The Gold Eaters (21 page)

Again a quick, private exchange. The husband speaks.

“I remember your father. Tayta Mallki. A fine man. We fished together sometimes. He was headman for a while. Less than a year. Before . . .” His voice dies in shyness.

The wife resumes. “Widow Chaska stayed on here for some years after your father died. She left when war broke out between Cusco and Quito. So did many others.”

She hesitates, glances at her husband. “There's one thing more you should know. By then your mother was no longer alone. She got married again. To a . . . a
stranger
who came here. Can they understand us?” she asks, shooting a fraught glance. He shakes his head. “The stranger looked a bit like one of
them
. Half dead when he got here, he was. Your mother took him in, cared for him. When he got better he worked for her. Later they got married. They all left here together. Those two and the little boy.”

“Was the stranger's name Molina?” Waman blurts, instantly biting his tongue. The others must have heard.

“Mulina?”
The two look baffled. “Turtle, his name was,” the husband offers. “That's what folk used to call him. Can't think why.”

“Felipe!” Candía cuts in. “What was that? What are they saying about Molina?”

“Only that they've never heard of him.”

—

Candía sends the other two back to fetch the horses. “What news of your kin, Felipe?” he asks, treading carefully, his tone solemn.

“They're not here. I'll tell you the rest later. Not now. I can't . . .”

Candía's large hand falls lightly on his shoulder. “Want to look for your old home?”

“We passed it already. Empty, like the others. They said a few more townsfolk are living by the beach. If we can find any, I should speak to them.”

What Waman really longs to do is go to the Town of the Dead in the high desert, mourn quietly there, say words that should be said for his father, his grandfather. But this is impossible. He's seen what Spaniards do at Peruvian cemeteries. Rooting for gold with their swords, cutting up mummies, scattering the dead like trash.

They ride through dunes to the seashore, Waman lost in his old life, his sorrow. And the astonishing tale about his mother and Molina. Can that be true? It is shocking, almost obscene. Yet who is he to judge her, after what she must have suffered here?

A few huts above the foreshore. All empty. But some hearths still warm. The owners hiding.

Waman stands on the long, curving beach where he used to fish, the wind loud with the cries of seabirds.

One man is riding a tiny boat on the horizon, so far out that only Waman sees him. As if seeing himself from years ago. The interpreter breathes a prayer to Mother Sea.

Atawallpa is nearing
the highland city of Cajamarca when Maytawillka returns from his assignment, borne swiftly in a travelling
hammock by a team of runners. The envoy is bruised about his face and arms. The Inca, on a small throne in his tent, does not look up at him.

“Back so soon? I told you to linger there, Cousin. Not come back in a week.”

“Only King, the time I spent among them seemed enough. I thought it best to report quickly—though of course I can go again if you wish.”

A nod for Maytawillka to continue.

“The barbarians are two hundred at most. I couldn't make an exact tally because some were away from the camp—at their ships or scouting roads. They have about five hundred prisoners, and auxiliaries from lands beyond the Empire. The bearded ones are lazy. Some never walk more than a few steps, riding instead like children on their beasts. These resemble the big llamas of Qollasuyu, though more heavily built, needing ropes and bridles to stop them bolting. When they run fast the ground shakes. The barbarians also have about thirty fierce hounds, big as pumas. I saw them throw a hotlander to these dogs. He was torn apart in no time.”

“Did you see their blowpipes shoot fire? The All-Seer of Tumbes sent my father a description. Like thunder, he said.”

“There was no occasion to see fighting. I made a show of friendship, as you said. But I did see their stores. Your knotkeeper has the details. There were only four of the fire-shooters. There could be others with the men who weren't in Chira. But I doubt there are more than seven or eight all told. Their main weapons are long knives that hang from their waists in leather sheaths and trail behind them like tails. Or, as the women say, like giant pricks.” Maytawillka stifles a laugh; Atawallpa is unamused. “These knives are of iron, not silver. Their armour too. They spend a lot of time polishing off
the rust. What struck me most is how their eyes light up at the sight of gold—like monkeys' seeing fruit. They were always fingering the metal on my clothes. They even tried to tug bits off.”

