IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
III: Responsibility
Chapter 14 The Battle of Cumenci
Saturday, June 13, 2013,
continued Nightfall--the guerilla's
hour. Check our equipment. Sandals secure--no weak strap to break and
cause a fatal stumble. Machetes and
knives--we hand a little bottle of jojoba oil back and forth to soak flakes of
sandstone in as the soft scraping sounds of sharpening pervade our camp. Guns, for those who have them--Kief breaks
his rifle by firelight, cleans and oils and reassembles it with an impressive
economy of motion, while Lufti watches closely and follows every move. I get Aichi's pistol in perfect order for
her. I have no gun of my own to prepare;
Kief says I'm much too good at improvising on the spot to waste a weapon on me. Aziz and Bakr finish up on
teaching some of us the mysteries of the blow-gun. Now their pupils dip the darts into the
wicked toad-brew that we conjured up a couple nights ago. Do I worry about how they'll do after so
little training? The Cumencians design
the darts to hit spider-thin monkeys and other small game; all of a man's a
target, and a pinprick anywhere on him, even through the thin stuff of the
Charadocian uniform, will suffice to weaken him, disorient him and, if he’s
small enough, take him down outright.
"Just don't inhale," Kief says over his shoulder, and
everybody laughs. Ambrette gives Lucinda the
machete that she'd sharpened up for her.
I hand Aichi the gun and walk over to them. "How you doin', Lucinda?" "Fit to kill,"
she says with a toothy grin. But she
hasn't been recovering as fast as I thought she would, and it worries me. "Just stick close to
Ambrette--I want you to live long enough to lead us in battle again." Ambrette clasps my hand and
says, "Don't you worry, honey; I'll take good care of her." Her plump little hand feels so soft in mine,
even though lines of lost weight already crease her young skin. I smile, trying to believe her, as I help her
bury the coals of our fire. With quick
efficiency we stash our gear under bushes, in hollow trunks, under stones. No government soldier will find this
particular needle in the rainforest haystack, if we have to scatter and can't
regroup for days. They might hamper
their backs with packs full of gear and their movements with long
supply-trains, but guerillas can live on nothing when we have to. "Kiril, you're with
me," I tell her as we head out. I
don't have to say it, with the distribution of the troops agreed upon ahead of
time, but she grins from ear to ear as she runs up to me, her braids flying and
her blow-gun in hand. As I pin her
braids up out of the way for her, into a little knot atop her head, Damien
swings a rifle onto his shoulder, just like a man, and he joins us; his aim has
improved much since the day he rode shotgun for us after Kanarik fell. Now Lufti and Aichi trot up
with grim brows and tight-clenched jaws, eyes too haunted for their age; it
doesn't escape Aichi that the "booms" go both ways, that she could
die just as easily as kill, that she needs just as much courage as any of us to
go out there tonight. Sloe-eyed Gaziley
straps on his machete and his knife and carries a blowgun, besides. He walks over with Bakr at his side; it suits
Kief's humor to send me the older of the Toad Brothers, but I must give the kid
a chance, regardless. "Kief says you're not
a nun," Bakr says with a goofy grin. "Nope--just celibate
till freedom rings throughout this proud nation of ours," I say with, I
hope, enough pomposity to wipe that leer off his face. He nods, appropriately sobered, and says,
"Lead on, Sister Deirdre." I
think I'm going to hate that name. My band splits off and
takes the trail down towards the westward side of Cumenci, while Kief's band
heads east. Trail! No regular army would find its way through
here, wading through the vegetation, climbing over and under and in between, as
native here as the jaquar and the snake.
It's not sap that we clean off of our machetes at the end of day. Up the airy mountain...We feel small as we twist
and turn through the giant trunks and dart beneath leaves broad enough to cloak
our shoulders--and small feels good, right now.
