Simón was now the healthiest and strongest man among them. Narváez had even commented on it. “You look well for a man kidnapped by savages,” he said. Narváez still dreamed of conquering Florida, of taming the land granted him by the crown. And it was becoming increasingly clear he’d never do that without a fight. Simón supposed that made him an asset again.
He certainly had nothing else to offer. His friends could not tell Narváez where the Uzita were located, and Simón feigned ignorance as well. He said he’d seen no treasure in his time in the wilderness. He had betrayed Shako once already. He wouldn’t do it again. He knew Narváez would raid the Uzita for their food alone. And if Narváez learned of the Water, then he would stop at nothing to possess it. He would take the glory and become the most powerful man in Spain, perhaps in the world.
Simón would not allow that.
So he kept silent. And he waited for several weeks, until Narváez was distracted by the constant press of foraging for food and keeping his troops satisfied again.
In the meantime, he made a plan.
“WE HAVE TO GO BACK.”
“For your whore? For that animal?”
Simón resisted the urge to split Aznar’s face open along the lines of his sneer. He tamped his anger down.
He’d gathered his friends at a fire on the edge of the camp, late at night. He’d considered simply leaving without them, but they did not abandon him, and he wouldn’t abandon them now. The truth was, they all needed to escape. And he needed all of them if his plan was to work. But he couldn’t tell them the truth. They would think he wasn’t just smitten but infected, that he’d caught some kind of pox from Shako that was already destroying his brain.
So he gave them a half-truth.
“Because there is treasure there.”
They paid attention to that. Simón was reminded of dogs sitting up at the scent of meat.
“Gold?” Francisco asked.
“Where?” Aznar demanded. “Why didn’t you tell Narváez?”
“Why should Narváez be the only one who profits from this disaster? We can have it all for ourselves. And believe me: we will be richer than kings. All of us.”
“I didn’t see anything on your savage girl that looked like gold,” Pedro said.
“You were looking at her other charms,” Sebastian said.
Again, Simón had to bite down on his bile. He could endure a few insults to his honor if it meant getting Shako back, and getting to the Fountain.
“It’s there,” Simón said. “Why do you think I spent so long among the savages? I wanted them to trust me. They don’t even understand what they have. If you come with me, I can negotiate. I can convince them to let us take the treasure with us.”
“You’re talking about mutiny,” Aznar said. “You should tell Narváez.”
“Has anything on this expedition gone as Narváez planned?” Simón shot back. “I was the one who was lost in the wilderness for months, but you are the ones who are filthy and starving. We could be hundreds or thousands of miles away from our destination. It’s lucky an ocean separates us from Spain. If the king knew of this, he’d have Narváez beheaded simply to avoid the embarrassment.”
There was a grudging silence. Simón knew from experience: hungry men were always angry.
“Do you believe you could do better?” Aznar asked, sullen.
“I believe we can do better. History belongs to the man who takes it. If we bring the Uzita’s treasure back to the king, I guarantee he will give us anything we want.”
They all stood in silence for a moment, considering that.
For a moment, Simón feared they would turn against him. This was treason. But more than that, this was an admission that the power and glory of Spain had its limits. To leave Narváez now would be to concede that the king, in his wisdom, had committed all their lives to the wrong man and the wrong cause. It was far easier to follow along than to sever that last link, that last string of hope that everything would work as planned because God and Kingdom had decreed it would be so. This was more than abandoning the mission; this was taking responsibility for their own destiny.
Finally, Max broke the silence.
“We’ll need supplies,” he said. Pragmatic as ever.
Just like that, the decision was made. They would follow Simón. This was uncharted territory, and they were trusting him to lead them through it.
Of course, the greed in their eyes had something to do with it as well.
“Gather what you can without attracting too much attention,” he said. “We leave the camp tonight.”
HIRRIHIGUA STOOD AT THE center of the Uzita village, flanked by nearly a hundred of his warriors. Each one of them looked ready to eat the hearts of Simón and his friends.
At this point, the only thing holding them back was the flag of truce and Hirrihigua’s tolerance.
“I’m starting to have doubts about your plan,” Max said in a low voice.
Simón tried not to show any fear. He and the others stood in the clearing at the middle of the Uzita’s village, circled by the wooden houses and their palm-thatched roofs, much as they had when Shako had begged for their lives.
The rest of the Uzita, all the old men, women, and children, crowded around the edges of the central ground, gawking at them.
Simón desperately hoped they looked more impressive this time. He wanted to negotiate from a position of strength, not beg for his life. They were all wearing armor and carrying their pistols and swords. Simón once more wondered if they’d made the right decision when they chose not to steal an harquebus, one of the cannonlike muskets that required two men to set up and fire. Narváez would have noticed that immediately, and even the lighter rifles would have slowed them down too much.
It was said that a handful of men with Spanish steel were worth a whole army in some battles. Simón hoped it would not be necessary to prove that.
