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The other possibility was that he was a Kurian who had gone over to the side of his estranged relatives, the Lifeweavers, to help the humans, but that made even less sense.
There was a third option. Valentine had heard rumors, long ago in his days as a Wolf, from his old tent mate that there was supposed to be another kind of Hunter, another caste beyond the Wolves, Cats, and Bears. Of course, it hadn't been much more than rumor. His old tent mate had claimed that it was something the Lifeweavers tried to effect in humans but that didn't work out; they all went mad and were locked up in secrecy.
Then again, Valentine had met an old resistance leader in Jamaica who'd been modified in some way by the Lifeweavers. She'd seemed sane enough, even if most of the rumors about her were insane. She'd offered some insight into his future.
She'd turned out to be at least partially right.
Valentine didn't know how there could be such a thing as precognition. There were so many variables to life. He'd seen too many lives lost by someone being a step too late or a step too early.
He quit thinking about Mantilla. As long as he got them safely to Evansville. Or to the mouth of the Tennessee in Kentucky, even. Past Paducah.
He woke up to gunfire.
It alarmed him for an instant. The familiar crack put him atop Big Rock Hill and running through the kettles of south-central Wisconsin and in the dust of the dry Caribbean coast of Santo Do mingo and with the punishment brigade on the edge of the mine-fields around Seattle, not sure of which and remembering each all at once in dizzy, sick shock. Then he remembered Lambert had told him that Mantilla had said she could practice with her rifle up by Missouri bootheel territory.
He put on his boots, grabbed a piece of toast, and went up on deck to watch.
Lambert, dressed in some washed-out, sun-bleached fatigues, was firing her rifle from the seated position, looking down the scope through a scratched and hot-glued pair of safety goggles. Valentine had seen the rifle's cheap cloth case when he came aboard and wondered what she had in there. He recognized the weapon: It was one of the Atlanta Gunworks Type Threes he'd become familiar with when Consul Solon had issued them to his ad hoc group posing as Quislings on the banks of the Arkansas. They were sought-after guns in Southern Command, basically an updated version of the old United States M14.
Lambert looked like she had one rigged out for Special Operations. It had a slightly longer barrel with a flash suppressor and a fine-looking optical scope, as well as a bipod that could fold down into a front handgrip. The plastic stock had a nice little compartment for maintenance tools and a bayonet/wire cutter.
The bayonet was a handy device. It had a claw on the handle that was useful for extracting nails and the blade was useful for opening cans or creating an emergency tap in a keg.
But he knew the weight and length of the weapon all too well. Lambert, for all her determination, found it an awkwardly big weapon to handle.
She was using it to pepper pieces of driftwood, old channel markers, and washed-up debris lining the riverbank. She clanged a bullet off of what looked like an old water heater.
"You're a good shot," Valentine said.
"It's hard to be a bad one with this thing," she replied, putting her eye back to the sight and searching for a target. "I wish it wasn't so goddamn heavy, is all."
"Try mine," Valentine said, offering her his submachine gun. It was a lethal little buzz saw, with an interesting sloped design that fought barrel-rise on full-automatic fire. Perfect for someone Lambert's size. He'd carried it across Kentucky and back.
Valentine looked at the serial number on Lambert's gun. Something about the stock struck him as familiar. An extra layer of leather had been wrapped around the stock for a better fit on a big man. He'd last seen this gun outside Dallas-
"This belonged to Moira Styachowski," Valentine said.
"Yes," Lambert said flatly.
"She gave you her old Number Three?"
"No. Colonel Post gave it to me. I wanted his advice on a good field rifle. He said something about Kentuckians knowing a good long rifle for three hundred years and counting, and that if I got desperate I could probably trade it for a working truck, optics being precious in the borderlands. I am thinking about trading it, though. It's a great heavy thing."
Post knew his guns. Odd of him to give Lambert too much gun. He'd made a present to Valentine of his first .45 automatic. Valentine had lost it, of course, but had replaced it with a similar version at the first opportunity.
Lambert fired off a few bursts with the entry gun, ripping up a blackened old post for a dock missing its planking.
"That's more my size," she said.
Valentine considered a lewd comment about a small size having its advantages in ease of handling, but decided against it. Lambert wasn't a flirt and had been his superior too long for it to feel right, even as a joke.
They each fired off a pair of magazines. The Number Three wasn't quite as handy as the Steyr Scout Valentine had gone west with, but the optics were better and it had another hundred meters on the carbine. It was a weapon that could serve equally well as a sniper rifle and a battle rifle. Valentine wouldn't care to use it for house-to-house street fighting, but for the woods and hills of Kentucky it was ideal.
"Want to switch permanently?" Valentine asked. "I'd love to get my hands on an old Number Three."
"Will said to sleep with it, or you'd steal it," Lambert said.
"Unless it has sentimental-"
