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By Root 2194 0

gave a hint of the blazing heat that would follow. Daspir was sweating in his wool uniform, though as a staff officer he’d been given a horse. Sweat-soaked in half an hour’s time, the laboring infantry smelled rather like wet sheep. They went double time up the steep zigzag ascent, which was more of a goat path than the road Hardy’s map had suggested. Daspir pressed up on his stirrups, lifting his seat from the saddle and leaning forward to ease the burden on his mount. The men pressed on, wooden faced, their pigtails hanging limp behind them in the moist heat. The air of the woods surrounding the trail had a thick scent of ripeness and rot. Daspir’s nose wrinkled. They had reached such a height now that the open stretches of the trail gave them a splendid wide view of the bay where the ships were moored and the ocean bending away beyond.

The drum sound thickened in the jungle, picked up speed. Then from the crook of the trail ahead came the sudden roar of cannon. Daspir was in the van with General Hardy; at the noise his horse spooked and slipped from the trail. The struggle of mastering the panicked animal and bringing it back to level ground helped him control his own impulse to jump down from the saddle and cower on the ground. Another horse had fallen with a shattered leg, pinning the rider half under it. After a moment Daspir dismounted and helped the other man free. The action calmed him. Their forward movement had scarcely been checked. Daspir swung back into the saddle. Someone shot the wounded horse and it lay still. Daspir’s mount trembled between his knees but was willing to go on, and Hardy was urging the troops forward with his sword. The cannon fired again and then were silent. Daspir moved up, dimly noticing the bodies of a couple of grenadiers spilled to the side of the trail, passing a wrecked gun carriage flung off the next bend. Then they had burst into a cluster of small clay-daubed houses, just over the crest of the height they’d been climbing. Cannon fired again, from the road below, and women and children and livestock ran scattering in all directions, throwing themselves down the defiles, plunging into cover of the jungle where the hidden drums kept grumbling. The women shrieked in a language that sounded exactly like French, yet Daspir could not find a single intelligible word in it.

At that he stopped short and groped at the back of his head, wondering if he’d taken some unfelt hurt that had knocked the comprehension right out of his brain. But then he realized he still understood Hardy’s shouted orders well enough. He choked, coughed, and saw that the roofs of all the little houses had been set afire. No wonder the women were all screaming. He squeezed his horse forward down the slope, behind the front line of infantry. The horse was cooperating with him better now—it was not such a poor horse as he’d at first thought. A row of black soldiers appeared across the road, and Daspir felt his hat go crooked; only as he set it straight did he hear the volley of musketry. The French soldiers moved on unperturbed except for those who had fallen. Enemy cannons spat out fire, and there was another ring of female screeching. Among the black soldiers Daspir picked out a huge white horse with a small black rider, swirling a sword as long as himself through clouds of smoke above his kerchiefed head. Daspir, who prided himself on his own horsemanship, had not seen such a stallion in his whole life. He swallowed and instinctively spurred out ahead of the infantry line.

Alé! Meté feu partout!

Hardy’s infantrymen were charging with the bayonet. Now they had the advantage of the downhill grade to add to their momentum. A shock, and the enemy line was dispersed. White horse and dark rider had vanished. The black soldiers were scattering into the trees. Hardy’s infantry re-formed and continued marching down the slope. Of a sudden their column was raked by musket fire—not an organized volley, but a series of isolated shots from the cover of the jungle on either side. A few men fell. Daspir picked at his mosquito