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The Grog Auxiliaries: the Kurian Order keeps its place through its Church, police forces, riot squads, troops, and of course the Reapers Soht say the paperwork and permits of existence in the Kurian Zone is a for than the policeman on the street or the riot cop at his fire hose Fear has its role too

Of course, the Kurians so men to shoot down other ht the Grogs over through the Interworld Tree, telling the if they&039;d evict an indolent and degenerate infestation of scrawny huh where they expected to frighten and herd away the hu the confused, starving multitudes in a few devastated areas had reported) they found resistance But Grogs take to new modalities of warfare like ducks to different-sized bodies of water, and soon modified human weapons for their own use

The Gray Baron&039;s "Missouri Division" is a recent construct The Grogs in central Missouri now recognize no law but their own, and are quite happy to raid north, south, east, or west-and the rich lands of Iowa have valuable cattle and sorth stealing Starting with nothing but a starving, co-opted Western Missouri clan of Grogs known as the Wrist-Rings, he built the band over the course of a decade, absorbing bands of Grogs along the Missouri Valley with pro

He kept that promise His warriors enjoy an enviable lifestyle, only chieftains south of the river live in the hter As for the clan chiefs, soods, so much wealth and wives and slaves do they have at their cos and their hu selected and bred What plans the Gray Baron has for them perhaps not even his human lieutenants may say

Valentine wondered if Snake Arms&039;s comment was a plant, tothe Gray Baron

If he hadn&039;t seen him in his command car, Valentine would have suspected the Gray Baron was a creation, a boogeys and soldiers in line

Ahn-Kha was true to his word, as always Two nights later Valentine oken by the discreet scratch of Patches The ratbit had a little pack lass case, and in it was a pad and paper

Valentine had spent so about the vulnerabilities of the Baron&039;s hue, he just passed word of the supplies he needed theht not be able to spare guns, but they had plenty to eat and drink

Valentine puzzled out why there were no Grog overseers Men ordered, and sos did the same for and to their own kind

He had plenty of tiht, under the orders and the implied threat of short whip, knotted rope, or crop in the hands of some ill-tempered NCO

He&039;d seen, all too often, one race or species used to supervise another It focused the subject people&039;s aniht direction-at least in the tyrant&039;s tere, every injury, every illness could be blaroup on top had to be fiercely loyal to the existing order, or they&039;d fall-and a bloody, hard fall it would be

Seemed crazy of the Gray Baron not to use this system on his human forced labor But instead, a few men and women with clipboards and kepis kept quiet watch, little brutality required

Probably the Gray Baron wanted to et any ideas about pushing men around In Valentine&039;s experience, all Gray Ones considered themselves superior to puny hu as a prepubescent youth

Valentine wondered if the Gray Baron wasn&039;t sitting on a throne of sweaty dynamite If only he were ht be able to find an a Tribe

Over the next two days, Valentine paid e and preteen hureen or blue overalls, putting up utility poles, working in the kitchens and laundry They looked healthy, intelligent, and strong-they reanda posters where everyone had firm jaws and full heads of hair

The cooperation between the younger hu to symbiosis Valentine had seen The juvenile Gray Ones didand checking and correcting But when not engaged in work, the roles were reversed and the Gray Ones ate first while hu their ears and nails and teeth,was clean and the chalorified, highly trainable pets that needed care, and to the young Gray warriors, the hualitarianishold didn&039;t feel like a Kurian Zone The elements were there, a survivor at the top with absolute power, his close advisors and guards just below, then the coe or notice to cli of the ladder

Valentine had his chance to step up a rung with the Warmoon Festival

It was his first tiachurch that served as the Baron&039;s headquarters He was, to his surprise, the Baron&039;s new chahter, and despite his lowly status as forced labor, he&039;d won a front-row seat at the festivities Even eant Stock was to lead his sirl who had finished studies at the top of her class in the stronghold&039;s school and a Youth Vanguard military track student commander who&039;d travelled all the way from a little town near Buffalo on Lake Erie to join the Baron&039;s forces

Again, a less Kurian Zone establishined It reotten corners of Southern Command, where staff inspectors were rare and the men built a little military world they liked There were captured weapons and pieces of unifore style

Trying to get out of the press of fleshcentral arena, he stepped off the corridor and into a sort of ruesome There was a collection of hu Tribe Valentine saw so in the streets in front of apart tossed out by corpse-disposal teams, what looked like a wild band of ravies victims, shot down Goya-like and frozen in tirapher&039;s flash