Down the rushy glen...Small enough to go where the musclebound
soldiers find all pathways blocked, small enough to slip between their defenses,
small as bullets, small as darts. They
daren’t go a-hunting for fear of Little Men! I feel good, much better
than I expected, after the meal we had earlier today. Not that we all couldn’t use much, much more;
we didn’t break our fast so much as crack it, and that too long ago. We step through branch and vine with
hunger-lightened heads, but we have shared enough to hearten us, to make us
glad of the ghosts that drift beside us, invisible to all but hearts, glad of
the blessings of God all around us like the evening mist, glad of the forest’s
deep love. "We, the seed trod
underfoot Shall send a secret,
deepening root, Shall rise a green,
unnoticed shoot Abandoned to sun and
rain..." Damien hums it very
faintly, then catches my eye with a wink and keeps the silence. But now the song falls like a seed indeed
into all our hearts, sprouts and takes strength there, uncoiling broad leaves
of verse after unsung verse as it grows inside to its entirety, sends tendrils
to thrill all through us until it takes over and the avenging power of the
jungle fills us, and we move with the jungle, not against it, and I can't get
the tune out of my head and I don't ever want to. "We, the wanton, wild
vine, Shall thicken, strengthen,
intertwine, Shall tangle path and
sharpen spine, Made tougher by want and
pain! I can smell the smokes of
Cumenci now. I can hear the stroke of ax
on wood, the slosh of buckets drawn up from the well, I can hear voice call out
to voice—raucous-sounding, already raw with chaummin. They don't even pretend to keep discipline on
Saturdays anymore. And then I hear the
ascending trill of the Romeo lark--the real lark and no rebel’s imitation--who
sings for us only at night, and I feel as though the forest herself rises up
behind as rearguard, covering our advance for us. How can my heart feel so light when I march
to such a grim business as war? Yet our
feet keep the beat to the song that we don't sing, and I find myself smiling,
for we shall do well tonight, to rescue the man that we have all come to
love. Yes, we shall take pride in that
much, at least! Softly Damien whistles us
to halt; we have reached the clearing's margin.
Quickly I gesture our blowgun-bearers, our "mosquitoes", to their
positions, the boys fanning out to the left and right, Kiril behind a tree right
in front of me, for they must fire first to soften up the troops for us. She puts only as much of her head beyond the
tree as she must to expose her weapon, and she takes careful aim. The darts take time to work on beasts as big
as men; our victims might think themselves merely stung at first, they might
attribute their whirling heads to the bottles in their hands. I hear the sharp exhalations as Gaziley,
Bakr, and Kiril send out their breaths of death. Positions change a bit, new targets
sighted. Blow again. Shift once more...again! If all goes well, we have now rendered nine
soldiers unfit to fight, though they don't know it yet. "Hey, what the hell
is...oh Jesus!" They
know! Somebody found a dart. "Oh sweet mother of God I'm gonna
die!" "Charge! Now!"
Damien, Lufti, and Aichi fire as they run. I grab a gun off a man writhing like a bug
and frothing at the mouth. I feel his
fear as my own till I blast the top off his head and catch my breath
again. Before I can get up from my knee
I hear boots run behind me; I twist around and fire, fire, fire, I watch them
fall and I grin, because they won't fear again, either. Now I scramble to my feet and shoot anything
in a uniform, each buck of the gun against me nothing like the jolts in my head
as man after man dies--what's happening to me? And after the jolts, relief. Go ahead, ghosts--shoot right through me as
you die--I like the feeling! It ends for you, and you, and you, right
here, in Aron's town. Click. No more bullets? God save me!
