Owensboro, December: Kentucky's third largest city, though a little smaller than nearby Evansville, has a vaguely Bohemian air to it. Long a riverfront town, Owensboro had its moments of fame: Its courthouse was burned by Confederate raiders during the Civil War, and once, at the turn of the twenthieth century, it had been shaping up to be one of the pivot points of the new automobile industry before being eclipsed by Ford in Detroit. It was also notable for being the site of the last public hanging in the United States, that of Rainey Bethea for the rape and murder of a septuagenarian named Lischa Edwards in the 1930s.

If Lexington is more bustling thanks to its status as a transport hub linking the Georgia Control and the rest of the middle and deep south Kurian Zones with the Ordnance and others to the north, and Louisville more industrious because of the huge legworm-rendering plants that turn quasi-insectoid flesh and a corn syrup sauce into WHAM!, Owensboro is proud of its cultural heritage. It prides itself on barbecue and bluegrass and, even in the reduced circumstances of the Kurian era, still manages to hold a few festivals a year dedicated to food and drink.

Now it is a popular watering hole for wealthy members of the Northwest Ordnance visiting from their vast homes and ranches in the delightful hills of southern Kentucky and the bluegrass outside Louisville. They enjoy the nominally illicit thrill of a visit across the river to dine and shop. The backdoor and under-the-table nature of the commerce along Owensboro's main street is the sizzle for goods that are often counterfeit, courtesy of the wily Kentuckians. The "Greek" olive oil is from Georgia, the "Colombian" coffee from Alabama, and the "Swiss" chocolate could be bought ten times cheaper in Pennsylvania. The gold in the quarter bars allegedly taken from Fort Knox is real enough; the identifying stamps aren't.

The bourbon, musical instruments, and barbecue sauce is real, however, as is the Kentucky weed. For some reason, plants that have been grown from seeds that passed through the digestive tract of a legworm are considered more valuable.

The giant sassafras tree-according to the locals the largest in the world-is still standing. It was recently the site of another public hanging, that of one of the Moondaggers from the nearby power plant who'd gone over the fence only to be run down by the city's impromptu militia, mobilized to render aid to Southern Command in the return of their plant workers.

The city is quieter than usual this December. Though often subdued in the winter, this time around the city is in lockdown. It's not the troubles at the power plant, or the revolt in Evansville, or the proximity of the forces of Southern Command that has closed the bridge and wharf to Kurian Order traffic. It is the great groups of strangers of all varieties coming in, from long-haired legworm ranchers to statuesque urbane females with gleaming leather courier bags and attractive wool suits.

There's a good deal of speculation about who the strangers are. The locals, for all their guitar picking and hurdy-gurdy cranking and trucks with smuggling compartments over the axles, are keener observers of Kentucky politics than it might seem. They suspect that they're playing host to the Kentucky Assembly but are willing to let history be made before they start talking about it in the main street's many cafes and bandstand joints.

The Crucible Legion, as it was now being styled, had its first field operation providing security on the streets of Owensboro. Valentine had a standing order to put anyone who called it "Valentine's Legion" to work filling potholes, and it didn't take many days of punishment with wheelbarrow and shovel before the name disappeared.

Both the informal name and the formal request to go to Owensboro had come through Brother Mark, who'd decamped without a moment's rest to the Assembly at Elizabethtown and engineered its move to Owensboro.

Valentine and Lambert allocated two companies to the security detail, one to provide a presence on the streets in town and a second in reserve just to the west, ready to move to the west bridge or travel on the Owensboro bypass as needed. Valentine gave the street detail's command to Ediyak, and Patel's company had the reserve duty. Ediyak had an intelligent charm about her that would mix well with civilians, and Patel could be relied upon to get his men from A to B in a hurry if it became necessary.

Valentine had little to do but get to know the town and keep his men from talking too much in the bars or being too high profile on the streets. The soldiers of the legion had the unusual orders to keep out of the establishments of the downtown they were guarding.

He felt odd patrolling a town not in Southern Command control, but as the Owensboro Emergency Council explained it, the delegates didn't trust some of the hotheads in the more vociferous clans not to try to storm the convention center and force the vote their way at gunpoint.

While the forces of Southern Command couldn't be called "neutrals" in Kentucky politics, they were famous for letting the civilians carry out votes without anything more than a soldier's fatalistic interest in the events of elected officials.

All Valentine's soldiers could do was provide an illusion of security. They stood in pairs and trios on the street corners and walked through the old town square and along the rusted, broken river walk. But if a file of Northwest Ordnance gunboats came chugging down the Ohio, all they could do was point the delegates to their designated bombproofs.

