Temple (7 page)

Once the object was safely in his hands, Renco slowly
removed its cloth.
And I saw it.
And for a moment, I could do nothing but stare.
It was the most beautiful, and yet at the same time the most
fearsome-looking idol I had ever seen.
It was completely black, carved out of a square block of a very
unusual type of stone. It was rough and sharp at the edges, the
workmanship crude, uneven. Out of the middle
of the block had been carved the visage of a fierce mountain cat
with its jaws bared wide. It looked as if the cat— deranged with
rage and fury—had managed to push its
head out of the very stone itself.
Imperfections within the rock—thin rivulets of the most
shade of purple—-ran vertically down the cat's face, making the
image appear even more fearsome, if indeed such a thing were
possible.
Renco covered the idol once again. As he did so, the old priestess
stepped forward and placed something around his neck. It was a thin
leather cord with a dazzling green gem stone attached to it—a
magnificent shining emerald that was easily the size of a man's
ear. Renco accepted the gift
with a solemn bow and then turned quickly to face me.
'We must go now,' said he.
Then, with the idol under his arm, he made for the hole in the
floor. I hurried after“ him. The four burly warriors all took hold
of the great stone slab that would cover our exit.
The old priestess did not move.
Renco climbed down into the sewer. I lowered myself after him. As I
did so, however, I noticed something quite peculiar.
The vault was silent.
The pounding outside had stopped.
And as I pondered this curiosity some more, I realised with some
dread that the pounding had in fact ceased some goodly time
before.
It was then that the entrance to the vault exploded inwards.
A great flash of white flared out around the edges of the huge
stone doorway, and an instant later, the whole six-foot doorstone
just blasted out into a thousand fragments, show ering the vault
room with fist-sized rocks.
I couldn't explain it. A battering ram could not possibly have
fragmented so large a stone so instantaneously…
And then the smoke and dust in the doorway cleared and I saw the
great black barrel of a cannon in the space where
the doorstone had been.
My mind reeled.
They had blown open the vault door with a cannon!
'Come on!' Renco called from the sewer beneath me.
I immediately started lowering myself into the hole, just as the
first Spanish soldiers came charging in through the dustcloud,
firing their muskets in every direction.
And as I disappeared through the hole in the floor, the last thing
I saw was the Captain, Hernando Pizarro, striding into the vault
room with a pistol in his hand. His eyes were wild, and his head
turned this way and that as he searched the vault for the idol that
he so longed for.
And then, in a single horrifying instant, I saw Hernando look down
in my direction and stare directly into my eyes.
I sloshed madly through the dark sewer tunnels, trying with all my
might to keep up with Renco. As I did so, I heard shouts in Spanish
echoing off the hard stone walls of the tunnels, saw long ominous
shadows stretching out around the corners behind us.
Ahead of me, Renco just plunged onward through the filthy water
with the Incan idol under his arm.
We hastened through the tunnels, waist-deep in the water, ducking
left, bending right, weaving our way through the dark stone
labyrinth back toward the river entrance and freedom.
After a while, however, I began to notice that we were racing in
the wrong direction.
Renco was not heading back toward the river entrance.
'Where are we going!' I called forward.
'Just move!' he called back.
I turned a corner just as a torch on the wall above my head was
blasted from its mount by a musket shot. I turned and saw a team of
six conquistadors wading through the tunnel behind me, the flaming
torchlight of the passageway glinting off their helmets.
'They're right behind us!' I called.
'Then run faster!'
More musket shots rang out, loud as thunderclaps, deafening my
ears. Their projectiles exploded against the damp stone walls
around us.
Just then, ahead of me, I saw Renco leap up onto a ledge
and push up with his shoulder against a stone slab in the ceiling—a
slab which I saw bore in its corner the same mysterious symbol that
I had seen before, the circle with the double 'V'
inside it. I leapt up onto the ledge after him and helped him heave
the stone upward, revealing the starry night sky.
Renco climbed out first and I followed immediately behind him. We
were standing in a narrow cobblestoned street of some sort.
Impenetrable grey walls lined both sides of the alleyway.
I hurriedly began to replace the stone slab when all of a sudden, a
musket shot from within the tunnel pinged against the edge of the
hole, narrowly missing my fingers.