The only time you ever saw photos of corpses were in Churchthe sins of the Old World, such as the Nike and Coca-Cola corporations&039; slaughter of laborers in the sugar plantation killing fields of Cambodia or the murder of the Tutsi nation in central Africa by a New York diaenesis of the Baron&039;s organization was a body locator and gravedigger&039;s unit, judging from some of the pictures and souvenirs in the first cabinet

The "Warmoon" to the Gray Ones was the first crescent naled the start of the season when their obscure cos

Snake Ar at some early Gray One weaponry and armor, much of it cut from car parts and old utility tools

"Future father of my child!" she called She was dressed, if you could call it that, in a costu, snakeskin, feathers, and lines of beads, both atavistic and glaiving her face an otherworldly whiteness

"Baby co Woain now?"

"What are you, punchy? You don&039;t want to be seen arriving late under the Baron&039;s nose"

He kept glancing down at her costume

"Like it? The enlisted ranks do It&039;s what keeps me in my trailer with some of the other wives If they hauled me to the officers&039; whorehouse, I think there&039;d be a riot"

"Top come off, you&039;ll see riots plenty," Valentine said

"I have to get backstage See you later"

Valentine caught up to his group and they entered the big auditorium

Perhaps next to the Meest indoor structure Valentine had ever entered Unlike the Pyra show

The antic pup tent Thick wooden beahts adht at the pinnacle There was a balcony-one part glassed in, presumably for the families with small children when it served as a church

Valentine was surprised to see the cross still there It was a siht-iron bolted bearegation,Valentine think of a set of last rites he&039;d seen perfor woman in his youth He&039;d held the cross before her face at just that angle Whether that had been the original architecture or a recent change Valentine couldn&039;t tell

There was too much activity to look at

The Gray Ones, for the most part, filled the lower level The church&039;s pews had been turned into benches to better acco Tribe had their own furniture brought in, or perhaps it was perreat perches like oversized Roman chairs

The human soldiers inhabited the balconies, emblazoned with painted battalion syraphy was fierce, colorful, and oddly Midwestern, featuring hawks and foxes and coyotes and an out-of-place cobra More humans sat upon the old altar riser, which projected out into the pews, though that part of it was empty for now

Valentine marked the Gray Baron froht on the h-backed chair, flanked by two flag bearers, hu hat looked to be a red-and-black checkerboard design with a few spiky icons stitched in the square&039;s contrasting color, and the hu the other, thea pair of sharpened parentheses crossing each other-the locked bull horns, he&039;d heard theht also be stolen froht he looked like so on a s sohanistan

He had a heavy, sloping forehead and a mountain spur of a nose hooked like a hawk&039;s talon But even the oversized nose was nothing compared to the Pancho Villahis upper lip and the sides of his mouth It made his expression rather difficult to read; Valentine couldn&039;t tell if he was s

A network of scars crisscrossed his face as though a ame of tic-tac-toe had been played with an assorth battle wounds to know they couldn&039;t have been accidental Unless the Gray Baron had stuck his head into an oversized lamprey&039;shi his, were three Reapers

Valentine had never seen Reapers like this They were fleshy-he thought fat Reapers didn&039;t exist, it see with the vital aura the Reapers transmitted Despite the bellies and love handles, their faces shone hard and alert, yellow eyes watchful of the few empty square yards in front of the Gray Baron&039;s throne Rich red, white, and black war paint striped their bodies in a series of Vs, and their claws and a band across their eyes were a deep blue

The Gray Baron had a woman next to him, a rather hard-faced brunette with an athletic build Her hair was piled up tight atop her head, bound together by a pair of stilettos in Asian hairstick fashion Valentine wondered if the blades were just for show She had her own stool, but chose to drape herself over the back of his chair, playing with his hair

Next to the Gray Baron on the stage was a feeble-looking old Grog gone white and bent-Danger Close, Valentine guessed He tried counting bullet wounds in the thick old hide and stopped after nine He was attended by a bevy of six she-Grogs, wives, daughters, concubines, or so blades, like the skinning knives native tribes of the Arctic north use to separate seal blubber from skin

A few Golden One representatives watched the celebration, stone faced They stood apart fros The celebration was like so warriors ran up with linked bags of netted heads, tossing the over thesounded, and the auditoriue" Valentine heard kettledru sound that touched you in the pelvis It grew louder, or perhaps the crowd grew quieter, and then the Gray Baron led Danger Close out on the platfor near the center point of the auditoriuer Close repeated the words in a Gray One dialect Valentine more or less understood

