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"Patel's fine, according to his last transmission. He's handling the pursuit with some Wolves and legworm riders."
"Then what?"
"From the very top, Valentine," Lambert said. "I just received new orders. I guess Major Grace gave us the thumbs down right before he surrendered the joint."
She handed him the communication tech's transcription. Block pencil lettering had a date, time, and code confirmation. Below that were the bare words:WITHDRAW TO RALLY BASE. AT ONCE.
CONFIRM SOONEST.
(S) MARTINEZ, GHQ
Valentine didn't know whether to retch, faint, or shoot himself. Gamecock, up to show him a vintage combat shotgun, steadied him with an arm. "After all this? The river's open now. Between the Goliath and the boats, we can hold the river, now."
"Not 'defensive stance' enough," Duvalier said, appearing from nowhere, in her usual style.
"What about the Golden Ones?" Valentine asked. "We'll just abandon them here?"
"Must have been garbled. Doesn't make any sense," Lambert said. She turned to her communications staff. "The equipment must be to blame. Find the fault in our long-range gear. Take it all apart if you have to, and go over it piece by piece. I don't care if it takes a year to finish the job."
"That transmission was confirmed received," Valentine said. "Somebody might call that mutiny. They can shoot you for that."
"You seem to be healthy enough with a death sentence," Lambert said. "Operation Javelin's going to succeed. Maybe it'll just take a couple tries. But if they want me to stop, they'll have to drag me out by the heels."
"Us by the heels, suh," Gamecock said.
"Dots Lambert ignoring orders," Valentine marveled.
"Can't withdraw anyway," Ediyak put in. "We're in action."
"And will be the rest of the summer, I expect," Lambert said.
They watched Fort Seng fill.
The Golden Ones filed in, walking in the football-shaped formations of the fighting Grog march. A ratbit rode on broad, faun-colored shoulders here and there. The Gray Baron led his Grogs in, Snake Arms dancing with her reptiles at their head to Bear whistles, the warriors perhaps not as orderly as they'd been at the Gray Stronghold, but time would improve them from war band into soldiers.
What fascinating pieces to a yet-unknown future mosaic, Valentine thought. Smelly, disorderly, ragged-like Kentucky, with a full year of warfare washing over it. But toughened and slowly coming together, and unlike the silent, oppressed masses to the south, every one of them could be trusted with a gun and a knife.
He almost felt pity for the Kurian Order. He certainly felt it for the poor bastards who'd be sent up against them.
gue: The exact provenance of the word Kentucky is a matter of dispute. The popular translation used by Civil War historians that the word means "dark and bloody ground" is almost certainly false.
For purposes of this history of Vampire Earth, it may be most appropriate to use the alleged Iroquoi-Wyandot phrase "land of tomorrow." What began to take shape at what Lambert called the heart of North America's great rivers as summer came on hot and dry and lush, was the first sprout of the new world that would have to take shape, should the Kurians be overthrown.
Man and Grog, ratbit and Reaper, horse and legworm, radio and newspaper, clattering petro-fueled engine and brown-water-churning propeller, community and its defenders came together that spring in something the world hadn't seen before, at least at the scale envisioned by Brother Mark. Like the ingredients in a stew, each took on some flavor from the other after the heat of action.
Kentucky would see more violence. Atlanta wouldn't give up their plans for the conquest and incorporation easily. Kentucky lived up to its misnomer as a dark and bloody ground in the following years, but like a vigorous new hybrid, its thrived in the churned-up soil.
After false starts in the swamps of Arkansas, the plains of Central Asia, the shores of Lake Victoria in Africa, and the islands and coasts of Japan and Alaska, the seeds of the future at last fell on fertile ground in Kentucky. Fate and the necessities of duty would soon separate some of the actors who gave what would become the Great Rivers Freehold its vigorous birth from their newborn republic.
But most would return, in time.
For now, we shall return briefly to the last few steps of a series of weary marches and passages by our no-longer-so-young major.
David Stuart Valentine felt each of his thirty years as he walked back up from the river landing to Fort Seng. His leg and back hurt. An old pain, one he hadn't had since a Reaper nearly took his head off during the escape from Xanadu, throbbed at his jawline.
Even echoes of the stomping he'd taken in a jail cell in Haiti courtesy of Boul brought a dull ache to his ribs.
Fort Seng buzzed as he crossed the old highway on its west border, at the edge of the thick woods on that side. The Kurian Missionary's doughnut stand had been turned upside down, looking like an odd mushroom with its tacked-together wood-pallet foundation.
