Tale of The Thunderbolt

by E. E. Knight

  The moon rose, and the drivers loaded their vehicles once more with those who had to ride.

  Monte-Cristi handed Valentine his horse's reins. "Ride today, Captain. I'll be afoot with my men in the rear. It will do everyone good to be able to see you. His name is Luc, and like me he is a defector from the Kurians; he is strong enough to bear even your oversize friend on these mountains. Take care of him should I.. . should I fall."

  Valentine read the expression in Monte-Cristi's face, and nodded dumbly. He cinched the saddle on the speckled gray gelding. He slung his submachine gun, grabbed a handful of mane, and mounted. Luc heaved a sigh and pawed at the earth, eager to be off.

  "Any sign of our pursuers?"

  Monte-Cristi shook his head. "No. For now they just watch."

  "Build up the fires as we go. I want them to burn for a few more hours at least. Take care of yourself. Dinner tonight with me on the ship?"

  "I look forward to it."

  "Let's get everyone moving. Quietly."

  Valentine rode at the head of the column, just behind the rear guard. He had contracted the mass of soldiers and civilians as much as possible, but the troops at his disposal could hardly watch the front and flanks, let alone defend them with so many men detached for the rear guard.

  They made good time despite the dark. When his sensitive nose picked up the smell of the sea, Valentine's heart leapt. He began to trot his horse up and down the column, urging the weary walkers on as best as he could.

  Everyone seemed to sense that it was time for the last sprint. The Grogs at the head of the column scouted, and helped the pioneers with the worst parts of the road by cutting down trees into washouts so the trucks could cross.

  Valentine followed with a vanguard of armed men watching at all times as the others worked. He needed at least a small group of disciplined men to be ready for any emergency. Then came the overloaded trucks, the valves on the aged engines clattering in complaint. A few men traveled to either side of the road, visible through the scarcer vegetation in this more arid region of the island. Interspersed with the trucks, ready to give a shove, came the masses of Santo Domingans with their children and bundles in tow, hardly a goat remaining. Somewhere behind, more refugees followed, covered by Monte-Cristi's rear guard, composed of his most reliable men with the best weapons.

  Valentine had enough on his mind, worrying about how he would find space, not to mention food, for perhaps two thousand extra mouths on the ride home without the Kurians intervening.

  Which of course they did, just short of his goal.

  A Grog shrieked a warning, and the dark of the road ahead burst into muzzle flashes. An automatic weapon swept the road, scattering both his men and the formation of pioneers. The Kurian soldiers were dispersed on the crest of a hill ahead.

  Valentine could see the vast night out there, between the folds of the earth, and cursed. Stopped!

  The Grogs came stumbling back, one wounded. Valentine got off Monte-Cristi's horse, led it into a gulley sheltering his soldiers.

  "They must have just beaten us there, my David," Ahn-Kha said. "They are not dug in-they stand behind rocks and trees, or lie on the ground. It is just a screen, I think."

  "But it's a well-placed screen, and we're the bugs."

  "If the pioneers charge too-"

  'There'll be that many more dead men. Any idea where their flank is?"

  "No."

  "Another hour, and I bet they have twice as many men. Give me your rifle. If we can at least get the automatic weapon..."

  Ahn-Kha took his submachine gun. "Give the word, and we will go, my David."

  Valentine's own men began shooting back at the soldiers ahead, and a slow, popping firefight took place and grew as both sides' soldiers gathered at the gunfire. Neither side seemed to have ammunition to waste; with no targets, the automatic weapon was silent.

  "Ahn-Kha, I have a great favor to ask," Valentine said, adjusting the slide on the gun's rear sight.

  "I know, my David. I will break for those rocks."

  Ahn-Kha ran forward in the low, loping run of the Grogs, using his hands and feet. The machine gun fired, and Valentine's Cat eyes picked up the source. He placed the flange of the front sight on what he hoped was a head. He squeezed, and the heavy Grog-gun kicked out its .50-caliber shell. He slid back into the gulley.

  "You got him," the Haitian at his right said, lifting his head.

  "Keep-," Valentine began. Valentine saw the man's hair rustle as if a brush had been run upward through it, and he slumped. Valentine slid over to the corpse, and passed the rifle to a sheltering pioneer.

