four groups of roughly equal size, and to surround the camp.
The smoke arose from a clearing in the oaks. Lowry’s forces surrounded the objective with suspicious ease—either, Lowry thought, the Agent’s senses were dulled out in the wilderness, or he was luring Lowry into a trap, or possibly he was just so slagging arrogant, he didn’t care if they did surround him.
Ordinarily Lowry would attack at a distance, with mortars and rockets and bombs, but of course, that was impossible without killing the General, too. The only alternative was to rush the enemy, bury him in waves of men. Lowry sent Collier in with the first wave, in the hope that he’d get killed, which would save Lowry the bother of stamping out Collier’s tendencies toward mutiny. As it happened, it wasn’t the Agent in the clearing at all, but Collier still got taken care of.
In the clearing were two men, standing to either side of a fire, over which they’d spitted one of the horrible misshapen deer of the forests. They’d heard the Linesmen’s approach too late to run, but in plenty of time to draw their weapons. They were armed with bows, like something out of ancient history, and they’d have been completely comical had they not fired off two deadly quick arrows, catching Collier in the throat and Mr. Shuttle in the shoulder. The Linesmen returned fire before they could reload.
One survived.
He’d been shot in the leg and had fallen unconscious. Lowry had him bandaged, tied up, and slapped awake.
Lowry said, “Explain yourself.”
The prisoner looked up in shock and confusion. He looked from Lowry’s face to the faces of Lowry’s men. He studied their uniforms. His eyes widened in horror.
“Linesmen.”
“Yes,” Lowry said.
The prisoner was a young man; tall, thin, wiry. He wore buckskin and fur. His dead companion had been an older fellow, forty or more, who wore the remains of a patched and tattered red jacket that filled Lowry with loathing and dread. Ancient and faded though it was, it was unmistakably the uniform of a soldier of the Red Valley Republic. It brought back all Lowry’s horrible buried childhood memories of the fighting at Black Cap; and fuck that.
“Explain yourself,” he repeated.
“I . . . Linesmen?” The young man screwed his face up into an expression of stubborn courage. “I will never tell you—”
Lowry hit him and he moaned.
“Please, sir, I don’t—”
“What are you? Deserters? Refugees?”
“We fled, we fled after the—”
“After the defeat. After we drove you from the world. You ran rather than be ground under the wheels. Right. Not just you, though, is it? Not just you and the old man. Don’t, don’t lie to me, it’s obvious—what else would you refuse to tell me? You’ll tell me in the end.”
“Please, we—”
“Not much fight in you. Not as much fight as I’d have expected—you were vicious bastards when I was a boy. I remember.”
He glanced over at the dead man again. That uniform! Lowry shivered as he recalled nights at Black Cap Valley crawling through stinking ditches laying barbed wire, under fire from the Republic’s rifles, knowing that at any moment the Republic’s arrogant cavalry might sweep past, and they thought of themselves as virtuous, but they were not too virtuous to ride down children of the Line. . . .
“Are you here to meet the Agent?”
“What?”
“The Agent,” Lowry said. “Creedmoor. Your General. Creedmoor’s working for you?”
“Who? What? I don’t—”
“Shut up. Creedmoor’s working for you; either he’s betrayed his masters or you’ve thrown in with them. And you have your General back. And you’ll have his weapon, soon enough. And now you want to start it all again, and it was hard enough to put you bastards down the first time. Right? Don’t lie. So where is he? Where have you taken him?”
CHAPTER 40
A MACHINE THAT WOULD GO OF ITSELF
Liv’s new acquaintances introduced themselves—thus becoming, their red-jacketed leader said, not captors, but friends. Red-jacket’s name was William Morton; Captain Morton to his men, but William—he allowed, with a yellow-toothed smile and a stiff elderly bow—to the good lady from out East.
The other two were called Blisset and Singleton, and they were brothers-in-law. Blisset’s sister was Singleton’s wife. Mary, her name was; Liv would meet her back at town, Captain Morton assured her. Blisset was the fair one, Singleton the dark one, unless it was the other way around, which was possible; Liv was so delighted to meet another human being that it hardly mattered what they said, and she had trouble paying attention.