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The old Jackson Purchase, Kentucky, November of the fifty-fifth year of the Kurian Order: Su on the sidelines as though waiting to determine a winner

Gloriously warhts of thick dew and fogs The trees cling to their leaves like bony old worowth rereen or brown

A line cuts through the growth, tragest trees A stranger to Kentucky of this era e, but to natives the furrow is instantly recognizable as a legworm trail

Capable of eating their way across country at a steady threethat if the riders chain the jaws and scythes shut and prod theiant yellow caterpillarlike creatures provide a ride s the broken-up state of many of Kentucky's roads, cracked when the New Madrid fault went in 2022 and exploited by neth

The trail ends at a camp

The torhtly as their seg allows One would al as prosaic as happiness or its antonylass attic insulation than this late in the year, when neinter growth turns the outer layer into tufts and tatters

Each of the worms bears a pair of curious wooden yokes across its back, projecting fro ship Each pair supports full ha wounded li those in the hammocks under the supervision of a blue-unifor spent the day walking up and down the back of the beast with the practiced air of a circus perfor a hook into a fleshy yellow tuft to drop down and check on a patient, offer water, or adjust a towel hanging so as to keep the sun out of the wounded soldier's eyes

The rest of the cauard cooks, bakes, or sleeps dead-deep and dirty There's always too much to do in a hospital train

A thin strip of woodland and a slug-shaped ures lies on their bellies just below the crest of one of the low rolling hills of this quarter of Kentucky where it falls off toward the Mississippi River Their prone bodies are pointed, like a pair of compass needles, at another camp, smaller in numbers but more spread out in size-a careless ca one another's sanization or security

The watchers are h it is hard to tell by their hair or apparel If observed froht be mistaken for a couple of dropped bundles of laundry The fe brown overcoat is so patched that the fabric takes the appearance of a cae of knife-cut red hair can just beeyes of a pair of er, leaner coear He's clad in an odd fusion of weaponry, pebbly leather, and slate gray uniforht wear, with thick padded knees and elbows He's worn-looking from scarred face to pocked and scratched bootheels In contrast, clean and silky black hair covers the back of his head in a luxurious fall down to his shoulders

Her binoculars sweep from campfire to sentry, from thick-tired four-wheel vehicle to tent to trailer She's counting, assessing, calculating risk and threat potential

His unassisted eyes reures in the center of camp They're neither tied nor restrained; instead they sit behind a staked-out square of construction pegs and red twine, eating hockey puck-sized biscuits the color of gravel from a freshly opened box Mothers have mashed and soaked them in water for their children; the others either break up the rations with fingers or bite into the on the condition of their teeth One of the stronger captives, a hulk with a pair of gloves over his ears serving as elephantine earmuffs, wrestles a heel of bread frouards do nothing to intervene It's gone all too soon, save for a few biscuits given up by the older speci to the mothers and children

It's hard to tell exactly what the watching ; he keeps his face a carefulmore than his companion as he watches the huddled captives try to feed their children

David Valentine suspected his eyes were glittering red in the dark, like eyes reflecting a caht vision he'd had ever since becoift of huainst the Kurians, but a double-edged one While his pupils could open as wide as if under a pharht in to the sensitive, and multiplied, rod-shaped cells beneath, that also left hilare and color vision that was a little off from what most people experienced

Though the tears interfered with his vision, Lifeweaver-improved or not