  Valentine heard a whistling sound; then an explosion lit the night at the crest of the enemy hillside. He slid sideways for a better view and was rewarded by the sight of a second shell bursting on the crest, right in the middle of the road where the machine gun had been placed.

  Naval gunfire, by God!

  "My David, it's the Thunderbolt," Ahn-Kha shouted from his hiding place ahead. The sky began to turn orange, and somewhere in the distance, a rooster crowed. He heard shooting far behind; the rear guard was contesting the road with their pursuers.

  Valentine took to his horse. They would not be ringed in.

  "Over the hill and to the sea, men. To the sea!" he shouted. "Sur la mer!" the hills echoed. Valentine handed the Grog-gun to one of Ahn-Kha's warriors.

  The Golden One let loose with a battle bellow, a blood-freezing sound. His Grogs answered, and went up and over the edge of the gully, their shotguns and rifles flaring in the half-light. There were no bayonets to glint in the rising sun, but the ivory in their oversize teeth shone.

  The trucks gunned their engines and kicked up gravel from the road. Valentine passed Ahn-Kha. His friend sprayed the roadblock ahead with bullets from the PPD. The charging Grogs to either side made for an odd sight, going forward with two legs and an arm, almost like horses cantering. Valentine considered drawing his blade for effect, but the Haitians and Grogs needed no urging. He pulled his Colt automatic instead and briefly wondered how he would work the slide and keep atop of the galloping horse....

  The Santo Domingans did not wait to meet them. The sight and sound of charging Grogs amidst the Thunderbolt's shell-fire proved too much for the thin line of riflemen. The cheering sight of knapsacks bobbing in the tall grass of the hillside as the Santo Domingans ran brought a victorious whoop from Valentine. The horse gathered itself to leap the roadblock, and Valentine gripped the mane. He saw dead men heaped by the machine gun as the horse jumped the felled tree.

  Valentine heard shots from the fishing village at the base of the hill and saw the Thunderbolt's marines deployed in a skirmish line advancing up the hill. Post, evidently trapped with his little contingent in the seaside fishing village, had heard the firing and acted.

  The Santo Domingan soldiers surrendered or scattered, and the rout was complete.

  Valentine swore to himself that he would see Post made into an officer in Southern Command if they ever made it back to the Free Territory.

  As the column got moving again, Valentine reproached himself for jumping his horse into the most likely spot for another shell from the Thunderbolt. But in his later years that was forgotten when he remembered the pure glory of that moment, his first battlefield victory in eight years of soldiering.

  Valentine saw boats drawn up on the beach, to either side of the village, under the guard of a sailor or two. Valentine had dispatched Post to the rendezvous with orders to gather every available craft, using the Thunderbolt's forbidding bulk if necessary to confiscate a flotilla of fishing boats. Using all the Thunderbolt's deck space, and a few large boats in tow, he hoped to get his charges along the coast.

  It would be another long day while they loaded and supplied all the boats, but he had learned to expect nothing less.

  By sunset, after an endless afternoon spent turning chaos into order, he stood on the Thunderbolt's bridge in clean clothes with a hot meal inside him. The Santo Doming
an refugees were crowded on board every seaworthy vessel. Monte-Cristi's rear guard had tumbled down from the hills into the Thunderbolt's motorized boats, covered by cannon and Oerlikon. Last of all came Post's marines, setting fire to the huts of the village to add covering smoke to the debarkation.

  But new worries replaced the old. Their cockleshell flotilla could fit the Haitian soldiers and Santo Domingans, just, but any kind of bad weather would lead to the possible loss of the boats, and perhaps the overcrowded Thunderbolt. The Kurians in Santo Domingo had a few ships, as well, mostly armed merchantmen that ran sugar and rubber and ore north. Any exchange of gunfire would be fatal to many of those crowding on the Thunderbolt's decks. Waiting in the bay while they captured better vessels from other villages was out of the question. The Kurian forces had already gathered, lobbing mortar shells into the water as the Thunderbolt towed the boats out to sea.

  Two single-masted fishing ships plodded alongside, reeking holds filled with mobs of huddled people. Dozens more stood forlornly on the shoreline.

