Jacques Monte-Cristi spoke next. "Perhaps, blanc, you have seen the short spears some of my men carry? Except for the very tip, the blade is of wood, fashioned in such a way as to splinter and snap off in the wound. Sadly, it takes several men to get one of the cursed ones. They fight like demons. If you could get us better guns from the north, we would do more."
"We tried bows," Uwenge said, speaking in slow but clear English. "Blowguns, everything. Nothing will penetrate their robes. My men have wooden bayonets at the ends of their rifles now. But they still must get close. It takes a brave man to face one of the Whisperers. When they know a battle is coming, my men drug themselves with cocaine, sing songs, scream, anything to raise their courage. I never send out patrols of fewer than thirty men. If four or five come across a Whisperer, it is they who die. It is bad when they come from the sea in groups."
Valentine nodded. "It hasn't been for nothing. Your people are free."
Monte-Cristi nodded. "We sometimes think we are wearing them down. They do not raid into Haiti as they used to. But it grows harder and harder for us to go to Santo Domingo. They have established a chain of garrisons on the border in fortified posts, and they send out many patrols. Unless we use a small team, the garrisons send out columns. The men have to either scatter or fight as they retreat to Haiti. The columns corner them otherwise, it may end in brave battle, but they always win. Either way, we lose many men."
"That is the source of our guns," Uwenge added. "Without going into Santo Domingo, at least for me, there is no way to capture more. My men have wooden clubs and spears for reasons other than killing Whisperers. Boul in Cape Haitian smuggles a few to us, so we leave him alone,
though he does terrible things to people trying to escape Domingo and then claims to be winning victories against us by pointing to the bodies. But he is useful to us, so we turn away and leave him to his games."
Post scratched the salt-and-pepper hair above his ear, extracted an insect, and dropped it to the floor, where he finished it with his foot. "We have a few extra guns on board, some ammunition."
"Anything would help," Uwenge said.
Valentine looked up from a map of Hispaniola. "Do you have friends, spies, anything beyond these garrisons?"
Bayenne nodded. "We have friends, through smugglers and traders. They pass us information."
"There are also the roadwatchers," Monte-Cristi said.
"Who are they?" Valentine asked.
"Spies. They watch the roads toward Haiti, let us know if many men go to one of the garrisons on the border. They also look out at the ocean from high points so we know when ships are coming."
"Do they have radios?"
"No, most rely on their children as runners."
"What about these garrisons?"
"We know that some have radio sets, the ones that are electrified. The rest use telephone lines."
"So most of their armed men are in the garrisons?"
Bayenne nodded. "Yes, or in the big cities on the coast."
Valentine thought for a moment, excitement building in him like a flywheel's electrical charge as it always did when he worked on a plan. "I'd like to see quickwood in action. I think we can help you get a new supply of weapons, but it would require men willing to go deep into Santo Domingo. I need to think this through with all of you. I can tell you this: We should be able to escape the pursuing columns. What do you say?"
"Tell us more, blanc," Uwenge said.
"First I need to know more about the interior of the island."
tadelle, Haiti: A black revolutionary known as "the Tiger"-who earned his reputation by sawing people in half-dreamed of Haiti's Citadelle as one of a ring of forts to guard Hispaniola against a return of the white slaveholders. The work of two hundred thousand laborers, of whom twenty thousand perished and, according to island legend, had their blood used as mortar to cement the stones, reshaped the top of the mountain with battlements faintly resembling a giant ship. This grim monument looks out on eroded mountains, now being reclaimed by the lush forests of the days when Christopher Columbus viewed them.
Set in walls a hundred feet high and fully thirty feet thick at their base, gunports like shaded black eyes look out on the north coast of Haiti and the steep track leading to La Citadelle. It is exactly the kind of cyclopean monument the Kurians make their refuge as they order the affairs of men. Behind walls of cannonballs piled like banks of skulls, there are storerooms and cisterns enough to feed an army for a year, space for troops, and catacombs beneath ready for untold horrors. The Kurian Lord has perches aplenty to stand, brooding at an altitude of three thousand feet while the stars whirl overhead. He could contemplate his domain in security, knowing that even a United States infantry division of the twentieth century would have a tough time blasting his men from the mountaintop, but their like no longer exist on Vampire Earth.
Were the Citadelle's lord looking out from his sun-bleached battlements one bright April morning, he would have seen a strange column ascending the switchback trail to his door. A black man hikes in the lead, being helped up the hillside by his sniffing dogs. Behind him a muscular mass of apelike Grogs, using their arms as much as their legs to negotiate the slope, followed by a taller, fawn-colored relative carrying a gun with a six-foot barrel. Behind him a handsome, dark-haired man with a slight limp uses a staff to get help up the worst parts of the trail. Ragged black soldiers, all wary eyes and ready weapons, follow in single file. The Kurian might think it a strange, pathetic assortment to challenge the stronghold atop the Pic La Fer-riere, let alone the entire Kurian Order.
David Valentine's second thoughts collided with third- and fourth-thoughts on the long climb. He had thrown the dice with his life lying on the table on more than one occasion, but never on such a strange gamble as this. Were it not for Ahn-Kha's steady presence beside him, locking his long toes around tree roots and rocks as he helped him over washouts on the trail up the mountain, he would have returned to the Thunderbolt days ago and quitted his task. Despair had never struck him when the bullets were cracking all around, but waited to infiltrate once he had a full belly and a decent night's sleep.
He had rejoined the Thunderbolt after a morning with Victo spent following the Limbe River to the coast, and from there a short canoe trip to her anchorage off Labadee. Following a freshwater shower and a change of clothes, he held an open-air meeting on the stern, telling his story to the Jamaican pirates and New Orleans mutineers, and explaining what would happen over the next few days.
As sunset fell, the officers and men decided that Carrasca and Post would stay with the ship, and a few members of the crew would join Grogs and the Haitian guerrillas on the next step: making contact with the "Kurian ally" in his moun-taintop fortress. This stirred the interest of the crew; they
had more questions than he had answers. The Thunderbolt would be safe enough. Her main armament had been repaired, and she was as ready to face a seaborn challenge as the day she sailed into Cape Haitian.
With that finished, the Grogs and men took their arms from the locker, and such provision as the NCOs could force them to carry. A beach party of sorts welcomed them to the mountains of Haiti, with comic sign language and a babble of English, French, and Spanish along with island patois the method of intercourse. Two mornings later, Valentine found himself sweating up La Ferriere's escarpment with his odd conglomeration, guided by Victo.