'Never mind. Come on, this way,' said Renco, pulling me down the
tiny street.
The walls on either side of me became indistinguishable blurs of
grey as we all but flew through the crooked alleyways of Cuzco with
Hernando's soldiers ever close behind
US.
As we evaded our pursuers, every now and then we would see brigades
of Spanish troops running through the streets, racing for the
ramparts.
We also—-I am ashamed to say—saw stakes not unlike those outside
the city walls. They were set up in every one of the city's plazas,
row after row of stakes, upon which were impaled the horribly
mutilated bodies of captured Incan warriors. These warriors had had
their hands, heads and genitals hacked off.
In one such plaza, Renco saw an Incan longbow hanging from one of
the desecrated corpses. He seized it and the quiver full of arrows
on the ground beside it and then ducked back into the maze of
alleyways. I just followed close behind him, not daring to let him
out of my sight.
At length, however, Renco turned abruptly and entered a building of
some sort. It was a squat stone structure, remarkably solid. In
fact, so solid it almost looked fortified.
We passed through several outer rooms before we descended a flight
of stone steps and came to a very large subterranean hall.
The hall was divided into two levels—one wide lower
and an upper landing that was little more than a balcony that ran
around the circumference of the hall.
But it was the lower storey that held my attention.
There were nearly one hundred holes in the dirt floor of
hall—pits over which a network of thin stone bridges
With a surge of dread, I realised where we were.
We were in an Incan dungeon.
I was reminded of the fact that these Incans had not yet
metallurgy, hence they had no bars to create A pit, I saw, was
their answer to this dilemma.
I looked up at the balcony that overlooked the lower It was a
guard-walk, for the prison guards to patrol they looked down on the
prisoners.
Renco didn't miss a step. He just marched out onto one
narrow stone bridges and peered down into the holes
it. Wails and shouts erupted from below, from the
starving prisoners who had been left in their pits the siege had
begun a week earlier.
Renco stopped above one of the pits. I followed him out the stone
bridge and looked down into the dirty hole truly, this is what I
saw.
The pit itself must have been at least five paces deep,
arthen walls. Escape was impossible. At the got-
of the dirty well sat a man of average size, but filthy and putrid.
Although he was thin, this man did not seem
nor was he shouting like the rest of the poor, forlorn creatures in
the prison hall. He just sat with his back pressed up against the
wall of his pit, looking, if anything, relaxed and at ease. His
composure that wanton coolness of criminals around the world—made
my skin crawl. I wondered what Renco could want with such a
character.
'Bassario,' said Renco.
The criminal smiled. 'Why if it isn't the good prince Renco…'
'I need your help,' said Renco directly.
The prisoner seemed to find this humorous. “I cannot imagine what
the good prince could possibly want with my
skills,” the criminal laughed. 'What is it, Renco? Now that your
kingdom is in ruins are you thinking of embarking upon a life of
crime?'
Renco looked back toward the entrance to the under ground chamber,
watching for Spaniards. I shared his concern. We had been in this
dungeon too long already.
'I will only ask you this once, Bassario,' said Renco firmly.
'If you choose to help me, I will take you out of here. If
you
do not so choose, then I will leave you to die in this pit.'
'An interesting choice,' remarked the criminal.
'Well?'
The criminal Bassario stood. 'Get me out of this hole.'
Renco immediately went to fetch a wooden ladder rest ing against
the far wall.
For my part, I was worried about Hernando and his men.
They could arrive at any moment and here Renco was bar gaining with
a convict! I hurried over to the door through which we had entered
the prison hall. When I got there I peered around the stone
doorframe—
—and saw the dark demon-like figure of Hernando Pizarro striding
down the stairs toward me!
My blood curdled at the sight—the wild brown eyes, the hooked black
moustache, the scraggly black beard that had not been shaved for
weeks.
I whirled back inside the doorway and started running.
'Renco!'
Renco had only just lowered the ladder into Bassario's pit when he
turned and saw the first Spanish soldier come charging into the
prison hall behind me.
