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The battlefield, August of the forty-third year of the Kurian Order: Burned-out ons fill the streets of Hazlett, Missouri Sos still stand, but of the wooden houses only stone chi as monuments to the homes that had been

A few soldiers still poke and rake a houses finally quenched by theweaponry and equipment lay in three heaps: destroyed, repairable, and intact Expert scroungers added to this leaned furtherwoods and the road back to Cairo, Illinois

The only bodies in evidence lay in neat, unshrouded rows lined up outside a wooden barn a half-mile outside the town proper, conveniently close to a water spring The ony out on pallets, old doors, and even hay bales, envied the corpses now past all suffering Two-ue and sht exhaustion and sepsis

The gravediggers adhered to their own priorities The first day after the battle, they put to rest the dead of Southern Command: Bears, Wolves, Guards, and Militia The second day, the dead Quislings were buried in a long co by the prisoners spared after the fall of Hazlett Finally on this day, the third after the battle, the gravediggers set alight a great pyre of Grogs, who shared the fla of firewood Exhausted froht and se decided to rest his detail before attending to the row of this &039;s bodies outside the field hospital The doctors couldn&039;t save everyone

Thus the miasma of burned flesh introduced Lt David Valentine to the tableau of a battlefield Three co Zulu, marched up from reserve near the southern border Sent to help deal with the incursion, they arrived too late to do anything but shake their heads at the destruction of the little town and join in the services held over the bodies of the slain

Chuckwagon tales told by the survivors of the Battle of Hazlett described a push into the valuabletowns of the area fros made a fortress of the little crossroads town, and only a concentration of every available Bear in eastern Missouri backed up by Wolves and a Guard regiht have been worse, but Valentine learned that a company of Wolves had a themselves to keep the road to Hazlett closed Out of a hundred Wolves, a bare sixteen now licked their wounds on the banks of the WhitewaterRiver

It was this destruction of Foxtrot Company that led Captain LeHavre, the senior Wolf officer in the area, to call Valentine into his tepee one afternoon Zulu Coain, as an incursion in the northeast er one in the southwest

Valentine wondered, as he answered the summons that afternoon, what the neould be LeHavre always hit his officers, whenever possible, with bitter s So an afternoon conference ht be a trail-mix assortment of sweet and sour

He found LeHavre by a co a cup of coffee with an unknown, clean-shaven Wolf

"David Valentine, eant Harper here is part of the Co eant, particularly on the Coer to be a lieutenant The courier had a lazy eye, which , but he wore a cheerful sree that Valentine liked hiht

"Pleased to meet you, sir," Harper said

"Valentine, you are going on a trip I need sos to accompany Harper here on a four-hundred-an, as a s of mail and one of dispatches, sir," Harper added

"Whya rebuke

"Noro, but as of these last few days, Foxtrot doesn&039;t exist anymore and probably won&039;t for another year or so There&039;s only acting-lieutenants in the junior position in the other two Wolf coh about them to pick one And you&039;re froht you&039;d like a trip back up I was going to send you up with Paul Sa sweeps, but this&039;ll be a better experience for you"

"Mounted or afoot, sir?"

"With a little luck, you&039;ll be mounted all the way Three horses plus a spare is what you have, right, Sergeant?"

"Yes, sir," Harper answered "The fourth will carry the mail and some oats Or if we lose one, it&039;ll be a re, sir?" Valentine asked "Who will that be?"

LeHavre patted Valentine on the shoulder "Take who you want, Valentine Except for Patel I need hi stretches anymore"

Valentine mentally ran down the list of Wolves in Zulu Company

"I&039;ll take Gonzalez, sir He has the best nose in the co bow"

"Take him with my compliments, Lieutenant Let ons haven&039;t caught up with us yet, but I can probably scrounge you up about anything Questions?"