The Gray Baron kept it brief The er Close translated, but not exactly He expressed the same sentiments, but in a Gray One idio and training They would venture regularly to Springfield and the Missouri River, even to the outskirts of Saint Louis, yet fighting only when another sought to fight Otherwise they would be peaceable, friendly, even helpful A Gray One clan with a broken water tank? Fix it! Illinois bandits stealing cattle or goats? Drive theion would be thought of as a two-headed dragon, not just because one head was hu upon friends, the other biting and rending enemies Then would coth to whip the true enemies, the humans of the Ozarks Addled by fevers, radiator-still whiskey, and backwoods religious ather and strike would cru

They finished to applause and Grog stomps of approval

Then so anecdotes of the i the seasons with respect Not all could fight even at the best of tiht wish to take a season off and enjoy their wives and increase their herds and teach youngsters the stern tasks of warfare so that they lories and wives

The storytellers met more approval from the main floor than fro patters, and Valentine&039;s quicktheht be characterized as a nod, and a quick one-two that asked for more of the same

Then there was a display of captured weapons and torn-off service patches Valentine felt a pang when he recognized a Zulu-Coon wheel on a helmet, but he applauded with the rest of the hureat indicators of luck, to the Gray Ones," Stock explained to the boy from Buffalo "A poor year for trophies one year will make them &039;s warressive"

"Last year was a good one?" the kid asked

"No, but it wasn&039;t our fault Southern Co to supply O recruiting tea over The Baron thinks that Southern Coht, and wants to take advantage of it, but the Gray Ones will be hard to convince"

Hoots and yelps broke out Valentine saw Snake Arms step into the open space on the main floor She had a rattlesnake wrapped around each aries," Stock said

The kettledrued and the faan to dance

It was a fascinating routine, as e down Her arms stayed statue-steady so as not to disturb the serpents, heads pointed out at the crowd, black eyes glittering Her head imbal-mount with her lower limbs, but the torso and arms opened and closed only occasionally

The Gray Ones watched in silent reverence Even the emotionless Golden Ones leaned forward in their seats

Valentine could just hear the quiet rattle of their tails as she ht the sound

After the dance ca with sticks, and finally swordplay Valentine wondered if on their home world they used swords or if they&039;d adopted the weapons fro style, at least in this theatrical display, involved cuts and parries in precise, ever increasing tely excited as the more furious blows and parries drew accidental blood

After that cahtered, starting with chickens and reat show of presenting the eagle&039;s feathers to Danger Close

"A few deaths prove that they&039;re serious about getting on the good side of all the invisibles," Stock said "Don&039;t let it scare you"

He glanced closely at Valentine Valentine looked down to see that some of the spray fro it in red

By now the croas excited

They brought a huddled line of shorn men and a few Gray Ones out onto the pulpit projection Two of the proposed victiht in on stretchers

"Bad head injuries," Stock said "Sometimes they&039;re considered prophets, but if they&039;re only barely responsive, they&039;re done aith"

Men with riot guns stood behind, and the Baron&039;s three pet Reapers flanked the colunized one of the sacrifices It was Beach Boy, froht with Fat Daddy, though he&039;d heard he&039;d been put in another hole to stave off further fighting

The Baron stepped forward, carrying a ba frorabbed it by the base, and held it up over the first man in line The feather just touched the top of the convicted man&039;s hands as the two Reapers held him, one at the ankles and one at the elboith the third behind

"Raminov, knifed a man over cards," Stock said to his party

There was so from the Gray Ones A voice cried out fro at cards too!

So broke out from the men, with a faint boo or "open him" shouted

The feather rowls broke out a the Gray Ones

"No idea what he did," Stock said

The convict fell back He gave one violent shrug The fist of the Reaper behind him exploded out of his chest in a shower of blood Valentine noted, rather coldly, that the Reaper had discreetly locked its teeth at the Grog&039;s shoulder and appeared to have its tongue wedged beneath one of the thick rhino-hide plates of cartilaginous armor

The auditoriu ceremony Valentine decided it wasn&039;t so much a sacrifice, or an execution, as a final appeal Valentine noticed the croent silent for some of the victims Someone from the audience would shriek out a plea for reat sta of feet The Baron never failed to heed the collective verdict, either way

Valentine, tired and nervous and sick to his store dinner down Hot-blooded killing was one thing, but execution as grand theater

He&039;d seen his share of executions There were several coed, in Southern Command military jurisprudence He hi trial and the rendering of an in absentia conviction Arguably, he&039;d performed them hie was just as helpless against his knife as a chained convict You didn&039;t execute men like this, in front of the next one in line with a holiday crowd roaring

