by E. E. Knight
Sissy had the knife now, and stuck it up and under her opponent's rib cage. Valentine grabbed his guard's head and pushed it as hard as he could into the wall behind him. Two sickening, crunching thumps, and he let the man drop.
"Get the keys," Valentine said, blood and cordite in his nose.
"They ain't good for the outer door," she said, slamming the door to the interior staircase shut. "I got the captain's. Boul's asleep for the rest of the day, and not much use to anyone for a while after that. His chicken curry had a pinch of magic in it."
Valentine looked at both rifles and took the better of the two, an old Ruger Model 77/44. There were no spare magazines, but one of the guards had a handful of .44 cartridges in his pocket.
"Food and water?" Valentine asked. He took one of the guard's sandals off and put them on his bare feet.
"Got it," she said, throwing the bag over her shoulder.
Valentine knelt. "Okay, get your arms around me. We're out."
Narcisse wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on to her mutilated forearm with her good hand. Valentine came to his feet easily; she weighed no more than a loaded backpack. He went to the dead bolt on the basement exterior door.
"It's the shiny steel one with the longest barrel," she said in his ear.
The door opened, and Valentine brought the rifle barrel up the stairway.
"Most of the men that weren't wounded are behind sandbags in the harbor. They expect your ship to come back for you. The white man with the chicken neck wants to spring a trap once they land troops."
Valentine kept the rifle to his shoulder and ascended the stairs. Where his eyes went, the iron sights of the rifle followed. He heard banging on the door Narcisse had locked back in the cells.
A trio of navy-uniformed men approached the stairway, rifles held ready, hunched over as if trying to make themselves smaller. They hugged the wall, all in a row, like the three blind mice. Valentine ducked when he saw the rifle barrel come his way. The shot pinged off the wall behind his head.
He popped his head and gun back up and shot the front man as he worked the bolt on his rifle. The other two dropped to the ground and fired without aiming.
Valentine ran, popping off another shot from his hip as he crossed the street, trying to keep the other two soldiers hugging pavement. His opponents looked more interested in getting behind the twitching body of their leader than in shooting at him. He made it into an alley chased only by the sound of a gunshot from the roof.
"You okay?" Valentine asked.
"You'd be running a lot lighter if I wasn't," she said in his ear.
"I want to get away from the waterfront, if that's where the soldiers are. You wouldn't have a suggestion on how to get to the resistance, would you?"
"We'll get out of town and head west. Hope you're feeling better and some kind of athlete, child. These mountains'll kill you if the captain's men don't."
Sissy guided him out past the standing buildings and into a mass of rubbled buildings. A shanty town of sorts grew out of the ruins, homes created from rebuilt walls and roofed with everything from corrugated aluminum to old doors to woven palm fronds. Gaping locals got out of Valentine's path. He was running with gun ready and Narcisse clinging to his back like a baby monkey riding on its mother. He ran to the canebrake beyond the rabble, then to the trees and momentary safety.
Valentine crossed the Plaine du Nord at a steady, loping run. Narcisse clung tightly to his back, Valentine's shirt tied around both their waists, to keep her from being bounced like a sack. They moved through the muted light of the forest, crossing old roads that were now only paths and the occasional overgrown foundation. During a break, he took a look to the south, at what looked like a tabletop mountain.
Narcisse panted: "How you ran like that, child? Don't you tire?"
Valentine did not want to be reminded. "Oddly shaped mountain," he said.
"That's no mountain, that's the Citadelle. An old fortress. It took many years and many lives to build, they say. It belongs to him now."
"The local Kurian?"
She nodded.
"Why are we running toward it?" he asked.
"They wouldn't be expecting me to take you there. Once we come near the ruins of Sans Souci, we turn west into the mountains. Then you'll be among friends."
The dead air of midday enveloped them. Sweat poured off the pair and mingled as it ran down Valentine's back. Narcisse mopped his brow and eyes as he ran.
