But when he reached the archers, he had to stop. Dejected, he realized that there was no way he could get through them.
Gabriel saw Manco’s proud silhouette standing at the end of the terraces. He was riding his white horse, handling it well, and he bore a spear in his hand, its tip glinting in the sun.
* * *
Anamaya could not see the plain or the Spaniards moving across it, but she knew they were approaching by the heightened tension that she could sense in the Inca ranks. She heard a tumultuous crashing of drums and a cacophony of horns rising from the slopes of the mountain atop which sat the Temple, whose doors had been walled up. She realized that Manco and his battle advisers, instead of using the element of surprise that had served them well before, preferred now to show their adversaries that they were expected. And to show them in such a way as to fill them with dread.
She closed her eyes and conjured up a vision of Gabriel. Where was he now? Had he managed to cross through the lines? Against all reason, she imagined him worming his way through the Inca ranks, diving into the river, and joining his people, jumping on a horse and grabbing a sword. He had often told her of how he had taken Sacsayhuaman, and she had no trouble now imagining him leading the Spanish attack.
She opened her eyes only to be blinded by the sun. ‘It’s no longer possible,’ she murmured. ‘He swore never to take up arms again. He’s come so far…’
But Anamaya found no comfort in her own words: wherever Gabriel was, whatever he meant to do, he was in the middle of a battle, and she could not help but think of the possibility of him dying.
‘Santiago!’
The all too familiar Spanish war cry echoed across the valley and reverberated within her.
‘Santiago!’
She recoiled in fright. Katari came up to her.
‘Stay,’ he said. ‘Wait. Banish your fear.’
But when Anamaya looked at him, she saw the worry in his eyes. She felt her heart tighten.
* * *
As soon as Manco saw Gabriel, he made his way over to him. The ranks of his soldiers parted, making way for their Emperor.
‘Why are you here?’ Manco demanded brusquely. ‘Have you come to fight alongside us?’
Gabriel said nothing. He simply stared intently at the Inca.
‘Or do you want to join your people? And die with them?’
Manco said this quietly, and Gabriel understood his confidence.
‘If that’s what you want to do, then I won’t stop you crossing over to them,’ said Manco, pointing at the plain.
Gabriel remained frozen on the spot.
‘Are you sure? You don’t want to? In that case, come and join my Lords,’ said Manco. ‘You’ve nothing to fear. Come and see what’s waiting for your people…’
The cry of ‘Santiago!’ had caused some ancient instinct to boil in Gabriel’s veins. It was a call to battle that, if he had let it, would have given him the will to act upon Manco’s challenging offer, leave the horde of Incas and join his own people. But gritting his teeth, he said nothing.
With precise coordination, the Incas sent a hail of sling stones and arrows down upon the Spaniards, causing the vanguard first to halt, then to retreat. Then two cavalrymen detached themselves from their company and charged at the Incas’ outer defenses. Without being able to see their faces, Gabriel could still recognize them both by their immense size: de Candia and Sebastian – the black giant riding a white horse and de Candia mounted on a black one. Gabriel’s pulse pounded as he recognized Itza – of course, the mare that Sebastian had given him.
It was as though his past was galloping back toward him.
* * *
Katari removed the bronze key that he wore around his neck and handed it to Anamaya. Her blue eyes were pale, her expression distant.
A deafening cacophony rose from the terraces, and the air was shrill with the whine of falling missiles. Each volley of arrows was like a cloud of stinging insects plunging from the sky to devastate the land below and the sling stones fell like diving hawks.
Anamaya turned to the north, toward the Secret City where she had met Huayna Capac. Katari turned with her.
‘Until that moment when Inti has consumed the hatred dividing us…’ she murmured.
Katari continued:
‘…And only women singing their grief over all the spilt blood will remain.’
‘Do you think that this is it?’
Katari opened his powerful hands, the natural lines in his palm criss-crossed by the scars of his work.
