AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chieftain followed them, wearing the Bear nonuniform of a mix of Reaper robe, legworm leather, Southern Command camo, and an old felt hat with a single nostalgic eagle feather stuck into it. Duvalier had cracked a joke that he'd molted over the winter, but the fact of the matter was he was still mourning Silvertip. He had his usual close-in weapons, twin forged-steel tomahawks. He'd add some support fire to the group with an old-fashioned 40mm grenade launcher that could either fire grenades or a sort of enormous shotgun cartridge of razor-edged flechettes that one of Fort Seng's gunsmiths customized. Rippers, he called them.
Pellwell followed with her ratbits. She carried one, the other two scampered, sniffing at the unique scent of Chieftain (he weatherproofed his uniform with a gummy concoction based on Reaper blood, or so he claimed).
Pellwell was his big worry on the march, though she'd carried her own weight so far. Field researcher or no, she wasn't used to the tired, stinky, hungry life of a soldier in the field. Dealing with the dirt and uncomfortable overnights took a mental toll on some, and Valentine looked for signs of mental stress in Pellwell. But apart from her usual clumsiness-she tended to stumble but not fall-she appeared to be bearing up. Valentine decided he'd have his next meal with her and chat for a while.
And last came Ahn-Kha, serene as a drifting cloud. He carried a support machine gun usually found mounted on a vehicle, a squat little death dealer fed by a belt-in-a-box. It was known as a "Heater" in Southern Command. A revolver big enough to bring down a grizzly hung under one vast arm, and he slung a sharpened shovel that came in handy for scratching out a toilet pit and a long hunting knife known as an Arkansas toothpick.
"What's with the shovel?" Valentine had asked him.
"A memory of my time in the coal mines," Ahn-Kha replied. "When we had no other weapon, we fought with our shovels."
Valentine remembered some of the grisly scenes described in Ahn-Kha's collection of diaries and shuddered.
The second day out from the Missouri crossing, Scheier returned out of breath at lunch.
"Jarvis and I saw signs of Scrubmen, a large party."
"Are they a threat?" Valentine asked.
"Can't say. We found a recent camp. Lots of them, forty or more."
"What would you do if it was only you and Jarvis?" Valentine asked.
"Get a feel for their trail. Moving fast or slow, and with what. If they're hunting, we'd find a place to hide and be ready to backtrack if they approached. They're tricky on the move when hunting, they'll backtrack, parallel themselves, send scouts back along their trail . . . Otherwise just observe."
Valentine considered the delay in backing off and moving north along another trail.
"Is there any good news?" he asked.
"There probably aren't Grogs around."
"Where's Jarvis?"
"Keeping an eye on the camp and the trail they left, to see if they reverse course."
"Let's try to swing round in their wake," Valentine decided.
"They're nothing to mess with, sir," Scheier said. "Don't let the spears and arrowheads fool you."
After it was all over, Jarvis tried to make Valentine feel better by telling him that the Scrubmen had probably spotted their party the day before and overnight, and left the cold camp in their path to gauge their reaction. The only way they might have frightened them off was to take off headlong along the trail like a pack of wolves. The Scrubmen might have assumed they were an advance party for a larger force that way and avoided contact.
As it was, Valentine's decision to dodge them solidified whatever ideas the Scrubman chief had been making.
They executed the ambush admirably, rising out of an open field at the shrill imitated cry of a Cooper's hawk as the file passed through a horseshoe-shaped bowl in the land.
A hedge of spears and drawn slingshots appeared all around. Valentine heard the creaking sound of bows being drawn from the brush. Valentine didn't count spear points, his brain guessed thirty and left it at that. They were well-made, simple weapons, their brutal effect proven since men were slaying each other with jawbones.
Valentine edged closer to Pellwell. "When the fighting starts," he said out of the side of his mouth, "drop. Get behind one of the Wolves and don't get up unless you see the rest of us running."
The Scrubmen dripped with mud and willow tresses. Valentine had seen some atavistic figures before, but the Scrubmen were like something out of early human history. They wore bits and bobs of Grog jewelry-probably tokens of friendship with certain tribes- shell casing necklaces, dog tails, and in one potbellied oldster's case, an old Kevlar army helmet.
It was their eyes that interested Valentine. Tough, hungry eyes, looking this way and that, these men were of, by, and for their pack. All it would take would be a nose twitch for spears and arrows to start flying.
"Yours guns, nows," the helmeted leader said.
"Gets good prices, yesses? Sweets-likkers-juices!"
Valentine called out: "Everybody, keep calm now."
