Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [139]
“Well, my captain,” he said, and his voice made a bark. “Return to your troops!”
Behind me the bayonets came down. I saluted Toussaint and walked away as stiff and straight-backed as I could, though for some little time my legs were weak, as if they were full of water instead of bone.
I had thought Toussaint would put me to writing his letters again, because he always had need of others to write for him, and that was why I had made Captain Riau’s letter in that way which it was. But instead we all went out of Dondon that day, more than four thousand men altogether, to fight the Spanish whitemen in the high plain to the east. I believe that Toussaint might have been thinking that those Spanish would have left their towns unguarded from the north since they had sent their soldiers to help the English at Verrettes. But they had left soldiers enough along the way we went, and they had made ready for a big fight.
Above Saint Michel and Saint Raphael the Spanish whitemen had made a strong place dug into a mountain where the road had a sharp turn, and they had also dug a ditch to bring water across the road to block it, with many cannons aimed over the road from behind this ditch. If they were surprised to see Toussaint coming from that direction, they did not look like it.
If Halaou or Boukman had led that fight, our people would have been killed by thousands, running at the cannons behind that ditch. This time was not like fighting for a hûngan, though. It was to be in an army of ants.
Toussaint divided the men into three. One line of foot soldiers went around the back side of the mountain to wait for the Spanish on the road behind. Another line of foot soldiers climbed up the side of that mountain out of sight of the Spanish so to come down on their fort from above. Toussaint himself stayed on the road in front of the cannons, with some hundreds of horse soldiers.
The horse Riau had taken from the men of Jean-François had been given to another man by Moyse before Toussaint had come, and someone else had taken Ti Bonhomme while Riau was in the guard house waiting to be shot, so I was sent with the foot soldiers who climbed the mountain above the Spanish fort. I was happy enough not to be riding with Toussaint that day anyway, when I saw what was going to happen. For a little time it was quiet, with our men climbing under the sun, and Toussaint with the horsemen waiting below on the road just out of reach of the cannons, and the two lines of foot soldiers going around and over that mountain like ants on a sugar hill. But then as we came out on the heights above the fort where the Spanish could see us, Toussaint’s horsemen stirred, and his long sword flashed, no bigger than a pin as it looked from the mountain. Then they charged.
Toussaint had to do this thing so the Spanish could not turn their cannons to shoot at us as we came down. I, Riau, could understand the need inside my head, but it was very bad to watch it. The cannons were loaded with mitraille instead of the big round balls, and when they fired, these little pieces of metal flew everywhere and hurt a lot of people. Toussaint charged two times and was turned back, and both times many of his men were shot down from their horses. I saw the horses were being torn to pieces also, which almost was worse, and some few of them broke their legs trying to cross the ditch that was filled with water.
When we came down from the mountainside, we found that the Spanish had dug a ditch all the way around their fort, so we could not come in so easily. But Toussaint led another charge, spurring up the stallion Bel Argent, who jumped all the way over the ditch this time, and then the Spanish broke where they were fighting us, so we all came among them together. Since it was too close for shooting, I began to cut them down with my coutelas, but there was no spirit in my head this time. It was