by David Harris
Adjusting his eyes to the light, Hiram cautiously climbed back onto the cliff and up to the split, which was his safe path to the terraces above. When he was part way up, a shadow flickered across him and something moved in the sky. He made sure of his next foothold before he turned to look.
A condor circled gracefully. The predator’s wingspan was at least ten feet across. No, now as it turned, more like fourteen feet from wingtip to wingtip. Yet it rode the wind with no effort, only the ends of its wings ruffling. Its beauty and grandeur stunned Hiram. It turned its head to look at him, then swung towards him, gliding as smoothly as a skater skimming over ice. In awe of the great bird’s power, Hiram watched it hurtle closer and closer. Feathers hushing, it swooped by, just out of reach. Beneath its belly, talons curved like scythes that could pierce and carry off a full-grown goat. Its cruel, sharp beak would tear apart a throat.
Magnificent, away it sailed.
What if it attacked him? He had no way of protecting himself.
This time, at the end of its orbit, the condor altered its trajectory slightly and came at him from a steeper angle. Hiram watched it close in at tremendous speed, straight at him. But, at the last moment, it lowered its wing and tail feathers to slow down and look at him as it passed.
For a moment that seemed timeless, Hiram saw into the eye of the condor, saw the white, saw the dark pupil, saw it gaze directly into his eyes. A wonderful feeling of recognition flamed between them with a force that struck like lightning. Hiram clung weakly to the cliff, his mind in a daze.
When he regained his senses, Hiram looked for the condor, messenger of the Sun God, his altar carved into stone temples, but the giant bird was gone.
What was the Sun God’s message? Was the condor a warning of the curse upon those who disturb the dead? Or was the bird sent as a guardian? More primeval than words, more terrifying and wonderful, was Hiram’s instinct that the condor clutched his spirit in its talons. If he did not return to the mountains of the lost cities, the condor would tear his heart out.
THE CUZCO HERALD
1 JULY 1911
NEW SEARCH FOR THE LOST CITIES OF THE INCAS
Adventurer, Hiram Bingham, is back in Peru. Two years after his expedition of 1909, he is determined to find the lost cities of the Incas.
This time he is not alone. Bingham is team-leader of the Yale University and Royal Geographical Society Peruvian Expedition.
Bingham does not do things by halves. He told The Herald, ‘My goal is to find two lost cities, Vitcos and Vilcabamba. Along the way my team will make accurate surveys of historical sites as well as the geology, geography and wildlife of the Andes.’
He knows the dangers of entering unmapped regions of the Andes. But Bingham is driven by burning ambition. ‘Out there, are cities lost for hundreds of years. Imagine being the first white man to set foot in the fabulous city of Vilcabamba. No Spanish conquistador saw inside Vilcabamba, or if he did, he never lived to tell the tale.’
The Cuzco Herald wishes Hiram Bingham and all the members of his team a safe return. We eagerly look forward to learn of any spectacular discoveries they make.
Chapter 15
Hiram stopped his horse on the bank of the river. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead. Even though it was hot and his muscles ached from weeks of hard trekking, it was good to be back in Inca country. The mountains, roaring river, freezing nights and Castillo’s little jokes were like a homecoming. The two years away — long, frustrating years of planning and raising money, now faded in his memory like a breath.
His horse was skittish, as if it sensed the ghosts, the shock of cannon fire, the blood …
Long ago, in 1571, a rope bridge had swung across the river. On the other side, a troop of cannibals gathered. Faces painted as masks of death, daggers slung at their hips, hands gripping poison arrows, the Flesh-Eaters watched curiously as the conquistadors played a wrestling game with strange long tubes of metal.
These Flesh-Eaters, a tribe called Antis, had never seen guns. But if they stopped the Bearded Ones crossing this bridge, the Inca — wearing his crown of plumes, a silver mask over his face and a cloak of gold — had promised them rewards of silver earrings and feasts of the Bearded Ones’ flesh. They were tastier than monkey’s eyes, sweeter than the backbone of snake. Their kidneys were juicy with fat and their livers oozed much blood.
Let the Bearded Ones cross the bridge. They would be easy kill. A single scratch of arrowhead on their faces, or the skin broken on their weak, white legs beneath their shining jackets and they would die before their second breath. The poison stopped a jaguar in mid-stride. What chance had these puny barbarians?
