"If you want some companionship, just look for one of the gal's tents with a paper lantern out front. They get food, washwater and protection as long as they're willing to share the bed once in a while. Sort of a fringe benefit of this outfit."
"Does this 'outfit' ever fight a battle?"
"We do a lot of raiding. General has us grab the new currency they're using here; we use it to buy some of the stuff we need from smugglers."
"Sounds more like banditry. Do you get overflown?"
"If the gargoyles come overhead, they only see a few fires. We don't try'n knock 'em out of the sky. We figure they just think there're refugees up here. We're far enough from Fort Scott so's they don't care, and the folks on the east side of the mountains have enough to do just controlling the flatlands."
"Many refugees?"
"No, unless they're Southern Command we send 'em elsewhere."
"Where's that?"
"Anywhere but here. That's part of what we were doing when I came across you and the boy and the Grog, keeping an eye out for runaways to warn 'em off. We got these higher hills around to cut the lifesign, but you never know when a Reaper'll be trailing along behind some broke-dicks to see where they're headed."
Voices rose to an excited roar from an opening in the trees, and Valentine's hand went to his pistol.
"Get him, Greggins!" someone shouted.
Finner shrugged. "Sounds like a fight. Interested?"
Valentine scowled and followed Finner downhill to a ring of men. Someone came running with a burning firework. In its blue-white glare he saw forty or fifty men in a circle, expanding and contracting around the action in the center like a sphincter. Valentine heard thudding fists, punctuated by roars from the crowd when an especially good blow was struck. He saw a few women among the men, some on top of the men's shoulders angling for a better view.
Instincts took over, even in the unknown camp. He elbowed his way through the press. "Make a hole!" he growled, then realized that Coastal Marine slang didn't mean much in the Ozarks. The crowd surged back around him and Valentine found himself with the back of one of the combatants sagging against him.
"No fair, that guy's holding him up," someone shouted.
A bloody-browed Guard corporal looked at Valentine over his scuffed knuckles. "Pull off, mister, otherwise he can't go down."
Valentine turned the soldier sagging against him, saw the bruised ruin of a face, then let go his grip. The man sagged to his knees, mumbling something in Spanish.
"Knees ain't down. Finish him, Greggins!"
The corporal stepped forward, corded muscles bulging from his rolled-up sleeves.
Valentine held up a hand. "It's over, Corporal. I'd say you won."
"What're you, his manager? Fight's not over until he's flat. He questioned my authority."
Valentine looked at the beaten man's uniform. "I see sergeant's stripes on him, Corporal. If I were you I'd be worried about a court-martial for striking your superior. Even if he were a private, a fistfight isn't the way we keep discipline."
Something in Valentine's voice made the man lower his fists.
"Now help him to his feet and get him to a medic. Better have him look at you as well. That eye doesn't look good."
The corporal took a step forward, then lashed out with a roundhouse. Valentine was ready for it, and slipped under the blow. He brought a driving knee up into the corporal's off-balance stance, and hammered him in the kidney with an elbow as the corporal doubled over. The corporal dropped, his mouth open in a silent scream.
Valentine looked at the circled men, not quite sure what they had seen in the blur of motion. "This how you do things now? Is there a sergeant in this circus?"
A man with a handlebar mustache stepped forward. "I'm a captain, Eighteenth Guards, East Texas Heavy Weapons. Who are you?"
"He's logistics, just come outta Texas, Randolph," Finner said.
"Don't see a uniform."
"I find my duties in the Kurian Zone easier to perform if I don't wear a Southern Command uniform, Captain." Valentine said, and a few of the men chuckled.