AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Would you like to see the world through Blake's eyes?
"Let him be."
I would no more control him as my others would a Reaper than I would have used one of these nerve hooks to bleed the aura from Narcisse . I correct him, calm him when he is anxious.
"When he eats a chicken?"
The aura in a chicken is more trouble than it is worth. It is like the smell of real food to you, David Stuart Valentine. Does it sustain you, or make you wish to eat your fill?
"Suppose I were linked to you, and knifed someone. Close enough to smell them."
I cannot say; it depends on many variables. I may benefit. I may shrink in fear of the violence. You may benefit. I expect you have already. Why do you think you thrill so, when you survive a combat? That is a splash of vital aura washing across you as it is released.
Valentine flushed. He felt greasy where it was touching him. "Get off me. Now."
He handed the double-handful of over-intelligent calamari back to Mantilla.
"Sorry, Mantilla. You'll have to find another symbiot."
The Mississippi: The mighty river south of Saint Louis to its meeting with the Ohio is practically unrecognizable to a riverman of the twentieth century.
Thanks to the great New Madrid quake in '22, the river doesn't even match old maps, having shifted both east and west in a few spots, closing down old loops, creating new islands, and leaving new fields and sloughs where once the river flowed. There is also very little in the way of dredging, so during the driest months it takes an experienced river-reader to navigate its twists and turns in an eighteenth-century style.
These banks are deep Grog country, owned by wild tribes who settled there shortly after the last great North American Grog-Human battle outside Indianapolis of the Old World in its death throes. The Illinois bank is owned by a tribe of Amazonian crossbreeds, another failed experiment by the Kurian Order.
The Grogs on the Missouri side are tough Gray Ones. For decades, they fought Southern Command tooth and nail, but both sides eventually exhausted themselves and discovered they could live in wary neutrality, with neither disturbing the other too much. Yes, bold young Grog warriors still prove their fighting and thieving skills by raiding down into the rough wilds of the New Madrid area, where no two bricks still stand atop each other after the massive 2022 earthquake. And yes again, Southern Command tracks, captures, and shoots the raiders, sometimes practically under the eyes of their home village, but the days of launching large counterraids to burn out Grog settlements and recover trophies of earlier raids have been over for years.
An informal demilitarized zone exists, where each side understands the other is fair game.
The river is another sort of zone, with a different set of rules. On the run between Cairo and Alton, Illinois, directly north of Saint Louis, it is understood that any craft on the water are inviolate. However, any vessel that becomes entangled with one or another bank is fair game. Crews are usually allowed to escape in a smaller boat, as long as they abandon their craft quickly enough to satisfy those onshore that cargo is not being taken off.
This has led to some Grogs acting in the manner of old wreckers on forbidding coasts, placing obstacles or faking the marker lights of another barge or boat in an effort to draw river traffic into the banks and disable it so plunder may be taken.
Now, in the critical spring of 2077, the snags and shallows are less of a hazard, as the river is at its fullest. Heavy spring rains and melting snow from farther north have turned it into a swollen, turgid beast, with many a birch- and poplar-filled spit turned into an island or chain of flooded trees. This is good smuggling time, for it's easy for small boats to take shelter behind the many temporary islands and short-lived lakes thrown off by the waterlogged river. But the Grogs on both shores are also ready for the increased traffic as well. On every bank there are eyes and ears watching the traffic, legitimate and illicit, sensitive as sharks detecting fish in distress.
The frustrating part was that the exodus could have been over by now, had Southern Command just cooperated. Lambert could have set up a landing at some friendly stretch of river, with a small mountain of foodstuffs and medicines. Blake and the rest would be resting in safety and comfort while they organized the final trip through Western Kentucky.
Instead, they'd have to pass the Missouri bootheel country and turn up the Ohio. All those "highways"-the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Tennessee-Lambert had mentioned could be used to attack the vulnerable transports. By now the Kurian Order would know what they were and where they were going.
Coalfield lowered his glasses. "Shit. They've strung a boom across the river."
"'They' who?" Valentine asked.
"Grogs maybe. Or the River Patrol. Looks like junked boats, most of them," Coalfield said, looking through his glasses.
"How do we get rid of it?"
He warned the following barges, out of sight on this twisted stretch of river, to backwater.
"Ideally, we just run up to it, board it, and blow a hole wide enough for our craft to get through."
"Bad stretch of river for them to do it. Lots of Grogs on either side taking potshots," Valentine said.
"Which is your bet?" Coalfield asked.
"Missouri side. Better cover, and the Grogs there are a little more amenable than the Doublebloods on the Illinois side."
Valentine had to admit, it was a perfectly executed ambush.
