She led the horse behind her with her free hand as she crept toward the edge of the field, down by the river.
Then crept on through the grass beyond it, past the pipe that was still pumping its dark waste down into the water. And up the shallow incline beside it, crouching whenever she needed to grab a rock for grip, as she and the horse clambered up into the hills.
“Should we follow, sir?” Bairamov said.
“The drones can track her for now,” Volkov said. “But be prepared to move out on my order.”
Logan checked his rifle, and flipped through the diagnostics on his suit. One round fired, suit hydraulics still worn and glitchy, otherwise everything was working as well as it usually did. The grenade launcher was loaded, and ready to fire if he needed to. The others checked their weapons around him.
They should have guessed the insurgents would mostly move at night. Not only because they thought they could hide in the dark, but because there’d be little radiation to worry about. If there was a solar storm in the next few hours, most or all of it would be blocked by the bulk of the planet between them and the star. All any insurgent out in the open had to worry about was what little radiation might find its way around the planet, and down to them on the far side.
But where the heck was she going?
CHAPTER 12
Logan accumulated more scrapes and bruises before he could fight the instructors off in most of the combat training sessions. A lot more. But the beatings lessened and the food improved, though there was still never enough to sate his hunger.
He did better at shooting and knife fighting than unarmed combat, and his scores rose rapidly the more they trained. Beauchene actually began to compliment him, occasionally.
But then came the Kepi Blanc March. The most important test any Legionnaire would ever face. Pass, and he’d gain the white cap of a Legionnaire. Fail, and all he’d see was the door of The Farm as he was sent back to wherever he came from.
The march was two days on foot, with each recruit hauling all his equipment in his pack, and his rifle over his shoulder. Led by instructors and monitored by drones, just in case a recruit should decide to take a short-cut, or to try to make a run for it, because that was better than heading back to prison if they failed the march. Not that any of them would feel much like running after a few hours of marching kilometre after kilometre across the hills around The Farm.
“Do you want to be a Legionnaire?” Beauchene asked them as they lined up on the morning of the march.
And that line of recruits had thinned, until there were now little more than a third as many as had lined up on that first day, weeks ago.
“Yes, sir,” the assembled recruits answered as one.
But every one, like Logan, must have been wondering whether they really meant it. And which of them would be on their way out of the Legion within forty-eight hours because they just didn’t want it enough.
The instructors loaded the recruits into ancient, mud-smeared trucks, whose engines roared as they bounced over the rough roads and dirt tracks of the nearby hills. Beauchene kept the men in Logan’s truck singing Legion songs, and taught them a few new ones along the way; mostly the kind you wouldn’t sing in polite company. Whatever you said about his instructing techniques, he knew how to take the mens’ minds off their problems.
Then the trucks stopped, and he was yelling at them again to get out, and get moving.
Each instructor led a team across the hills, and marched so effortlessly that they made it look like an afternoon stroll. The recruits followed Beauchene as he strode over the grassy hills beside the mountains that separated France from Spain, capped with snow, and the thick plasteel and concrete of the wall, which glowed in the sunlight where red lights weren’t flashing.
For a second Logan wondered whether hiking over those mountains and finding a way across the border would be easier than finishing the march.
But Spain still wasn’t home. An escape would be temporary, to say the least. He’d be in some prison in weeks, at most.
Besides, the cool mountain air and the smell of grass and flowers was almost relaxing. For the first few hours.
Then his legs grew heavier with every step. It was barely noticeable at first, but rapidly worsening as the day went on. Desoto gasped for breath beside Logan, as he adjusted the straps of his backpack every few minutes. Logan’s was pulling his shoulders down, and the weight on his hips seemed to be pulling them away from his chest.
If it continued, his legs would be half a metre shorter by the end of the march, crushed down by the perpetual load.
But carry it he did.
The strain grew as they climbed uphill through the woods. Pain began to spread through his knees and ankles as the march skirted the edge of the woods along the side of the valley, and they peered down the hill for any sign of the other teams, eager to know whether they were ahead or behind.
They laughed every time they saw another team behind them. And muttered and cursed every time a team was ahead.
By lunch, Logan’s feet were pounding in his boots, but a hot meal and drink helped take his mind off of the pain. Desoto pulled off his boots and socks, and studied the blisters growing on his heels.
They’d marched hundreds of kilometres before in training, but they’d never marched so fast for so long. And it was taking its toll on their bodies.
“Now you’re fed and watered, ladies,” Beauchene said, “we can do some real marching this afternoon.”
And he meant it. Now they were on the flat ground at the top of the ridge, Beauchene had them marching faster than ever before. Logan’s legs became lead weights, and his feet wore down, blistered and bloody, in his combat boots.
Clouds rolled in along the valley, and rain began to fall. Now they not only had to march, but keep it up while their boots slipped in the mud, with their fatigues soaked through to the skin, and rain dripping down their helmets.
Desoto yelled as he slipped and fell.
Logan grabbed Desoto’s arm and heaved, gasping and straining to lift the man, and the pack on his back that must have weighed about the same again. Desoto grabbed a rock, and the two of them got him back to his feet. Then struggled onward, marching even faster to catch up with the others.
After that, it was just one step after another, following the man in front, staying ahead of the man behind. That was all they had to do. And keep on doing it for the rest of the day.
And the next.
By the time night came, Logan barely had the strength to build a shelter in the trees that would keep the rain off him overnight. He and Desoto shovelled their supper down their throats before clambering into the shelter and pulling the boots from their feet to let them air overnight.
“I don’t think I can go on…” Desoto said.
But Logan was already fading into blissful oblivion as every bone and muscle in his body demanded rest.
Stefano and Yazid gave up after breakfast. Beauchene yelled at them to try to keep them moving, but yelling wasn’t enough to motivate their bodies to move another metre. Beauchene didn’t even try thumping them, he just handed their rifles to Logan and Adamski, and told Stefano and Yazid to meet the truck at the bottom of the hill, where it would take them home to Mummy.
Logan slung the rifle over his left shoulder. Great, another weight to carry. But the Legion didn’t leave weapons behind.
There would always be a new recruit that needed one.
They marched on. Over the hills, through the woods, breathing in the clean mountain air, trying to ignore the pain, struggling to turn it into a motivation to keep going, rather than a reason to collapse and give up.