B01AOKY60K

  It had been more than two months since Almagro’s departure, and for Almagro, his son, and the men who joined them, these months were months of unbridled hell. They headed south and followed the coast, but to their despair, the land kept going. Almagro’s men were still confident, anticipating they would find something grand. His son, Diego, in particular, possessed a confident air about him as he rode his horse down narrow, rocky trails. They had been told stories from the local tribes that El Dorado was close, closer than they could imagine. Hope was waning, but it was still viable and a driving force of their momentum. And for Almagro, the odds that his expedition would find something seemed as a certainty.

  But it never happened. Days turned into weeks, and weeks forwarded into months of insufferable pain, but the Almagros and their expedition still hadn’t found gold of any kind.

  For Francisco, it seemed as though he finally found his kingdom in Lima. What he loved the most was the absence of things. He loved the absence of the controlling combatants of the Almagros. He loved that he no longer had to deal with his brothers. But what Francisco loved most was the absence of limited space. And in Lima, he could finally breathe.

  When Francisco arrived in Lima, he knew he was home. In that time, Francisco quickly took in his wife, a beautiful Inca woman, who was given as a gift by Atahualpa so long ago. And with the children she gave him, Francisco finally surmised the dream he longed for. He knew this was his kingdom, and his kingdom alone. He had made a palace of his own from all the gold that he collected, and his Incas servant built him a golden throne. Although his palace was smaller, Francisco view was of the grand ocean and sands. He kept at his throne and sat on until his rear and lower back ached. It was a peaceful view and with it, Francisco knew that it was the culmination of his entire fortune.

  Both Almagro and Francisco were lost in their dreams, and they would both stay there. Both held Cusco as secondary. For both were far away. But in truth, that’s how they wanted it. They knew that if they so much as blinked they would lose Cusco forever, and with Manco’s revolt it was only the beginning. In the back of their minds, they knew in order to keep it in their control, they would have to fight for it over and over again, and if necessary, they would fight each other. They knew it too well.

  For the meanwhile, Cusco itself remained in constant battle. At sunrise, Manco joined his men in prayer. There was much doubt in his face, but also pride. He took pride in his people and their devotion. He took pride in all the dead that lay on the ground, and vowed they would not be forgotten. His spirit was strengthened as he finished his prayer. His face remained calm, and his resolve was convincing.

  But Manco knew that his revolt was falling at the seams. He knew Cusco was lost. Even though his people still outnumbered the Spanish, they gave up too much ground. The Spanish took control of too much territory and continued to replenish their growing forces. He knew that continuing fighting at this rate would all be in vain. As Manco looked at his warriors setting up for their ambush, he thought of how long it could possibly go on. Still deep inside Manco wanted to fight on. The stench of the city after a week of battle was awful. What would it smell like in a month? What about a year? His people and his warriors were very much alive and their spirits intact, but Manco knew it was over. The decision would have to be made. But also, he knew his people deserved much more. Although it was a prideful feeling when each charge was ordered, it didn’t make much sense to continue fighting. At least not in Cusco.

  It took more than a week of constant battle for the decision to be made, and Manco’s forces lost more men than one could count. For hours at a time, Manco debated with his Royal Council on when they would sound the retreat. They arranged that at the end of the day they would cease fighting and retreat to the sacred valley, in hopes the Spanish would find it difficult to follow.

  As he looked from the temple’s perch, Manco knew that this would be the last day he’d ever see Cusco. The Spanish now controlled much territory. They gained control of both the outer gates and the inner palisades of the westward back entrance. But as he looked down, he saw the last platoon of his warriors gathered for a final charge, and a smile had formed on his face. There were only twenty of them, but they were the fiercest men Manco had ever seen. He saw it their faces. Their war faces. He saw their dedication, their commitment, and their great disdain for death. The warriors bowed when Manco approached them, and together they whispered their sacred prayers to all their gods. They were ready and willing to die, and there was nothing that could stop them. Manco gave them their blessings and watched them dash to the walls to make one last attempt to defend Cusco. And Manco looked on.

  The warriors rushed over and captured the crevice point of the wall. Then they yelled their war cry and attacked with spears and stones, and when they got close enough they choked the Spanish with their bare hands. The Spanish shot back and half of the warriors died within two minutes. The other half climbed up the walls and defended their ground, armed with Spanish swords. They killed as many as they could. They speared and stabbed. They strangled and bled.

  But the Spanish kept coming. The warriors were surrounded and the Spanish killed them off one by one. And when the surviving warriors saw that it was indeed hopeless, they gauged their eyes and threw themselves off the cliffs.

  And like that, they were gone.

  After the moment passed, Manco approached the Royal Court and with a simple nod of his head and he conceded to the agreement. Immediately afterward, the Incas fled Cusco in droves. Thousands upon thousands of people exited through the back entrance of the city, and they retreated north into the valley.

