The War of Knives

by Broos Campbell

  He surveyed the field with distaste. It lay hidden in shadow, now that the sun had gone, but I recalled that it sloped sharply down toward the ancient fort overlooking the anchorage, and then dipped again into a gully before climbing up to the foot of the prison. A wall running between the prison and the main fort had come down in places, and I supposed that would be their objective.

  “No sappers, no artificers, an’ no engineers to tell ’em where t’ dig. But with any luck we’ll get bogged down in the ravine there. Excellent cover, that.” He gave me a twisted smile to show he was joking. “Oh, bit of advice if you’ll forgive me. Should leave m’ horse behind.” He tapped the side of his nose with a finger of his dirty glove. “A white man on horseback makes a simply marvelous target—for both sides.” He trotted back to his company, where he dismounted and sent his horse to the rear.

  “’Tis off that beast you should be gettin’, as himself said, sir,” said Cahoon. “We was after needing a officer, as ya know how Jack hates takin’ orders from a sojer. Well now, the sun has set and there go the bugles, sir. I’ll just get me lads lined up there, and you can look ’em over.”

  Juge reached over and nudged me. “What is going on? It sounds as if you have acquired these men.”

  “That’s what they think. I need—”

  “Oh, if you please. It would be very amusing!”

  “Amusing! You know I can’t spare the time to get sidetracked. Sergeant Cahoon here has merely asked me to inspect his Marines. There’s no harm in that, and will probably make them happy. But after that I must find a way to get into that frigate.”

  Cahoon barked and growled the Marines into order. They stared stolidly in front of themselves, but the sailors eyed me curiously. Some of them even grinned as they stood at what passed for attention among seamen. I suppressed a sigh and dismounted, walking up one short line and down the other, my hands clasped behind my back as I pretended to look them over. The soldiers seemed clean enough—Marines keep themselves in good order without any interference from sea officers, I’ve always found—and the sailors were sober.

  “An excellent turnout, Sergeant Cahoon,” I said. “I’ll mention it to Captain Block.”

  Cahoon gave me the foot-stomping salute again. “It’s grateful I am to hear it, your honor, and so I am.”

  Joséphine skittered and snorted as I hoisted myself aboard again, and she laid her ears back across her head, but she made no effort to nip at me. If anything, she seemed eager to get going. The skin across her withers rippled, and she shook herself as if settling her gear in place before a run.

  “Right, lads,” Cahoon called out. “Present . . . harrrm!” In a normal tone he added, “Right, me boyos, pull yer socks op.” The Marines didn’t pull their socks up that I could see, but they did bring their muskets to with a snap.

  “Fix . . . bay-nets!”

  There was a great rattling of metal on metal, and some hollering and stamping that seemed to be an expected part of the procedure. The seamen drew their cutlasses and tomahawks.

  “Now listen here, Sergeant Cahoon, I need to get to the Croatoan. Where is—”

  Cahoon gave me a gap-toothed grin, pointing at his ear to indicate a temporary deafness as trumpets blared and drums roared along the line. His own drummer, a boy of maybe ten, was pounding away like a crazed monkey. A shout began far off across the valley and raced around the line and back again.

  From the army’s center a band of chosen men—the forlorn hopes, the half-companies of men who led assaults in expectation of promotion or forgiveness of crimes should they survive—strode out onto the field, with the single white chevrons on their sleeves seeming to glow in the darkness. Most carried muskets with bayonets fixed. Some carried ladders and grenadoes as well. A subaltern capered in front of them, waving his sword and pointing the way.

  Fireballs—burning bales of oil-soaked wool—came whooshing over the walls of Jacmel. “Trebuchets,” shouted Juge at my look. He swung his arm in imitation of a medieval catapult. In the light of the fireballs, groups of chosen men pelted head-down across the plain toward the forts. The defenders’ small arms and artillery opened up. As men fell, their comrades snatched up their ladders and raced toward the gaps in the wall. Little trails of sparks rose toward the wall and exploded beyond them as the chosen men threw their grenadoes.

