Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [71]
“Who will be able to come through to the end?” he said with the same uneasy smile. “It is a curious phrase.”
Guiaou twisted the helmet away from his clinging hands. “I will put eggs in it,” he said, to cover the roughness of his action. He jerked his head at Guerrier as he went out the door. The older woman was still puttering over the business of lighting the fire. Guiaou marched quickly up the rise. The Spaniard’s voice sounded behind him and he looked back once. The blind girl was following him, but slowly, finger on the string.
The string ran from stall to stall in the lean-to area on the far side of the barn, and stopped at the door of a raised-floor room closed with a wooden latch, where fodder must have been stored. The three horses, tethered by a brace of oxen, were tossing their heads over a small wisp of hay. There was no sign of the two boys, nor any hens or eggs. This, Guiaou had expected. And now there was something like a rumble in the ground. He could not really hear it yet, but felt it in a prickle from his heels through his spine. He stepped clear of the barn and looked down the road they’d been traveling before they’d stopped here.
Nothing at first, then a crawling speck on the road, a dust cloud, horses, many horsemen. Guiaou ran into the barn and began to untie the horses, fumbling in his hurry. He’d put his helmet on, to free his hands. It was awkward leading all three horses at once, and the animals picked up his nervousness. One of them twisted around to bite another on the haunch, and the bitten horse whinnied and made to rear. Before Guiaou came to Toussaint he had been afraid of horses as much as of water, and now it seemed to him that the skill and confidence he’d gained since might drain away and leave him helpless, like the blind girl frozen on her string halfway between the barn and the house. The yard was empty except for her—the older woman must have gone back in. Guiaou remembered the conch shell he carried in a saddlebag. He yanked it out and sounded it. At the harsh tone, Guerrier’s horse pulled free. Guiaou could not chase it—he started toward the house leading the two others, and the third horse followed, as he should have known it would do.
He mounted and rode down toward the yard at a trot, trailing the second horse by the reins. Guerrier came dashing out of the house, carrying his musket. The horsemen on the road were near enough to be counted, and there were more than fifty of them, white men all, with the look of Spanish militia. But one of them wore the blue coat and epaulettes of a French cavalry officer, though it seemed impossible that those ships could have landed anyone this soon.
Now, at last, Couachy came through the door. With a sweep of his head he took in the approaching riders. The Spaniard came scurrying after him, his messy mouth open and his arms spread out in some remonstrance. Couachy pulled out his dragoon’s pistol, took time to steady the barrel over his right wrist, and shot the other man in his shirtless chest. The range was so short that the impact sent the Spaniard cartwheeling backward, oversetting the iron kettle and tripod into the fire as he fell. The older woman stood screaming in the door frame.
At the shot, the horse Guiaou was leading reared and broke the reins, but Guerrier ran up on it before it could go far, caught the mane, and vaulted one-handed into the saddle, always clutching the musket with the other. The third horse had bolted all the way to the horizon. Guiaou screamed wordlessly to Couachy, who was taking a slow, deliberate time to charge his pistol. A shot sounded from the approaching riders, and Guerrier fired his musket wild into the sky. Taking a carefully studied aim, Couachy shot one of the militiamen out of the saddle. His fall broke the advance of the others. Their horses milled. Couachy turned and walked toward Guiaou, in no obvious hurry, though he did not stop to reload his pistol now.
The French officer was shouting orders, and the militiamen were regrouping for a charge. Guiaou, who had pushed his horse to a canter,