“How did they receive the gifts I sent?”

“I gave them the stuffed ducks without explanation. I wanted to see what they would do. They knew nothing! Some asked if the ducks were good eating. Others feared they might be poisoned. One said they were a threat from you, Sapa Inka, warning them they'd soon be trussed and dried the same way.”

“Splendid idea!” Atawallpa laughs, looking his cousin in the eye at last. “Go on.”

“The same man said the stone vessels you sent were model castles—to frighten them with all the fortresses that lie in their way.”

“How did you follow all this? Is their interpreter any good?”

“He was away when I first got there. He came back to the camp on my third day. If anything, he seems to speak their language better than our own. He has a thick Tallan accent. He told me his name is Waman, though they call him
Pilipi
. He's young, about eighteen, seems bright. Good-looking for a lowlander. Though part of his face is like a peanut shell—from the spotted death, he said, when the barbarians took him away. He dresses like them. Same clothes, same smell. He seems wounded somehow. In his being. A great sorrow within him. Dead eyes.”

“The sickness blinded him?”

“No, he sees all right. But he looks like one who has seen too much, too young. He wouldn't speak with me privately. No doubt he was told not to. As you know, he's been their prisoner for years. On their terrible rat-ridden ships, to their land across the Other Sea. Which must also be terrible. Why else would they come so far to get away from it?”

“You're to tell me things, not ask them.”

“Forgive me, Sapa Inka. As you ordered, I toyed with them. I drank with them, arm-wrestled, tugged their beards, played a few practical jokes, got them to draw their long blades. They anger quickly. One poked a knife against my chin, another beat me with his fists . . .”

“So that explains your bruises. You look like the hammock men dropped you on the road.”

Maytawillka laughs. “Feels like they did. Their leader, whom the interpreter calls the Old One, had a hard time saving my skin. He had to shout at them—imagine, their leader has to shout!—to stop them harming me. They have no self-control. They are careless and wasteful. They slaughter llamas by the hundred but eat only the neck meat and the brain. They piss outside their doors like dogs, shaking their pale pricks at Mother Moon.”

“Did they say why they have come?”

“They claim they're sent by the Maker of everything. But this is not our Maker. Despite their strange looks and lofty claims, they are simple men. They eat and drink, dress and undress, stitch their own clothes, fuck their prisoners. Their women told me they can work no magic. When they cross the desert they take water along like anyone else.”

“What of their leader. The Old One. How old is he?”

“Between fifty and sixty, I'd guess. Still strong for his years. Taller than most. Hair and beard the colour of smoke. He has a dog's eyes, yellow, shifty. His mouth is a toothless hole like an old woman's sex. He needs a knife to eat.”

“How does such a man lead?”

“By his fury and their fear, Sapa Inka,” Maytawillka answers, silently adding
not unlike yourself
. “It can't be by birth. There's no great lord among them, for they all dress and behave the same way. Except
for their prisoners and blacks. These the bearded ones treat cruelly, as small men do who suddenly have others in their power.

“In short, they are
pumaranra
,
suwa
. Brigands, thieves.”

Atawallpa looks away, thinking. After some time he says, “If they have come to attack us, why so few? If they come in peace, why so violent? They're beginning to intrigue me. I look forward to seeing them for myself.

“You've done well, Cousin. Now we'll drink.”

The Inca calls for beer. They pour an offering on the ground, the rest down their throats. The helper, a slim beauty in her teens, refills their tankards. Maytawillka smiles at the girl.

“Lovely, isn't she?” Atawallpa says ironically as she retires. “It's high time you found yourself a wife, Maytawillka. If only for appearances. A man without a woman is always a boy.”

“But you know me, Ata— Sapa Inka.” He risks a wink. “I like being a boy.”