‘No. Not all the signs are there.’
‘And him? Can he die?’
‘I told you, the Puma is a man, and a man must die. But that man is the Puma.’
Anamaya smiled.
An explosion shook the air itself.
* * *
Gabriel watched, fascinated, as the Indian bombardment forced Sebastian and de Candia to retreat, despite their bravery. They wheeled around and joined a troop of cavalry that headed off to attack the Temple. Seeing it from below, with its formidable walls, the Spaniards had no doubt mistaken it for a fortress. Its defenders seemed at first to fall back, but then two Chachapoya Indians broke the legs of the lead horse with a sling stone, causing the rest of the cavalrymen to panic, and they beat a hasty retreat. No cavalryman dared attempt another charge.
Gabriel could see that the Spaniards were hesitating. For the first time, they were facing the prospect of a pitched battle without having an obvious upper hand. The time when their horses had afforded them automatic advantages of speed and surprise was long gone, their artillery was next to useless, and Manco seemed to have taken their every move into account when he had organized his defensive lines.
Even the regiment of foot soldiers that Hernando had sent around the mountain to attack the Temple’s walls was repulsed by a hall of sling stones.
Gabriel heard a culverin fire. The noise came from the Inca side, from somewhere midway along the terraces. Although the explosion undoubtedly did no harm to the Spaniards (it was a miracle, thought Gabriel, that the long cannon hadn’t exploded and blown the heads off its amateur Indian gunners), it caused a proud murmur to run through the lines of Inca soldiers.
The blast was heard by all the warriors waiting along the terraces and slopes. It coincided with a triumphant roar from Manco as he ordered his forces to charge.
The Incas, moving as one, surged downward toward the Spaniards. Gabriel, powerless and unable to see anything, felt the earth shaking underfoot. He concentrated on not getting trampled by this tide of screaming men, a tide rolling down the mountainside and overwhelming everything in its path, a tide full of rage amassed over months of humiliation and fear.
When he recovered his footing, all Gabriel could see on the plain was a fog of confused movement: in fact, it was dust kicked up from the earth, it was a mist of sweat, it was the flash of swords scything through the air – and it was the strange sight of Manco in the middle of the fray, mounted on his white horse, spear in hand and wearing his mascapaicha on his forehead, charging at the enemy like a demon afraid of nothing.
Gabriel fleetingly remembered the first riding lesson that he had given the Inca emperor.
‘I didn’t want to make war,’ he murmured. ‘And yet I make it all the same.’
Despite their furious resistance and the considerable damage, that they inflicted on the Incas, the Spaniards and their allies were gradually forced back. Their cavalry charges became less and less effective, no longer cutting deep into the enemy ranks. Gabriel watched Hernando’s crimson feather retreat further and further across the plain, like a tattered red sail on a rudderless, drifting raft.
Gabriel was surprised when he noticed that the light was failing: he felt as though the sun had only just risen.
He looked away from the battle toward the mountain peaks, the Apus that Anamaya and Katari had taught him to recognize. Then he looked back down at the two rivers. And froze in horror.
A hundred
or so Indians were diverting the flow of the Patacancha toward the channels that they had dug weeks ago.
Gabriel immediately realized what they were doing.
They were going to flood the plain. They were going to drown the Spaniards.
CHAPTER 17
Ollantaytambo, November 1536
Darkness fell on the mountain like the shadow of a condor’s wing that was as big as the sky itself. The din of battle down below grew dimmer, as though it was somehow slipping away into the distance. There were fewer war cries but more agonized moans, and the explosions had ceased completely. Anamaya felt suddenly cold. She pulled her manta tighter around her shivering body.
‘I wonder where Villa Oma is,’ she said.
Katari thought about it for a moment.
‘He probably took refuge in an underground huaca, where he’s casting curses in the hope that we are defeated, thus confirming his jaundiced and utterly wrong prophecies…’
‘I would have thought that he would have joined Manco for the battle.’