Confidently, the Flesh-Eaters crowded at the end of the bridge and shouted challenges.
The Bearded Ones turned the eyes of metal tubes at them. Did those eyes have witchcraft?
Uneasy, a few Flesh-Eaters raised their small round shields of parrot feathers, tipped with blood and protected by witch doctor’s spells
Other Bearded Ones held strange metal sticks with mouths. Were those the thunder-sticks that killed from far away?
The Flesh-Eaters slid notched arrows into bowstrings.
A white man drew his sword and held it high above his head. He cried out a single word. A magic word, because flowers of flame and smoke burst from the tubes.
Cannon balls howled across the bridge and tore men in half. Chests, arms, heads smashed against other Flesh-Eaters. Entrails and blood scattered into the air. The tremendous crash of cannon fire struck the Flesh-Eaters again and again from echoing cliffs. Reloaded, the cannon fired another salvo. Shotguns, fixed on tripods, puffed smoke. Sharp strips of metal and chips of stone sliced men to ribbons of flesh.
The few surviving Flesh-Eaters turned and ran. In their panic, none stayed to hack the ropes of the bridge.
Centuries after that slaughter, Hiram wondered why the Inca hadn’t told the Flesh-Eaters to cut the bridge? Without that single bridge the conquistadors could not have crossed the river. The wild water was too deep to lead men and horses across. Canoes would be swamped by waves, rafts smashed on rocks.
But the bridge at Chuquichaca wasn’t cut. Captain Garcia hurried his men across and into the mountains. He hacked his way from fortress to fortress, closing in on the Inca’s refuge — the city of Vitcos.
Castillo, a few hairs already grey in his beard but with the same floppy hat, trotted his horse next to Hiram’s gelding.
‘This place bad.’ Castillo’s eyes were dark with emotion.
What was Castillo feeling? He had the eyes of the ancient Peruvians and the beard, well, almost the beard, of a Spanish conquistador. How did he feel about the mangling of the Inca’s wife in front of the Inca? The screams of his tortured, dying children? The Inca’s own horrible death. The end of their empire. The people of Peru — Children of the Sun God — had lost their father, the king they called Inca. How suddenly their world was destroyed. A few strange ships in the harbour had seemed no threat to an empire.
Hiram remembered his classmate, Harry, who came home late from football training. When he saw smoke above the roofs, he didn’t think it was his house. But then he saw the fire trucks, flashing lights, the ambulance outside his place. A policeman ran to him and held him back. What can you do, when you stand where your world was, but it’s gone? Parents, brother, everything — gone.
Did Castillo feel the sudden loss of empire, or was he more Spanish than Peruvian?
Hiram said, ‘It was a great empire, Castillo.’
Castillo pulled at the reins and his horse pranced, its front hooves drumming on the ground. ‘The greatest of all South America. From Ecuador to Argentina. Great as Romans and Egyptians.’
‘Your ancestor was Inca?’
‘Only the king was called Inca. Nowadays word means everybody. My ancestors were from mountains. They were warrior for the Inca. He was at Panticalla. Sixty of my people fought five hundred enemy.’
Hiram imagined the ambush at th
e Pass of Panticalla. The Inca warriors rushed from the rocks and hurled their bolas — three stones spinning around on ropes. Bolas tangled the legs of conquistadors’ horses. Bolas tied the enemy’s arms against their bodies so they could not fire their guns.
Castillo’s mouth set hard. ‘Bolas broke iron swords. We have courage.’ He stabbed the air with his fist. ‘Our little bronze daggers against axes and armour. We pushed them away. Kill many, many.’
Shouts and hoof beats came from behind Hiram and Castillo. Their long mule train moved from the canyon and towards the bridge. First came Hiram’s team of six Americans on horses: his classmate, Harry, now a professor of Natural History; his good friend, Professor Foote, the geographer and geologist; Buchan the engineer; Doctor Williams; Erikson the mapmaker; and his surveyor, Tucker.
Then followed the baggage mules and porters.
Castillo dismounted and led his horse onto the new bridge, built of iron where the old rope bridge had been.
Hiram peered across the bridge and beyond it to a faint track leading into the mountains.
