granted the strength to see it through. Then another generation will get to worry about their carb intake," Valentine said.
"I don't know about that," Silvertip said. "I don't think the old world's ever coming back. Good riddance to it."
Chieftain stood up. "Not this speech again. I'm going back for seconds. I'll have fourths by the time he's done."
Silvertip gave him an elaborate double-index-finger salute. "You just don't know wisdom when you hear it. I say it's all got to come down. Everything: Kurian Order, the Free Territories. Let's say we beat the Kurians-we're not just restoring the United States as it was. There's Grogs settled all across in their bands from the swamps in North Carolina through Indianapolis, St. Louis, the Great South Trail and then up Nevada and out to Oregon. We just going to put them on reservations? Exterminate them? The Kurians have ruined half of mankind and impoverished the rest. Southern Command's handed out land right and left. Suppose some relations show up with old deeds saying it's theirs?
"It's all gonna get burned down, and then maybe the decent folks will rebuild civilization. The honest and diligent and talented will find others of like mind and start setting up again. It'll be ugly for the Kurian herds, but maybe their kids or their grandkids will be human beings again. That's why your legion's bound to fail, beg your pardon, Major.
"In the end, we'll be thanking the Kurians. They gave us a challenge and we'll end up better for it, the way a forest fire helps the trees thrive. Gotta burn away the rubbish once in a while."
Valentine disagreed but knew better than to get into a heated argument with a Bear. Most of Valentine's command would be "rubbish" in Silvertip's taxonomy. Time would tell.
Chieftain returned with a piece of newspaper filled with honey-dipped apple slices. "He give you the world's got to burn down speech?"
Valentine bedded down with the sounds of music and celebration still echoing from the hillside.
Duvalier shook him awake in the predawn.
"There's something brewing across the river. Can you hear it?"
Valentine went to the riverbank. There was still enough night air for the sound to carry; his Wolf's ears did the rest. A steady crunch and soft clatters and clanks like distant, out-of-tune wind chimes sounded from the screen of growth and trees across the river.
Frat was already at the riverbank, on his belly with a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Valentine asked.
"We're about to get served by the Host," Frat said.
"Run to the A-o-K headquarters and tell Tikka that they're coming."
Frat passed the binoculars to Valentine and took off.
Flashes of light, like distant lightning, lit up the eastern riverbank ridge. Valentine saw the red lines of shells pass overhead.
They landed among the mortar tubes and wagons parked on the hillside.
"Those rotten bastards," Silvertip said, roused by the smell of action. "May they all rot in Kurian innards, or whatever happens when they dine."
"I have a feeling it's about to become unhealthy in these trees. We'd better fall back to the hill," Valentine said.
He made sure of Duvalier and his weapons and pulled everyone out of the woods, turning them south so they moved parallel to river and hill until they made it outside the box of artillery.
The Host executed their attack well. Valentine grudgingly granted them that. Artillery shells exploded in the vehicle park and all along the artillery line, sending up plumes of black-rimmed gasoline explosions. Smaller secondary explosions from readied mortar shells added to the dirt in the air.