Atawallpa darkens. “Did you invite them to visit me?”

“Yes. When I gave your gifts to the Old One.”

“Which roads are they scouting? Where will they climb into the mountains?”

“Some of them were on the Qashas highway. Probably while you were encamped at Pukara.”

“Qashas! I hear they broke into the House of the Chosen there. Odd way to begin an embassy.”

“I heard so too. They lined the girls up in the square. Hundreds. Their captain—not the Old One, another one called Sutu—was picking out the comeliest and handing them to his men. The town lord put a stop to it, telling the bearded ones they'd all be hanged. How dare you do this, he said, when the great Atawallpa is only twenty leagues away with fifty thousand men.”

The Inca smiles. He's heard enough of these barbarians. He will
do with them as he likes. Take anything worthwhile they have to offer—iron, fire-shooters, their new breed of llama—and humiliate them publicly, an exotic touch to the victory parade he's planning for Cajamarca. Man-drums! With their strange hair and skin they'll make unforgettable man-drums.

12

P
izarro musters his troops, leaving some to hold the base camp until Almagro returns with more from Panama. The rest he leads through the desert by the main coast road, southward into unknown territory. The sea lies on their right, silver beyond the dunes. To the east are grey outcrops and purple foothills vibrant in the heat. Above these loom the teeth of the Andes, crowned with ice, veiled in haze yet always
there
. Somewhere beyond those ranges lie the Empire's greatest cities. And its King.

The highway is deserted. The posthouses every two miles are unmanned. As are the
tampu
, the government way stations built one day's travel apart. From some children weeding a canal, Waman learns that the new Inca, Atawallpa, has emptied the land of its men to swell his armies, and of its women to feed and clothe them. There is other, grimmer, evidence of war: bodies strung by the feet from scaffolds, eyes and bellies hollowed by birds, skin made parchment by the desert wind. The Spaniards are unfazed. Such a sight is common enough, whether in Peru or Spain. It is the sight of power.

Here and there the road runs past ancient buildings gone to ruin many centuries ago: wind-eaten walls with fading murals; great pyramids of weathered brick rearing like hills from the sandy plain.

Some days later, about noon, they come to an important crossroad. The Old One calls a halt. The royal highway runs invitingly on
towards Cusco, the far-off capital. A secondary road comes from the seashore and runs east into the foothills, its trace visible above the lower slopes, sometimes snaking up mountain flanks, sometimes riding crags head-on. Up there, Pizarro knows, the going will be hard, with risk of ambush at each pass and precipice.

Waman, too, dreads the mountains, which he has never set foot in, though they hovered over every day of his young life. He fears their snows, their earthquakes, and above all the slides of stone and ice they hurl on those who live among them. He thinks of Tika's village, smothered in an instant.

Yet the highlands also lure him with a brittle hope, for the more he thinks on what he learned in Little River the more he believes his family is up there somewhere, deep in the mountains.

While the Commander is halted at the crossroads, Hernando Pizarro (eldest of Francisco's three brothers, though twenty years younger than he) scouts the main road ahead with Waman and a dozen riders. Their way is soon blocked by a wide river and cut bridge, its cables lashing in the flow. Spotting some people fleeing on a raft, Hernando plunges into the shallows and drags a man ashore.

“Where is this man now?” Pizarro demands when his brother returns. “Why didn't you bring him back to me here for questioning?”

“He's already questioned, Francisco. Thoroughly. And in no shape to travel.” Hernando laughs darkly, spittle flying from his fleshy lips.

“You've disobeyed orders. No harm to the Indians while we march. You've put our lives at risk.”

“They won't find out. What's left of him is on the bottom of the river. With heavy stones for company.”

“There'll be no more of that. Not unless I order it.” The Old One stares his half brother down until Hernando yields a nod. “Now. What did the man have to say?”

