Chapter 6
The struggle back to consciousness was an all too familiar experience: the disorientation, the dawning awareness and then the pain. Vague memories of fighting and danger and running swam to the surface of my mind, bringing with them the panic of helplessness. I felt a gentle, insistent pressure on my chest; heard a quiet, gentlemanly, English voice murmuring to me as if from far away, "Rest easy my boy, don't try to move." I heeded the voice and sank back into the darkness.
Awareness drifted into a confused disjointed nightmare. Long unwanted memories twisted and merged into a fever-ridden collage of my own personal hell. I was there, running through viscid mud on legs leaden from fatigue. I saw the rows of pallid, dead-eyed men, clad in rags, squatting in fetid slurry, clutching rifles, waiting for the rain to ease so the artillery could begin; caught my own reflection, frozen in a shard of broken mirror - as grey skinned and dead-eyed as all the rest. Clouds hanging low and heavy over a wasteland disgorged endless torrents of rain that did little to clear the air of the acrid miasma of filth, cordite and death. Machine gun fire scythed through hundreds with all the emotionless efficiency of a reaper cutting through a field of corn. An anguished howl of denial, lost and primeval, rent the air; I saw bodies of allies, colleagues, and friends lying where they had fallen, rotting in the mud. I looked down at the same mud, at skeletal arms hung with skeins of flesh reaching up, tearing at me, and dragging me down into the morass. The mud churned as I tried to struggle clear, crawling up my body. I stumbled and fell, hands reached up from beneath me and pulled me under. Now, as then, I couldn't escape.
I heard the same voice whisper in my ear, like a soothing balm, somehow far-off yet close-by all at the same time. "Don't be afraid John. I have you. You're safe now. Sleep. I'll watch over you until you wake." The mud, the fear and the horror were gone as I relaxed into the calmness the voice offered. I tried to look around to see who was speaking but somehow knew it wasn't important. I sank into a deep, comfortable sleep.
I don't know how much later it was that I awoke again. I knew that I had to open my eyes, that it was an important thing to do. In my time, I'd fought in the most devastating war that Europe had ever seen, climbed mountains and hunted the most dangerous game the world had to offer. Somehow, forcing my eyes open rivalled them all for difficulty. What I saw was not worth the effort it had taken. Everything was blurred, as if swathed in cotton wool or cobwebs. I frowned, concentrating, trying to drag the world into focus through sheer willpower. The stab of pain through my head quickly, if temporarily, convinced me that clarity was over rated.
Thinking about it, I faintly recalled the voice, talking to me through the remembered terror of my own nightmares, leading me home. I retained wits enough to reason that wherever I was, I wasn't alone. "Hel…Hello?" Was that really my voice? It sounded so weak, so fragile.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, John." Yes, that was the voice I'd heard, gentle, paternal even. How had he known my name? Memory of the events in the quarry finally slipped into place, and with them renewed panic. Apart from Domingo, the only people who knew who I was were those who were hunting me. The need to see became suddenly far more compelling. I rubbed my face, blinking back the relentless pressure pounding behind my eyes, and with a convulsive effort dragged myself on my side, propping myself up on one elbow to look in the direction of the voice.
For a few seconds my sight cleared and outlined in the entrance of a cave I could make out a man. He was stocky, perhaps in his late fifties or early sixties, with white hair and a neatly trimmed white beard though I couldn't clearly make out his face. He looked back at me as if sensing my scrutiny. He took the pipe, which he had been smoking from his mouth, and smiled wryly, even sadly back at me. "You never were a very good patient, John. Sleep now. You're through the worst of it. I'll see you again, in just a little while." He put his hat on and started to amble out of the cave into the mist that swirled outside.
"W.. Wait, who are you? Where are you going?" I listened for an answer, but none came. The brief spurt of energy which had enabled me to prop myself up was fading fast. I slumped back down, gasping in pain and exhaustion as a fresh wave of nausea swept over me. The head injury must have been worse than I thought.
"Juan! Juan, wake up! Please wake up!" I didn't need to open my eyes to recognise Domingo's voice or to hear the worry and concern it held.
"I'm awake," I grumbled. My head was aching less than it had been which was a definite improvement. I levered open an eye. The accompanying pain was less than I'd anticipated so I took a chance and opened the other. A couple of seconds of focusing and I could make out Domingo crouched next to me, a damp bloodstained rag in his hand. "Where's the old English gentleman gone?"
Domingo shook his head in confusion. "There is no one here apart from you and me. I only found this place a few hours ago after searching for you for three days."
Three days? It couldn't be. I couldn't have been out for that long. It just wasn't possible. "Where's Robbie?" I said, trying to pull my thoughts back together. I noticed the renewed confusion on Domingo's face matched by an apparently growing concern for my sanity. "Robbie: the pony," I explained, "I decided to call the pony Robbie."