Of course, an illusion could be a powerful thing, as Valentine had learned at substantial pain in the Kurian Zone.

Owensboro had a police force, of sorts, who appeared to have one law for the town's residents and another for strangers and transients. Valentine had to keep in the good graces of the local police captain, his deputies, and his "detectives"-who, as far as Valentine could tell, were in charge of extorting money from the shadier local establishments.

The Kentucky Assembly met at the waterfront conference center that played host to Owensboro's famous flea markets. Instead of socks and shoelaces and genuine Japanese electric razors, they traded votes during the day and drinks at night.

Valentine set up his command post in the old town welcome center right on the main street, with a good view of his observation post on the old severed bridge over the Ohio that ran into the center of town. The welcome center had become a sort of lounge for restaurant and accommodation touts and cabdrivers. The touts and drivers were so busy with the Kentucky Assembly in town, they had no need of a place to sit out of the weather and swap lies about their clients, and Valentine had moved in without any protest.

Brother Mark came in on a coal train with a few other delegates, including Tikka, now dressed in an impressive mix of cotton, legworm leather, and riding boots that made Valentine think of a dashing flying ace of the First World War. She looked Valentine levelly in the eye and shook his hand before excusing herself.

"That bright young woman's building an army for Kentucky. Or an Army of Kentucky, though they haven't settled on a name," Brother Mark said in admiration.

"I hope word doesn't get out."

"Kentucky is turning into the proverbial tar baby for the Kurian Order," Brother Mark bubbled. Valentine wondered if he was drunk. Perhaps it was the stimulation of so much social intercourse, running from faction to faction, picking up on the queer electrical currents that run through political assemblies. "They're like Br'er Fox, getting stuck in the tar."

"I think the version I heard had Br'er Rabbit getting stuck. Br'er Fox wins one for a change," Valentine said.

"Well, either way the analogy is sound. Every time the Kurians try to attack Kentucky, they only get themselves stuck in worse trouble. They sent the Moondaggers in after us, and they perpetrated outrages against a people that tend to pick up their guns and let the lead fly until the point of honor is settled. Just when matters were beginning to calm down, they tried their gambit at the power plant. Now all of Kentucky is talking about that over their back fences and cracker barrels."

"I've yet to see a cracker barrel my whole time in Kentucky," Valentine said. Brother Mark had a city man's habit of cornpone cliches to make his points about the rural folks.

"Yes, yes, well, you know what I mean. But they're stuck in worse now. The bombing of Elizabethtown is another example. It united the delegates just as it chased them out of the city. Half were ready to break off and go home until the bombs started falling."

"And delivered them right into our lap," Valentine said.

"You're a victim of your own success, my daring Valentine," Brother Mark said. "All Elizabethtown spoke of the way you handled the power plant difficulty, and that smothered the idea of moving to Bowling Green or Danville. When planes hit the conference center unexpectedly again in a night raid, they decided to relocate in secret to Owensboro. We picked up two more legworm clans and several of the towns in the south. The only major hold-outs are the towns in the Cincinnati-Louisville-Lexington triangle, but you can hardly blame them, practically in the shadow of all those Kurian towers."

There was still a pretense of an assembly going on in Elizabethtown, complete with press notices. A radio broadcaster calling himself Dr. Samuel Johnson-Valentine had no idea if that was his real name or not, but he felt as though he should know the name-continued to report jumbled details and play recorded interviews allegedly obtained in Elizabethtown over what was probably Free Kentucky's only computer-telephone line hookup. Of course Kurian agents were hunting all around Elizabethtown for the site of the assembly, probably so it could be targeted for bombing again, but for now the decampment to Owensboro and the new swearing in of delegates at the high school basketball court had remained a secret.

They kept an "underground special" radio in Valentine's city headquarters for listening to Dr. Johnson's daily report. Valentine, who was right in Owensboro with the Assembly meeting only around the corner from him, knew more about how the debate was progressing from a transmitter in Elizabethtown than he did from local reports.

Odd world. But he'd noted that before.

There didn't seem to be much for his security team to do. In the end, his one great contribution was to take Pencil Boelnitz off the hands of the Assembly security team. He snuck into the Assembly once, was warned off, and was escorted out. When he got in again the very same day, the Assembly sergeant at arms demanded that he never see Boelnitz's classic profile again.

Valentine had the journalist put under guard and walked back to Fort Seng.

Even Brother Mark wouldn't update Valentine on the real progress of the debate. Valentine plied him with food and had Ediyak cut and style his hair-strange duty for someone with captain's bars, but she was as curious as Valentine about the progress of the debate and was willing to play sort of a Mata Hari with comb and straight razor.