  “Sergeant Cahoon,” I said again, when I thought I could be heard, “tell me at once where—”

  Everyone seemed to be shouting now. No one was paying attention to me. Lieutenant Treadwell bellowed something. His sergeants and Cahoon repeated the bellow, and the soldiers and Marines and sailors stepped out with their blades glittering in the light of the fireballs.

  Juge drew his saber.

  “Juge! We must dismount!”

  Joséphine minced around and tossed her head as she fought me for the bit.

  Juge cupped his hand behind his ear.

  “Juge, we must advance on foot!”

  He shook his head, laughing. “Draw your sword, my friend!”

  I had to do it, with him watching, but hell if I was going with him. The forlorn hopes had mobbed up around a breach in the wall. A fire burned there. The subaltern I’d seen before scrambled up the rubble into the breach, a black figure against the flames, turning around and raising his hands in encouragement. A dark spray blossomed around his shoulders, and his headless corpse fumbled down the slope.

  Juge urged his mount forward. Joséphine tried to follow.

  “Avast there!” I sawed at the reins. “Stand and be damned!” I had to dismount—I must dismount—but it was all I could do to hang on.

  Juge had circled back. “You have trouble with your horse, mon ami?”

  “Yes, damn it! She won’t—”

  “Naughty Joséphine!” he cried. “How you shame us!” He smacked her in the flank with the flat of his sword.

  Juge whooped. The Marines and sailors yelled. Joséphine shot to the fore, with me swinging my saber in a wild circle and roaring, “Whoa, dammit! Whoa!”

  Men streamed through the fire-streaked dark toward the walls of Jacmel. The pounding of boots and drums drowned out the pounding of my own heart. Joséphine sailed down the hill past the ancient fort and across the little ravine. As we crested the rise I saw the gap in the wall. In front of it a trench had been dug, and it was filled with soldiers raising their muskets. They disappeared behind a wall of smoke. Bullets whispered past my head.

  Juge careened alongside me. “Woe, dammeet, woe!” he shouted merrily, as if my words were a battle cry. He spurred his horse, his saber at the point.

  We plunged into the enemy’s line. Juge rained down death and mayhem with his saber. The soldiers and sailors caught up with us and scattered the mulattoes, and then we were through the wall and clattering down a narrow cobblestoned street.

  The prison wall rose up on our left. Beyond a head-high wall on our right glowered the ramparts of Fort Beliotte. The street ahead was filled with fleeing mulattoes. Juge cut them down as they ran. A man he missed fell to his knees before me, his hands raised in supplication. A green strand of intestine ballooned from under his vest as Joséphine planted a fore-hoof in his middle.

  A man on my left tried to run me through with a sword. Something blew his face off and he fell.

  A bayonet poked at me from the right. I kicked it away and yanked out my saber. I swung down at a head. The blow was pure reflex, training mixed with terror, but the saber split the skull from crown to chin.

  And it got stuck. I didn’t think to let go of it, and the weight on the end of the blade snatched me right out of the saddle. I hung in air, head down and face up—stars twinkled beyond my boots—and then my momentum ceased and gravity brought me crashing down square on my back. The air left my lungs, my arms and legs flopped uselessly, and I lost the saber. Joséphine and Juge thundered off without me.

  I gained my knees, wheezing for breath. Treadwell and Cahoon arrived. “Good evening, sir,” said Treadwell, jogging pa
st, and then the Jamaica company and the sailors and Marines knocked me flat again as they jostled by.

  Except for the groaning of the wounded and my own sobs as the air returned to my lungs, all in my immediate vicinity was quiet. I gained my feet and looked around. The mulattoes had retreated to an inner line of fortified rubble. It had caught fire in places, and in the firelight I saw men swarming over it like cockroaches on a garbage pile. There was a frantic tumult there, trumpets blaring and drums roaring and banners waving or wavering, suddenly broken up by a horrifying swirl of canister from the defenders’ cannons.

  As I yanked at my saber, trying to free it from the corpse’s ghastly grip, an ebb tide of retreating troops sent me sprawling face-first into something hard. I felt the blow from my skull all along the length of my bones. I tried to get to my knees but only managed to turn over. Even my toenails hurt.