By nightfall they hit a grade that made Valentine slow to a walk. Evening birdcalls and air flowing like a slow stream seemed to whisper a promise of relief from the day's heat. Valentine found a heavy tree trunk and set Narcisse down between two roots. He passed her the water, and she spat out a beaded chain she had clenched between her teeth, and fingered the charm on it with her good hand.
"Those look like rosary beads," Valentine said as she drank.
"My favorite juju." She smiled, handing him the water. "They were blessed by the pope himself, in the long-ago, my mother told me. She got them from her mother."
"I thought you practiced voudou."
"Voudou's a bit of everything, child. Even the pope did it-he just didn't know he was."
Valentine emptied his gun and looked down the barrel. "Captain Boul's men take good care of their weapons."
"He dotes on that sort of thing. Every gun represents some piece of trading he did. He's just protecting his investment."
Valentine dried his chest with his shirt, eyes stinging with sweat. Even the thin cotton of his pants seemed to suffocate his skin.
"It's hot here. You'd think the shade would help." He bit into some kind of rice-flour bun from the sack of provisions.
"It is worse farther inland. The cool night is soon. Your name, Valent-Valenter?"
"Valentine."
"Oh, like the saint. And your first name?"
"David."
"Dav-eed," she said. "The king who danced. Your name is strong with magic."
"The only dancing I'll be doing is at the end of a rope, if we don't find the guerrillas." He looked east, where a long string of mountain feet ran down to the ocean. "Are you up to it?"
"There is a road along the coast. They will catch up soon on horses using it, once they know what direction we go. But perhaps they will not come this far. No man can run as you. This is a race for a story."
"Where is the finish line?"
"I cannot say for sure. They move. There are guerrillas to the west is all I know. Not many kilometers, I think. Their area begins at a place of good magic, and we are near it."
"So close to Captain Boul?"
"They have... an understanding, perhaps you would say. You do not know Haiti, David. The Kurian on this part of the island, he is more concerned with appearances than results."
"The one in the Citadel?"
"Yes."
"Do his..."-Valentine searched for a phrase- "'drinkers of death' visit Cape Haitian often, or use the road?"
"Monks of death? You mean the Whisperers? He does not use them much. Again, appearances."
Valentine thought for a moment, wondering if he was losing something between his barely adequate French and her Haitian Creole. A Kurian who did not use his Reapers much?
"I don't understand."
"Knowing that is the first step on the path to wisdom."
"Hope the path isn't as steep as this damn hill," Valentine said. He picked her up, retied his shirt, and carried her onward.
The next day, after a long mix of jogging and walking the rugged mountains of the coast, Valentine heard the sound of a hound's cry. It brought back memories from five years ago.
He was tired, hungry despite emptying Narcisse's store of food, and still sore from the beating in the Cape Haitian jail. Evening was well on its way; the sun had disappeared behind the mountainside. Picking a path through the tangled growth would become a blind, exhausting flight for a normal man. Valentine's gift of night vision would help, but he needed a mod
icum of light, and without some moonlight penetrating the clouds that gathered above the canopy, they were as good as lost among the lianas and creeping vines.
"We're being tracked."
"Yes, we are," Narcisse agreed. Her strong good hand still locked the ring of muscle and bone around his neck and shoulders that allowed him to bear her.
"You wouldn't have some hot pepper somewhere in that food bag, would you?"
"I wasn't planning on cooking, child."
Green cotorras screeched at them from the trees above. The noisy parrots mocked them.
"How did they catch you, when you ran before?" Valentine asked, pushing up yet another steep hill. Perhaps he could outlast the tracker, if not the dogs. Talking to Narcisse might get his mind off the pain in his legs and back. Exhaustion was an enemy that could not be beaten, but it could be delayed if he kept his mind from giving in to it.
"The first time was when I worked in the cane fields, in Santo Domingo. I hitched a ride on a taptap-"
"What's a taptap?"