"Sworn to secrecy, I'm afraid," Brother Mark said, wincing at the amount of gray exposed at his temples. "Everyone's afraid of an opinion getting back to the Kurians. There's a rule, until the actual Assembly vote, that none of the voting on motions and so on is to be recorded or reported."

"But Dr. Johnson's sources keep giving him a 'sense of the Assembly, ' " Ediyak said, applying a little Macassar oil (Owensboro style-probably cooking oil with a little dye).

"Dr. Johnson is not necessarily accurate in his reports," Brother Mark said. "Remember, he's also reporting that they're meeting in an 'undisclosed location outside Elizabethtown.' "

"Well, that's true after a fashion," Valentine said. "About eighty miles outside Elizabethtown."

"Why didn't they do this last summer?" Ediyak asked.

"Karas was operating on his own hook with his own allied clans," Brother Mark said. "But some of Kentucky supported him and started putting together a democratic assembly, on paper at least. The Assembly is almost feudal, going back to the traditions of the Magna Carta. This is a collection of powerful and influential men and women. Kentucky's nobility, you might say."

"You wouldn't know it by how they're spending in town," Ediyak said.

"They're afraid to show their faces. If you see a man hurrying down the street with his collar turned up and his hat pulled down, I guarantee that's an Assembly member."

Brother Mark was willing to brief them on general parameters of the debate. There were three broad factions in the Assembly, the Old Deal Caucus, the Militant Independents, and the All-Ins. According to Brother Mark, the future of Kentucky would be determined by which way the Militant Independents voted.

"Hard to say what'll tip the balance," Brother Mark said. "The Kurians seem to have finally figured out that threatening Kentucky is causing more problems than it's solved."

The debate was raging among the people as well. Dr. Johnson, when he had no news to report, read letters and notes from a few phone calls and even news reports from overseas. Of course there was no knowing just how much the good doctor was editorializ ing, but the vast majority of the messages he read were in favor of Kentucky declaring itself against the Kurians, though there were mixed feelings about whether they should join the United Free Republics or no.

The United Free Republics, as it turned out, suddenly developed a diplomatic interest in the situation in Kentucky.

A civilian of Valentine's acquaintance named Sime arrived with more than a dozen security men and aides dressed in the ordinary buttoned, collarless shirts and denims, corduroys, and mole-skins of the Kentuckians.

Valentine could only gape at the motorcade. He hadn't seen vehicles like this since driving Fran Paoli's big Lincoln out of the Ordnance on Halloween night. The one at the front was marred by a big brush cutter. The passenger van at the rear bore a medical red cross. All were excessively dirty, however.

Sime checked in at Valentine's security office on a blustery afternoon. At the moment, Valentine didn't have anything but oatmeal and hot apple cider to serve his elegant visitor.

Valentine wasn't sure how he felt about Sime. In some ways they were similar: in age, melting-pot heritage-Sime a dark chocolate and Valentine a native bronze-and general height and build. There were contrasts: Sime was smooth-skinned, Valentine scarred; Sime bald, Valentine long-haired. Valentine found Sime's usual scent of sandalwood and gentleman's talc appealing.

More important, every time Valentine became involved with Sime, Valentine seemed to end up in deeper difficulty. Now Sime was giving him the additional headache of keeping tabs on one of Southern Command's bigger political bugs.

Sime idled in the lobby, after requesting the Kentuckians for an opportunity to speak on behalf of Southern Command. Perhaps for power-play reasons of their own, the Assembly put him off for a day.

"You wouldn't have a shower in here somewhere?" Sime asked Valentine. He had an entourage of sixteen, personal security types and drivers and communication staff.

"There's hot water in the washroom. Best I can do. You're going to have difficulty finding accommodations in town, unless you want to squat in a rat run or take charity. You're welcome to stay on base, but it's a two-hour drive to Fort Seng."

"We can sleep in the vehicles. They're rigged for it."

"I don't suppose they're rigged to carry medical goods and antibiotics. We could really use some."

"Yes, we'll spare what we can. I've brought you the latest ravies vaccine too."

"New strain loose?"

"You'll have to ask the doctor. I believe it's just this year's booster," Sime said.

"We could really use a doctor at the post."

Sime pursed his lips, and Valentine knew the man well enough to know when his patience was wearing thin. "I thought you had support from Evansville."

"It's a small manufacturing city, and even that's not much good without raw materials. I don't want to strip the town of what little they have for their own people. And it helps to have a doctor who has to obey orders."

