Tale of the Thunderbolt (28 page)

Cercado appeared out of the dark, with two skinny youths he introduced as nephews. The boys did not take after their uncle in grooming: their scalps were shorn like merinos in springtime.

“We had some trouble near the border. A patrol.”

“I am sorry, Captain. Always in war is bad news. Always.”

You just summed up war almost as concisely as Sherman, roadwatcher.
“We're pressing on. You've got more of your family spread out up the mountain, and then down to San José?”

“Yes.”

“How many are there?”

Cercado frowned. “Were it not for the accursed ones, there would be sixty-seven or more. My father had five sons and three daughters, and I am the second oldest. My father and my elder brother both died. Every year more die than are born. There are twenty-nine of us now. In ten years' time, the family of Cercado will cease to be, unless some of the infants survive. They hunt us up and down the mountains, and sometimes they find us.”

“Why do you keep on?”

“Why do you?”

Valentine nodded at the feral-looking man, for a moment feeling an affinity for him stronger than his battle-tested friendship with Post. “I understand. I'm the last of my family.”

“You are still young. Find a wife, have children, go far from them. There are other ways to beat them than killing.”

“My father tried that. I'm still the last.”

“I see. So you stick to killing.” It was a statement, not a question.

Valentine looked back at the men. “How long until we can rest?”

Cercado took the question literally. “At the rate you go? A few more hours. Say five at most. Then you will be safe among the heights.”

They reached the heights, grassy meadows on the rounded tops of the mountains that reminded Valentine of some of the weather-rounded peaks of the Ouachitas. They had come up far. Far higher than the mountain that held the Once-ler's Citadel. It was cool, even for Haiti in June, at this elevation.

Valentine walked his horse backwards down the column. He nodded at Monte-Cristi. “We'll rest until dawn,” Monte-Cristi announced. The men groaned in relief as they sat.

There was Post to see, and Ahn-Kha. The Grogs were already sleeping in a heap of limbs and broad backs, like pigs seeking the comfort of each other's warmth in a cold sty.

“Rest, my David. I will keep watch,” Ahn-Kha said.

“I'll join you. I can sleep in the saddle tomorrow.”

“You are limping. You always do when you are tired. Stop pretending you're a ghost and rest,” Ahn-Kha argued, sotto voce. Ahn-Kha's rubbery lips came to a point like an accusing finger.

“Wake me in two hours. Then you can sleep. Two hours, old horse, and that's all.”

“Agreed.”

Valentine unsaddled his mount and wiped the sweat from its back and muzzle. By the time he hobbled it, gave it a nosebag full of vegetables ground with sugar, and checked its hooves, half an hour of his two was gone. He looked at Ahn-Kha, standing atop a rock with the patience of a tree, as if the rock itself would succumb to fatigue before the Golden One would. Comforted, he slept beneath the statue-like shape.

“Up. You've been asleep two hours,” Ahn-Kha said, prodding him in the back with one of his crossbow bolts.

Valentine snatched the bolt and rapped Ahn-Kha on the shin with it before the Golden One could react. “Thanks.”

Ahn-Kha responded with a playful swipe of his long-toed foot that Valentine ducked under even as he rose. There was a hint of something in the air, the early purple of the predawn. He realized he was chilled. “You lie down. My blanket's warm.”

Ahn-Kha grunted and wrapped what he could of himself in the blanket. “Thank you, my David. That scout, Sera — ”

“Cercado.”

“Cercado kept awake. He moves well. I've never seen a man who can vanish among the rocks like that. Only you are more silent. But he hides even his shadow in his pocket.”

“Speaking of silence . . . ,” Valentine said.

The Grog snorted and closed his eyes.

Valentine watched the mists revealed by the dawn, admiring the craftsmanship of the crossbow quarrel while waiting out the light. The quarrel had chiseled ridges running down the shaft, creating an artful, air-guiding line from tip to flange. The Grogs put artistry into everything they made, even something meant to be fired once into an enemy.