"One of those painted trucks. They are still running after all these years. The only thing on them that isn't forty years old is the tires. The driver of this taptap turned me in at the first station we came to. There's a standing reward for runaways; he was a poor man.
"After that I met my lover; he was one of the guards who came for me. Kinder than the rest. After punishment, a whipping, he got me a job cooking at a waystation for the guards on one of the highways. They would stop, and I would cook and wash. I had time on my own when there were no soldiers to take care of. I went into the woods, and at a waterfall met a juju-man."
"A witch doctor, you mean?"
"Yes, Dav-eed. When I touched the stream to drink or bathe, he said I made writing in the water, which told him I could practice voudou."
Valentine set her down next to a great mahogany tree, looked downslope, and set the sights on his rifle. He worked the bolt and chambered a round.
"So he taught you?"
"People think voudou is all fear and hate, but there is love and healing in it, Dav-eed. There is a bad side-like anything, it can be used to destroy. Those who work their magic with both hands can cause much sadness. Have you ever heard of a zombie?"
"Yes."
"On the east side of the island, there are many zombies, slaves to the Evil Ones. They hardly need their Whisperers to feed from them. Such a sad thing, to have the gros-bon-ange taken, and the poor soul standing there, with no chance to even run."
"The 'great good angel'?"
"It is the spirit that enters you at conception. It animates you."
"I learned it was called the 'vital aura.'"
"One word or another-it is all the same. Didn't I tell you that already?"
"Yes. Seems different when it comes from a Lifeweaver."
"Still think there's nothing to voudou?"
"I never said that. I've seen enough to know not to laugh off anything."
Valentine settled down behind a thick tree root, stomach against the moist earth, with a good view of the slope. "Our gros-bon-anges may be packing for a tap. I'm going to see if I can't take out a couple of these dogs before the light fails. I smell a rain coming. That'll throw them off if they don't get here first."
"Wait for me to tell you to shoot," she said, sliding next to him for a better view down the hill. She removed her bandanna, and Valentine saw more scars going up the side of her head. They had a stretched-over, half-healed look to them: burns from long ago.
"Why, are you going to work a charm to make me aim better?" he asked, tearing himself away from the tales told by the scar tissue.
"Don't know one, or I would, Dav-eed."
The occasional barks and yips grew louder. Valentine tucked the rifle closer to his shoulder. He wished he had had more time to get familiar with the gun; it felt a little nose-heavy. Too late to fill the stock with lead weights now.
Slathered dogs came out of the gloom, towing a ragged black figure up the slope. Valentine listened for the hoof-beats of more men behind with hard ears. He heard nothing.
Valentine looked down the barrel and put the foresight square on the man's chest. He placed his finger on the trigger, then startled with recognition. He put up his gun.
"That's the man who sent me the message in the market."
She squinted. "Yes, I thought so when I heard the dogs. His name's Victo, but the captain's men call him Dog-boy. He hunts wild pigs with those things. He's a character. Come into town just to trade, though I've seen him around more lately."
"Monsieur Valentine," Victo hallooed up the hill in English, waving. "Have no fear." He held up a pair of boots. "Look, I have your shoes, sir."
Valentine stood slowly, his aching body fighting him. "Thank you, Victo. You know what a good pair of boots means." He put on cotton socks, another gift from Victo, and slipped the familiar boots back on his sore feet. The sandals had chafed his skin badly during the long run from Cape Haitian.
"I thought you'd be on the Thunderbolt" Valentine said.
Victo showed a healthy set of teeth. "No, soon as we knew you were missing, I put ashore."
"Where's the Thunderbolt?'
"Down the coast, off a little island. They won't be seen, unless another ship from the other side of the island comes looking. That's Roots land." Valentine took a good look at the man who rescued his boots: Victo was handsome, with coal-black skin stretched tight over lean muscle.
"Roots?"
"The guerrillas."