“It wasn't easy. Not a word, Francisco, even with his feet on fire. Nothing till I set the dogs on him. These Indians don't feel pain the way we Christians do.” Hernando sighs. “I asked how far it is to Cusco. He said troops on the march would take a month to get there. He said the King is still in Cajamarca, only seven or eight days from here. The army is in two divisions. One stationed at that city, the other at some high pass over there.” Hernando lifts the tip of his beard to the road rising from the desert shimmer. “The man said Atawallpa is waiting in great pride, boasting that every one of us will soon be dead.” Hernando smirks. “That may have been wishful thinking—by then he was nearly dead himself.”

Pizarro scowls and turns away, in jealousy as much as anger. When he sailed for the Indies with Columbus, not one of these brothers had been born. Hernando: what an upstart! Thinks himself the best of us because his mother was the only one our father wed.

“How many troops in these divisions?”

“The main force is at the city. He said the King has fifty thousand there.”

“Impossible! The man was raving.”

“So I thought too. But nothing I did to him changed his mind. I even made him tell me how Peruvians count, to make sure we understood each other. Felipe confirmed it. They reckon as we do—in tens, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands. He said Atawallpa has ‘five ten-thousands' at Cajamarca. He didn't know the strength of the other force, but it is smaller.”

“You, Brother, and I—and our young friend here”—the Old One fixes Waman with a warning stare—“we keep these numbers to ourselves.”

A low buzz of unrest has already arisen from Pizarro's men. Many are for going straight to Cusco. Why bother with Atawallpa at all;
why not sack the Peruvian capital and sail away laden with gold? The more timid are for turning back to Chira, where they were beginning to enjoy the idle life of overlords.

The Commander weighs the risks. God and fortune favour the bold. Atawallpa must not think him hesitant. Nor must he be given time to learn more about the Spaniards. Sacking Cusco has its merits but would take too long. Besides, Atawallpa is said to have another strong army there.

With a mix of dread and awe Pizarro ponders the Peruvian military machine. Roads, garrisons, and warehouses stacked to the roof with weapons, uniforms, footwear, tents, dried food. What organization! Nothing like it has been seen in the Indies, not even in Mexico. Perhaps nowhere on Earth since the Romans.

He takes some heart from the Peruvians' biblical weaponry—maces, pikes, clubs, slings, bows. An armoured horseman is worth a hundred Indians, Hernán Cortés told him in Spain. “Never fight unless you can deploy your horsemen,” he said. “That was my worst blunder.”

Pizarro recalls the details of Cortés's great mistake: how the Mexicans snared him in the canals of their island city, killing two-thirds of his army at a stroke. He'd had twelve hundred Spaniards—six times Pizarro's strength—yet lost eight hundred in one night. To Indians armed with flint and bronze. Had God not smitten Mexico with smallpox, Cortés would never have recovered.

The Lord has already swept that terrible scythe across Peru. Even so, it will take a miracle to win this land.

—

The Commander summons Waman and a lowland lord he trusts, a man who hates Atawallpa for things done in the civil war.

“Felipillo, ask this fine fellow if he has the courage to go ahead to Cajamarca as my spy.”

The lord laughs and spreads his hands. “No! I do not have the courage. To go as a spy is death.” He stares up at the white fangs of the sierra, thinking for some time. “But I might be willing to go as the Old One's ambassador to speak with the Inca, if he'll see me. Perhaps I can learn what he intends.”

“Good man!” Pizarro responds, clapping the lord on both shoulders. “In that Indian skin of yours beats the heart of a Spaniard. Here's what you do. First, if you spot any troops on the way send runners back at once. Second, when you speak to Atawallpa, tell him how well we Christians treat everyone who befriends us. Tell him I make war only on those who make war on me. Now pick out your hammock men. Leave right away.”

Pizarro mounts the steps of a roadside shrine and looks down on his small army. On battered helmets and rusting mail, on ragged clothes—half Spanish, half Peruvian—on the footwear of man and horse worn down by granite roads. On the crazed, truculent eyes that meet his stare. What a band of rogues! They may not frighten Atawallpa, but at times, by Christ, they frighten him.

