I saw the dark outline of a large cat—saw the black feline head, the upturn of the nose, the tips of its high-pointed ears, Saw its mouth open in silent anticipation of the kill.
At first I couldn’t believe its size. Whatever this animal was, it was enormous—
And then suddenly the animal was gone and all I saw was the hut’s wall, bare and empty, illuminated by the moon’s rays.
The three Incans were now about twenty paces from the citadel.
I whispered loudly to them in Quechuan. “Over here! Come quickly! Come quickly!”
At first they didn’t seem to understand what I was saying.
And then the first animal stepped slowly out into the main street behind them.
“Run!” I called. “They’re behind you!”
The man of the group turned and saw the giant cat standing in the mud behind them.
The animal moved slowly, with precision and calculation. It looked like a panther. A massive black panther. Cold yellow eyes looked down a tapered black snout—eyes that stared with the unblinking coolness of the cat
At that moment, a second animal joined the first and the two rapas stared intently at the small group before them.
Then they both lowered their heads and tensed their bodies like two tightly wound springs waiting to burst into action.
“Run!” I cried. “Run!”
The man and the woman broke into a run and hastened toward the citadel.
The two cats in the street leapt after them in pursuit.
I ran to the open doorway that led from the roof of the citadel down into the main body of the structure. “Renco! Someone! Anyone! Open the main door! There are people out there!”
I hastened back to the edge of the roof and arrived there just in time to see the woman reach the base of the citadel, carrying the child in her arms. The man arrived right behind her.
The cats bounded down the street.
No one downstairs had opened the door.
The woman looked up at me with frightened eyes—and for the shortest of moments I found myself entranced by her beauty. She was the most striking woman I had ever—
I made my decision.
I ripped my cloak from my body and, holding onto one end of it, hurled the other end out over the edge of the roof.
“Grab my cloak!” I called. “I will pull you up!”
The man snatched the other end of my garment and handed it to the woman.
“Go!” he cried. “Go!”
The woman took hold of my cloak and I pulled on it with all my strength, hauling her—and the child in her arms—up toward the roof of the citadel.
No sooner was she off the ground than I saw the warring beneath her get pummeled by one of the rapas. The man’s body made a sickening sound as it was thrown against the outer wall of the citadel. He screamed as the rapa began to eat him alive.
With all my strength I heaved on my cloak, lifting the woman and the child to safety.
They reached the rim of the roof, and in the light falling rain the woman grabbed hold of the stone battlements, while at the same time she attempted to hand her child over to me, He was a small boy, with large, frightened brown eyes.
I struggled to hold onto three things at once—the woman, the boy, my cloak—and I looked out in horror to see that several other rapas had slunk out into the main street of Vilcafor to view the commotion.
Just then, one of the cats beneath us leapt up from the mud and tried to snap its jaws around the woman’s dangling feet. But the woman was too alert. She lifted her toes at the very last moment and the cat’s jaws closed on nothing but air.
“Help me,” she pleaded, her eyes frantic.
“I will,” said I, as the rain beat down on my face.
Whence the cat in the mud beneath her leapt again, this time reaching out for her with its huge scythe-like claws, and this time it caught the hem of her cloak and to my absolute horror I saw the entire cloak go taut under its weight.
“Nor the woman cried as she felt the weight of the can begin to pull her down.
“Oh, Lord,” I breathed.
At which moment the cat yanked down hard on the woman’s cloak and she tightened her grip on my wet hand but it was no use, the great cat was too heavy, too strong.
With a final scream, the woman slipped out of my grasp and, with her child in her arms, she fell off the rim of the roof and out of my sight.
It was then that I did the unthinkable.
I leapt out over the rim after her.
To this day, I don’t know why I did it.
Maybe it was the way she had held onto her son that made me do it. Or maybe it was the look of pure fear on her beautiful face.
Or maybe it was just her beautiful face.
I don’t know.
I landed rather unheroically in a pool of mud that lay in front of the citadel. As I did so, a spray of brown wetness splattered all over my face, blinding me.
I wiped the mud away from my eyes.
And immediately saw no less than seven rapas standing in a close semicircle around me, staring at me with their cold yellow eyes.
My heart was pounding loudly inside my head. What I intended to do now, I surely did not know.
The woman and the boy were right beside me. I stepped in front of them and yelled fiercely at the phalanx of monsters before us.
“Be gone, I say! Be gone!”
I extracted an arrow from the quiver on my back and slashed it back and forth in front of the giant cats’ faces.
The rapas didn’t seem to care for my pathetic act of bravado.
They closed in around us.
Now truly, it must be said that if these fiendish creatures had looked large from the roof of the citadel, up close they looked positively massive. Dark, black and powerful
Then, and abruptly, the rapa standing nearest to me lashed out with its forepaw and snapped the sharpened point of my arrow clean off. The big creature then lowered its head and snarled at me, tensed itself to launch and then—
Something dropped with a loud splash into a muddy puddle of water to my right
I turned to see what it was. And I frowned.
