Northern Louisiana, March, the forty-third year of the Kurian Order: The green expanse once known as the KisatchieForest slowly digests the works of man. A forest in name only, it is a jungle of wet heat and dead air, a fetid overflowing of swamps, bayous, and backwaters. The canopy of interwoven cypress branches shrouded in Spanish moss creates a gloom so thick that twilight rules even at midday. In the muted light, collapsing houses subside every which way as roadside stops decay in vine-choked isolation, waiting for traffic that will not return.
A long file of people is moving among moss-covered trunks to the piping cries of startled birds. At the front and rear of the column are men and women in buckskin, their faces tanned to the same weather-beaten color as their leather garments. They carry sheathed rifles, and all are ready to use their weapons at the first hint of danger. The guns are for the defense of five clusters of families clad in ill-fitting lemon-colored overalls at the center of the file. Patches of brighter color under the arms and along the inner thighs suggest the garments once glowed a vivid optic yellow and are now faded from heavy use. A string of five pack mules follows behind them under the guidance of teenage versions of the older warriors.
At the head of the column, well behind a pair of silent scouts, a young man scans the trail. He still has some of the awkward gangliness of youth, but his dark eyes hold a canny depth. His shoulder-length black hair, tightly tied at the back of his head, shines like a raven's feathers even in the half-light. With his dusky skin and buckskin garb, he could be mistaken for a native resident of this area three centuries before: perhaps the son of some wandering French trapper and a Choctaw maiden. His long-fingered hands wander across his heavy belt, from holstered pistol to binoculars, touching the haft of his broad-bladed parang before moving on to the canteens at his waist. A scratched and battered compass case dangles from a black nylon cord around his neck, and a stout leather map tube bumps his back from its slung position. Unlike his men, he is hatless. He turns now and again to check the positions of his soldiers and to examine the faces of his yellow-clad dependents as if gauging how much distance is left in their weary bodies. But his restless eyes do not remain off the trail for long.
If they come, they'll come tonight. Lt. David Valentine returned to that thought again as the sun vanished below the horizon. He had hoped to get his charges farther north of the old interstate before nightfall, but progress had slowed on this, their fourth day out from Red River Crossing. He and his Wolves shielded twenty-seven men, women, and children who had hazarded the run to freedom. The families were now adapted to the rigors of the trail, and followed orders well. But they came from a world where disobedience meant death, so that trait was understandable.
If they had been traveling by themselves, the detachment of Wolves would already be in the FreeTerritory. But Valentine was responsible for seeing the Red River farmhands brought safely north. Four hours ago, the yellow-clad group had crossed the final barrier: the road and rail line connecting Dallas with the Mississippi at Vicksburg. Then Valentine had driven them another two miles. Now they had little left to give.
It was hard to quiet his mind, with so much to think about on his first independent command in the Kurian Zone. And quieting his mind, keeping lifesign down, was literally a question of life and death with night coming on. Being a Wolf was as much a matter of mental as physical discipline, for the Reapers sensed the activity of human minds, especially when fearful and tense. Every Wolf had a method of subsuming consciousness into a simpler, almost feral form. But burdened with new responsibilities and with night swallowing the forest, Valentine struggled against the worries that shot up like poisonous weeds in his mind. The Reapers read lifesign better at night. His charges were giving off enough to be read for miles even in the depths of the Kisatchie. If his Wolves' minds were added to the total, the Reapers would home on it like moths drawn to a bonfire.
A trilling call from ahead broke into his anxieties. Valentine raised his arm, halting the column. Garnett, one of his scouts, gestured to him.
"Water, sir, in that little holler," the scout reported as Valentine came up. "Looks safe enough."
"Good. We'll rest there for an hour," Valentine said, loudly enough for the column to hear. "No more. We're still too close to the road to camp."
The faces of the farm families brightened in contrast to the deepening night as they drank from the spring trickling down the side of a shallow ravine. Some removed shoes and rubbed aching feet. Valentine unscrewed the cap on his plastic canteen, waiting until the families and his men had a chance to drink.
A faint yelping echoed from the south. Wolves dived for cover behind trees and fallen logs. The yellow-clad families, who lacked the ability to hear the baying, shrank together in alarm at the sudden movement.
Sergeant Patel, Valentine's senior noncommissioned officer, appeared at his elbow. "Dogs? Very bad luck, sir. Or..."
Valentine, careering along in his runaway train of thought, only half heard Patel's words. The families broke out in noisy consternation.
"Silence," Valentine rasped at the civilians, his voice cracking with unaccustomed harshness. "Sergeant, who knows this area best?"
Patel's eyes did not leave the woods to the south. "Maybe Lugger, sir. Or the scouts. Lugger pulled a lot of patrols in this area; I think her people lived westaways."
"Would you get her, please?"
Patel pointed to and brought up Lugger, a seasoned veteran whose limber, sparse frame belied her name. She held her rifle in hands with alabaster knuckles.
"Sir?" she breathed.
"Lugger, we may have to do some shooting soon," Valentine said in an undertone, trying not to alarm the unsettled civilians. "Where's a good spot for it?"
Her eyes wandered skyward in thought. "There's an old barn we used to use on patrol. West of here, more like northwest, I reckon. Concrete foundation, and the loft's in good shape."
"How long to get there?"
"Under an hour, sir, even with them," she said, jerking her chin toward the huddled families. Their yellow overalls now looked bluish in the darkness. Valentine nodded encouragement.
"Solid foundation," she repeated. "And a big water trough. We used to keep it filled with a rain catcher."
Make a decision.
"No help in that direction. Mallow's more to the east, but it will have to do," Valentine said. Mallow, the senior lieutenant of Zulu Company, had remained in the borderlands with a cache of supplies to help them make it the rest of the way to the OzarkFreeTerritory. He considered something else. "Think you could find the rendezvous at night?"
"God willing, sir," she responded after a moment's cogitation.
"Take a spare canteen and run. Ask Mallow to come with everything he can."
"Yes, sir. But I don't need my gun to keep me company. I think you'll need every bullet you got before morning," she said, unslinging her rifle.
Valentine nodded. "Let's not waste time. Tell Patel where to go; then run for our lives."
Lugger handed her rifle to the senior aspirant, spoke briefly to Patel and the scouts, then disappeared into the darkness. Valentine listened with hard ears to her fading footfalls, as fast as his beating heart, and thought, Please, Mallow, for God's sake forget about the supplies and come quick.