"Personnel isn't my specialty. Remember, I'm not here to support your guerrillas or legion etrangere or whatever you're running here."

"What are you going to tell the Assembly?" Valentine asked.

"What do you think I'll tell them?" Sime asked.

"A rousing speech promising the friendship of the Free Republics, as long as that friendship doesn't get measured in bootheels over the river," Valentine said.

Sime had a good poker face. No tells gave away whether he was angered or amused. "I may just surprise you. I hope you come and hear it."

"I'm afraid they won't let me in."

The lips tightened again. "The man handling security for the town? I'll see what I can do."

"Seems to me everything you've been involved in has been a disaster for Southern Command," Valentine said. Sime's smooth exterior made Valentine want to stick a pin in him just to see if he would pop. "Kansas, Javelin . . . what about the offensive in the Rio Grande Valley? Your handiwork too?"

"You earned your dislike, Valentine. Maybe one of these days you'll grow up and realize I'm in the same fight as you. I can't swing a blade and I shoot like a cross-eyed man and I'd be dead in a week if I had to eat preserved ration concentrate and WHAM! But I know people and I can read my audience."

"Bet that comes in handy when a Reaper tears the roof off your house."

"Maybe I'm better equipped for fighting the kind of battles the Kurians wage. They don't put-what's that phrase?-shit on target. They'd rather make their target give up and go home, or do a deal that swaps a few lives, a few towns, for a generation's security."

He stared at Valentine. Valentine recognized the challenge and tried to meet his eyes, held them for a long moment, and then found an old lighting fixture over Sime's shoulder suddenly of great interest.

Perhaps he had been unfair to Sime.

"Like you, I'm ready to make sacrifices for victory," Sime continued. "I was ready to give you up to get Kansas. And if I could trade your life for a different outcome in Kansas, I would, like a shot."

"The feeling's mutual."

"Would you, now, if it came to it?" Sime said. "If you could get the high country of Kansas back for us by just putting that pistol to my head and squeezing the trigger, would you?"

Valentine took his hand away from his belt and crossed his arms.

"It's never that easy," Valentine said.

"Your father would have."

"You knew him?"

"Not firsthand. But I know the history. He was what we called a plantation burner. Left a lot of scorched earth-and scorched bodies-behind. But it made the Kurians pull out of most of Missouri. I won't argue the results. I'm sorry if he told you different, but that's the truth of the matter."

"He never told me anything at all."

"You a fan of football, Valentine?"

"I know the basics, but I never had much time to follow it."

"I'm a big fan. We have some fair mud leagues running the spine from Little Rock to Texarkana. I'm a Buzzsaw man, myself."

Valentine had overheard enough sports talk to be conversant. "I've heard of them. I think they won the championship a few years back."

"Two seasons ago. Every good team needs what I like to call a hatchet. With the Buzzsaws, it's a linebacker. It's the crazy mean player, the guy who puts people down for a game or two. So instead of covering assignments, the opposing team's eyeing the hatchet, wondering who's going to be broken next. Bad sportsmanship? Maybe. But I've learned something before I started shaving my gray hairs. Most good organizations have a hatchet or two to do the dirty work."

"I see."

"You'd make a pretty good hatchet. You have the right name, anyway, thanks to your father's, well, fierce reputation."

Valentine shrugged. The gesture made him feel like a hypocrite-a shrug from a subordinate always annoyed him-but he was only too happy to use it himself with the slippery Sime. "I always thought of myself as more of a screwdriver. Always being used for jobs other than the one I'm designed to do."

Sime was good to his word. An Assembly ID showed up for Valentine the next day. Though he had to report to the Assembly's own sergeant at arms to get his picture taken with a Polaroid and have a card made.

The Assembly itself was run by the Agenda. That office was held by a woman, thin and wan and brittle-haired; she looked like a cancer victim. Brother Mark introduced Valentine to her. She greeted him gravely, made a polite mention of the power plant and said she hoped Kentucky would support his command in the manner of allies who'd bled together, and then she moved on to other business.

Her handshake was a frail one.

"You are no doubt wondering," Brother Mark said. "Some kind of cancer, but it's not public knowledge. She's doing her best to get through the Assembly before it claims her."

"Brave woman."

"From a great old family in Lexington," Brother Mark said. "Our good Agenda believes that however this goes, the Kurian Order is going to extract their revenge on whoever leads the Assembly. She intends to die quietly this winter and deny them the satisfaction."

Once the formalities were taken care of, Brother Mark showed him around the pre-22, poorly lit convention hall, which smelled like musty carpet and popcorn to Valentine's sensitive nose. A lectern platform stood at one end, with most of the folding chairs around more-or-less arranged to face it. On the platform was a lectern with its own podium and a small desk just above a discreetly placed recorder's station.