His relief that I was not completely delusional was almost tangible. "Robbie is here. Once I have seen to your injuries, I will see to him." The next hour was spent cleaning out and treating the gash on my head, then bandaging it. We had no means to stitch it so I knew that it would scar badly, but at least hidden by the hair no one would be able to notice it. Domingo had some sulfa powder with him, which he dusted the wound with, to help fight any infection. Getting the boot off from my twisted ankle proved difficult, not to mention painful, but eventually we managed it. I rotated the joint experimentally, wincing as I did so. It wasn't broken, but after the way I'd abused it during the skirmish at the quarry it would benefit from a couple of days' rest.
Domingo rode out after he had done what he could to bring back enough supplies to keep us going for a few days. The weather had shifted back into a bitingly cold reminder of winter high in the Andes. While unpleasant, it did mean that the searchers would be at least as hindered by the weather as we were. We stayed holed up in the cave for several more days. The agony in my head subsided into a dull, persistent ache. With my ankle strapped I could walk, albeit slowly and with a limp.
I examined the entrance of the cave the first morning I'd been able to get up, looking for any trace of the old man but found nothing: any tracks or sign that he had been there had been obscured by Domingo's passage. I thought back but couldn't bring to mind his face, just his voice. He'd said that he would see me again. I wondered how he had been so certain of that fact. It was perplexing. When I'd told Domingo about it, he just shrugged. I could sense that he had decided to chalk it down to delirium. Lacking any proof beyond my own tangled memories, I felt I might as well do the same. Perhaps in time I would remember how I had got to the cave, when the last thing I could recall with any certainty was sliding from Robbie's back on a mountain trail.
Four days after he had found me, Domingo and I were sitting around the small fire eating dinner. I'd spent the afternoon cleaning the rifles and my own handgun as well as getting things ready for the next day when I was leaving. For the time I had been ill, Domingo had been my eyes and ears, riding the area and noting the locations of any of Lopez's men. Since the ambush I'd sprung on them at the quarry, they had become distinctly more chary about riding out.
Opposite me Domingo was carving off and chewing slivers of paprika-spiced chorizo, occasionally offering pieces to me. "What will you do now, Juan?" he asked.
It was a good question, and one I'd been asking myself many times over the past few days. I had a fair idea of how the rubber industry, from which Lopez drew most of his income, worked. I knew that in the vast estate that Lopez claimed for his own there would be captive villages, set up to house the enslaved workers: forest Indians kidnapped from the local tribes - the Huitoto, the Andoke, the Zarribos and the Chunchos amongst too many others. Unlike Domingo's people, the mountain dwelling Cholos, they were not by nature particularly bellicose, which meant that trying to start a rising would be unlikely to succeed. Tactically, that left me with just one option: "Lopez. He's the key." And his sister, but I was at a loss there as to what to do. I couldn't begin to contemplate killing a woman, however despicable. It just wasn't… right.
Domingo just looked at me. I didn't know whether he had been half expecting that answer or whether he had gained better control over his emotions in recent days, but his face was expressionless. He sliced off another piece of chorizo and handed it to me. "The people you rescued from the quarry heard what you said to Ramon. The stories of the battle you fought afterwards, alone against them, have been told in villages for miles around. Lopez and Ramon both tried to stop the survivors from talking, but many did. I do not know what did happen there, but I went back today and saw enough to know that the stories being told are not as outrageous as they sound. You did more than just free some prisoners and kill some pelados that day; you showed people that they could be beaten. You gave them hope." He grinned as I reddened in embarrassment, then continued speaking, enjoying my discomfort. "The stories give you a new name. They call you El Mayal del Dios!"
The… something of the Lord. It took a few moments to dredge up the unfamiliar word from my memory, then I had it: the Flail of the Lord. It seemed that someone back in the quarry had taken my statement to Ramon about beating him and his men into the dust literally. I was as discomposed by the grandiose epithet as Domingo had guessed I would be. It seemed far too much to live up to. I sighed; these people had placed their hopes in me, trusting that I would be able to help them. It was a responsibility I had not wanted, the kind of responsibility that I had never wanted, but now I had accepted it I wasn't about to let them down. From what Domingo had said, they had nowhere else left to turn.
"Lopez's men are beginning to say that you have fled from here, or that you are dead," Domingo said. "The people want to believe the stories, though. When I was back in Chalhuanco Alto picking up supplies, I heard that Lopez's men had raided several of the nearby villages. They beat anyone who spoke of El Mayal del Dios. Ramon swore that he would cut out your heart and eat it!"
I looked at him while he spoke, considering his words and thinking on what I knew of Lopez and his men. Throughout history, there were records of oppressed people who had been pushed just a little bit too far. People with nothing left to live for made the most implacable of enemies. Many would-be conquerors had discovered that too late and had lost to rebellions of their own making. Lopez had pushed these people too far now, and the Cholos were not a people to meekly submit. He had provided me with the allies and support I would need to prosecute the war I had started.
The first order of business was to get supply caches set up so I could travel fast and light. That would take time - time I would need to fully recover, because the next time I went out, I wasn't going to bother with underlings. I was going straight for 'Don' Ernesto Lopez himself.
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