Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [160]
But for the next several days the doctor was able only to confront what came immediately into his hands. With Toussaint’s vanguard he rode in the attack on Camp Flamen. The first fort barring their way to this camp was overrun with slight resistance. Toussaint paused long enough to learn that posts on the neighboring heights of the chain had been taken as easily by his other columns and sent an order to Dessalines to join him at Camp Flamen.
But here the defense was more determined, so the doctor was soon submerged in poulticing and bandaging or amputating hopelessly shattered limbs. The hideously scarred Guiaou, whose touch had a strange gentleness, as well as strength enough to hold a man still while the doctor sawed off his arm or leg, assisted him. Once the battle was over, Riau came to help him too, so that all three of them worked together, seamlessly, communicating by gesture more than speech. Camp Flamen fell to them that afternoon and Toussaint began a foray toward Cambion, but dropped back at nightfall because of ambushes.
The surgery went on through the night, and the doctor threw himself down to sleep just as Dessalines and Médor were marching their troops out for predawn attacks on Camp Roque and several other posts. An hour later Riau shook him awake and he clambered into the mule saddle (he had never found time to reclaim his horse) and rode with Toussaint’s column on the fort of Saint Malo. Here Toussaint subdivided his men again so as to attack from two directions, while his other columns reduced and burned a number of smaller surrounding posts: Cormine, Bense, Salenave, Dupuis. . . .
The doctor saw to the priming of his pistols and long gun, but Toussaint had no intention of risking his surgeon near the front line, and the campaign was so very well organized that the doctor had no need of his weapons, and soon forgot he was carrying them. He installed his surgery at Saint Malo and worked through the night again with his assistants, the howling of the wounded under his saw sometimes punctuated by gunfire and shouts from ambushes in the forests all around. Toussaint also stayed up the whole night through, receiving and sending reports and orders from the adjacent columns; occasionally he would fold his arms, inhale deeply and let his eyes roll back in his head for perhaps as long as forty-five seconds. When he exhaled and refocused his eyes, he would seem as lucid and refreshed as if he had slept for several hours.
The doctor stole another hour of sleep and jerked like an automaton back into the mule saddle. That day the columns marched closer together to support one another in case of ambush, but the doctor took the precaution to lash his knees to the saddle so that if he fell asleep, he would not fall off the mule.
They rode on for several days more, with the accompanying reduction of more camps and forts: Cardinau, Pistaud, Tannache, Ducasse. Toussaint was taking a great many prisoners, whom he dispatched along with his own wounded back to the security of Dondon. But the doctor remained near the fighting lines, dazedly carrying on his sawing and bandaging, a blood-soaked zombi carpenter of shredded flesh and bone. He seemed to slip in and out of awareness, a dark-feathered wing passing over his vision.
Sometimes the wing lifted on astonishing spectacles: the troops of Moyse climbing the cruel heights toward Fort Bamby, under constant cannonfire but so disciplined they never fired a shot in reply and never hesitated in their advance till they forced the wall and did in their opponents with fixed bayonets. On the heights all around, the camps of the enemy were burning, and then Riau came through the smoke of the fires to tell the doctor that soon indeed they would advance to Vallière, next day or the day after. At this the doctor’s heart quickened, as for almost the first time since the campaign began, his recollections of Nanon and Paul came fully through to him.
Next day Toussaint took his main force to the attack of Camp Charles-Sec, believing