I run for shelter bent so low I could pat the ground, diving behind a
wall around a little yard; Gunfire pins Kiril and Lufti down—they can’t join
me. My heart beats like crazy as I gulp
after air, and every muscle in me quivers like a hiding rabbit. I hear military-issue boots crunch closer and
closer. A door slams open as a
woman kicks a corpse rolling out the door, his throat slit and his face surprised. She quickly strips his bandoleer and throws
it out my way, then darts back in and slams the door shut tight again. It falls halfway in the dust, but I scramble
for it, rolling under a sudden new burst of bullets just in time, scuttle back
behind the wall to frantically stuff as many bullets as I can into the magazine. Kiril sees her chance to join me and dives in
quickly, blowing dart after dart to cover me, as fast as she can take breath
and shove the feathery little things into the hollow reed. And the brave men of the Charadoc fall back,
more afraid of the maddening poison than of the bullets that can kill them more
surely. Now out again, rejoin the
fray! Damien knows the way and we follow
him, our boy-general of the hour. We
dart from corner to corner, bending around to shoot at soldiers, ducking back
with pounding hearts. I hate it I love
it I never felt so alive so close to the brink of death! That broad building over there, with the
balcony-shaded porch all the way across--that's the Master’s Manse that they
have turned into headquarters and commissary.
That's where they keep our Malcolm caged. The door slams loudly shut in the night as
hell breaks loose in the village streets. Because more and more
soldiers fall to blades and bullets not our own. The entire village has risen up! Gaunt-faced men and wild-eyed women loot dead
soldiers and toss guns and bandoliers between them, diving behind corners and
trees and anything that comes to hand.
And out again they run, giving us cover. They might not have the training, but they
make up for it in zeal and numbers. I think we're actually
going to get through this alive--every last one of us! For it's Saturday night and the army’s
bullets go wide. My crew takes the lead,
for Damien knows the way and I've got the best sharpshooters in the whole troop
short of Kief himself. And not just
them--Gaziley leaps forth again and again like some whirling thing of blades
who scares the troops so badly that some have dropped their guns; his ocelot
eyes burn brightly with their fear. I
see Bakr, terrified but determined, bury his knife into some screaming man's
belly, then stumble back too shocked to reclaim it. I finish it for him; another frightened soul
fleets away from this world. Five men to the right
rally, come charging at us with blazing guns--automatics, Lord have mercy! We scatter, eyes blurred with fear; we crouch
behind barrel and well and oil-press, terror thick in our throats...till we
turn and watch those drunkards hauling back their wounded without a shot of
ours--the fools shot their own men! Oh
glory to God and all the saints--our ghosts fight well for us today! Cover Lufti while he
reloads from my bandoleer. Advance. Shoot.
Hold fire as Kief's folk come in from the other side. Advance.
Let Lufti and Aichi cover me as I scuttle crouching to the commissary
door and I swear I’ll never pick a lock so fast in my whole life! “Out of the way!” a man roars.
I reel to the side as a Cumenci man drives an army jeep crunchingly
right through the manor door. Rush in, before the balcony
can collapse on us! Spray the drunken
soldiers, bleeding falling into their food as the women shriek and dive still
shrieking back into the pantry. I hear
heavy things scrape up against that door to block it as I pick the lock on the
cage and Malcolm cheers, fist punched up toward heaven and his eyes
a-gleam! I see him shove teeth into his
mouth, then tackle a buttered baguette with a triumphant whoop, more power to
'im. Wham! Something propels me face first into trays of
sharp things and I skid across the table.
I twist around mid-slide and swing my legs under the table on the other
side, then upend it into the face of my assailant. But ol' Whitesleeves recovers quickly and
shoves it back, the legs coming at me, but I wrench it from him and charge him
with it. That leaves me caged on three
sides by table-top and legs, and he makes it quickly around to take advantage
of this, but I slip past him before he can blink, the table crashing to the
floor. He stumbles into it coming after
me, but recovers swiftly. Then we have at it by fist
and foot, throwing each other into food, slipping on the blood, and he has the
gall to grin as I smash a bottle and come at him with it, since he stole my gun
in the tussle, but as the muzzle jabs my jaw I twist aside in time, so that the
powder burns my cheek yet the bullet draws no blood. Now I drive the glass home, but he, too,
dodges just short of gutting, but at least I left that monster scarred. He staggers back, clutching his side, and I
grin, myself, to see his torn and bloodied shirt. I move in for the kill, but just then he
throws something and CRRRRRACK! Darkness. |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||
![]() |