  Like shadows from a magic lantern, men moved forward and back, tripping over me, frantically concerned with things I couldn’t see. And here was Juge, leaning down from the saddle, tugging at the front of my coat.

  “Get up, my friend! We regroup!”

  I recognized the individual French words, but their collective meaning escaped me. My head throbbed and my stomach heaved. As soon as Juge had gotten me to my feet I fell to my knees again, puking like a poisoned dog.

  Juge spoke to me in French, laughing about a mulatto graveyard and an uneasy stomach.

  “I seem to have lost my ability to speak French,” I said, surprised that it came out in French.

  Joséphine shoved her way through to me. A pair of seamen picked me up and threw me into the saddle.

  Our men had formed around us. The nice young English officer, his carefully patched coat singed and torn, pointed his men here, pushed them there, organizing a double rank of muskets across the narrow street. I wished I could remember his name.

  Cahoon drew up his remaining Marines in a third rank behind the British, with the sailors behind all. Through the smoke I saw the dim figures of infantry sweeping down the narrow street toward us.

  “Prime and load!” said the Englishman. The Marine drummer boy reinforced the order with a tattoo on his drum.

  The redcoats and Marines bit the ends off their cartridges, primed their pans, poured the remaining powder down their barrels, spat the balls in on top, and rammed the charges home.

  “Make ready!”

  The soldiers and Marines cocked their muskets.

  “Pre-e-sent!”

  They leveled their muskets. A mob of mulattoes loped out of the smoke, shrieking as they came.

  “All ranks together,” shouted the Englishman: “Fire!”

  The mulattoes staggered as the triple rank of muskets spat flame and lead. The mulattoes’ front collapsed, and the men behind them wavered.

  “Now, me boyos,” cried Cahoon: “Charge!”

  With a furious yell, they flung themselves on the enemy. Juge dashed after them with a shout. Joséphine followed, ignoring the stranglehold I’d thrown around her neck.

  The boys were doing pretty good until a troop of cuirassiers slammed out of a flaming side street, their steel breastplates gleaming scarlet in the hellish glow. The soldiers and Marines parried the sabers with their bayonets, but the weight and speed of the heavy cavalry was too much for them. They scattered like ninepins or simply fell under the lashing hooves and sabers, till the sailors slipped low into the fight, hacking with their cutlasses and tomahawks at the horses’ hamstrings. Horses screamed and fell, throwing their riders.

  The cuirassiers on foot were clumsy in their jackboots and breastplates. The boys plied their bayonets and tomahawks on the unprotected legs and arms and heads.

  Lights flashed in my head. I couldn’t see who was who. I swayed in the saddle.

  Men strained for footholds in the gore as they tore at each other. Blades glittered in the firelight. Blood misted from the sky. I saw a Marine astride a mulatto grenadier, gouging his eyes out with his thumbs. Then a cuirassier was hacking the Marine to pieces. I saw the Marine’s upraised arm come off, and then most of his head.

  I hauled my carbine out of its scabbard. A .69-caliber ball at thirty yards will penetrate five inches of oak. At two feet, I discovered as I shot the bastard in the back, it goes through a steel breastplate like tinsel paper.

  Then things got out of hand as a fresh wave of mulatto infantry joined the fray.

  “Oh, blast,” said the English lieutenant as he took a bayonet through his thigh. Then he fell and our line broke. Our men and the enemy alike disappeared into the smoke.

  I seemed to have fallen out of the saddle somehow. Joséphine stood over me, screaming and kicking at anyone who came near. She knocked a grenadier into the wall, his pigtail slithering in the smear the back of his head left on the stones. She lashed out with her hooves and teeth as the mulattoes streamed past us. Then she collapsed with a shriek that fair tore my heart out.

  I scrabbled up the street on my hands and knees. And here came Juge, whacking left and right with his blade as he fought his way toward me.

  Then he too was unhorsed. He dragged me over the blood-slick cobblestones. I tried to tell him to run for it, but speech had left me.

  I was on my feet again, leaning on him while the world swayed. I took a step, and then another. My head buzzed. All around me men were shooting and shouting and falling down. Some got up again. Some didn’t.