It was the idol.
It was Renco’s idol My mind spun like a windmill. What was Renco’s idol doing down here? Why would anyone throw it down into the mud at a time like this!
Whence I looked up and saw Renco himself leaning out over the edge of the citadel’s roof. It was he who had just thrown the idol down to me.
And then it happened.
I froze.
The noise was like nothing I had ever heard in my life.
It was only a soft sound, but it was utterly pervasive. It cut through the air like a knife, piercing even the sound of the falling rain.
It was similar to the sound a chime makes when it is struck. A kind of high-pitched hum.
Mmmmmmm.
The rapas heard it too. Indeed, the one which had only moments before been readying itself to attack now just stood there in front of us, staring in a kind of dumbstruck wonderment at the idol which now lay half-submerged in the brown puddle beside me.
It was then that the strangest thing of all happened.
The pack of rapas around us slowly began to move backward. The rapas were stepping away from the idol.
“Alberto,” Renco whispered. “Move very slowly, do you hear? Very slowly. Pick up the idol and go to the door. I’ll have someone let you back inside.”
I obeyed his command to the letter.
With the woman and child beside me, I scooped up the wet idol in my hands, and with our backs pressed firmly against the wall of the citadel, we slowly made our way around its circular outer wall until we were at the doorway.
For their part, the rapas just followed us at a careful distance, entranced by the melodious song of the wet idol.
But at no stage did they attack.
And then all at once the large stone slab that acted as a door to the citadel was rolled as
ide and we all slid in through it, and as I came in last of all and the great doorstone was rolled back into place behind me, I fell to the floor, breathless and soaking and shaking, and totally and utterly amazed that I was still alive.
Renco came hurrying down from the roof to meet us.
“Lena!” said he, recognizing the woman. “And Mani!” he cried, taking the boy up in his arms.
I just lay exhausted on the floor to the side of all this happiness.
I am ashamed to say it now, but in that moment I actually felt a pang of jealousy toward my friend Renco. No doubt this astonishingly beautiful woman was his wife—as one would expect of so dashing a character as Renco.
“Uncle Renco!” the boy exclaimed as Renco held him high.
Uncle?
My eyes snapped up.
“Brother Alberto,” said Renco, coming over. “I don’t know what it was you were planning to do out there, but my people have a saying.
“It is not so much the gift as the intention behind it that matters.’ Thank you. Thank you for rescuing my sister and her son.”
“Your sister?” said I, staring at the woman as she removed her waterlogged cloak and revealed a minuscule tuniclike undergarment that was itself soaked through to the skin.
What I saw made me swallow.
She was far more beautiful than I had at first perceived—if indeed such a thing were possible. She was perhaps twenty years of age, with soft brown eyes, smooth olive skin and flowing dark hair. She had long slender legs and smoothly muscled shoulders, and through her saturated undergarment I could see her ample bosom and—much to my embarrassment—her erect nipples.
She was radiant
Renco wrapped her in a dry blanket and she smiled at me and I truly felt weak at the knees.
“Brother Alberto Santiago,” said Renco formally. “May I present to you my sister, Lena, first princess of the Incan empire.”
Lena stepped forward and took my hand in hers. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said she with a smile. “And thank you for your most brave act”
“Oh, it was . . . nothing,” said I, blushing.
“And thank you also for rescuing my errant brother from his prison cell,” said she.
Seeing my surprise, she added, “Oh, rest assured, my hero, word of your noble deed has spread throughout the empire.”
I bowed my head modestly. I liked the way she called me “my hero.”
Just then something occurred to me and I turned to Renco. “Say, how did you know the idol would have that effect on the rapas?”
Renco gave me a crooked smile.
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t know it would do that”
“What!” I cried.
Renco laughed. “Alberto, I am not the one who jumped off a perfectly safe roof to rescue a woman and child I didn’t even know!”
He put an arm around my shoulders. “It has been said that the Spirit of the People has the ability to soothe savage beasts. This I have never seen, but I have heard that when it is immersed in water, the idol will calm even the most enraged animal. When I was awoken by your shouts and I saw the three of you surrounded by the rapas, I surmised that this was as good a time as any to test that theory.”
I shook my head in wonderment.
“Renco,” said Lena, stepping forward, “I hate to disturb your revelry, but I have come with a message.”
“What?”
“The Spaniards have taken Roya. But they cannot decipher the totems. So whenever they reach one, they have Chanca trackers scour the surrounding area until they pick up your trail. After the gold-eaters sacked Paxu and Tupra, I was sent here to tell you of their progress since I am one of the few who know the code to the totems. I have since learned that they have burned Roya to the ground. They have picked up your scent, Renco. And they are on their way here.”
“How long?” said Renco.
Lena’s face darkened.
“They move fast, brother. Very fast. At their current rate of travel, I estimate that they will be here by daybreak.”
“Found anything?” Frank Nash said suddenly from behind Race.
