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He decided to make conversation. His mind kept drifting to Snake Arms, and those hard muscles under that deceptively soft flesh.
"Back in the Wolves," Valentine said, "when I was trying to convince Captain Patel that I knew my ass from a knothole, I learned a saying, 'If a Wolf doesn't have it, he makes it. If he can't make it, he captures it. If he can't capture it, he'd does without.' "
They all watched the tug begin another careful turn, its paired barges in front reminding Valentine of a cargo wagon with an eight-horse team, following in the wake of the pilot boat.
If only we'd grabbed another tug or two. We'd be able to make better speed. Shorter cargo barges would mean easier turns.
Still, the amount of space they'd covered in a single night's run was nothing short of astonishing-a steady five miles an hour thanks to the smaller boats feeling their way forward. They'd be north of Saint Louis sometime before noon.
"That's the worry, Valentine," Captain Coalfield said. Like most men who spent their lives on water, he was darkly tanned and seamed. Rather wispy hair gave away his years-his body certainly didn't. Coalfield was all muscle. "There's a River Patrol station at the mouth of the Illinois River. We got by it northbound by tying together, dousing all our lights and using trolling motors on all but one boat in a dark run. Unless they're all drunk as Milwaukee brewers, these barges aren't getting past without the River Patrol having something to say about it."
According to intelligence, there were no heavy cannon at Alton. Mortars, machine guns, and light cannon protected the base itself from potential Grog raids, but trained artillerymen and their pieces were needed at other borders of the Kurian Zones. The River Patrol relied on their fast, hard-hitting boats to command the Mississippi.
"You don't need much to take out Grog canoes and flatboats," Coalfield's executive officer said when briefing Valentine on Alton.
Captain Coalfield shifted his grip again.
He would have made a bad poker player, Valentine decided. There were all kinds of "tells" that he was uncertain.
"We've never made the run past the mouth of the Illinois River with such a big flotilla before," Coalfield said.
"That may be to our advantage," Valentine said. "Three big barges, loaded, an escort of combat vessels-it's coming from the wrong direction for anything Southern Command would do."
"Could be they were alerted by riverbank spies."
"I've been up that riverbank as a lieutenant. There are a few gangs of headhunters, but they have to watch themselves. The Grogs raid across the river into the bluffs all the time. There's nothing worth guarding on that bank until you get to the big farms in the flats."
Weather came to the rescue of their doubts. As they approached Alton, thunder began to crackle. A line of fast-moving storms boiled up from the south, and soon rain turned the boat into a one vast drum.
"Better go down in the cabin. Lightning on the river can be dangerous," Coalfield said.
Morse lamps were flashing back and forth between the barges and the escorts.
Hair running with water, Valentine complied, as Coalfield made a note on a plastic-covered clipboard next to the ship's wheel. "We're all reducing speed," Carlson told the man at the wheel. "Tighten up on the pilot boat."
Valentine, stripping off his shirt in the cramped, food-stuffed cabin, had a strange flash of Frat Carlson and Stockard sheltering in an old farm shed. If they were being tracked, the bad weather would put the pursuers off, and hopefully buy them time to rest for the remainder of the overland trip.
Valentine always thought of Saint Louis as "the Green City."
He'd seen two great ruins in his life: Chicago's downtown and Saint Louis. The buildings of Chicago's downtown, while sporting tufts of green here and there, never became too overgrown, mostly because the unfortunates dumped there cultivated every bit of useful soil. Potatoes and onions grew in the old boxes that had held trees; tomatoes grew from old sinks propped up in glassless windows.
Saint Louis could not have been more different. The Grogs did not utilize the higher floors of the city's great structures, except for thrill-seeking youths looking for risky reaches to prove themselves. They liked to see vines and bushes clinging to the sides of concrete and glassless windows bearded by kudzu and creepers. The growth sheltered insects, birds ate the insects, and hawks ate the birds. The Grogs, in turn, captured and trained the hawks to hunt waterfowl.
Valentine went ashore with Mantilla, the riverman who'd delivered letters to Narcisse when he could not visit Saint Louis himself.
They paid their usual brief homage to a fat old Grog chieftain Valentine thought of as Blueball-he painted himself in blue dye, put gold flecks about his face, and had a human slave who whitened his fangs and brushed out his hair and polished his nails to flaunt his wealth and power-and obtained a foot-pass for both of them. The price was some Kevlar liberated from the Gray Baron's stores.
Humans had to carry a token in Saint Louis, either signifying their ownership by a particular clan or tribe, or to show they passed through the city with the permission of a chief. Valentine had learned in his years of visiting Blake that certain Grogs who sold foot-passes cheap had influence only on the waterfront, or the market, and if you ventured into the city with some nobody's foot-pass you could get cuffed about and kicked back down the hill toward the riverside. Blueball was one of the more influential chieftains, being a slave trader, and his passes were recognized even in the hills to the south and the suburb country to the west.
This trip, Blueball's foot-pass was a piece of Christmas decor, some old sleigh bells on a bit of dingy leather with the red velvet flaking off. But they still chimed a merry accompaniment as he and Mantilla crossed through the market.
It was a little like Dickens, come to think of it. As painted by Maurice Sendak. Grog children gamboling underfoot while groups of females sorted and bargained and stored, trading weights of salt and tobacco and bullets for foodstuffs and goods.
Valentine looked forward to a happy day. He'd bring Blake and Narcisse with him when he left, this time.
Of course, a young Reaper at the fort would be strange for the men. He hoped that with so many other new arrivals, Blake would pass without comment, perhaps as a pale and sickly child.
"Haven't had a letter from them in a while. Haven't you been north?" he asked Mantilla as they passed through the Grog trade stalls of the riverside market. Valentine made a show of carrying his Type Three-a foot-pass was a useful necessity, but Grogs had their criminal classes, too.
