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"Worn-down dicks in 'seventy-six."
The chatter stopped when they noticed Valentine watching from the shadows.
"I miss the two-for-one whores of 'seventy-four, myself," Valentine said. Valentine headed for the barbecue spits, purposely altering his course so they wouldn't have to rise from their coffee and rolls and salute.
He found his old company headquarters staff passing a bottle of homemade wine, with vanquished soldiers tucked out of the way beneath their chairs.
Valentine wasn't feeling social. He passed in and out of the conversing groups, shaking hands and wishing well, never lingering to be included in a conversation.
He danced once with Bloom, who found his clumsy steps quietly amusing, and once with Lambert, who did her best to hide his offbeat lurches by holding her body so erect and stiff he had to move with her to avoid looking like he was trying to pull down a statue.
The Evansville group-"Valentine's Legion," some were beginning to call them, though Valentine himself corrected anyone who used the phrase-had an uneasy relationship with the Southern Command regulars. The average soldier had a low opinion of Quislings-they either ran from danger or knuckled under it when the Reapers hissed an order-and the soldiers preferred to keep thinking about them in familiar terms: as targets to shoot at or prisoners to be counted. So the ex-Quislings were relegated to the "back of beyond" at Fort Seng, a chilly field far from hot water.
If the goal of the celebration was to reconcile the two groups, the party was an unmitigated failure. But the two groups each ate well, albeit separately.
Brother Mark returned in the darkness. The man had a curious sixth sense about when to show up. If there was plenty of food and drink to be had, he was there. Yet he wasn't a social man. Like Valentine, he seemed to prefer hanging about the edges.
Valentine addressed a long table filled with his old shit-detail company. Many of them were wearing their new stripes and insignia for the first time.
"Be a lot more room for us once the others leave," Valentine said. "More hot water for everyone. We'll stick new recruits in your tent-shacks."
"Be good to have a home at last, sir," Glass said. His heavy-weapons Grogs were on guard duty while the men celebrated.
It was an unusually optimistic statement from Glass, but odd. He'd grown up in the Free Territory.
"We don't fit in," a corporal said. "Across the Mississippi, they put us in camps. Had to display ID all the time, wear prisoner clothes. Deep down it ain't life under the towers, but on the surface it wasn't that much different."
Valentine nodded. "You're changing that here and now. After you complete your hitch, you'll be as good as anyone else in the Republics, in the eyes of the law. You can settle wherever you like."
"Can we get our land in Kentucky?" Glass said. "Better land in some ways than Arkansas. People here aren't so hung up on where we came from."
"Not for me to promise," Valentine said. "There's Brother Mark. Ask him. He can go to the local government and see what they have to say. But they've been plenty helpful to us up until now, haven't they?"
"Reward's always over the next hill," Glass said. "Be nice if we could get something on paper."
Getting back across the river was much on the soon-to-depart contingent's mind. Valentine had men step up to say good-bye, shake his hand, or say a few hopeful words about wishing him success in the coming winter.
They gave him a present or two as well. One soldier gave him a flexible horsehide case for the new Type Three, having seen him practicing with it on the shooting range. Another gave him one of Karas' coins, the back carefully polished and re-etched with the brigade's designation and the dates of the Javelin's operational activity in beautiful copperplate hand.
As everyone settled down into groups after the eating and drinking, to smoke or play cards or show off valuables they were contributing to Bloom's "hopper" to buy supplies for the trip home (and for which they would receive a chit in return that, in theory, would restitute them once they returned to Southern Command, probably in near-worthless military scrip), a guard sergeant with the support staff loosened her belt and exchanged a few words with the musicians. Valentine didn't know her-she was one of the replacements-but he recognized the song as soon as the soldier with the fiddle began to draw his bow.
She sang:
The water is wide, I cannot cross o'er
But neither have I the wings to fly.
Build me a boat, that will carry tow,
And both shall row, my love and I.
A ship there is, and she sails the sea,
She's laden deep as deep can be,
But not so deep as the love I'm in.
I know not if I sink or swim.