The Kentuckians, a smattering of representatives from the Evansville area, and even a delegation from the rebels in West Virginia-he'd hoped Ahn-Kha would be among them but the golden Grog would have stood out among the men like an elk in a goat herd-had gathered into three distinct groups.

As Brother Mark explained it, the biggest faction in the room was the Militant Independents. A mixture of legworm clans and burghers, these Kentuckians believed that Kentucky now stood in a position of strength to negotiate with the Northwest Ordnance north of the Ohio and the Tennessee Kurians and the Georgia Control to the south. They had a provisional charter drawn up that declared Kentucky a self-governing territory with a promise not to engage in operations outside its old United States borders, nor to shelter fugitives or guerrillas.

"The fugitive law is the real sticking point," Brother Mark said. "Almost everyone in the legworm clan has a relative or an in-law who fled the Kurian Zone. They'd be grandfathered in, of course, but there's sympathy for escapees."

"How do they know the Kurians will go along with it?"

"I suspect there's already been some back-and-forth. Rumor has it a top-brass ring fixer has been negotiating in Louisville."

Valentine had heard of "fixers" before: trusted human interme diaries who handled difficulties between the various Kurian Zones. Without their intervention, the Kurians would eliminate each other in the snake-pit world of high-level Kurian politicking.

Was there a conference going on in, say, Chicago or Cleveland or Atlanta, with Kurian representatives meeting to determine what to do about the chaos in Kentucky? He hoped some stealthy Cat had managed to worm her way in to listen. Or better yet, plant a thermobaric bomb.

Next in size among the groups at the Assembly was the All-Ins. These delegates represented the legworm clans gathered under "King" Karas last summer for Javelin and their supporting towns, the thinned-down remainders of the Kentucky Alliance who'd done much of the fighting in the destruction of the Moondaggers. They'd already beaten the Moondaggers and were expecting the other delegates to join them in a rebellion well-started, to their minds.

The Old Deal Caucus was the smallest contingent but, not surprisingly, the most polished and best turned out. They represented Kentucky's Kurian-occupied cities and those with financial interests in the Kurian system. They had their chairs in a circle in the far east corner, mostly talking among themselves.

Of all the delegates, these men and women from the Old Deal Caucus may have been the most courageous, to Valentine's mind. Their lives, and probably those of their families, would be forfeit if the Kurians learned of their presence here. The more hard-line rebels considered them only a baby step away from being open collaborators, and Valentine's sharp ears picked up one of the All-Ins saying that they should hang the lot of them.

Whichever way the Assembly ultimately voted, Valentine suspected that these delegates would suffer the most.

Maybe it was just ego, the desire to show Valentine that there were victories to be won in the political arena as well as on the battlefield, but Sime had facilitated Valentine's credentialing on the day he was scheduled to address the Assembly on behalf of Southern Command.

Sime, looking like a walking advertising poster for skin toner, stepped to the podium as the Agenda introduced him from her little desk. Sime's aides had cleared away the Styrofoam cups and the scribble-covered scraps of provisional resolutions and vote-counts littering the podium and the stagelike platform. Much of the audience quieted-not just hushed voices and close-together heads, but true attention. Evidently all were interested in what he had to say.

"Thank you, Madam Agenda," Sime said.

"I come before you as a friend of liberty and an open enemy of the Kurian Order.

"This Assembly is now addressing the most vital question in human history. What is the future of our species?

"There are those who counsel for surrender. Certainly, deals may be struck with relative ease. Either the Northwest Ordnance or the Georgia Control would be happy to hand out a few brass rings, sign elaborate guarantees, and offer the usual Kurian promises of better food, housing, and medical care in exchange for the Kurian Order policing of criminals and troublemakers. Are there any voices who consider this their preferred option?"

The Assembly didn't produce so much as a cough. Had it been night, Valentine suspected he could have heard crickets outside.

"The next option is an understanding with the Kurians such as you lived under these past decades: the emasculated autonomy trading produce for peace before your martyred hero, Mr. King Karas, declared himself against our oppressors."

Several members stood up and began to applaud. Valentine recognized them as members of Sime's entourage, sprinkled about the assembly. The others who joined in on the recognition of the dead hero's name looked enthusiastic enough, but Valentine felt a little sickened by the planted enthusiasm.

Sime nodded solemnly, looking toward the circled chairs of the Old Deal Caucus. "The rightness of his decision, I think, is not questioned by anyone in this Assembly, even if the outcome was not all that we in the Free Republics hoped would come of our alliance.