The pink-and-blue of first light revealed his column isolated as though on the shores of an island, surrounded by a calm gray sea of fog. Everything was reduced at this height: the trees, grasses, and flowers were all smaller, as if imitating the foreshortened landscape below. He woke Monte-Cristi, who in turn woke his other chieftains. The soldiers gathered at a spring Cercado pointed out. Their guide's discovery was hardly more than a seep, but the men lined up as though it were a tiled bath.

Valentine wished for a moment he were one of them, joking as they waited for a washup. His thoughts drifted back, as they did with unsettling frequency, to the months of Quisling service on the Gulf Coast. Ordinary soldiers weren't asked to put on the uniform of their bitterest enemy, salute men they despised, organize more thorough sweeps of coastal islands and bays to capture auras for the insatiable Kurians. At the time he told himself, told Duvalier, that he just followed orders, didn't kill anyone himself unless they were shooting at him. Usually in defense of their families. Maybe Duvalier believed him. Trouble lay in that he couldn't convince himself. He could still hear the squalling of terrified children as his men shoved them and their mothers into pens, ready to be shipped —

“The mists are a stroke of fortune,” Cercado said from somewhere on the other side of the world. “If we move now, we can be back among the trees before they clear. It is downhill from here.”

Valentine boxed up his terrible memories. For now. “Good. We'll get off this ridge while it lasts.”

He endured a series of vexing delays while the men took up their arms and equipment. Only the packhorses were ready, happily cropping mouthfuls of mountain grass.

Post came up the slope from the head of the column as Valentine mounted his horse. “There's trouble with the Grogs.”

Valentine rode off the ridge and came upon Ahn-Kha, arguing with his scouts. The Golden One used a combination of barks and gestures to encourage his reluctant charges.

“What's the matter?”

Ahn-Kha's ears were up and pointed forward. “Fools! They take the mists for poisoned air. They remember their grandfathers' tales of chemical weapons of fifty years ago, and they're frightened of descending into the fog.”

“Post, keep the column moving, don't worry about the Grogs for now,” Valentine said, using the quarrel to tap the horse's flank. It trotted down the grassy slope toward the fog.

“I'll ride in and come out alive,” he hollered back. “Tell them I breathe just as they do.” The mist closed in around him. The sun winked white on the horizon.

When he replayed the incident in his mind later, Valentine rebuked himself for forgetting everything old Everready had taught him about moving alone, his first year as a Wolf. He had failed to lower his lifesign and his anger at the delays kept his senses from knowing the Reaper was near until it leapt out of the mist.

It wanted him as a prisoner, not as a corpse, for it killed the horse with a kick that caved in the roan's skull. Man, beast, and Reaper crashed to the meadow grass. Man fell beneath beast; Reaper landed on its feet beside Valentine with feline poise. It turned, its bullet-stopping cape cracking the air like a whip.

Valentine reached for his holster, but the Reaper was faster. It planted a foot on him, and knocked away his automatic faster than his eyes could follow the motion.

His arm went numb. The Reaper reached behind him and removed his machete from its sheath across his back. Pinned as he was, he could no more grasp the machine gun strapped across his saddlebags than he could the mountaintop.

“Hel — ,” Valentine managed, before the Reaper's long-fingered hand closed over his face. Fingernails like steel talons dug into his cheek.

The Reaper dragged him out from under the horse by his head, its baleful yellow eyes staring into his from an unkempt tangle of thin black hair. Its mouth was open in a theater-mask grin, revealing pointed black teeth. It looked upslope at some motion Valentine caught out of the corner of his eye, and pulled its captive to its chest, putting the other arm under his knees, like a muscular hero taking up his lover. The Reaper turned to run.

Valentine struck. In pulling him free, the Reaper released his trapped hand holding the quarrel. He gripped the wood near the point and struck the Reaper in the pit of its stomach. The Reaper staggered, gripping him so tightly to its chest, he thought his back would break. Valentine fought the crushing embrace and lost. He could not draw breath.

Suddenly Post was in front of them, one of his pikes barring the way. Valentine looked up at the Reaper's face. Its mouth yawned open in a terrible grimace, fighting some inner seizure. It dropped him, and sank to its knees.

