Ник Картер - War from the Clouds

He pointed a fat finger at me. Frankly, I was getting a whole lot tired of being tied up and asked to spill my guts about who I was and what I was doing. I could feel Elicia’s trembling body against me. Her fear helped me to keep a level head. This fat man meant business and I had damned well better take that business seriously. He couldn’t have cared less about what I was tired of. But I really didn’t know where to begin with Botussin, just how much I should tell him. For one thing, I didn’t know the sentiments of the Ninca Indians in all that was happening in Nicarxa. Nobody had bothered to ask them — and that included our intelligence people whose information had caused me to be sent down here on this wild and woolly caper.

I decided to shorten the distance between what I wanted and what I hoped to get.

“We are here to learn about the cave that Ancio used more than thirty years ago,” I said.

I couldn’t have gotten more dramatic results if I had plucked a pubic hair out of one of their spearchuckers. That entire circle of half-naked brown men went almost white at the sound of Ancio’s name. The chief himself staggered back and looked as though I’d just scored on his huge belly with a sledgehammer. Even the strong, silent son, Purano, appeared stunned, but he held his ground and glowered at me.

“How,” the chief began, faltering, stuttering, “how you know of such things? How you know of sacrificial cave, of the devil Ancio?”

There was no reason not to tell him, since the whole country seemed to know of the hermit, Pico, so I told him the whole story, keeping it as short as possible because time was getting more precious by the minute. I down-played the impending war that Don Carlos Italla was plotting from his high place in the clouds and, of course, my role in trying to stop him. I didn’t want to complicate the subject for the old chief. As it turned out, he was capable of digesting much more complicated concepts. He was obviously capable of digesting everything.

When i was finished, the circle had quieted down considerably and all the bodies had returned to their original brown hue. The chief motioned to his son and Purano hastily left the hut and came back with a low wooden stool. The chief settled on it and I marveled that he didn’t settle all the way to the ground. That stool literally disappeared in the folds of his buttocks. The others, including Purano, stood around with their arms folded, waiting for the chief to continue this absorbing conversation.

“Pico speaks truly,” the chief said, “but he knows nothing of that which happened after he left for his hiding place in the mountains. I will tell it all to you, from the beginning.”

And he did. Using his soft growl and his still melodious voice to best dramatic effect, he spun a tale of horror that would have done proud any of his ancestors who had stood around campfires in the dead of night frightening the young and the sensitive with horrifying stories of yore.

It seems that Ancio had found an ancient map made up by a long-forgotten ancestor and had used the map to find the entrance of the sacrificial cave. When the tribe had given up human sacrifices more than two hundred years ago, the men had sealed up the cave and had destroyed all visual evidence of its existence, such as maps or descriptions of its locations, even recorded stories of what had taken place there. Even the tribal storytellers were reluctant to mention the cave in the succeeding generations.

But one ancestor had kept a detailed map and this map had been handed down in his own family, kept secret from others in the tribe. More than thirty years ago, an old man on his deathbed summoned Ancio to his side. The old man had no family to give the map to, so he entrusted it to Ancio, forbidding him on pain of death ever to reveal its existence, or to use it to find the cave. According to new tribal gods adopted two hundred years ago, any Ninca who entered the cave, or approached its forbidden entrance — even accidentally — would be burned to a cinder. That was the curse the new gods put on the cave.

The old man died and Ancio went secretly to the cave. He had already begun to think of himself as a god, so he figured he was immune to the spell. Sure enough, he found the cave, went inside and came out again. Not a hair had been scorched, which proved only that the spell of the devil was so strong in him that the new gods couldn’t touch him.

In time, Ancio began to take young children there to make sacrifices to the old gods. Or, as Botussin put it, to the devil. Ancio soon enlisted others in his grisly scheme. Before long, the cave became the scene of sexual depravity as Ancio and his friends took young maidens there, abused them in every conceivable fashion and then burned them.

It was when other members of the tribe began to notice smoke rising from Alto Arete that they tumbled to what was really happening to the children and maidens disappearing with regularity from their lands. They didn’t know that Pico had discovered Ancio’s secret cave and the scene of his depravity. They thought at first that Pico was a victim, having stumbled across his former friend’s secret.

But a month after Ancio’s disappearance, twenty maidens disappeared from the tribal camp in one night alone. Among them were two of Botussin’s daughters, princesses. They were ten and twelve years old. Purano was an infant and was thus spared. One of Botussin’s daughters, the twelve-year-old, had the presence of mind to tear small bits of fabric from her garment and drop them on the trail. Botussin and his spearchuckers followed the colorful fragments and found Ancio’s encampment on a slope of Mount Toro, where they had apparently stopped to enjoy the maidens prior to going on to the cursed cave.

In the ensuing battle, many of Ancio’s friends were killed. He, however, got away with a few of his followers, leaving the map behind. Since the maidens were rescued safe and sound, Botussin did not follow. Ancio never returned, nor did any of his friends.

“If they should ever return,” the old chief said in his soft growl, “the spearchuckers will have them. The tribal council has banished them all and has sentenced them to death if they are found.”

“Has Pico also been banished and sentenced to death?” I asked. After all, Pico had been Ancio’s friend and the tribe never knew why Pico had disappeared.

“No,” Botussin said. “Although we knew nothing of what you have told us about Pico, we suspected that he had known of Ancio’s activities. After all, his own daughter had disappeared and we all knew that she must have become one of Ancio’s victims. Pico has suffered greatly. Although he is not Ninca, he is welcome in Ninca lands if he wishes to return. His enemies are our enemies, his friends our friends. You are obviously his friend or you wouldn’t be alive to tell me what you have told me of Pico.”

I wanted to clear up that point about Pico eating people who came into his territory, but there was something else of far more importance.

“The map,” I said, wondering just how I should phrase the question. “Was it destroyed?”

The old chief took a long time answering that. He looked at the faces around the circle, but there was nothing I could read on those dark, stony faces. His gaze finally fell on his son’s face. Slowly, Purano nodded. The chief looked back at me.

“My father was the chief when Ancio was banished from the tribe. It was his decision to keep the map. He entrusted it to me and I shall entrust it to Purano when I go away from life.”

“May we see the map?” I asked. I could feel Elicia and Antonio suck in breath at my bold request. Given the knowledge of the Indian’s superstitions, or religious beliefs, about that cave, I was a bit surprised myself at my boldness. But a great deal was at stake here.