Grace (28 page)

“Why is she wearing the rosary?”

“It is from me,” I said.

“A present must be of gold,” he laughed. “It is a rosary.” His voice contained a preternatural calmness. He was in his element, and it was nothing for him to kill. He only needed a reason, and he would take a life as simply as blowing out a match. Or no reason at all.

“It is just a bracelet.” I feigned indifference, which I had for myself, but not for her.

“You are not a Christ bride, sister?” he asked.

“No. She is mine.”

“You are a race-mixer, my brother,” he grinned a demented grimace.

I did not want to give him fodder for his lunacy and stared straight ahead.

“The chief spoke to you. Answer him,” one of his minions threatened.

“What you call race is a lie,” I said.

“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.

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.

I was bleeding badly, and kept one hand pressed down against the wound to try and staunch it, and tried as well to control my breathing, and keep from crying with pain. I began down the mountain again.

I first picked my way horizontally across the face, trying to find the path we'd taken up. I could not separate it from the darkness, or see even more than a few steps of the trail I was on, until I was eventually completely lost, and on a different side of the mountain from where I'd started. Every opening in the vegetation seemed like a trail and every clearing seemed like salvation, but all were cruel tricks. The only thing for me was to head straight down, and try not to end up in one of the deeper
couloirs
, which I might never escape. Each step fell into a deeper darkness, and I poked at the air first with my foot to find the slope, then at the soil, testing the ground, to keep from falling off the mountain. I was hopelessly lost by then, feeling my way back in the direction I remembered, hoping I would not get taken by the hyenas or wild dogs, or else fall into one of the holes. And what I knew about where I was headed was only gravity.

When the slope evened out, I found a place to perch and managed a tourniquet from my shirt, which was soon soaked through. There were a lot of ways for me to die on the mountain then, and I did not know which I dreaded most, and I did not wish to acknowledge my fears any further, for fear of conjuring them, or giving over to them more power than they already had. I heard lizards scurrying in the brush and then a bark in the darkness, and that fixed my fear on the hyenas. The cats would come one-on-one nobly, and I had the gun and if I missed it would be a quick death, but the hyenas and dogs would come in packs, ganging up to rip and pick little by little, until I succumbed. If I fell into a ravine there was at least the chance I would break my neck and lose consciousness. Time I would lose against eventually, if not that night. The bullet I already had in me. I kept heading downward into the brutal blackness, keeping watch for hyenas and wild dogs.

The base of the slope appeared through the fog sometime past midnight. I was caked in dust and muddied with blood, and the pain from the wound throbbed with each heartbeat. The clouds parted midway and the dense stars were high and bright in the sky, along with half the moon, which made the going a little easier, until I realized how far I was from where we had ascended, and how far I was from the lorry, where I hoped Sylvie would be waiting and safe. I rounded the lower reaches of the mountain in another hour, before I spotted the truck below me in the platinum darkness. It was only half a mile away, but there were a series of plunging crevasses in front of me, and no way to cross over with the pain in my shoulder, and that hand unusable. I wrenched the tourniquet tighter, as I sat down to rest and try to plot a way down. There was no certain passage from where I was that I could see. The only safe thing to do was to climb back up, until I found the trail we had taken before.

I stood wearily and climbed uphill another hour, before finally picking up a ridge wide enough to pass over without falling into one of the ravines. From there I descended the remainder of the way.

By the time I reached the truck it was near two o'clock, and Sylvie was nowhere to be found. I was dead with worry, and tried to keep my mind from running off with bad scenarios, as I searched the cab of the truck for the medical kit and checked around for a spare key.

I did not find keys to the truck, and the medical kit was half empty, with nothing of use for the gunshot wound. I was overcome by thirst then, and went round back to find water and my gear bag, where I had some painkillers Doc had given me. It would be light in a only few hours and I did not think they could head back down before then without my being able to see them before they spotted me. I calculated if I slept three hours, and set out for Sylvie an hour before light I could still keep out of their reach.

When I climbed up into the back of the truck I was struck hard by something crashing into me, and tumbled backward, reaching for the gun holstered in my waistband.

“I'm sorry,” I heard Sylvie gasp. “I thought they had caught you. They were so close.” She threw her arms around me, crying with joy but drew back when she saw how I winced in pain, as moonlight streamed into the truck through the open flap. “Did I hurt you?”

“Not you,” I told her.

“Let me see,” she said, pulling away in shock, when she saw my arm and how bedraggled I was. “You're covered in blood.”

She touched my shoulder gently, near the wound.

“It is better not to touch it.”

“They shot you?”

“It did not hit anything major, or I would have known already,” I tried to comfort her.

“You are just trying to keep me from worrying,” she said.

“Worrying does not help.”

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“Like hell.”

She found scissors and cut away my makeshift tourniquet, and made bandages from a clean shirt, and began to pour water from a canteen to wash away the blood, but I told her it was better to save the water. She began to redress the wound with the clean bandages, and I began to feel cold and clammy and parched. I was thirsty again and asked for the canteen, and drank deeply, until it was empty. She wrapped a blanket around me to help regulate my temperature, and refilled the canteen from a half-empty jug in the truck, and I drank half of it down, and swallowed the last of the pills.