"Are there any who think that all the blood shed across Kentucky between the Alliance clans and Southern Command's forces was wasted?"

"Madam Agenda," a delegate said, upon being recognized and permitted to speak. "The representative from through the woods and over the river forgets that Kentucky is more than just legworm ranchers. There are farms, mines, towns, and cities. Not all of us suffered reprisals. Even with the troubles up north, the Nashville Kur left us in peace, and the Georgia Control even pulled back from the borderlands."

A white-haired oldster cleared his throat. "Maybe the vamps don't know which way we're jumping, or even whether we're gonna jump, and they don't want to startle us. It's the sitting frog that's easiest to catch."

The Agenda pounded her gavel at her own small desk at the edge of the stagelike platform. "The delegate from Bowling Green will keep order."

Sime asked for permission to continue his address, and she nodded.

"There is a third alternative, one pursued by the Ozark Free Territory throughout its history, though we have recently been joined by Texas and much of Oklahoma and part of Kansas into the Free Republics. It is both the hardest and the easiest course: that of resistance.

"I say hardest because it means fighting, funerals, constant vigilance, loss of precious blood and materiel. Empty bellies in winter and blistered hands in summer. It has long been said that freedom is not free, but in the United Free Republics we've learned that those who desire freedom pay a bill more costly than the alternatives of supplication or cooperation. Freedom is a more exacting taskmaster than any Kurian Lord."

Sime had worked up a good head of steam. Valentine realized why he survived as elected leaders came and went. "Yet it is also the easiest choice, for we can meet the terrible reckoning with a clear conscience that we remain human beings, dignity intact, our births and deaths ordered only by our Lord on his Eternal Throne.

"We will not be chickens in a coop or pigs in a pen. No, we're the wolves in the forest, the bears in their caves, and those who would have pelts made from us must beware.

"While our cause is yours, I must tell you that for the moment, all that Southern Command can promise is that we will tie down as many of the enemy forces as we can on our borders. We've suffered grave losses recently. We need a few years' respite to catch our breath before taking the offensive again. All I can offer the Assembly is moral support and what our forces near Evansville are able to recruit and train."

The Assembly hid their feelings well, but Valentine could see consternation in the All-In faction.

They applauded, politely, and Valentine could only imagine the reception Sime would have received if he'd promised a whole division of Guards, complete with an artillery train and armored-car support.

"I'm glad you didn't overpromise," Valentine said later as he and Sime watched Brother Mark go from group to group to exchange a few words with the faction leadership.

"It's the New Realism, Valentine."

"Putting 'new' in front of anything as tenuous as a word like 'realism' sounds like an excuse rather than a strategy."

"Nevertheless," Sime said coolly, "I have to work within the parameters of the possible, just as you do."

"And you agree with this New Realism?"

"Of course not. We can't beat the Kurians playing defense."

Either Sime was an unusually artful liar or he'd finally revealed something of himself beyond an official presence. "Something's been bothering me for years," Valentine said. "I hope you don't mind if I ask."

"Shoot," Sime said.

"I've met a lot of men who shave their skulls, but your head looks . . . polished. What's your secret?"

Sime's face broke into a wide smile. He flicked his forefinger down his nose. "I'll loan you my razor and we can go over to a washbasin-"

"On you it looks distinguished. I would look like a mental patient."

"If I let my real hair grow, I'd look much older. Be proud of yours. Not enough gray yet to dismay the twenty-year-olds."

"I never had luck with twenty-year-olds, even when I was twenty," Valentine said. "Where will you go next?"

"You know that joke the Denver Freehold tells about the UFR, don't you?" Sime asked.

"What's that?"

"Too near for a penal colony, too big for an insane asylum, and too fractious to be a nation. I heard a similar joke in the Mexican desert, just not so family friendly in language. I'll return to our insane penal colony nation."

"Can't say that I like you, sir. But I'm glad you're with the team," Valentine said.

"The feeling is mutual," Sime said. "By the way, did you enjoy that soap?" The first time they'd met, when Valentine was sitting in prison awaiting trial for the murder of some Quisling prisoners, he'd complimented Sime on the unique smell of his sandalwood soap. Sime had presented him with a supply before the launch of Javelin. Valentine found it's aroma relaxing, especially when worked into a fragrant lather in a steaming field-tub of water, and had used it frequently during the retreat whenever they paused long enough for a hot bath.

"Sadly, yes. Used it up last summer."

"I've a spare bar. I'll drop it by your fort on the way out. Oh, I'm taking Moytana back with me. The new broom wants a large reserve of Wolves ready to be shifted at need, and Moytana's due for an important promotion. Besides, his replacement has arrived."

