Temple (45 page)

'My brave friend,' I replied, 'if the circumstances were to repeat
themselves, I would do it all again. May God look after you in
heaven.'
'And you too,' said Renco. 'And you too.'
'Gentlemen,' said Hernando to our executioners.
'Remove their hands.'
The sergeant and the Chanca raised their glistening
swords at the same time, raised them high above their heads.
'Wait!' someone called suddenly.
At that moment, one of the other conquistadors hurried over to the
altar. He appeared older than his fellow sol- diers-more grizzled—a
wily old fox of a man. He ran directly over to Renco.
He had spied the emerald pendant looped around my companion's
neck.
The old conquistador quickly lifted the leather necklace over
Renco's head, smiling greedily at him as he did so.
'Thank you, savage,' he sneered as he placed the emerald pendant
around his own neck and scurried back to his posi tion over by the
temple's portal.
Our two executioners looked over to Hernando for the signal.
But strangely, Hernando wasn't watching them anymore.
In fact, he wasn't even looking at Renco or myself either.
He was just staring off to our right—at the temple—his mouth
agape.
I spun to see what it was he was looking at.
'Oh, my Lord…' I breathed.
One of the rapas was standing in the half-opened mouth of the
portal, peering curiously at the assembled mass of humanity before
it
It loomed large in the doorway—its powerful forelimbs splayed wide,
its shoulders bunched with muscle—but its appearance at that moment
was oddly comical, chiefly
because it was holding something in its mouth.
It was the idol.
The real idol.
The great black cat—previously so terrifying and vicious—now looked
like a humble retriever bringing a stick back to its owner. Indeed,
the rapa just held the idol
dumbly in its mouth, as if it were looking for someone who might
wet it again and thus make it sing.
Hernando just gazed at the cat—-or rather, at the idol that it held
between its mighty jaws. And then, all of a sudden, his eyes swept
from the rapa and the idol in its mouth to the idol that he held in
his own hands, and from it to Renco and
myself, a wash of understanding spreading across his face.
He knew.
He knew that he had been deceived.
The big Spaniard's face went red with fury as he glared at Renco
and me.
'Kill them!” he roared to our executioners. 'Kill them
now!'
It was at that exact moment that a myriad of things happened at
once.
Our executioners raised their swords again—re-aimed at our necks
now—and had just begun to bring their blades down in two great
swinging arcs when abruptly a sharp whistling sound cut through the
air above my head.
Not a moment later, with a powerful thud, an arrow lodged itself in
the nose of my executioner, sending a garish fountain of blood
exploding from his face and hurling him clear off his feet.
For its part, the rapa in the portal—after seeing the crowd of
people standing in the clearing before it and sensing another tasty
human meal—immediately dropped the idol from its mouth and leapt
ferociously at the nearest Spaniard, not a moment before the eleven
other rapas rushed out from within the temple one after the other
after the other—and commenced their own attack on the crowd of
conquistadors.
Castino had seen the other executioner drop to the ground beside
him, struck by the arrow, and had momen tarily halted his lunge at
Renco's neck, a look of stunned incomprehension on his face.
I knew what he was thinking.
Who had fired the arrow? And from where?
Castino obviously decided he would answer these ques tions later,
after he had killed Renco.
He quickly raised his blade again and brought it down with
tremendous force—
—whence another arrow slammed into his sword's hilt and sent it
flying from his grasp.
Not a moment later, a third arrow whistled down from somewhere
above us and struck the rope binding Renco's hands together,
cutting it cleanly in two, releasing him.
Renco immediately leapt to his feet, just as Castino—now
swordless—-swung at him with one of his gigantic fists. Renco
quickly yanked the conquistador who had been holding him to the
altar in between himself and the oncoming blow, and Castino's
mighty knuckles hit the conquistador square in the face, shattering
his nose in an instant, pummelling it into the back of his skull,
killing him with a single blow!
Just then another conquistador levelled his musket at Renco and
fired at exactly the same time as Renco pivoted on the
spot—bringing the dead conquistador around in front of him, using
him as a shield—and the musket's shot opened up a ragged red hole
in the centre of the dead soldier's chest.