The only questions that ca responsibility, so he remained silent

LeHavre finished his coffee "You two get together with Gonzalez and talk it through I know you&039;ve made the trip a couple of times, Harper, so tell as much about the route to the other two as you can, just in case You leave at dawn"

Harper accepted the possibility of his death, suggested by the just in case, with the sa, Gonzalez joined them in an informal camp-fire conference

"Seems like a lot of effort to deliver a few letters How often do you do this?" Gonzo asked

"Two or three times a year Southern Command tries to stay in touch with the other Resistance pockets, at least the big ones This is information we don&039;t want to broadcast on the shortwave That&039;s why if it looks like we&039;re going to be taken, you need to pour the fluid in the flasks onto the dispatches and burn &039;eoing to be too busy to start any fires, Sarge"

Valentine oing to be gone?"

"Depends on the horses, and then the sailors If we can co But there&039;s no guarantee the ship will be in WhitefishBay on time The Lakes Fleet has troubles of its own Luckily the Kurians don&039;t pay et too close to a city they care about We&039;ll just have to wait if they aren&039;t there"

"Ever had any proble the mail?" Valentine inquired

Harper&039;s smile returned "A few close shaves We should keep toward the Mississippi until the Wisconsin border or so About all you have to worry about there is border trash, but they&039;reWisconsin has the real Kurian lands we have to cross Their pet huood, and of course the Reapers farh central Illinois, but that&039;s thickly settled, and unless you have a death wish, you&039;ll want to keep away froo"

Valentine and Gonzalez bade farewell to their coloom LeHavre offered a final word of advice to his junior lieutenant

"Keep your eyes open, Mr Valentine," LeHavre said, soleh about what is happening in the Lost Lands Try and pick up any information you can, even if it&039;s just impressions"

"Thank you for the opportunity, sir"

LeHavre winced Howmen have you sent to their doom with those words on their lips? Valentine wondered

"You can thankback, David"

The three Wolvestheir heads in their eagerness to be off, and rode into theof the journey, they kept to the rough terrain of the MississippiValley They conserved the strength of horse and rider, walking theiroften On the second day, they crossed the Mississippi in a hollowed-out old houseboat, well carowth on its battered sides The trio of old Wolves who took thehed as they listened to the secondhand story of the Battle of Hazlett over the labored putting of the aged diesel engine

"That&039;ll learn &039;eht the houseboat out of its hidden cove and into the current at the "all clear" signal from his observer "Hank and I, we&039;ve been puttin&039; up signs all over the west bank for miles readin&039; &039;Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted&039; and &039;No Solicitors Invited," but theood"

Once in no-man&039;s-land, the Wolves traveled cautiously They caht spot, not when the sun set Daybreak never found theht Valentine ordered a cae of at least a half-mile, and lost sleep wasthe worst of the late summer heat They set no watch, but relied on their senses to rouse theer They always cooked theirbetter than to call attention to theht of a caht out, they were swapping life stories Valentine had heard Gonzalez&039;s before, but listened again to his scout&039;s words as he lay in his hammock under a cloud-masked moon

"I was born in Texas in 2041, out there in the western part My parents were part of a guerrilla band called the Screales, which my father told roup They used to do a war cry I would do it, but it&039;s too loud for these parts Too loud for the Ozarks, too I don&039;t reles stole cattle off the Turncoats That e called the Quislings out there Sometimes in the summer ent as far north as Kansas and Colorado, and in the winter ould be in Mexico

"I was about twelve when the Turncoats got us It was in Mexico We were in this kind of bowl-shaped valley, a few old buildings and tents, with the cattle all spread out They got some cannon up in the hills somehow, and pretty soon there were explosions everywhere, withdown froht them, but I&039;m sure he was killed with the rest There were just two passes out of the valley, but they had hundreds of uns hidden in the rocks I don&039;t think anyone ot me and ht up to us He attacked her, but I picked up his gun and shot hioing to shootas a football down on his head and killed hith to lift it; she was a sered a small silver crucifix around his neck