Rumor had it the Assembly would vote before the first day of winter. Valentine found a reason to hang about the convention hall, hoping to run into Brother Mark in one of his circuits.

Valentine enjoyed the late fall air, chill but sunny. It reminded him of the Octobers of his youth in Minnesota. He wondered if the chill was characteristic of Kentucky this time of year.

A rather decrepit legworm stood facing the river. It was bare of all baggage, of course. Even the heavy saddle chair had been stripped off, and sheets of plastic tarp protected the legworm from the wind. Battle pads were on the side facing the street, with VOTE FOR FREEDOM = VENGEANCE painted on the mattresslike panels in Day-Glo colors.

Valentine felt for the legworm. In cold weather, their instinct was to gather in big heaps, forming domes that warmed and protected their eggs as living nests.

This dilapidated old creature had hide hanging off every which way and looked clearly uncomfortable on asphalt, glistening probes out to smell the air.

Valentine marked an ancient plastic refuse container holding a mix of leaves and refuse, probably from the quick cleanup of the convention center. Valentine picked it up and dumped it under the legworm's front end.

Where was the legworm's pilot? He could at least feed his beast.

"Wonder which end is worse, sometimes," a delegate said as he puffed politely nearby on a cigarette.

The legworm happily sucked up the refuse. Paper would be digested as regularly as the crackling leaves.

Valentine looked down its torn, perforated side. Skin was falling away in patches from-

Nature abhors regularity, and something about the pattern on the legworm's side facing the building disturbed Valentine.

Valentine quit breathing, froze. Sixteen holes in the legworm's side. He lifted a piece of loose skin, saw stitching in the legworm's hide.

He looked around, kicked some more refuse under the legworm's nose. He marked rings around the light sensors that passed for eyes. The creature wasn't old; it was ill cared for and badly fed. It had clearly been ridden on very little feed recently.

The legworm's anchor detached with a casual press to the carabiner attaching the drag chains to the fire hydrant serving as a hitching post.

"You!" he called to the smoker on the corner of the main drag. "Get everyone back from this side of the building. This worm's a bomb!"

When is it set to go off ?

Valentine unsheathed his knife and prodded the creature in its sensitive underside.

Valentine crept along, keeping low in the gutter, moving the legworm along with shallow stabs. Clear fluid ran down the knife blade, making his hand sticky.

The legworm angled left, drawing away from the building as it slowly turned from the conference center, tracing a path as gradual a curve as an old highway on-ramp.

Duckwalking made his bad leg scream with pain. Valentine waited for the cataclysm that would snuff his life out like a candle in a blast of air.

The hungry legworm hit some of the overgrowth at the end of street. What had once been a pleasant river walk had largely collapsed into brush and small trees. The starving legworm settled into a hurried munch.

Valentine, launching off his good leg, used a saddle chain to swing up and over the beast and dashed for the convention center.

Whoever had spread the alarm didn't do a very good job. Several delegates, their ID cards whipped by the wind, ran out the doors on the worm's side.

"Not that way," Valentine yelled, waving them toward the main street.

Koosh! Koosh! Koosh! Koosh!

Valentine had his face in the pavement. Later, he was told by witnesses that some kind of charges had fired out of one side of the beast like cannons firing in an old pirate movie. Most of the charges fell in the Ohio, detonating in white fountains like a long series of dynamite fishing charges. Valentine, deafened, felt the patter of worm guts all around.

When the thunder stopped, he stood up. The worm had been opened messily, mostly in the direction of the river. Part of the northwest corner of the conference center looked like it had been struck by artillery fire.

Troops, police, and citizenry were running in from all directions. Valentine went to work getting help to the figures knocked off their feet or staggering around in a daze, turning chaos into order.

Valentine felt something squish and slip underfoot as he directed the confusion. He glanced down, expecting a brown smear of dog feces, and realized he was standing on a length of human intestine.

Incredibly, within a few hours of the blast the Assembly had reconvened.

"They are ready to vote," Brother Mark said. "They've excluded all non-Kentuckians from the Assembly."

Valentine saw the Evansville delegates decamp en masse for the beer halls and wine gardens of Owensboro-if you called a wood- paneled interior with a couple of potted palms a garden, that is.

"Which way do you think it'll go?" Valentine asked.