As Renco went off to join the fight, the conquistador holding my
wrists across the altar drew his sword and glared at me with evil
intent.
But thenmfaster than a man can blink—an arrowhead exploded out from
the centre of his face and the conquistador flopped down onto the
altar stone in front of me, face-down, an arrow sticking out from
the back of his head.
I looked up into the darkness beyond him, searching for
the source of the arrows.
And I saw him.
Saw the figure of a man positioned up on the rim of the
canyon.
He was silhouetted against the moon, crouched on one knee with a
longbow extended in the firing position and an
arrow drawn back to his ear.
It was Bassario!
I gave a cheer, and then I immediately set about unravelling my
bonds.
It cannot be understated the carnage that was going on around me at
this time. It was-mayhem. Pure and utter mayhem. The clearing in
front of the temple had become a battlefield—a ferocious, bloody
battlefield.
Fighting went on everywhere, in about a dozen separate
battles.
Over by the temple, the rapas had already killed five of the
conquistadors, and now they were attacking four more Spaniards and
their three Chanca trackers.
Elsewhere in the clearing, the seven Incan warriors— avoided by the
rapas due to the monkey urine that covered their bodies—fought with
the remaining Spaniards. Some of them fell as the conquistadors
fired their muskets into them, others hacked into their Spanish
foes with rocks or stones or whatever weapons they could lay their
hands on. Despite all the murder and bloodshed that I had seen on
my travels throughout New Spain, this was indeed the most brutal
and primal example of combat that I had ever witnessed.
Beside me, Renco and Castino had both picked up swords and were now
engaged in the most ferocious of swordfights.
Castino, taller than my brave companion by at least two heads, held
his sword two-handed and unleashed upon Renco a rain of powerful
blows.
But Renco parried well-done-handed, just as I had taught
“him—dancing backwards in the mud like a classical Span ish fencer,
maintaining his balance as he retreated toward the foliage.
As I finally released the rope from my left wrist and stood, I
realised just what a keen student Renco had been. It was
clear to me now that the pupil by far outclassed the teacher.
His swordsmanship was dazzling.
For every mighty blow that Castino threw at him, Renco would
quickly bring up his sword—just in time to stop it.
The two men's swords clashed with ferocious intensity.
Castino swung, Renco parried. Castino lunged, Renco danced.
And then Castino unleashed a devilish blow, a blow so
hard and swift that it would have taken the head off any ordinary
man.
But not Renco.
His reflexes were too quick. He ducked under the blow and in the
fleeting instant that followed, he leapt forward, up o.nto a low
rock and launched himself into the air, negating the height
difference between himself and Castino, his blade cutting through
the air so swiftly it whistled, and before I even knew what was
happening, I saw his sword embedded horizontally in the tree trunk
behind Castino's neck.
Castino just stood there, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. A
moment later, his sword dropped out of his hand.
And then abruptly his entire body just dropped away from beneath
his ugly head.
Renco had cut his head clean off his shoulders!
I almost cheered.
Which is to say I would have cheered, had I not had other things
with which to deal.
I spun to survey the battlefield around me.
Small battles were still being waged all over the clear-
ing—but the only obvious victors seemed to be the rapas.
It was then that I saw the idol.
The real idol.
It lay on the threshold of the portal, tilted over onto its side,
at the exact spot where it had fallen from the rapa's mouth
earlier.
With the length of rope still tied to my right wrist—it was about
two paces long—I grabbed a sword and a torch from the ground beside
me and ran for the temple, through the clashing of blades and the
screams of the ravaged conquis tadors.
I reached the portal and fell to the ground next to the idol,
grabbed it-
-just as one of the Spanish soldiers rammed into me from behind,
bowling both of us in through the portal and into the temple!
The two of us tumbled down a set of wide stone steps, down into the
darkness of the temple, a tangled mix of arms, legs, idol and
torch.
We hit the bottom of the stairs and fell apart. We were inside a
dark stone-walled tunnel of some sort.
My foe clambered to his feet first so that he now stood against the
wall, in front of a small alcove set into it. I was still sprawled
out on the floor, flat on my behind, with the idol sitting in my
lap.