The feather moved over Beach Boy

"He was in your hole, I think," Stock said, looking at Valentine "He&039;s in for shirking They found hi under a truck on his shift When you&039;re forced labor, that&039;s it"

Beach Boy was a silly little toady, certainly, but how ht? Perhaps enough had seen him in the fields to know he played the fool, alith the softest jobs and gentlest duties, to better preserve his supple, scented skin for Fat Daddy

"Give hirowls and angry rew louder

"Chance! Chance! Chance!" soan to shout The chant picked up voices, and the feather uess the thoughts of every man in the audience: if it was me up there, hoould I take it? Tears? Pleas for ument? A final mouthful of spit?

"Just like you, Valentine, trying to save a worthless little dicksicle like that," Sergeant Stock said out of the side of his mouth

The rest of the cerelass box with Snake Arms&039;s reptiles back to her trailer

So, Graf Stockard knew his nah Molly, or looked him up sometime or other at headquarters Perhaps he&039;d even met him at some point or other before either of them knew Molly Carlson, and Stockard remembered and Valentine didn&039;t Much of his life before becoue, dreamy feel to it these days

Stockard had whispered a feords about speaking to him in private He&039;d used the word escape, at least Valentine thought so The din of the Warmoon Festival as the sacrifices were offered to a successful summer of battle made the word difficult to pick out

"War to last for five days I think they&039;ll cut you off before then My fertile period this month&039;s almost over"

"Have they tried to breed you before?" Valentine said, slowly, as though thinking over every word

"I&039;ll let you in on a secret, uys here are bent as jackknives It&039;s kind of a haven for the rugged, outdoorsy ones"

"I don&039;t understand"

"They don&039;t like girls They don&039;t like the&039;s about out of the question"

Valentine pretended to puzzle it over for a bit "Ahhh," he finally said "Men&039;s men"

"Exactly"

Shelike Dorothy, all the e, or brain

Valentine heard Snake Arms&039;s door open and came into alarmed wakefulness He sat up so quickly, he half-rolled her off the bed, where she was sleeping atop the sheet

A flashlight shone in his face

"Yeah, it&039;s Scar all right," a hostly circles on his optic nerves and gave hiraine

"Whassat?" Snake Arms said

"Baron wants to see ya, Champ"

This time it was four who escorted hi up with two ood deal more alert than the Baron&039;s usual hus

They let him dress completely and didn&039;t put hi soht celebration

They brought him to a different part of the camp, in the wooded hills behind the church They walked hile truck up a hill and down into a huhts frosted the red oaks and ot the sense of soood job of concealing it, but he suspected heavy fencing stretching off into the woods It looked like so, thorny trees of so a double line of razor wire a few years back The trees turned the wire into a ht

The ground flattened, and they caated at the trail Valentine ss, but didn&039;t see or hear them His escort nodded to a sentry at a shelter and aved in

Valentine got his first look at the Baronial residence

It looked like a hunting lodge or a small hotel set in the pretty wooded hills, with decorative rather than security lighting

He passed under a threshold The posts and lintels were covered with deep-burned Gray One nized one for "victory" and one for "health"

The inside was just as rugged Slabs of li-lodge meets prairie-style that the Gray Baron seeaing just above it and a dartboard at one end, and a great seh that they needed a ladder with a desk in the middle at the other A beautiful button-backed leather sofa sat near a a area

The books looked dusty and not in any sort of order Valentine wondered if they were just for show

"Welcome to my home, Scar, isn&039;t it?" he said Valentine nodded in reply "Sorry to keep you up so late I&039; Coffee?"

"Whiskey spirits?" Valentine asked

"Not when I&039;," the Baron said "Sit"

The woman he&039;d seen draped behind his chair shuffled papers

"Chuckles here has three degrees," the Baron said "You knohat a degree is?"

"Hot," Valentine said, wondering if he looked wary enough

"No, it&039;s a piece of paper that says you know better than someone who&039;s been in the field their whole life But she enerals in Iowa happy I don&039;t ienerals, but they expect the paperwork correct Murder all you like, just file it in triplicate"

The dark wolass pot and sorees to serve coffee," the Baron said

"And five technical certifications, plus security clearance," she said

Valentine sipped the coffee It was rich stuff, but he felt a slight lift that wouldn&039;t be explained by caffeine as it warmed him Probably a few drops of sos

"Why did you speak up for Beach Boy?" the Baron asked

"Knew hi same-same," Valentine said