Renco's hands moved quickly and in an instant he had his longbow
raised with an arrow drawn back to his ear. He let fly with the
missile and it streaked across the room, careering right for my
head. I ducked and the arrow smacked into the forehead of the
soldier behind me. His feet flew out from under him and he was
thrown to the floor in a heavy heap.
I rushed out onto the network of stone bridges, ran quickly over
the foul dungeon pits.
More conquistadors entered the prison hall behind me, Hernando
among them, firing their muskets wildly.
By this time Bassario had emerged from his pit and now
he and Renco were running across the wide section of dirt
floor at the far end of the prison hall.
'Alberto! This way!' Renco called, pointing at the wide
stone doorway at that end of the dungeon.
I saw the opening at the other end of the hall, saw a solid
squared-off boulder suspended above it by a pulley-like mechanism.
It wasn't a big boulder—it was roughly the size of a man—and it was
exactly the same size and shape as the doorway beneath it. Two taut
lengths of rope held it above the doorway, each rope weighed down
by stone counter weights, making it easier for the prison guards
standing on the elevated guard-walk to raise and lower the boulder
into the opening.
I ran for the door.
Whence I felt a terrible weight slam against my back and
I was thrown forward. I fell heavily onto one of the narrow stone
bridges and saw to my surprise that I had been pum melled from
behind by a Spanish soldier!
He knelt astride my body, drew his dagger and was
about to run me through when abruptly an arrow struck him in the
chest. In fact the arrow hit the soldier with such force that it
knocked his peaked steel helmet clear off his head and threw him
bodily off the bridge and into the pit beneath us!
I looked down into the pit after him, only to see four bedraggled
prisoners converge on him as one. I lost sight of the hapless
soldier, but an instant later I heard a scream of the most utter
and absolute terror. The starving prisoners in the pit were eating
him alive.
I looked up just in time to see Renco slide to the ground
next to me.
'Come on!' said he, grabbing my arm, pulling me to my
feet.
I got up and saw that Bassario had arrived at the far
doorway.
69
Musket fire rang out all around us, the rounds kicking up bright
orange sparks as they bounced off the stone bridge beneath
us.
Just then, a stray round hit one of the ropes that held the
squared-off boulder suspended above the stone doorway at the far
end of the hall.
With a sharp twang the rope snapped…
… and the boulder began to lower itself into the door way!
Beneath it, Bassario looked up in horror, then back at Renco.
'No,' Renco breathed as he saw the descending boulder.
The doorway—forty paces away from us, and the only way out of the
dungeon—was being sealed up!
I evaluated the distance, took in the speed at which the
boulder was grinding down into the square stone opening.
There was no way we could make it.
The doorway was too far away, the boulder descending too rapidly.
In a few moments, we would be sealed inside the dungeon, trapped
and at the mercy of my bloodthirsty countrymen who were at that
very moment racing out onto the network of stone bridges behind us,
firing their muskets.
Nothing could save us now.
Renco obviously did not see it that way.
Despite the roaring body of musketeers behind us, the young prince
quickly looked about himself and spied the pointed steel helmet of
the Spanish soldier who had fallen into the pit beneath me.
Renco dived for the helmet, grabbed it, and then turned and threw
it side-handed, sliding it across the dusty floor of the dungeon
toward the rapidly-closing doorway.
The helmet slid across the dirt floor, spinning laterally as it did
so, its silver pointed peak glinting in the firelight.
The boulder in the doorway kept descending, grinding
against the sides of the stone opening.
Three feet.
Two feet.
One foot.
At which moment the rapidly-spinning helmet slid into the threshold
of the doorway and wedged itself perfectly in between the
descending boulder and the dirt-covered floor, stopping the
boulder's downward movement! Now the thin boulder stood poised a
bare foot above the floor, balanced
on top of the helmet's pointed steel peak!
I looked at Renco, astonished.
'How did you do that?' said I.
'Never mind,' said he. 'Go!'
We ran off the bridge together and dashed across the wide section
of dirt floor that led to the partially-open doorway— where
Bassario stood waiting for us. In a dark corner of my mind, I
wondered why Bassario hadn't just run away while Renco was occupied
saving me. Perhaps he thought he stood a better chance of survival
staying with Renco. Or maybe there was some other reason…