Simón had argued against stealth, and instead walked right up to the village in the bright morning sunlight, carrying a once-white rag as a sign of peace. He spoke to the sentries in their own language, and asked—not demanded—to see Hirrihigua.
The chief must have been intrigued. He agreed to let Simón speak. But he had them face every warrior in the tribe to do so.
Simón had never lacked courage. He wouldn’t whimper. This was his chance.
And, to the audible gasps of his fellow soldiers, he kneeled.
“What are you doing?” Max hissed.
Simón ignored him.
“Great Chief,” he said, with as much humility as he could muster. “We are here to offer you our apologies.”
That caused a murmur among the Uzita. Hirrihigua looked around, and they went quiet again.
“What did you say?” Max asked.
“Quiet,” Simón growled, and continued to speak to the chief in Uzita. “We do not have to fight. I believe we can have peace. I believe we can work together. I come to you to ask for a chance to prove this.”
Simón searched through the limited vocabulary he’d learned from Shako. There were so few words, but each one had multiple meanings. The phrases seemed to slip away the harder he tried to grasp them.
“We have many things that can help the Uzita. Help with the food. Help with the tools. Medicine. Weapons.”
The chief finally spoke. “And what is it you want?”
Simón hesitated, then plunged ahead. “The Water.”
There was an audible gasp from the Uzita. Simón was aware he’d just committed the equivalent of blasphemy, so he hurried ahead.
“You know what a treasure this is. It would be worth much to our”—they had no word for king—“chief across the ocean. He would bring you much treasure for this. He would make your tribe stronger than any other.”
“From what I have seen of you,” Hirrihigua said cal
mly, “your people can barely feed themselves.”
A little of Simón’s pride reared up at that. He looked the chief directly in the eyes. “We have conquered greater warriors than yours,” he said. “And more of us are coming every day.”
The Uzita men bristled at that. There was a general muttering of anger, a readying of weapons.
The chief remained stoic. “Then perhaps we should kill you now, to save ourselves the trouble later.”
Max chose that moment to speak up again. “Simón, I can’t help but notice this doesn’t seem to be going well.”
Simón breathed in deeply to remain calm. All he wanted was a few barrels. That’s all it would take. He could take those and Shako and return to Spain an impossibly wealthy man. The king would give him anything if he returned with the Bimini waters. He could restore his family’s lands and then find a small place far away from everything, where they could live in peace.
He had to make the chief see. He stood up so he could be closer to eye to eye with the man.
“My words . . .” Simón hesitated again. “I need to find the right way to explain. It would help if your daughter was here. To talk for me again.”
If Hirrihigua was stone before, now he was ice. Simón realized he’d made a mistake, but he did not know what.
The chief looked at him and did not reply.
Simón tried again. “Where is Shako?”
There was finally something like an expression breaking through the stone of the chief’s face. It was barely a grimace, but to Simón it looked like contempt.
He spoke one word in Uzita: “Gone.”
Simón felt like the world had dropped out from under him. His head spun. Like most of the Uzita language, the single word had multiple meanings. But there was one he knew best from his lessons with Shako. “Gone” meant “dead.”
“You killed her?”
That broke the chief’s composure completely. He erupted in rage. “You killed her,” he shouted back. He lifted the war club above his head. Simón was still frozen and reeling. The others did not even know exactly what had been said. They were hesitant and confused.
The chief roared and the warriors of the Uzita roared with him. At that moment, Simón knew he’d brought his closest friends and allies with him only to die. A single thought filled his mind. Perhaps in Heaven, he would be reunited with Shako.
Then something burned Simón’s face. Smoke stung his eyes, and he could no longer hear the bellow of the chief or his warriors.
The chief looked down at his chest, which was a smoking ruin. A musket ball with a heavy charge of black powder had smashed into him, tearing a hole through his ribs and into his heart.
His eyes went dead as the blood began to flow, and his body hit the ground, lifeless.
But we didn’t bring the harquebus, Simón thought.
Then he turned and saw the conquistadors. Dozens of men from the expedition, pouring from the overgrown jungle in full armor, with Narváez, the one-eyed demon, leading the charge.
The big harquebus fired again, this time to Simón’s left. Someone tackled him to the ground before the next blast took his head off.
Max pulled him from the dirt and hurried him off to the side. “Get out of the way, you idiot,” he grunted. The other soldiers of their expedition were already preparing to fire again.
Impossible, Simón thought. How did they find us?
The soldiers came from everywhere. They had surrounded the village completely. The lines of men closed in like a knot being pulled tight.
The guns concentrated their shots on the warriors, who were conveniently lined up where the chief had been standing. They had been caught just as unaware as Simón. The musket balls hit them as they tried to cross the village ground, laying half of them down in the first few moments of the fight. The smoke and noise sent the Uzita scrambling for cover, their defenses broken in second. Then it was nothing but slaughter.
The conquistadors laid into the Uzita with their swords. Everyone in the circle was a target. He saw a woman with a baby at her breast stabbed in the throat. An old woman had her face smashed with a mailed fist. A man took a musket ball to the back of his head a few steps away, his skull shattering under the impact. Those who ran screaming were impaled on a relentlessly advancing wall of pikes. Narváez screamed, “No prisoners! No quarter!”
