The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War) - By Dave Gross Page 0,5

MacHorne.

“This don’t look too good for you, kid,” said Burns. He grabbed Dawson and shoved him against the wall. Dawson’s feet dangled inches above the ground. “What kind of man spies on our briefings? I’m thinking rival company or Khadoran spy. Which is it?”

“Neither!” said Dawson. “I was just curious.”

“Curiosity skinned the cat,” said Burns. “Or something like that.” He glanced back at Harrow, who studied Dawson’s face through slitted eyes. “What do you think, Harrow? We Dogs got ourselves a cat or a rat?”

Harrow shook his head. “Bring him,” he told Burns before walking off.

Burns dragged Dawson by the arm. Ahead of them, the rain made silhouettes of the buildings. Their peaked roofs turned blue-gray in the dusk.

Dawson tried to keep his feet in line as they marched through the mud. “Where are we going? Sergeant Crawley will miss me at the briefing.”

“Old Creepy don’t like to be bothered with cleanup details.” Burns said.

“Corporal Burns, I’m not a rat!”

At the end of the street, Harrow turned toward a row of boarding houses and cheap inns. At the other end stood the huge stable where the Devil Dogs’ drivers kept the draft horses required to transport the warjacks and the seemingly endless supply of coal needed to fuel them. Harrow spoke to a couple of the drivers smoking their pipes under the stable eaves. One of them nodded and hurried inside the boarding house.

Burns shoved Dawson under the overhang and leaned against the wall beside him. “Relax, pup. Spies are trained not to piss themselves under pressure. You’re obviously no spy.”

“I didn’t piss—” Dawson thought better of it and said, “Thanks.”

Burns stretched his neck. They stood there for a while as the patter of rain grew louder on the roof above. Soon it was joined by the sound of footsteps running down the boarding house stairs.

“Corporal, what’s a dragon hunt?” Dawson asked.

“You know what a gobber hunt is?”

“It’s when your friends send you after something that doesn’t exist, for a laugh. No matter how hard you look, you can’t find it.”

“Something tells me you had some first-hand experience.”

“It was years ago. I was only a kid.”

“You’re still a kid, Dawson. You should hope this is only a gobber hunt. In a dragon hunt, the difference is that you find what you’re looking for, all right,” said Burns. “Only then you wish you hadn’t.”

The Devil Dogs spent the first half of the day loading and driving their three great wagons to the Molhado River. They spent the second half crossing it.

The Talon, Foyle, went over without incident, an honor guard of eight Dogs escorting its supine figure on the ferry. Under Sergeant Crawley’s direction, and with the help of the drivers, mechaniks, and two bespectacled engineers, they levered the warjack up onto the iron-reinforced cart that had made the first crossing. At a signal from the drover, six heavy draft horses drew the wagon away from the riverbank.

Private Dawson watched the proceedings as the ferry returned to the Tarna side of the river. Beside him, Corporal Burns leaned over a hitching fence and spat a wad of brown tobacco on the ground. “If you were any greener, you’d have turned yellow by now.”

Dawson’s cheeks flushed with anger.

“I’m not calling you yellow, kid. You’re green as a leaf. It’s autumn. You’d turn yellow. Get it? Anyway, it was plenty gutsy spying on the Captain’s briefing.”

A relieved smile creased Dawson’s smooth face.

“Stupid,” said Burns. “But gutsy all the same. Did you notice how mad Harrow seemed?”

“No,” said Dawson. “He didn’t seem angry at all.”

“That’s how you know he was really mad. I’m surprised he didn’t cut your throat on the spot.”

Dawson gulped. “Yes, Corporal.”

“You do it again without an invite, I’ll take care of you myself. You wait with the rest of the men, or one day somebody will really take you for a Khadoran informant.”

Dawson’s face yellowed and greened. “Yes, Corporal. I mean, no, Corporal.”

Burns chuckled. “How old are you, kid? Seventeen?”

“Twenty!”

“With that smooth face? Or have you been sneaking out with Lucille?”

“Who?”

“Smooth’s lady.”

“I’d never even set foot inside the brothel before—”

“The razor, pup.”

Dawson winced at the dismissive term for rookies in Dog Company. “Oh, right.” Just as the irritation lifted from his face, a cloud of perplexity settled back down. “He named his razor Lucille?”

“He loves that blade. The pups Harrow doesn’t kill for spying, Smooth cuts their throats for looking at Lucille the wrong way.”

Dawson smiled, looked away, tried and failed to laugh. He swallowed hard and looked again at