  He unburdened his concerns on the one who knew the waters best.

  "Don't worry about the weather," Carrasca said, her hair blowing out in the fresh Caribbean breeze, just as it had that first morning taking the captured ship into Jamaica. The helmsman ignored them. "We have a few weeks left before worrying about real storms."

  Valentine took the sea air into his nostrils like a drug. "We have to get farther off the coast. Two or three miles at least. They might have guns mounted."

  "Let it go, David. We're at sea. My element, remember? Let me do the thinking for a while. You've done brilliantly. Maybe not what you set out to do, but it was the right choice in the end."

  "I should-"

  "Sleep. That's an order."

  "Captain's word at sea is law," he said, turning up a corner of his mouth.

  Her mock-serious attitude vanished. She glanced onto the bridge and stepped into his arms. He couldn't tell who started it, but they were kissing. "Sleep with me," she whispered. "Soon. When we get back to Jamaica. After we see this through." She broke off the embrace, leaving his body tingling. "Enough. You see, I take my duty as seriously as you. Tempting as the thought is," she added, looking at his crotch and then returning her eyes to his. She no longer watched him with that wary hint of fear that his pupils might be glowing.

  Valentine, too aroused to feel embarrassed, saluted. "It's a date," he said, moving past her to leave the bridge. "I'll be in my cabin, if there's room to sleep between Post and Ahn-Kha, that is." He allowed his hand to trace the firm course of her buttock and thigh as he passed, puckishly wanting her to be as aroused as he.

  Sure enough, Ahn-Kha lay on the floor, still smelling of gunsmoke. Post occupied his cot, having fallen into bed still in uniform. Post reeked of sweat and woodsmoke, blood and gun oil, tidewater and pig fat. Valentine did not even have to hypersensitize his nose to smell the story of his lieutenant's day. Valentine stepped over Ahn-Kha and managed to get his boots off before falling into a dreamless sleep.

  A hand shook him awake. Valentine's nose told him it was Cercado before he was even partly awake.

  "Captain, it is Monte-Cristi. Come, please."

  Valentine rose out of bed, wide awake, but with the weighed-down feeling of a rushed awakening. Post and Ahn-Kha picked up on the alarm and stirred.

  He followed Cercado out the door and down the short companionway to the officer's mess. Monte-Cristi sat up, held in the arms of one of his chieftans, some of his soldiers clustered in the doorway.

  "Make a hole, dammit," Valentine growled, pushing into the compartment.

  Monte-Cristi's breathing was labored.

  "Jacques, what is it, a seizure?" Valentine asked.

  Monte-Cristi looked up, wincing. "My heart, I think, David."

  "He fainted away twice," the chieftan holding him elaborated. "We gave him some wine to ease the pain."

  Valentine dashed back to his cabin, forcing his way past Ahn-Kha's companionway-filling bulk. He tore through his footlocker and came up with a bottle of white tablets. He rushed back to the mess.

  "Water, someone," Valentine said, putting four white tablets into Monte-Cristi's mouth.

  "It is ironic, David," Monte-Cristi said, after swallowing a drink of water to wash down the aspirin. "Hours of bullets flying around me, shells even. I've been on the run all day, and the moment I get to rest"-he shrugged, forcing a smile-"my heart chooses to kill me." He shut his eyes, and Valentine patted his hand until he opened them again. "We fooled them, going to sea like that."

  "The Kurians forgot that the ocean is also a road."

  "A good joke," Monte-Cristi managed.

  "Yes, and we'll be laughing about it for weeks, over rum in your mountains."

  "I-," Monte-Cristi began, but he simply faded. Valentine thought he had gone to sleep, but when he felt for a pulse there was nothing.

  "Fuck!" Valentine said. He lowered Monte-Cristi to the deck. "It's a good heart, Jacques. It just needs some help. Ahn-Kha!" he shouted. "Get out of here, everyone, clear the floor," he yelled, forgetting to speak French, but his gestures served. Ahn-Kha entered. Valentine pounded on Monte-Cristi's chest and put an ear to his breast, listening for a beat. Nothing.

  "Push on his chest, like this," Valentine said, demonstrating.

