Winter Duty Read Free Page B

portable stove. Not flab, exactly, but the heavy center of a powerful man.
    Valentine walked Sunday around the circle of onlookers. Each took a step back as he approached and held his right fist cocked so his brass ring was at eye level. The circle of men and guns around him widened and spread and thinned as though he were rolling dough.
    They eyed the submachine gun at his hip. Carrying a quality firearm like that openly marked one as either a tool of the Kurian Order or someone operating outside it. Easy’s Crew maintained their well-armed independence by living on the fringes of the masquerade of a civilization beneath the towers.
    Deadly as his weapon was, some would say the brass ring on his finger was the deadlier weapon. It was the mark of Kurian favor. A wearer was owed respect, for the fear and favor of the Kurians hung about the ring’s owner like a king’s mantle.
    “Who do you think you are, threatening my crew?” Blitty Easy barked.
    Valentine held his brass ring high. “Who am I? A man tested by the only law that lasts—that of the jungle. I speak three Grog dialects and have a foot pass for half the tribes west of the Tennessee and Ohio. I’ve watched Twisted Cross tubs open, ridden the cannonball St. Louis to LA, and flown with Pyp’s Circus. I’ve sailed the Caribbean and the Great Lakes and Puget Sound, humped hills in Virginia and Baja, tickled lip from Albuquerque to Xanadu. I’ve won a brass ring and the power to put you all in unmarked graves. I’m your last chance, Blitty Easy.”
    Easy had a good poker face. “Why you bothering with us, then, Mr. Big Shot?”
    “The Old Folks are interested in Kentucky right now. They don’t want to see another state fall to the guerrillas. We’re on our way to talk some sense into the more friendly locals. I thought my goons would have to forage for heartbeats, but you went out rounding up strays and did the job for us.”
    “We get paid for them?”
    Valentine would have happily bought the lives, had he or his column had anything the brigands would accept.
    “Payment is you just hand over your collection without going in the bag with them. My Old Man likes keeping brimful on aura when traveling, and they’re not particular.”
    “He’s bluffin’ , ” someone called from behind Valentine.
    Valentine whirled. “Kiss my ring and check it out. I don’t mind.”
    A brass ring on its rightful wearer accumulated enough bio-electric charge to tingle when you touched your lips to it. Valentine found the sensation similar to licking a battery. His brass ring, fairly won in Seattle, was legitimate enough, and he usually kept it with some odds and ends in a little velvet bag along with a few favorite hand-painted mahjong pieces. Though he’d lost his taste for the game long ago, they still made useful tokens for sending messages to people who knew him. The only tarnish about the ring was the mark it had left on his conscience.
    Valentine could tell the crew was impressed, even if Blitty Easy still looked suspicious.
    “Or you want to test me some other way?” Valentine said, drawing his blade.
    “Regular Sammy Rye, with that blade,” Blitty Easy said.
    “Steel without the talent to back it up’s just so much butter knife,” a man who smelled like cheap gin said, two younger versions of himself flanking him.
    Valentine inflated his lungs and let out an unearthly wail. An imitation of a Reaper scream had worked once before, a dozen years ago, several hundred miles north in the hills of western Illinois. It might work here.
    Movement and a bullet crack.
    Valentine’s reflexes moved ahead of his regrets.
    The camp exploded into noise and motion, like a tray of ice cubes dumped into a fryer.
    He knocked Sunday flat.
    No rhyme or reason to the rest. The fat was in the fire and he had to move or burn. A hand near him reached for a chest holster to his right and he swung his sword and struck down in a sweeping blow. A shotgun came up and he jumped as it