  It was a sad walk of five miles, but Cusco was still in sight. It was too grand. Too familiar. Too painful. But it was still visible. Manco held Titu by his side, and he knew for certain that he’d never see Cusco, or his wife, Cura, ever again. Manco tried not to look back, but there were times when he was unable to refrain. He held the reigns of a horse and continued to walk on foot. He smelled smoke burn and the harvested crops spoil. He smelled the burning corpses sweat and stink. Little by little Cusco started to fade away. Little by little, the Royal Court’s plan of surrender was beginning to make sense. Yet the entirety of the moment was still present and agonizing.

  Waman Poma slowly caught his breath and paced towards Manco. They shared a look but not much else. All the reason in the world couldn’t prevent Manco from crying. But he wasn’t alone. Most of the Incas faces were worn and weathered, and filled with tears, and the air was filled with the sound of heavy footsteps and sobs.

  But the Incas did not forget to sing. They sang through their tears, and their sweet songs continued. They sang through the pain. They sang the lilting songs of their ancestors. They sang the songs of Atahualpa. But when they were finished singing the obvious, painful question returned: where to?

  And Manco simply pointed to the jungle ahead: Machu Picchu and the sacred valley beyond. He mounted on his horse, and his people followed.

  In Cusco, the Brothers did not celebrate. The only remaining Incas were servants and slaves, many of whom had already taken their own lives. The Spanish took complete control of the city, but they were still seething with rage. Gonzalo, himself, lost all control of his emotions. He yelled across the from one end to the city to the other, and he stabbed anything that crossed his way. Hernando, on the other hand, kept quite still. As the afternoon approached, Gonzalo walked about the city. He repeated to himself a single phrase for a straight hour. Sometimes he whispered the phrase. Other times he shouted it. His lips were dry. His face grew red as a pomegranate. But his anger was pure and obsessed.

  “The bastard! The bastard!”

  Gonzalo approached Cura, stared at her for several seconds, lifted his hand and slapped her across the face with his bare hands until she bled. Then he threw her to the ground and ordered his men to arrest her. Later she was quartered to the basement of the lower temples and was kept there indefinitely.

  Upon seeing this H
ernando immediately tried to calm Gonzalo with soothing words of reassurance, but his attempts were in vain, and his words were empty and left unheard. Even at an early age, Hernando knew that controlling Gonzalo was like trying to control a tidal wave, and it was, even more, apparent now. With Juan dead and Francisco cut off in Lima, Hernando felt not just a brother to Gonzalo but a pseudo father, and with that burden came the inability to communicate. The more Hernando pleaded for Gonzalo to relax, the more Gonzalo spat to the ground. They spoke of their options, of what to do and how they would go about it. They talked about Juan and cried when the silence took over. But when their cries subsided, Hernando knew internally that there was only one thing his brother was thinking about: and that was Manco. Hernando knew that Gonzalo’s only intent was to do as much damage as he could with the rage built inside him. And naturally with that, the silence broke. And Hernando sighed a heavy sigh. The rounds of the obvious began. And the rage returned.

  Gonzalo’s eyes were wide, hungry, and bitter. He peered into the jungle and grunted. He flashed his eyes from left to right. Then he turned to his brother.

  “We’ll get the bastard. He can’t be hiding far.” Said Gonzalo.

  “Yes, but we have to be smart about it.” Said Hernando.

  “We’ll find him.” Said Gonzalo. “We’ll find him. We’ll search every tree.”

  “We can’t go now.”

  “Why? Why on heaven’s earth can’t we, Hernando?”

  “The Crown forbids us. We are ordered to stay in Cusco and govern it. We can’t just abandon it. We’ll go when we get permission. Please use some common sense, brother.”

  “Permission? Common sense?! Oh yes, common sense. The common sense that bastard’s still alive and you refuse to do anything about it!”

  “Please, Gonzalo.”

  “He’s hiding an empire! Can’t you see that, Hernando?! Cusco is only a tiny sliver of what’s out there! Why do you think he gave it up so easily? Why do you think Almagro left when he did?”

  “The crown forbids us to go elsewhere! Please understand, Gonzalo.”

  Gonzalo stood up and took out his sword. He shouted a speech, which could be heard from hundreds of yards away.

  “The Crown? The Crown? Who is the king to say who I am? Who is Spain to say who we are?! Do you hear them?!! Can they hear us?!! But if by chance you do, if by chance you see the king, if you see him prancing along in this horrid jungle, please do me a favor, brother. Kiss his feet. Shake his hand. Steal his crown. And shove it up his ass!!!”

  “Brother.” Hernando pleaded.

  But Gonzalo finished.

  “The crown is blind, Hernando. We are not Her servants anymore. I am my own man! And this is our empire. Our home is here. Spain? Glorious Spain? What does Spain have that we lack? Tell me. Land? Have we not seen God yet? Is this not the navel of the earth? What else does Spain have that we haven't? Wine? More churches? Gold? Gold, Brother?”

  “History.” Said Hernando.

  “History.” Said Gonzalo, nodding his head. “You’re absolutely right. History. We don’t have a history. We'll have to start it then.”

  With that, Gonzalo departed. Hernando knew Gonzalo would have his way, and with Francisco gone in Lima, it was a forgone conclusion that Gonzalo would do what he deemed right and needed no permission. It was driven by pure and unadulterated rage. It was another quest. Not just to capture Manco, but to humiliate him and kill him in front of all the Incas. The only question was who would go along with him.

