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Two had survived their wounds. They were all nine- to fourteen-year-olds, the next generation out of the Ringwinners and Quislings in Iowa, proving their worth to the Kurian Order.
"Patch 'em up and take them along," Valentine said, taking his youngest POWs, ever.
Grog Point was theirs.
Valentine learned from the wounded that a military school in southeastern Iowa had turned out, and been rushed to Grog Point to keep order. They were supposed to be joined by Illinois troops and some artillery coming across the river, but the Illinois men never showed up. The school had either been sacrificed uselessly with lies, in the hope that they'd hold long enough for men to come downriver, or been caught up in a Kurian Zone double cross between rival Iowa and Illinois factions.
It took all the sweetness out of seeing the rest of his charges arrive and start to board the river barges. Valentine spent the next thirty-six hours with a bilious taste in his mouth, working like a fury to get the population organized and into the boats.
They'd put together quite a river fleet. Three huge, multibarge tugs under Captain Mantilla protected by six armed craft, plus the firefighting tug rigged out with a few guns, to do double duty as a close-in armed boat and emergency tug, if the need arose. The flotilla was under overall command of Captain Coalfield, a veteran Mosquito Fleet boatman whom Mantilla tempted out of retirement with the prospect of the biggest riverine operation Southern Command had ever launched.
Valentine was astonished to see Gray Ones taking precedence over the Golden Ones in space in the barges, tentage, and bedding. They even ate and drank first.
"None understand the Golden Ones," Ahn-Kha said. "We are peaceful looking-even our sports and games have none of the knockabout, violent energy of human and Gray Ones contests. We don't roar out our accomplishments in battle. When the hot blood comes, it comes fast and hard and fades again, like a flash flood."
Still, the Gray Ones weren't behaving as he would have liked. Clearly, he'd gotten the outcasts, all but the most ambitious or the outcasts had stayed with Danger Close. He'd try the Baron again, in the hopes that he'd take charge of the lot.
The Baron smelled. He hadn't shaved or washed himself.
"We're getting on the boats, Baron," Valentine said. "Nice easy trip on the water. You might avail yourself of it.
"A few days ago-was that all it was?-you told me you thought I had potential," Valentine said. "I see the same in you. I could use a man like you in Kentucky.
"What is your real name, anyway?"
"Ricard Anthony Alido, but my father's last name was Mairpault, of the Ithaca Mairpaults."
"I take it the Mairpaults were important," Valentine said.
"My father's brother chaired the Council of Archons for North America. Church politics. I was an embarrassment, so they sent me to a military college in Wisconsin. Always wanted a title, the Maripaults were always dropping titles like trump cards in bridge. Bridge is very popular with the churchmen. They sip their white tea and play bridge and eat sandwiches made of cucumbers and bread that's mostly air."
"I could use a good officer for these Gray Ones. Pick any or all of those names, and swear under it. From then on out, you're a new man. Like the Baptists pulling you out of a river."
"I told you I don't think too much of your definition of freedom. I was scratching-poor at the school and didn't care for it."
"Better than a POW camp in Arkansas."
"You'd hand me over to Southern Command's inquisitors? I've heard some funny things about you, too. Would your record survive that close a look?"
Valentine looked him in the eye. "No." He reached into his pocket and took out a key, knelt and undid the leg irons, unthreaded the chain to the wrist restraints, then undid those.
Quick as one of Snake Arms's serpents, he whipped the chain around Valentine's throat. Valentine felt a hand fumbling for his holstered gun.
Valentine let him get it. The gun came out of the holster and the Baron released the chain around his throat and backpedaled.
"Now you're-fuck!" the Baron said, fumbling with the plastic trigger lock Valentine had put on it. Quite an ordinary precaution before entering a prisoner's cell with a firearm.
Valentine drove a solid chain-wrapped right into the Baron's jaw, followed it with a roundhouse left. The gun fell, and Valentine kicked it back behind him.
"Can we stop this nonsense?" Valentine said, rubbing his chafed throat under his chin.
He quieted the soldiers calling from outside. "Stand down, we're fine in here. Coffee!"
They shared a cup-coffee was almost always decent near the river where traders and smuggling boats could come and go at will.
"We're boarding the barges. Next stop is Southern Command," Valentine said. Technically, the next stop would be Saint Louis, but no point revealing too much. He grabbed a small rucksack from one of the men standing guard on the car.
As they walked along the ticking, waiting train, Valentine took an extra step away from the Baron and removed the trigger lock from his pistol.