Valentine rolled downhill. He turned three full revolutions before stopping himself. Vision wavering from pain and dizziness, he looked up at the Reaper. Its eyes rolled up into its skull. Post stood frozen, staring at the thing in astonishment.

Ahn-Kha appeared in the mists, his crossbow cocked and ready. The Grog circled the Reaper, and saw the bolt protruding from the stomach, the wood swollen where it touched the avatar's flesh. Ahn-Kha came to Valentine's side, keeping the weapon ready but his attention on Valentine.

“My David. You are hurt?”

Valentine shook his head, cradling his right arm. “Not seriously. I think my hand . . . or my arm is banged up good.” What he wanted to say was that it stung like a son of a bitch, but Ahn-Kha never complained of discomfort, so why should he?

“I heard your horse fall, and feared for you. I readied the crossbow, for only one of those would get the better of you, and came. Post, too.”

“Stupid,” Valentine grunted, flexing his fingers.

“For leaving the column?”

“No, stupid of me. My apologies, my friend, I put us in danger because I wasn't thinking.”

“There can be no apologies between us. Come! Let us see how this quickwood kills.”

The Grog pulled him to his feet with burly ease. They walked up the hill, Valentine feeling like a Sioux version of Richard III, limping along horseless and with paralyzed fingers. The head of the column appeared out of the mists, Grogs among the Haitians with weapons at the ready.

Valentine inspected the dead Reaper. Propped up on its knees, it seemed to be howling at the waxing sun rising from the Santo Domingo mountains.

“Tell your great friend that he hit it square,” Monte-Cristi said. “A good shot, near enough the heart to kill it in a few seconds.”

“No, that was me. I barely stabbed it. The wood went in an inch or two at most, that thing has muscle like armor plating.”

Valentine thought back on those “few seconds,” which seemed to his pained remembrance to be hours at least, and looked into the empty yellow eyes of the Reaper. He tried to imagine what it would feel like, having the heart harden into a solid mass. Did the Kurian at the other end feel the pain, as well? He found himself hoping so, before shrinking back from the sadistic speculations.

The men would waste the whole morning admiring the dead Reaper if he didn't move them along.

“Post, let's tighten the column up in this mist. Ahn-Kha, you and your Grogs will get a break for a while. Take a place at the rear.”

As the various groups got themselves organized in four different tongues — counting Grog-speech as a language — Valentine retrieved his weapons and saddlebags. Monte-Cristi offered him his horse, but he declined. Penance for his foolishness would be being on foot for the rest of the long journey. A pair of Haitian pioneers retrieved the saddle and added it to the pack animals' burdens.

The Grogs looked at him, sniffing and pointing at the still-warm cadaver and muttering to each other. One licked its chops. Ahn-Kha growled something, and they turned abjectly away.

The Cat intervened: “Oh, belay that. They can dress and quarter it, as long as they do it quickly. But they have to share with any of the men who want a piece of horsemeat.”

 

Valentine squatted in the hills looking down at the armory, which in turn stood in the hills above the dilapidated town of San Juan. Behind him, the serration crowned by Pico Duarte purpled the dawn's horizon.

His column had covered close to fifty mountainous miles in three nights and two days, and had once again been reduced when he detached Post to cut the valley road leading northwest out of San Juan to the garrison on Haiti's border. What was left of his command was hardly larger than the garrison inside the armory, if Cercado's estimation was to be believed.

Their march had been uncontested, if not uneventful, as they descended from the high mountains, following paths staked out by Cercado and his family. Until they ran into a trio of Santo Domingan soldiers on patrol.

Monte-Cristi's horsemen had finally run the scouts to earth this morning, and the hunt ended tragically, with the shooting of all three scouts when they came to bay among some rocks. Valentine seethed at the loss of vital information even as he congratulated Monte-Cristi's men for their coup.

He examined the armory from higher ground. It was built more to withstand thievery than assault, though inside a perimeter fence of barbed wire the buildings were linked by a series of walls and wooden towers. The whole edifice had the slapped-together look endemic to the Kurian Zone.