‘His anger imprisons him alone on an island lost in the middle of nowhere.’
‘He’s still the Sage to me…’
‘And he’s also just a man, like the Puma. He has never really understood why the powerful Huayna Capac confided the secrets of Tahuantinsuyu to a strange little girl with blue eyes rather than to him.’
Anamaya looked lost in a dream.
‘Still, for me, he’ll always be the Sage,’ she repeated.
Katari’s laugh carried gently into the night.
‘Why are you laughing?’
‘I’ve been trying, for a while now, to see, behind the Coya Camaquen’s façade, the little girl that you were when you arrived before the great Inca Huayna Capac. I think I just heard her for the first time.’
Anamaya laughed with him.
‘Why did you give me the bronze key?’
‘One day, when all the signs have been revealed, we too shall be separated. I shall go to the Lake of Origins, whereas you will head back to—’
She interrupted him, putting her finger to his lips.
‘Please don’t say the name out loud.’
‘You’ll need this key. With it, you will open the stone.’
‘How will I know?’
‘You’ll know.’
The nocturnal breeze picked up, carrying the sound of the men on the battlefield away from them. Curiously, Anamaya was no longer cold.
‘What about him?’ she asked.
* * *
Gabriel watched the water rise with frightening speed and flood the plain. It reached the level of the horses’ girths, and then the animals could hardly move, stuck in a lake that had suddenly risen from nowhere and that threatened to swallow them up. He watched as a cavalryman fell from his saddle. In the water, he whirled his arms about, desperately trying to stay on the surface while at the same time getting rid of his heavy gear.
As night gradually enveloped the valley, the Spanish retreat was detectable only as a dwindling noise. It occasionally flared up again when a battle cry rang out, or a trumpet, or the sudden clamor that occurred when the Incas caught a lagging Spaniard or managed to topple a horse.
Gabriel felt a heaviness that he could not shake off overcome his body and weigh down his limbs.
Although he hadn’t fought that day, he suddenly felt very old, as though he’d been crippled by his non-existent wounds. He closed his eyes and saw an Inca and a Spaniard, each of them sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot, wielding a sword or a sling. He had difficulty banishing the vision from his mind. Yet in his soul he wanted to be engulfed by it, like a warrior who, surviving a battle, collapses at its end, when everything is over and he can no longer be beaten by anything but his own all-consuming weariness.
He saw Manco returning on foot, leading his mud-covered horse by its bridle. The Emperor looked Gabriel up and down without saying a word, his black eyes gleaming with pride, his being still charged with the fever of battle. Victory was a drug stronger than any number of jars of chicha, stronger than ten thousand coca leaves.
Manco handed Gabriel his horse’s reins and headed toward the canchas, an exhausted victor.
Gabriel followed in his steps.
* * *
The path was so steep and in places paved so badly that it was risky to travel down it, particularly at night.
Yet Anamaya and Katari descended sure-footedly, guided only by the occasional glimpse of moonlight and the instinct of those who had traveled across all the skies.
As they drew closer to the Willkamayo and the springs they heard the clamor of the atiyjailli, the victory songs already being sung, in which the noble feats of the battle’s heroes were hailed. The earth had not yet finished drinking the blood that had been spilt upon it, and corpses still floated in the river. Anamaya saw a woman facing her from the river bank. She was holding against her belly the manta containing her husband’s clothes, a husband whom she had followed to a senseless war. Her expression was blank, her gaze lost in a place beyond the Four Cardinal Directions.
Just outside the canchas, they came across men staggering along. Some were lying in the mud and in their own vomit, still singing drunkenly about their famous victory over the demigods who had come from across the ocean. The Strangers had once more become the fabulous creatures that they had been many moons ago, when they had been described as invincible, as half-man, half-horse, with hands that sliced through flesh and silver sticks that spat fire. But according to the legends now being invented by the drunken, victorious warriors, Viracocha himself had created the Incas from stone, and had made them so strong and brave that even with their arms sliced off they repelled the attackers. They had also become the masters of water and hail.