He calls Friar Valverde to his side and holds aloft his battle standard—the royal arms on one side, a plumed knight on the other, a crude piece of embroidery done cheaply in Seville, yet good enough to stir these murky souls. He shakes it at the men.

“Listen to me! Never be daunted by any heathen horde. Even if we Christians were fewer and those arrayed against us were much more, the help of God is mightier than all.”

Valverde says a blessing. Pizarro announces that Cajamarca—not Cusco—is the goal. Any who wish to return to the base at Chira are free to do so, without shame. Better to cut the rot out now.

To his relief, only a dozen take this offer. The rest—some one hundred and seventy all told, with sixty horse, thirty war-dogs, three hundred Nicaraguan auxiliaries, and a baggage train of slaves and women—march east into the Andes.

—

Waman leaves the only Peru he knows, the seaboard plain of sand and heat, for a vertical land of rock and mist. The Maker has piled mountains one upon another, each summit merely a crest before a higher summit, and a higher. The Incas have made the only flatness: terraces built anywhere that walls can cling, can hold up strips of earth and corn to the sky. And the road itself: a river of stone flowing against them, carved into cliffs, tunnelled through spurs, raised on viaducts, and often, where steepest, cascading towards them in stairways hewn from living rock. He is thankful when fog blows in, shrouding these terrors, shrinking the giddy landscape to a cocoon of ghostly light.

Nobody rides. Each horseman leads his unwilling mount, the same fear in the eyes of animal and man.

Waman's breath is fast and shallow, overworked lungs fighting to fill his chest. The highlands are so much higher than he'd imagined, steeper and wilder, peaks like colossal beasts lurching above him in the clouds. He feels as foreign here as any Spaniard.

They crest the first pass, unchallenged.

The land opens into a sunny upland roamed by llama herds, the road aimed at another pass, yet higher, beyond a flight of terraces supporting a small town. Above the town stands a fortress, its walls rising from a platform of giant stones. The Old One sends Candía and three others ahead, but they find the fort deserted, eerily still, mist threading through its windows and across a courtyard.
Why?
he asks himself. Why does Atawallpa let us come on?

Pizarro is not much given to doubt or wonder, let alone introspection, but here in this cold, high place with air so thin his heart races even at rest, the unearthliness of Peru strikes him as it never has before. This road, this castle, this kingdom—it all seems impossible, an illusion, a work of enchantment. He thinks of what Candía and Ruiz said after their first sight of Peru: that its wonders and riches were uncanny, as if here in this unknown hemisphere, where winter is summer and north is south, the Devil has built a mockery of Christendom, a kingdom of the Antichrist.

He shudders in the thickening twilight, then chides himself for such light-headedness. He gives orders to spend the night in the great building, and is soon on his folding chair beside a fire of rafters and thatch torn from a nearby roof. Meanwhile some of his men search the town, returning with two elders wrapped in wool against the cold. Atawallpa's troops were here only a week ago, these say, but all men of fighting age are now at Cajamarca.

A young runner arrives shortly afterwards, sent back by Pizarro's spy, who is proceeding to the city. There are no troops on the road.

Cheered by this, safe within the fortress, fed on a stew of dried potatoes and llama jerky, the Spaniards sleep well.

—

Candía is first up, awakened by cold falling on his pallet from a window. He strides out to warm himself, climbing a terrace in the foredawn mist, treading carefully up corbelled steps that jut from the retaining wall. On the top he finds a stone channel bringing meltwater from a glacier, distributing it to the fort and houses below. He kneels to splash his face and drink from cupped hands, the water thrusting a stiletto of pain into his palate. Mother of God, what cold!

He stands, sees the interpreter has followed.

“Felipe! How do people live here?
Why
do they live here?”

Waman, teeth chattering, gives no answer beyond a sympathetic grin.