Nail was a pigeon-chested Bear with long, sun-lightened blond hair, wearing captain's bars. Nail had been promoted after the fight on Big Rock Mountain, and was the leader of the toughest soldiers in the Razors . . . and probably Texas, in Valentine's opinion-and that meant the world, if you asked a Texan, but Valentine had learned not to argue with Texans in matters of regional pride.
"Ready? Send them forward now."
"No. I'm going to have a talk with them first."
"It's your aura, Val."
Ahn-Kha lifted his improvised cannon. "I'll go along, my David."
Valentine looked around, and pointed to a scrawny, fuzzy-cheeked Razor. "You come too, Appley."
"Yes, sir," young Appley said, uncomprehending but conditioned to respond to orders.
Valentine passed the boy his order book. "If we get some kind of dialogue going, I want you to look like you're taking notes."
"You want me to write down what they say?"
"If you want. Write your mom if you want; I just want you writing when anybody is talking. Can do?"
"Can do!" Appley said. Major Valentine only offered a "can do" to key jobs, and it was the first time the boy had heard the phrase applied to him.
"Great. Follow a little behind."
Ahn-Kha walked beside him. "Why such a youngster?" the Golden One asked, speaking from the side of his mouth-an eerie-looking effort, thanks to his snout and rubbery lips.
"Would you use that boy in an ambush?" Valentine asked.
"Of course not."
"I hope the Kurians think that too."
When he figured he was close enough, Valentine stopped and looked around at his feet. The Kurian vessel reminded him now of a pill rather than a propane tank. Or perhaps a malformed watermelon; the "top" half was a bit bigger than the bottom. Some kind of bright blue sludge clung to the bottom.
"Reminds me of heartroot come to maturity in a drought," Ahn-Kha said. Heartroot was a mushroomlike Grog staple.
Valentine picked up a piece of shattered glass and threw it at the tank. It bounced off. Valentine noted that the blue sludge shrunk away from the vibration. Perhaps a Kurian? They were bluish on the rare instances when they appeared undisguised. But why would it be hiding outside the tank?
"Anyone home?" he yelled.
The blue sludge quivered, shifted up the faintly lined side of the tank vessel. The lines reminded Valentine of the nautical charts and plots he'd seen on the old Thunderbolt.
"I've come to negotiate your relocation from Texas," Valentine yelled. He looked over his shoulder; the boy was scribbling. He was also cross-eyed when looking at something up close and Valentine stifled a snicker.
The blue goop bulged, then parted. Valentine startled, and no longer had to fight off laughter when he recognized a Reaper emerging from the protoplasm. The two-meter-tall death machines were living organisms linked to their master Kurian, used in the messy, and sometimes dangerous, process of aura extraction. The Reaper fed off the victim's blood using a syringelike tongue, while the Kurian animating it absorbed what old Father Max had called aural energies. Others called it soul-sucking.
Is that how they make 'em?
The Reaper climbed out of the blue sludge and lifted its hood, pulling it far forward over its face to block out the sun. Sunlight didn't kill them, unfortunately, but it interfered with their senses and the connection with the master Kurian.
Valentine silently wished for one of Ahn-Kha's Quickwood spear points or crossbow bolts. Two years ago Valentine had brought a special kind of olive tree-like growth called Quickwood back from the Caribbean. It was lethal to Reapers, but had been consumed in the insurrection in the Ozarks known as Operation Archangel the previous year.
"Look, they shat out a Reaper," Valentine said. The kid laughed, a little too loudly.
Ahn-Kha raised his long gun just a fraction.
Valentine revised his estimate of the interior of the tank. At one Reaper per Kurian, there could only be a dozen or so Reapers inside the tank. The flexible, octopus-crossed-with-bat Kurians could squeeze into nooks and crannies, of course, but the impressively built Reapers could only be packed so tight. And all breathed oxygen. At one Reaper per Kurian-there was a theory that without at least one Reaper to supply it with aura, a Kurian starved to death- that meant a dozen Kurians. Others claimed, with little to back it up but speculation, that the Kurians could "bottle" aura to last until a new Reaper could be acquired. Still others said a Kurian could absorb aura through its touch, a "death grip."
Experience told Valentine that if the third were true, the Little Rock Kurian who had died under his fists hadn't managed it in the last few painful seconds of its life.