Anamaya and Katari heard this story again and again as they made their way through the narrow alleys between the canchas. Even the womenfolk, gathered around the fires grilling guinea pigs, told it. Everyone spoke of the warrior who had hurled the stone that had broken the leg of the first horse, and of the soldiers who had diverted the Patacancha. They recreated the scene by imitating the sound of arrows or stones whistling through the air, telling how so-and-so had grabbed onto a horse and toppled its dead rider from his saddle, leaving the corpse to float down the river. Everyone spoke at once, as though there weren’t enough words to recreate the joy of the victory.
Anamaya was frightened.
She couldn’t find Gabriel. She stared at every silhouette she came across in the dark, hoping it was him. But she didn’t dare ask anyone if they had seen him. Seen the Stranger? I hope he’s buried in the Under World.
Her heart was pounding when they at last reached the tall, trapezoidal door that opened into Manco’s cancha.
The Inca was standing amid a gaggle of his Lords, wearing a coat of mail over his unku, his spear lying at his feet. He was waving his hands around, describing some particular action, and Anamaya saw that the men were still covered in blood and mud; grime covered Manco’s face, and his eyes glinted with pride and hatred. The men surrounding him laughed and smiled almost familiarly, and the great deference normally accorded an Inca now gave way a little to the camaraderie of fighting men. The room fell silent as Anamaya and Katari entered.
‘Well, Coya Camaquen, presumably my father had told you of our victory. No doubt that’s why you’ve taken so long to join us.’
Manco signaled to two women to bring him more chicha. They poured it from a jug into his finely worked gold goblet. Manco drank slowly.
‘And you, Katari? Have you been slinging stones from the top of Pinkylluna Mountain?’
The two young people said nothing. The Inca’s cheeks were flushed from the drink and his eyes burned.
‘They don’t reply,’ he said, turning to the Lords. ‘Either they scorn us, or else they’re ashamed…’
‘We have laid the foundation stones for a new temple,’ said Katari, ‘that will one day crown the head of our Ancestor, Huayna Capac – your father.
’
He spoke calmly, fearlessly. Manco lost his murderous look. He pointed at Anamaya.
‘I captured an animal during the battle,’ he said, his rage abating. ‘I want to give it to you.’
‘What animal?’ she asked gently.
‘A puma. I understand that you’re attached to them.’
Manco motioned toward the far side of the room. Two soldiers brought Gabriel forward. His face was impassive.
‘I’m giving him back to you, Anamaya. He’s yours.’
Anamaya forced herself to remain still, despite every atom in her body urging her to run up to Gabriel and take him in her arms.
‘Your puma can keep his life – on one condition.’
Anamaya returned Manco’s unflinching gaze, her own blue-eyed stare steady.
‘He must disappear before Inti throws his first rays into the sky of the day after our victory. Tomorrow – before dawn. Do you understand me?’
Anamaya remained silent. She waited as Gabriel walked unsteadily toward her. He was clearly exhausted. They stood side by side without touching, facing Manco. Then they passed together through the crowd, and she felt their hostility, their lust for vengeance. They wanted to tear him to pieces.
As they passed beneath the stone lintel that was decorated with a carved condor, Manco called out after them:
‘Tomorrow before dawn, d’you hear?’
He sounded completely sober.
* * *
Night closed in around Anamaya and Gabriel as they left the canchas behind.
She led him past the springs, then along beside the Willkamayo toward the condor huaca.
They said nothing for a long time, and didn’t even dare touch one another. They had only been apart for a few hours, but they both had to recover their breaths and slow their beating hearts before they could speak.
The night was cool and clear, and as they walked they left behind all the horrors of the battle. Soon, there was no thought of defeat or victory, no memory of fighting, no mental echoes of the cries of hatred and triumph.
The Light of Machu Picchu Page 19