As the Spanish soldier stood over me, I saw the emerald necklace
looped around his neck and I recognised him instantly. He was the
wily older soldier who had relieved Renco of his priceless pendant
earlier.
The old fox drew his sword, raised it high. I was defenceless,
completely exposed.
At that moment, with an obscenely loud roar, something very large
leapt over my head from behind and rammed
into the conquistador at frightening speed.
A rapa.
The cat hit the Spaniard with such colossal force that he was
thrown back into the alcove behind him. His head struck the wall
with the most sickening of sounds and just exploded, cracking like
an egg, a foul spray of blood and brains shooting out from the hole
that was instantaneously created in the back of his skull.
The wily old soldier collapsed into the alcove, but he was well and
truly dead by the time he reached the floor.
The cat began to ravage him on the spot, its tail licking back and
forth behind its body as it did so.
I seized the moment, grabbed hold of the idol and charged back up
the stairs, out of the temple.
I burst out into the night, thankful to have escaped death once
again.
But my revelry was shortlived. No sooner was I out of the portal
than I heard a sharp click-click from somewhere behind me, followed
quickly by a coarse shout of 'Monk!'
I spun.
And saw Hernando Pizarro standing before me with a pistol in his
hand, levelled right at my chest.
Then, before I could so much as move, I saw a flash of fire flare
out from the end of the pistol, heard its loud report echo out all
around me, and almost immediately I felt a tremendous weight slam
into my chest and I was thrown backwards.
I collapsed to the ground instantly, after which I saw nothing but
clouds—dark storm clouds rolling across the starry night sky above
meL and it was at that moment that I realised to my extreme horror
that I had just been shot.
I lay on my back, my teeth clenched in agony, looking up at the
cloud-strewn sky, a searing, burning pain shooting through my
chest.
Hernando bent over me and took the idol from my loose grasp. As he
did so, he slapped me lustily across the face and said, 'Die
slowly, monk.” Then he was gone.
I lay on the stone steps in front of the temple, waiting for the
life to drain out of me, waiting for the pain to become
unbearable.
But then for some reason that was beyond my ken, my strength,
rather than fading, began to return.
The searing pain in my chest subsided and I sat up instantly and
patted my chest at the point where the bullet
had created a hole in my cloak.
I felt something there.
Something soft and thick and square. I extracted it from my
cloak.
It was my Bible.
My three-hundred-page, handwritten, leather-bound Bible.
In the centre of it was a tattered round hole that looked like the
burrow of a worm. At the farthest extremity of the
burrow I saw a warped sphere of dull grey lead.
Hernando's bullet.
My Bible had stopped his bullet!
Praised be the Word of the Lord.
I leapt to my feet, exhilarated in the moment. I looked for
my sword, couldn't find it anywhere, gazed out over the
clearing.
I saw Renco on the far side of the clearing, fighting with two
swords against two sabre-wielding conquistadors.
Two Incan warriors grappled with a pair of Spaniards not far from
where I stood—they seemed to be the only other men left alive on
the rock tower
And then I saw Hernando—with the idol in his hands— hurrying away
into the foliage to my right, dashing down
the stone stairway there.
My eyes went wide.
He was going for the rope bridge.
If he got there, he would almost certainly cut the bridge and leave
us stranded on the tower, stranded with the rapas.
I hurried after him, bounding across the clearing, hur dling a rapa
as it lay on the ground tearing into the body of a dead
conquistador.
I flew down the stone steps two at a time, my heart racing, my legs
pounding, chasing after Hernando. As I rounded a bend in the
stairs, I saw him about ten paces in front of me, stepping out onto
the rope bridge.
Hernando was large and muscular, and he moved as such. I was
smaller, more nimble, faster. I gained on him quickly and dashed
out onto the bridge after him, at which moment, with absolutely
nothing else to call on, I hurled myself—swordless—at his
back.
I collided with him most heavily and we fell together onto the thin
floorboards of the rope bridge, high above the canyon floor.
But such was the weight of our landing that the floor boards
beneath us shattered like twigs and to my utter horror we fell
straight through them, down into the abyss…