"Our, or rather, freedom's way, praise God. You know, that bomb ended up being ironic. It was obviously meant to blow the Assembly apart, but it ended up pulling them together. Another foot stuck well into mouth on the part of the Kurian Order. The one man killed was named Lucius F. B. Lincoln, by the way-a delegate from Paducah. A good name for today's entry into Kentucky history. He ended up doing more for the Cause by dying than we'll ever do, should we both live out our threescore and ten. The Assembly's all talking to each other again. I think they know those shaped charges would have torn through the Old Dealers or All-Ins without discriminating according to political belief."

"That's a hard way to put it," Valentine said.

"It's a hard world. I tell you, Valentine, that bomb couldn't have worked better if we planned it and one of our Cats had done it herself."

"You don't think we did, I hope," Valentine said.

"I don't know that we're that clever."

"I'd say ruthless," Valentine said.

"Oh, mass manipulation isn't all that hard," Brother Mark said. "I had whole seminars devoted to it. We're herd animals, Valentine. One good startle and we flock together. Then once you get us going, we all run in the same direction. There's a lot of power in a stampede, if you channel it properly."

"Perhaps. But it can also send your herd right off a cliff," Valentine said, "the way our ancestors used to hunt buffalo. Saved a lot of effort with spears and arrows."

"You're a curious creature, son. I can never make out whether you're a shepherd or a wolf."

"Black sheep," Valentine said.

"No, there's hunter in you."

Valentine nodded to some relief sentries, and said to them, "When the post has been turned over, head over to the diner and get some food. Kentucky is buying our meals, for once."

He turned back to the old churchman. "When I was inducted into the Wolves, the Lifeweaver warned me I'd never be the same. I'd be forever sundered from my fellow man, or words to that effect. I was too keen to get on with it to pay much attention."

"It's a bargain most of the men in your profession make, and it's a very, very old one. War changes a man, separates him from someone who hasn't seen it. You're both exalted and damned at the same time by the experience."

"What about you?" Valentine asked. "You've seen your share of fighting."

"Oh, I was damned before I saw my first battlefield."

Valentine was organizing his soldiers to block nonexistent traffic two blocks away from the convention center, using old rust buckets dragged into position as roadblocks.

Mr. Lincoln, the only man killed, had been running to jump in the river when the charges in the legworm went off. There was some bickering when his underage daughter, who had accompanied him to the Assembly, was given his place in the voting. Some said her sobs swayed a few critical votes.

He heard the commotion, the yells and firearms being discharged after the vote was tallied.

Some security. There weren't supposed to be firearms in the conference center. Well, Valentine's men were responsible for the streets; it was the sergeant at arms of the Assembly who'd been negligent. That, or after the bomb attack, they'd allowed the delegates to arm themselves.

Valentine sent a detail under a formidably tall Texan to get the delegates to unload their pieces and opened up a line of communication to Lambert at Fort Seng, which could radio relay to Southern Command.

Tikka herself was the first out of the convention center. She had a red streamer tied to the barrel of her rifle. The streamer matched the flame in her eyes.

"The vote was 139 to 31!" she said, leaping into Valentine's arms and wrapping her hard-muscled legs around his back. Her lips were hot and vital. "Five blanks in protest," she said when she was finished kissing him. "Cowards."

"For the Cause?" Valentine asked.

"I wouldn't have run otherwise," she said. "I want to fuck, to celebrate. You had a hand in this."

"That's all I can afford to put in at the moment. I'm on duty."

"Isn't part of your duty to maintain close contact with your Kentucky allies?"

"The closest kind of cooperation," Valentine said. "But we've just had a bomb explode, and no one seems to have any idea who brought a forty-foot legworm into town and how it was parked next to the Assembly."

She slipped off. "Too bad. May I use your radio? I want to communicate with my command."

Energetic Tikka. Denied one piece of equipment, she'll requisition another.

Valentine nodded and led her to his radio operator. Tikka almost bodychecked him out of his chair in her eagerness to put the headset on. Valentine knew he should really get it confirmed and look at an official roll count for his own report, but he trusted Tikka.

Valentine noted the time and vote on his duty log, and carefully covered the page so the cheap pencil (taken from the narthex of a New Universal Church, where lots are available to write "confessions," which were, in practice, accusations against a relative or neighbor) wouldn't smear. You never know what might end up in some museum case.

"Yes," Tikka said over the radio. "Put Warfoot into effect and open up the training camps." She pressed her earpiece to her head. "Oh, that's a big affirmative. Couldn't have gone better. Lost one delegate, but every cause needs a martyr."

Valentine, when he later considered her words over the radio, wondered just how large a role Tikka had in Mr. Lincoln's martyrdom. He hoped Tikka was just being her usual, brutally direct self. What he'd seen of the birth of the Kentucky Freehold was bloody enough, without adding deliberate political murder to the tally.