Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [169]
By midafternoon the heat was merciless, even at these heights. The men were all wearing standard woolen uniforms, officers too. They sweated under their heavy packs as they struggled up the breathless trails. By evening they smelled like a flock of wet sheep. As soon as the sun set, the air turned sharply chill, and the damp wool uniforms sank clammily against the skin. The men made camp, grumbling—they’d not been able to forage any supplement to the rations they carried. Guizot gnawed his lump of hardtack moodily, washed down the jagged, concrete-textured crumbs with water, remembering the stock of good brandy Daspir had brought onboard the ship.
At least it did not rain that night. The sky was cloudless; Guizot lay wakeful, under the piercing stars. There was drumming in the distance, and a skirling sound, like horns. He was tense in his soggy uniform, shoulders stiff against the damp ground. But though that racket must have come from the enemy, there was no attack. He woke to cock crow, the gray mountain mists, and the sound of men snorting and coughing with colds they’d come down with during the night. That morning his company marched in the vanguard, while the caissons and the mounted officers struggled along behind.
There was beauty in the wild luxuriance of the landscape that surrounded them, now gilded by the rising sun, and Guizot felt his spirits lift as his uniform dried and the effort of climbing dispelled the night’s chill. He had not caught cold himself so far, and began to feel a pleasant vigor as he marched. Sergeant Aloyse, at his side, had just begun to whistle some martial air when the first shot cracked. There was a shout, a curse, in the file behind them. Guizot half turned. A grenadier sagged backward, supported by his fellows. A dozen more shots tore off, and more men jerked and fell.
Ambush. A boulder came tumbling through the brush and Guizot dodged it, then craned his neck to see it hurl into the empty air of the gorge. A gang of blacks was firing at them from ledges on the other side, but they were out of effective range; the real danger came from musketeers in the jungle just above the winding trail along which Rochambeau’s column was stretched. Sergeant Aloyse quivered and pointed at Guizot’s side, impatient for instruction.
“Form a line!” Guizot shouted. He drew his pistol, though he could see no target. “Forward!” Shoulder to shoulder with Aloyse he began scrambling up the slope from the trail. Nothing for it but to sweep the ambushers out of the bush, though there would be some cost. Somewhere below he seemed to hear the whinnying of a wounded horse. A ball whined by his ear, and then he saw one black in ragged trousers, cartridge box across his shoulders. He fired his pistol, did not know if he had hit or missed. A flight of arrows came out of the leaves like a covey of startled quail.
Arrows! Guizot gaped at them. “Fire!” he said. His line let off a reasonably concerted volley. “Bayonets!” Was that his voice or the sergeant’s? Aloyse was slipsliding just at his side, bayonet at the ready. Guizot came face to face with a young black woman in a mud-streaked dress, with a great lopsided head of wiry, matted, leaf-strewn hair. As he read her face from the shadows of the leaves, she released her bowstring and retreated. A thump on his upper left arm, like a punch. It took him a moment to realize the arrow had struck him. He could not feel it, but it had pierced his sleeve.
“Avancez!” he cried, dropping his discharged pistol into the holster, drawing out his sword in its place. The woman who’d shot him had disappeared among the broad shiny leaves, but he still seemed to feel the brown heat of her eyes. His men were coming along eagerly enough, but no enemy stood to receive them. Guizot pushed up the slope, his boots slithering over mats of half-rotted leaf and loose soil, flourishing his sword with his right hand, clutching at saplings with his left. The left arm seemed to operate normally;