"We walked for days and would have died, but a rainstore An old ed for my mother to move into eastern Texas where his son lived My mother lived with his son and had a child with hih he was very good to us She gave hihters, but when I turned sixteen, she said, "Victor, you otten themselves and God" We heard rumors about a place in the o, and I found this place on my own, but I fear it went bad for my stepfather, who let me ran away But I know my madre still lives because I still live; her prayers protect me and keep me alive With what I have seen, I cannot pray as she does, so when she dies, I will die, too"

Valentine told his story next, leaving out the fact that his father had been a Wolf He described the cool beauty of the Boundary Waters&039; woods and lakes, and the challenge of living through a Minnesota winter

"I hadn&039;t seen an "I was born to a big family near FortScott My pa was an officer in the Guards, and he tried to keep me in school, but I wouldn&039;t have it Everyone made fun of this eye of mine; you kno kids are At nine, I tried to be an Aspirant, but they wouldn&039;t letout in Wolf camps whenever I could; my pa ay a lot, and my ma-Well, she had her hands full with the other children They let me become an Aspirant at thirteen, finally I was invoked when I was fifteen, and I was in the River They eant after all that I was a chaot put in the couriers I made a trip to the Gulf in &039;sixty-three, and did the run to Lake Michigan twice last year I crossed Tennessee this spring going to the Appalachians, and that&039;s the worst run I&039;ve ever been on Took me forever to find resistance people in the Smokies These trips should be run by just couriers, but we&039;ve lost soand another that Co why you showed up with two erateful of your coht ss, if you&039;ll excuseso, sir And Gonzalez-you, sir, have the lad you&039;re along to count the mouse farts, you know?"

Gonzalez proved just how good his hearing was so for a hen so the up behind," Gonzo reported "Haven&039;t caught sight of them yet, but you can hear theht on our trail or just keeping with the old road"

The three Wolves rode parallel to an old road, now overgrown but still too far from tall timber for their purposes Valentine debated the choices An ah to set up, but he balked at shooting down strangers in cold blood Anyone close enough for the Wolves to hear would probably have cut their trail by now and would know so trailed worried him

"Do you knoho lives around here?" he asked Harper

"This far off the river? A few far out here On other trips we&039;ve crossed the trails of pretty big groups on horseback I don&039;t like thinking worst case, but this is just the kind of area a pair of Reapers ht hunt"

"Yes, but they wouldn&039;t be on horseback And they wouldn&039;t ued As usual, someone else&039;s opinion helped hio up the bluffs If they&039;re casual travelers, they won&039;t follow If they coood look at e&039;re taking on before we start shooting"

With that, the Wolvesinto the wooded hills away frorown road Valentine removed his lever-action rifle fro up a steep slope, leaning far forward in their saddles to help the horses&039; balance

As they ascended the hill, Valentine searched right and left No rock pile or fallen trunk presented itself Valentine cursed his luck at riding for the one uneroded hill covered with uniformly healthy ti the summit, the Wolves at last found a deadfall they could hide behind The breeze blew fresh froh to whip at the horses&039; manes and make theand looped back; tracks heading straight for an aated more cautiously Valentine asked Harper-to hold the four horses out of sight behind the crest of the hill

Dismounted, eapons in hand, Valentine and Gonzalez walked back to the fallen log Gonzalez held an arrow to his bowstring With luck, the trackers had a single scout out front who could be silently dispatched with a feathered shaft

"Keep your bow ready, Gonzo," Valentine said in a low tone "I&039;et in that oak above our trail If there&039;s just two scouts, I&039;ll drop on one When you see me leap, try for the other with the bow If it&039;s three or four, I&039;ll let them ride past, and I&039;ll backshoot theo up the tree, sir"

"I&039;m not much with a bow, my friend I doubt I could hit a horse at this distance, let alone a rider Just stay cool and wait for nal"

Valentine scrarandfather oak He hugged the tree li a leafy branch toward his face for concealment Whoever the trackers were, they had four scouts ahead on horseback Valentine listened with hard ears past theroup of horses and ht, upwind to the west He smelled some tobacco, and cannabis, as well