Race looked up from the manuscript to find Nash, Lauren, Gaby and Krauss standing in the doorway to the ATV, looking at him expectantly. It was late in the afternoon, and owing to the storm clouds overhead, the sky behind them had already begun to darken considerably.
Race looked at his watch. 4:55 P.M.
Damn.
He hadn’t realized he’d been reading so long.
Night would fall soon. And with it would come the rapas.
“So? Have you found anything yet?” Nash asked.
“Er . . .” Race began. He’d become so engrossed in the manuscript that he’d almost forgotten why he was reading it—to find out anything he could about defeating the rapas and getting them back inside the temple.
“Well . . . ?” Nash said.
“It says that they only come out at night, or at times of unusual darkness.”
Krauss said, “Which explains why they were active in the crater earlier. It was so dark in there, even during the day, that they were—”
“It also looks like the rapas know that this town is a good food source,” Race said, cutting Krauss off before he could justify his earlier error—an error that had resulted in the deaths of three good soldiers. “They attacked it twice in the manuscript.”
“Does it say how they came to be inside the temple?”
“Yes. It says that they were put inside the building by a great thinker who wanted to make the temple a test of human greed.” Race looked up at Nash pointedly. “Guess we failed that one.”
“Solon’s temple. . .” Gaby Lopez breathed.
“Did it say anything about how we can fight them?” Nash asked.
“It did say something about that, two things actually. One, monkey urine. Apparently all cats hate it. Douse yourself in it and the rapas will steer well clear of you.”
“And the second thing?” Lauren said.
“Well, it was very strange,” Race said. “At one point in the story, just when the cats were about to attack Santiago, the Incan prince threw the idol down into a puddle of water. Once the idol came into contact with the water, it emitted a strange kind of humming noise that seemed to stop the cats from attacking.”
Nash frowned at that
“It was very peculiar,” Race said. “Santiago described it as sounding like a chime being struck, and it seemed to operate on the same principle as a dog whistle—some kind of high-frequency vibration that seemed to affect the cats but not the humans.
“The really strange thing,” Race added, “was that the In-cans seemed to know about this. On a couple of occasions in the manuscript it’s said that the Incans believed that their idol, when immersed in water, could soothe even the most savage beast.”
Nash glanced at Lauren.
“Could be resonance,” she said. “Contact with the concentrated oxygen molecules in water would cause the thyrium to resonate, the same way other nuclear substances react with oxygen in the air.”
“But this would be on a much larger scale—” Nash said.
“Which is probably why the monk also heard the humming sound,” Lauren said. “Human beings can’t hear the resonant hum caused by the contact of, say, plutonium with oxygen—r the frequency is too low. But since thyrium is a whole order of magnitude denser than plutonium, it’s possible that when it comes into contact with water, the resonance is so great it can be heard by humans.”
“And if the monk heard it, then it must have been twice as bad for the cats,” Krauss added pointedly.
Everyone turned to face Krauss.
“Remember, cats have a hearing capability approximately ten times that of human beings. They hear things that we physically cannot, and they communicate on a frequency that is beyond our auditory range.”
“They communicate?” Lauren said flatly.
“Yes,” Krauss said. “It has long been acc
epted that the great cats communicate via grunts and guttural vibrations that are well beyond the aural perception of humans. The point, however, is this: whatever that monk heard was probably only one-tenth of what the cats heard. That humming sound must have driven them crazy, hence the pause it gave them.”
“The manuscript went even further than that,” Race said.
“It didn’t just make them pause. The cats seemed to follow the idol after it had been dropped in the water. It was as if they were drawn to it or something, hypnotized even.”
Nash said, “Did the manuscript say anything about how the idol came to be inside the temple?”
“No,” Race said. “Not yet, at least. Who knows, maybe Renco and Santiago wet the idol and used it to lead the cats back inside the temple. Whatever they did, somehow they managed to lure the cats back inside the temple and at the same time put the idol inside it.” Race paused. “It’s not entirely inappropriate, really. By placing the idol inside the temple, they merely made it another part of Solon’s test of human greed.”
“These cats,” Nash said. “The manuscript says they’re nocturnal, right?”
“It says that they like any kind of darkness—nighttime or otherwise. I guess that would make them nocturnal and then some.”
“But it says that they came down to the village each night to hunt for food?”
“Yes.”
Nash’s eyes narrowed. “Can we assume, then, that they leave the crater to forage for food every night?”
“Judging from the manuscript, that would appear to be a safe assumption.”
“Good,” Nash said, turning.
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, “when those cats come out tonight, we’re going to go inside the temple and get that idol.”
The day grew darker by the minute.
Black storm clouds rolled in overhead, and with the cool air of the late afternoon, a thick gray fog settled over the village. A light rain fell.
Race sat next to Lauren as she packed some equipment to take over to the citadel in anticipation of their nighttime activities.
“So how has married life been to you?” he asked as casually as he could.
Lauren smiled wryly to herself. “Depends which one you’re talking about”
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