“Ah. You are a white man.”
“I am black as you.”
“You are impure.”
“Purity is a worse lie.”
I did not want to debate the eighteenth century, and especially not with an armed madman. To my relief, though, he let go of her wrist for the moment, but as he turned away his eye caught mine in a different way. I saw him registering something as a flickering passed behind his thoughts. He saw me then, and that I was not afraid of him. I knew we were marked. He had released her wrist and the bracelet, though, for the time being, as we continued up the mountain, ascending to their base.
35
We were at the base of the mountain inside the damp clouds. Above us the lights from their camp were visible as a diffuse glow, refracted by the water vapor. The buzz of activity reached our ears from the camp, filling us with alternating currents of fear of the strange voices and fear of an unknown fate, as they forced us from the truck and started marching us upslope.
Sylvie was shaking as we climbed down from the truck, and I offered my hand to steady her in the condensed stillness, where all was quiet except the spray of pebbles from our boots as we ascended a narrow trail through the cloud forest.
When we had climbed more than an hour the path began thinning out even further, forcing us to scramble in single file up the steepest part of the slope, searching in the thickening darkness for handholds to help pull ourselves up when the ground fell away uncertainly.
We were slowed to a near halt, as the boots of the person in front cleated the dust down onto whoever was next, so that the line was stretched out forty feet against the face of the mountain. Two of the guards stood up ahead. To intimidate us, two were on either side of the group hectoring to speed us up, and another in the rear. Sylvie and I were near the last in line and the darkness was almost palpable by then, as we shivered from sweat and exertion.
The guards were growing agitated, visibly eager to get to the light and warmth of their camp, which could be seen clearly now, casting its steady glow out into the ravines opening below us.
“Whatever happens keep your head,” I said, as we neared the two soldiers at the midpoint of the slope.
“Quiet,” their shouts rained down on us from above. “No talking.” They climbed like rams, and our slow-going was keeping them in the cold, away from their cooking fires, which we had started to smell. When we looked up we saw the front of our line had started to disappear into the mouth of the cave, and I grasped Sylvie’s wrist to hold her there.
“Wait here.”
The Aussie, who was ahead of us, looked back with annoyance, knowing we would only incite the guard’s anger again, and that they would have plenty of time to take it out on all of us. He was right, but I waved him off, as the guard in back started yelling, scrambling angrily up the loose sides of the mountain to vent his rage. When he had closed the distance, and his hand raised to strike me, I threw myself hard down the slope at him, spiking my feet into his legs. My boot landed at his knee joint, and he tumbled over. Sylvie had already started scrambling down in a bolt of adrenaline as I grappled in the dust with the guard.
“Harper,” she yelled.
I shouted for her to keep running and not to stop. I had caught the guard by surprise, but he was recovering from the initial shock, and searching with his hand for his holstered pistol. I managed to pin him briefly, but he freed himself, and we started to crash down the mountain as we fought and struggled, until we smashed brutally against a ledge. I managed to grab hold of a loose stone, and pounded it down as hard as I could to his head. He was stunned into stillness, and I claimed the pistol from his dazed hand, and scrambled to get away before his comrades could capture me and claim their revenge.
High above the others heard the commotion, and the soldiers began throwing themselves down the mountain in a rush to get to us before we were out of their grasp. I could see their silhouettes, but was uncertain if they had a bead on me, only that they were making steady progress. I threw myself off the ledge, diving headlong into one of the ravines below, where I crashed hard into the rocks and thorny underbrush.
The noise had let them know my location, and they began aiming their flashlights to track me down in the darkness. I aimed a shot right into the light, which went black and held them off for a time.
Sylvie was a good way down the mountain by then, and I began after her as another flashlight started to play over the ground. I heard shots ring from their guns and ricochet against the stones around me. I took careful aim, then fired again, trying to hold them back at least until I could no longer see Sylvie below.
The pistol was a forty-caliber Sig, and held a dozen shots. I only fired when I saw something moving, to make them consider how much it was worth it, and to know that if they caught me, it would not be with rounds left in the gun.
The darkness was gathering quickly; as I reached the cloud layer it grew near impossible to see, but I kept an eye trained for the soldiers and the other trained below to make out Sylvie’s silhouette until she was out of range.
Around me several shots rang from above as I inched my way forward, but I had the cover of a boulder in the ravine and the shots struck some distance away, telling me they did not have a clear line of sight. I pressed myself against the ravine floor, and began picking my way down on my haunches. The spiny burrs stung my legs, and the rocks began to slide unstably down the trail with me.
The dust rose and rose as I slid, until all of a sudden I sensed myself falling straight down a gap in the pitch darkness, and it was then the shots burst closer. I suddenly felt something strangely warm pin me to the ground violently, and reached my hand out in the darkness to investigate, as the warmth turned fiery hot and began circulating through my body.
My hand groped its way to the hot center of heat, and I felt there the wetness of blood. I brought it instinctually to my face, as by some subconscious belief that it could not be my own blood, until I smelled its ferric familiarity.
I was overcome by pain, but knew I could not remain there, and pushed off the side of the mountain down the uncertain incline, unable to see more than three feet in any direction, and unsure whether they knew I had been hit. I started across the slope, knowing they would no longer have a straight shot down at me if I could get far enough away.
I could not judge distance in the darkness, but leapt from the ravine in desperation, banging hard along until I fell to rest again, against a bed of smooth stones, where I remained, unable to move.
I listened over the pain, and waited for the sound of their guns. I did not hear anything then except the pounding of blood in my own ears, until the tinkle of pebbles falling let me know they were still on the precipice above me.
Their flashlights reached down into the ravines, like transparent fingers, and I flattened against the rocks, as the light prodded and searched each gully in turn. They fired a burst of rounds into each trench when they were done searching it, and I began sweating with fever and freezing from the coldness of my injury, when the thick fingers of light began poking along the ground nearby until they finally let go a volley of rounds against the stones that rang in my ear like my own heartbeat. Then nothing remained and nothing could be heard but the darkness and evensong of the earth itself.
The lights brushed over the darkness above once or twice more, before bending down into my trench again. I do not know how long it took, but eventually the lights passed, and they started back up the mountain. I knew they would return at first light, if the hyenas and wild dogs did not pick up the scent of blood before that.