  Ahn-Kha's thick shoulders went to work, the Grog's four-fingered hands on Monte-Cristi's breastbone. Valentine pinched off his nose and breathed as Ahn-Kha worked. A long, long minute went by, and Monte-Cristi heaved and gasped on his own.

  "... think ... perhaps ...," Monte-Cristi said. His eyes fluttered, and he looked more alert. "Why am I on the floor?"

  "Relax," Valentine said. "Don't try to talk."

  The rest of the voyage, Monte-Cristi's health consumed Valentine's attention to the point where he actually forgot about the Thunderbolt, Carrasca, the Santo Domingans in their flimsy boats, and the weather. He knew time passed only from the growth of his beard, and an occasional look out the window. He fed Monte-Cristi aspirin at each small meal and watched a little of his strength return.

  "I feel... used up," Monte-Cristi confided, sitting in a canvas chair on the shady side of the deck as the coast slid by. "More so than before. But I will say this: Life is sweet now. It wasn't before. The past died the other day. Now I make my own future free of it."

  "Your days carrying a rifle are over. Sit on a beach from now on, learn to fish," Valentine suggested.

  "Why all this concern for a worn-out old man?" Monte-Cristi asked.

  "Perhaps ..." Valentine struggled for the right words, and would have struggled no matter what language he was using.

  "Perhaps what?"

  The man was beyond pretense, in himself or others. "Perhaps because I see you as one possible me in thirty years. Also, I didn't want an old enemy to lay his hands on you."

  "Who? I thought you had not been to our land before."

  "Death. The Grim Reaper, chief of all the others. When we got on board, I figured we left Death back on shore. Turned out He followed. The bastard's never satisfied. He wants more every chance he gets. So every chance I get, I kick him in the teeth. Sooner or later one of us is going to give up. It won't be me."

  Chapter Nine

  Free Haiti, July: It is easy to believe in spirits in the mountains of Haiti, when the misted woods press close all around. Groaning sounds that cannot be birds yet should not be trees echo through the night air. Even a trained ear finds them impossible to place. According to voudouists, waterfalls and streams are favorite haunts of the spirits. When you come across a mountainside waterfall, cascading down a rocky cliff like a splashing staircase, you get the feeling of being the first to lay eyes on it since the forming of the world; it becomes easy to imagine it consecrated by apparitions dancing in the mists as the shafts of sunlight strike them. Then a dragonfly with a hand-size wingspan whirs by or a parade of ants crosses a root in a chitin stream, and the spell is broken. The forest is just a forest, and the water i
s just water again-until later, when the body is elsewhere and the beauty of the place weaves its magical spell, knitting memory and imagination.

  The Roots rejoiced at the return of her warriors in sacred ceremony and profane revelry.

  Valentine watched the sacred portion from a moss-hided rock, dew-dusted ferns brushing at his frame. Soldiers and civilians gathered at a waterfall in the forested hills, led in singing by their priests. Narcisse sat on a rock in the swirling waters at the base of the waterfall, like the statue of the little mermaid, calling the men to her one at a time to receive a cleansing dip in the river. Other voudouists escorted the supplicants into the water, or sang hosannas in the background. Part baptism, part absolution, and part bath, the ritual moved Valentine. There was none of the solemnity of Father Max's traditional Catholic ceremonies: the participants and audience laughed and encouraged each other through catcalls.

  The Grogs sat high on the hillside, chewing fruit and watching the human performance below as if from balcony seating. Further above, Ahn-Kha stood sentinel with crossbow and gun, a watchful set of eyes allowing the humans to relax below.

  Valentine, by nature an observer rather than a participant at this sort of display, sat on his rock with Carrasca resting on a patch of grass beside him, dappled sun setting her hair agleam. By nature scientifically minded, a few years ago he might have thought the whole performance silly animism; but he had seen too much of the inexplicable since beginning his journeys to laugh anything off. He applauded when Monte-Cristi waded into the stream. Narcisse took extra time over him, either through concern over his frailty or giving the spirits ample opportunity to work their magic. The aged hero was the last of the spiritual bathers. Some of the Thunderbolt's sailors and marines shuffled forward, and finally Post went through the ceremony. He emerged from his dunking and beckoned Valentine to join him.