The last Inca, Tupac Amaru, had fled along that track. Captain Garcia, with orders to exterminate the Inca and all his followers, had massacred mercenary Flesh-Eaters here, and pursued the Inca.
The bridge and the trail led to the last refuges of the Inca — the lost cities of Vitcos and Vilcabamba.
Hiram sniffed the air from the mountains like a hunter sensing his prey.
Chapter 16
A mile along the cliff trail and half a mile above the river, Hiram stood on the brink of disaster. A short section of the trail had collapsed.
It was too narrow for the heavily laden mules and horses.
‘Sorry.’ Castillo stood with Hiram. ‘Was okay last time I was here. Maybe earthquake.’
Below the path, scrubby mesquite bushes and clumps of grass grew in crevices down the cliff. If there was an earthquake, it was some time ago.
A whiff of rancid smoke wafted around Hiram and Castillo. ‘Let me have a look.’ Buchan the engineer, pipe clamped between his teeth, pushed in front of Hiram and Castillo. Surveying the disaster zone, he grunted. His pipe bubbled juicily with spit and tobacco sludge.
Muttering angles and distances, Buchan patted his pocket and took out a round tin. In no hurry, he unscrewed the lid and pinched out some rings of tobacco that smelt like spiced apricots. He tamped the tobacco into the bowl, struck a match and sucked. The flame bent down into the gurgling bowl. Clouds of smoke billowed from the pipe and Buchan’s bushy nostrils. As he breathed out, a speck of dried snot dangled on a hair.
Buchan was as craggy as the granite cliff. He had the body of a heavyweight boxer, fiery dangerous eyes and a smashed nose, nostrils sprouting clumps of hairs as if two baby porcupines had run up his nose and buried their faces to play hide-and-seek. He gave a satisfied grunt. ‘Easy.’
‘Risky,’ Hiram replied.
‘Bah. Life is a risk,’ Buchan growled.
Turning to the porters, Buchan bellowed commands. Castillo translated into Quichua and the porters sprang into action untying gear from horses and mules.
‘And I need mud,’ Buchan shouted. ‘Castillo, tell the men I want three cubic yards of mud, ten panniers of grass or reeds and half a ton of flat stones.’
Porters led mules back down the trail to the Jungle.
Buchan draped ropes around his shoulder and buckled on a carpenter’s belt whose pouches bristled with spikes, clamps and tools. Taking a last puff of his pipe, he shoved it hot and still smouldering in his top pocket. He hitched up his belt and eyeballed the cliff as if it was another boxer to be thrashed. He strapped a pickaxe to one wrist and a hammer to the other. With that, he swung the axe and chipped a foothold.
Buchan was a mountaineer. Feet first. Get the foothold right. Then worry about the hands.
Hiram was slender beside the bulk of Buchan, but Hiram was the boss. ‘Here. Rope up.’
The cliff fell a long way down to the river.
Seething with suppressed anger, Buchan snatched the safety rope from Hiram and clipped himself on. Hiram hammered a spike into the cliff, anchored the safety rope to it and then wound it around his own body.
Buchan stepped onto the cliff. Hiram followed. Working their way methodically they hammered spikes into the cliff, strung ropes which would become the suspension bridge and secured ropes at the other end of the gap. All the while, Buchan cursed the tangle of his safety rope.
Three times they moved across and back, using mesquite bushes or clumps of grass for extra grip. Every so often Buchan lashed out at his safety rope and shot murderous glances at Hiram. But Hiram preferred to ignore Buchan and concentrated on making the suspension bridge safe.
Mules were returning along the path. Some mules had tree branches tied to their backs. Others carried masses of cut vines. A line of mules staggered under sagging baskets of mud and rocks. Sweat cut little rivers through the dried mud which plastered their sides.
Hiram hung on his rope and checked the loads on the mules. A porter tried to ease a basket of mud from his mule but it was too heavy. The basket broke loose, split, and poured mud over the porter’s feet and legs nearly knocking him over the edge. Men laughed and cheered as the porter flapped his arms wildly for balance then lifted one slimy foot from the slop.
Smiling, Hiram turned back to work. Buchan put his hand into a crack in the wall, yelped, and snatched his hand away. ‘Scorpion!’ he yelled, flicking his hand. Hiram had a brief glimpse of the brown scorpion, stinger curled over, stabbing into the back of Buchan’s hand. Then it flew off into space.