  I saw a hole in the wall and stumbled through it, leaving the insane din behind. And there, outside the wall, resided a blessed peace. I leaned against the wall and sank down.

  Cahoon’s face swam into view. With a terse “By yer leave, sir,” he bent my head back and swiped at my hairline with his sleeve. He hauled me to my feet, and we staggered a few steps before a shocking pain in my head buckled my knees.

  I slumped against a pile of broken stones next to the English lieutenant. The whole world seemed on fire.

  Blood dribbled into my mouth and bubbled in my nose. I sneezed and a crimson spray spattered my pantaloons. I’ll catch merry hell from that little fellow—what’s his name, I thought. You know, the little fellow who does for me and Franklin at the farmhouse.

  “Am I dying?” I asked, but the words bumped into each other. I was annoyed to notice that my ass was damp from sitting in the mud. I didn’t want anyone to think I’d shit myself.

  Cahoon winked. “’Tis but a wee scratch, sir. A bit o’ rag an’ ye’ll be right as rain.” He plucked my kerchief from my sleeve and knotted it around my head.

  He’d lost his hat. His hair was cropped down to stubble like an old cornfield, which struck me as comical. I couldn’t recall ever having seen a Marine on duty without powdered hair before. I started to say so, but then a long red crease appeared in his scalp. He jerked upright, looking surprised, and then flopped onto his back.

  Juge stood up—to my eyes he seemed to keep on standing up and up and farther up for quite some time, limned against the far-off starry night—just in time to get a musket butt across the back of the head. I tried to push him off my legs so I could get the hell away from there, but then a muddy boot swung toward me from a great distance and sparked against my nose.

  Mulatto soldiers marched me and Juge down the street. I thought the Englishman must be behind us, but they had me by the elbows and I couldn’t turn around to see. My head hung so heavily I could barely lift it. I fell and they dragged me till I made myself walk upright again, and I shrugged their hands away and they let go of my arms.

  I saw Joséphine on her belly among the corpses, looking at me and trying to rise. She got her haunches up, but her forelegs were broken and her hind hooves skittered on the cobblestones.

  “S’il vous plaît, citoyen,” I said to the officer in charge, noting distantly that my French had returned to me. My scabbard was still strapped to her rigging, but my sword was gone. I wiped the snivel from my face. “I implore you. May I have the loan of a pistol?”

  He glanced at Joséphine and then motion
ed the soldiers to let me step aside. “What do you care about a horse?”

  I shrugged. “She is my horse.”

  “We have no ammunition to spare for the stroke of mercy. However—” He drew his dirk and handed it to me.

  I cradled Joséphine’s head in my arms. Her breath was warm in my ear as she nuzzled my neck. I gave her two quick strokes across the throat, with the dreadful weight of finality behind them. She gazed at me in wonder, and then the light fell from her eyes.

  Ten

  “We are in a quandary about you fellows,” said Négraud, a mulatto lieutenant with a big nose. It wasn’t just a honker, it was a colossus. He squatted next to us in the courtyard of Fort Beliotte, exactly filling the only spot of morning sun. The stones where I sat were still clammy from last night’s rain. “The ammunition to shoot you we cannot spare,” he said, “but to let you starve distresses us. Not to mention the inconvenience of guarding you. It is a big dilemma.” He scratched the black bristles on his heavy jaw. “We could bayonet you, I suppose,” he said as if to himself, “but that might upset the men.”

  “Bon sang!” said Juge, lifting his head. “They are the delicate ones, hein?”

  “As delicate as your fellows,” snapped Négraud, and Juge’s head sank back onto his knees. The lieutenant turned back to me and said, “Which is to say, not at all. The bayonet, she lacks a certain exuberance. Most of the boys prefer the manchèt for such work.”

  I glanced at the Englishman and Cahoon, and resented their ignorance of French. I looked Négraud in the eye. “Why not just murder us and be done with it, then?”

  He looked away. “Oh, la la, this word murder is such a harsh one. It is more in the line of the stroke of mercy. Like your nigger friend here, we do not normally take prisoners except for the torture.”

  “To extract information?”

  “Ho ho! No, I told you—for the torture. It eases the ill feelings.”