Narcisse interrupted in her Haitian Creole. "Men, we need to be moving now. Sun is going down, but that doesn't mean they can't follow us still. There's more dogs on this part of the coast than just yours, Victo."
"Yes, woman. He carry you all this way?"
"Like an empty sack. Up and down these hills, never knew a man could run like that. What do they feed you up north?"
"I'll tell you, if you'll tell the story of why the guerrillas are called Roots. Do you hide in tunnels?"
Victo laughed in the slow, easygoing manner of the Caribbean. "It's an old saying, blanc. When the old hero Louverture was taken from us, he said, 'Overthrowing me, they have cut down the trunk of the tree of black liberty. I will shoot up again through the roots, for they are numerous and deep.' We aren't numerous, my friend, but we are deep. Deep in the mountains, deep in the forests. Though for once, all men wear the same yoke."
Valentine took up his human backpack again, and swallowed a grateful mouthful of Victo's water. It seemed almost futile; the water left him as fast as he took it in. He thirsted as if the last time he had water was yesterday. "Never been so thirsty," he said.
Victo pulled a metal tin from his pocket, an old breath-mint logo in red and white still visible on the lid. He opened it. "Salt pills. Take two now. Two more later."
"There are springs soon. Don't worry, child," Narcisse said.
The Cat led the way, and the dogs circled as they hiked.
It began to rain, one of the enervating downpours of the Caribbean summer. They made a queer procession, Valentine toting his human load, the rainsoaked dogs crisscrossing first in front, then behind, and Victo's long-legged tread at the rear.
They slogged through the night with an hour of fast walking along the hillsides, a ten-minute break, and then another hour of walking. By the time Valentine set Narcisse down again, he had lost the battle with exhaustion. His time in the KZ and life on the Thunderbolt had softened him from his years of run-walks with the Wolves and long treks with Ali Duvalier into the Great Plains. He had to take his mind off his legs, which felt like someone had shot them full of sulfuric acid.
"So you ran away from the station again?" he asked Narcisse. He put two more of Victo's salt pills on his tongue; they tasted almost sweet.
"Oh, yes. I heard you could get away if you reached the coast. There were boats, men who would take you across the waters to safety. But of course I was caught again. Brought to a coastal village, under a plantation owner. A terribl
e man, this one. He had four strong men hold me down, and he broke my legs with an iron rod. Broke is not a good enough word, he made it so the bones inside were nothing but splinters. You should have seen them-they looked like two run-over snakes. After that, there was nothing to do but take them off. The beast of a man gloated over me, said something about my not running anymore. He got his face too close. I tried to put out his eye. He chopped off my hand with a machete. For some reason, they let me live, perhaps as an example to others. For a while I went from plantation to plantation, and they would set me in the sun with a sign around my neck where the workers would walk by every day as a warning to others. Then Captain Boul found me. He had been a friend of Rowberr, in a manner, and he took me to his station on the cape."
"What ever happened to your lover?"
"He just vanished. I think that is the worst part of this time. You do not even know if people die. They just disappear. Perhaps they ran; perhaps they were killed. You don't know."
Valentine's legs no longer bothered him. He tried to imagine what it would feel like, to have the bones so broken they were nothing but pieces, and had to shift his mind to the trees towering overhead.
"My brothers and sisters, too. Just gone," Victo added.
"I'm sorry," Valentine said. It wasn't enough.
Victo nodded. "Let's sleep. It is safe-we are far enough into the Roots' lands that anyone after us will come slowly."
"Can you find them?" Valentine asked.
"They will find us."
Valentine would have slept through the dawn were it not for the birds. The parrots hollered back and forth between the trees like argumentative neighbors, while thousands more greeted the morning with song and call. Victo and the dogs slept in a snoring mass, and Narcisse lay with her back pressed up against his. He felt something disquieting in his crotch.
"Sissy," Valentine whispered.
"Yes, Dav-eed?" she yawned.
"I think a bug or something crawled up my leg."