Losing his balance, Buchan instinctively lunged for a nearby spike. But his full weight tore the spike from the rock. Hiram saw the shower of white powder where the point of the spike pierced crumbling rock.
Buchan slid down the cliff, his face to the rock wall, fingers clawing for a hold. Hiram braced himself to take the jolt of Buchan’s weight. But the safety rope didn’t go tight. The rope was slack, its end flying in the wind. In that second Hiram realised Buchan had unclipped the rope when Hiram was not looking.
Hiram felt the shock like a kick in the stomach. Buchan would fall about three hundred feet, strike a sharp ridge and, already dead or dying, cartwheel another two thousand feet into the rapids.
Chapter 17
Buchan flung out a hand and, in a desperate reflex, grabbed a mesquite bush. The impact swung him around. A spike of broken branch pierced his hand and held him. His shoulder ripped from its socket and he dangled, awkward, screaming.
‘I’m coming,’ yelled Hiram. He slid down the cliff, paying out the safety rope, begging his spike not to break out.
Buchan gave a great roar, swung his other hand up to the bush and grasped it.
Hiram called to him, ‘A few more seconds.’
The rope slapped against Buchan’s head. Hiram’s feet kicked Buchan in the back. He let out more rope and reached for the clip on Buchan’s belt.
‘What took you so long, boy?’
Chapter 18
‘Thanksh Doc. Doped to the eyeballsh.’ Buchan giggled. It took a while for him to realise he was sitting on the path with his back against the cliff. ‘Look at me. I’m an Egyptian.’
Doctor Williams, the surgeon — magnificent drooping moustache, cheeks florid with a mat of burst veins, a floral bandanna around his head, bloodshot eyes and a slight wince from port-induced gout — finished tying knots on Buchan’s bandages.
Neck to waist, Buchan was trussed in white wrappings. Snapped collarbone strapped down, and shoulder joint popped back in its socket by a simple medical procedure. The doctor had turned the unconscious Buchan onto his back, stood over the body, gripped the right hand, pulled the arm straight and given it his best number-nine iron swing.
Buchan’s left arm was free. He lifted his hand to examine it carefully. The fingers were encased in dressings. His stomach heaved, his throat gulped, and the doctor leapt aside. Buchan vomited noisily then stared at the puddle and gig
gled, ‘Porridge and bacon.’
Hiram was not amused. ‘Buchan is a damn fool,’ he snapped at Castillo. ‘Thinks he knows better than the rules.’
Castillo stared in surprise at Hiram’s outburst.
Provoked by Castillo’s expression, Hiram’s anger flashed. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? You’re a soldier, Castillo. You know that the regiment is more important than the individual.’
Castillo shrugged. ‘Army rules.’ He pulled a face as if he’d trodden barefoot on a snake.
‘Good order depends on everybody obeying rules. You know that, Castillo. All the way down from the top. But Buchan doesn’t agree with that. Thinks he knows better. Must go his own sweet way. Well, the damn fool almost had me joining him at the bottom of the cliff.’
Hiram glared at Castillo, daring him to disagree. Seeing no sign of insubordination on Castillo’s impassive face, Hiram calmed a little. ‘Don’t you see, Castillo. That’s one reason I admire the Incas. They were good kings who looked after their people. Nobody went hungry or cold. The people’s only duty in return was to pay the Inca back with their obedience. And it worked. Everybody knew exactly what to do, precisely when to do it, and they obeyed without complaining or going their own sweet way.’
Castillo went to say something, but then thought better of it.
A mule was eased in beside Buchan. The doctor and Castillo gently lifted him onto the animal’s back. The mule stepped confidently onto the bridge. It couldn’t see down through the road of mud, rocks and grass. Buchan allowed himself one glance over the side, down the cliff and into the river.
Hiram’s mind was cooling down by the time he led his horse across the bridge. He thought ahead to the next major problem.
The old Inca trail on his map only went so far then faded into a blank section. More worrying was the fact that the trail on the ground was not one, but divided into many. The Incas had a complicated system of trails to link all parts of the empire. Royal messengers, like relay runners, raced along the trails and handed on the quipus — cords with information in a code of colours and knots. But the messengers knew where they were going. One wrong turn could lead Hiram anywhere. He did not want to be lost.