  And as always, it was only a matter of time.

  II

  “It all happened too fast. The Incas simply disappeared and we watched the remaining of them head off to the woods. Every man left in Cusco was angry, even the slaves and servants who remained with us. We kept looking left and right to see another ambush. Left and right to see if there were any stragglers. Left and right to see if they were any left. There weren’t, and our questions remained unanswerable.

  I tried to look for Soto, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. Then I found him not too long after. He was sitting on a stump and sharpening his sword against the white stone of the walls. He gave out a glare when I approached him, and he hadn’t said anything to me for a good couple minutes. I tested his silence and sensed that he was in such a mood that he could go on like this for a month without saying a word. I, for one, was in a similar state, if not the same. It was the state of absolute numbness. It wasn’t disbelief. I fully believed what had happened. I fully believed that I was still alive. And that’s what made it all too numbing.

  Soto took to his pen and parchment and spent the afternoon in a deep calculation. My suspicion was that he adding what his fortune amounted to. He always did his own calculations and never left a single coin to the treasury. I heard his reasoning in my mind. It was clear and unarguable.

  “Why should I, Sardina? I earned this myself. They have no say what I do with it.”

  But still for the time, he refused to say a word. I joined him by the fire. For the entire night, Soto didn’t speak. We didn’t play the game. I didn’t even set up the board. I couldn’t think. I forgot how. I looked up to the gray sky. It seemed calm and dead. All that time we stared, not to each other, but to the city, and how empty it looked. From time to time I glanced at Soto, but not for very long. Had I known it was his end game, I would have acted differently. Had I known anything, I would have said something, anything. But I didn’t. The truth of the matter was that I was too dumb to understand and I didn’t understand until years after. I was too stupid to understand that Soto had come to the end of his terms in Cusco and the whole of Peru. There weren’t any other moves to be made. Hernando and Gonzalo proved to be in charge of all the decisions. And it was clear that after Francisco departed, Soto had virtually no say.

  I knew these things, but I didn’t have the heart to confirm it with Soto. So I did what any stupid young man would do. I stared in silence and slept the night away. But the silence sufficed. And dawn broke. And like always, Soto got up to his feet and disappeared.

  In the morning, Gonzalo assembled his men and they gathered and formed a line. I looked at them from afar and I leaned against a moss-covered rock. They were paid in advance, and most of them were young. I looked at their eyes, their eager, hungry eyes, and again I was caught by the spell. Men with hardly any teeth. Men with broken jaws that slung and drooped. Men with patches on their eyes. Men with no regard for anyone than themselves. Men who only wanted enough gold so they could retire and never have to work another day in their lives. These men had their reasons.

  In the morning, there were a hundred men who fell in line. By the end of the day, there were more than two hundred who had signed. Needless to say, I couldn’t find Soto. There was still time to join. Gonzalo would take one more day of offers, and the most qualified would get the opportunity to join. I had one more day to decide.

  All throughout the day, I was at a standstill of what to do, and all throughout the night I thought about my next move. My intention was to think all night and die of exhaustion. I made half of the promise.

  I kept my distance from the men and refused their invitations to drink and talk amongst the fires. I kept to myself, and set up the board, and tried to think. I arranged the pieces in a quandary.

  During the night, I made a fire and stared at my fortune. It was enough, and I hadn’t spent nearly what I thought I spent. The chest was still heavy and I thought of securing some of it into a secret hole of some kind, so that if I were to lose it all, I’d still have something to fall back on. But Cusco was filled with these buried savings. And my biggest fear was that I would forget exactly where it was buried if I had done such a thing. Cusco was a graveyard of blood and gold. I stared at my fortune again for what seemed like an hour. Then realized that I fought too hard for it, to simply bury a small amount, seemed ridiculous. It seemed like a giant waste of time and effort. So I decided to carry the burden. I would carry it all the way back to Spain if I had to. And I d
ivided it up and put a small amount of it in a pouch, and the rest of it remained in its chest.

  The fire burned. I stared up at the stars and searched for an answer. I set up the board and watch the pieces reflect and flash against the firelight. Like most men I was caught in between the present and the future, but unlike most men, I knew what both were. I knew what Cusco was. It was glorious, sacred to some. It was worth defending in every which way. At least, that was what it seemed on the surface. At least, that was the rationalization and the general convention of thought. That was the present. It was the essence of the dream. But it wasn’t enough. Because it seemed there was no life to it anymore. That was the truth. And that, in turn, was the present. It was a hell I knew, but no longer wanted to live in.

  Then there was the future. It remained unexamined and it bothered me. To find Manco. To find El Dorado. Those were our objectives, but they both seemed so unlikely to occur. Lies and truths. My mind was in between. The truth became clearer as I continued to stare. And I felt as empty as the days of wandering on the beach. I thought I’d never feel that empty feeling ever again, but no. I felt it. It felt exactly the same. The feeling of complete emptiness. That life was not lived, and my time was over. That my life amounted to nothing, and to say otherwise was just lying to myself. There had to have been a remedy, something to quell the pain. This couldn’t be my end game. There was still much to explore.