They followed us, Simón realized. One of his own had told them. They laid in wait, and they surrounded the village, and they took their moment.
Simón felt heat on his face and arms, and saw that someone had set the thatched palm of the roofs on fire. He watched an Uzita woman driven into the flames by two pikemen he’d eaten and drank with. He saw the baby torn from his dying mother’s breast.
He closed his eyes, because he did not want to see what happened next.
He wanted nothing more than to wake, screaming, from this nightmare.
THE SUN CLIMBED OVER the scorched earth of the Uzita camp. The burned wooden houses. The plain unpainted pottery, now smashed into fragments everywhere. The bodies, which wore no jewelry or decoration of any kind.
Narváez surveyed it all. The other men were still stacking the corpses in a pile.
Simón and the others were not even given that humiliating duty. They were assembled, on their knees, in the center of the village. Guards had watched them since the battle—or, more accurately, the massacre—was done.
Simón had tried to speak once, and was beaten by the guards for his trouble. His face was now swelling with bruises. The others took the hint and remained silent.
One of Narváez’s lieutenants came from the burned huts at the edge of the village. He and Narváez spoke quietly for several minutes. Simón couldn’t hear the conversation, but he there was no mistaking the anger on Narváez’s face.
Narváez then turned on Simón, his one good eye squinting. “Where is the gold?”
Simón was unprepared for Narváez’s rage. “There is no gold.”
Narváez crossed the ground between them in a few quick steps, his saber at Simón’s throat before the younger man could blink. “You told them there was treasure here. You swore to it.”
“There is—there is treasure,” Simón said, and then stopped. His life was in his commander’s hands now. A twitch of that blade and Simón’s life would spill out all over the ground.
Along with the lives of every man, woman, and child of the Uzita.
He had never intended this. He felt shame and fear and anger. He thought about Shako.
He looked into Narváez’s eye and said, “Find it yourself.”
The look on Narváez’s face was pure murder. For a moment, Simón was certain he was about to die.
Then Narváez withdrew his sword and stepped away. He called to his second-in-command. “Alvar,” he said. “Divide the savages’ food among the men. We will continue into the interior on foot.” He pointed to Simón and his friends. “The traitors stay here. Strip them of weapons and armor and supplies.”
Aznar wailed as if stabbed in the gut. “No,” he said. “You cannot abandon me here. I was loyal! I told you! I came to you!”
“You repeated his lies,” Narváez spat back. “You gave me nothing.”
Aznar began to protest, but the nearest guard clubbed him hard with the hilt of his sword. Aznar went down to the ground, gasping for air.
“Tie them up,” Narváez ordered. “If they resist at all, kill them.”
He looked at Simón one last time. “You kneel to a savage? Then you can rot here with the rest of them.”
FOR THE REST OF the day, Simón and his friends watched, bound and seated on the ground, among the buzzing flies that feasted on the dead bodies of the Uzita. The other conquistadors swept through the remains of the village, gathering what little food remained in the storehouses. They took fresh water from the nearby stream a
nd packed the supplies on the horses.
By midafternoon, the expedition was ready to move on. Narváez ordered every man to march past Simón and the others, both as a torment to the disgraced and a warning to those who remained.
Aznar did not stop wailing the entire time, no matter how often he was kicked or punched. “Please,” he screamed to Padre Suárez as the priest passed by. “For the love of God.”
Suárez averted his eyes. The other soldiers were stone-faced as they walked away into the jungle. Simón knew they were hungry as well as angry, and eight fewer men meant eight fewer mouths to feed.
The others were stoic, but Simón could feel their fear and tension. They blamed him for this. They were right. This was all his fault.
Despite that, Simón was calm. He had been sitting among corpses for the better part of a day. The fat black flies landed on his face and, unable to brush them away, he no longer even flinched as they bit him.
In his mind, a part of him had already died. A piece of his soul was gone. He had lost everything: the woman he loved, followed shortly by his rank, his position, and his few possessions.
His body, however, went on living. As his mind turned over his new circumstances, he forced himself to see the advantages.
For the first time in his life, he was truly free. Free of expectations, free of obligations, free of the chains of family and honor and duty and loyalty. Free of anything but his ambitions.
As soon as he was certain Narváez and the rest of the expedition were well away from here, he would make the others see as well.
They had been left alone with the greatest treasure any man had ever known. And Simón would make certain they used it right.
He had intended none of this. But he would take the responsibility.
This was the New World. His world.
IT TOOK SIMÓN THE best part of an hour to squirm out of his bonds. His wrists were slick with blood by the time he got the ropes off. He didn’t feel the pain.
He released the others, then convinced them to follow him. He promised food and shelter. They didn’t want to move at first, but they had been baking in the sun all day, and whatever anger or misgivings they had, they still got up and walked behind him. At this point, he was their only option.
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