Poul Anderson: The Year of the Ransom

As if across a hundred miles: “Are you the lady Wanda Tamberly?”

Somehow that snaps me back from the edge of screaming. Whatever is going on, I can meet it. Hysteria never has been compulsory. Nightmare, fever dream? I don’t believe so. The sun is too warm on my back and off the rocks, the sea too steadily bright, and I could count every spine on yonder cactus. Prank, stunt, psychological experiment? Less possible than the thing itself. . . . His Spanish is the Castilian sort, but I never met that accent till now.

“Who are you?” I force out of my throat. “What are you after?”

His lips draw tight. Bad teeth. His tone is half fierce, half desperate. “Quickly! I must find Wanda Tamberly. Her uncle Estebán is in terrible danger.”

“I am she,” blurts my mouth.

He barks a laugh. His vehicle swoops down at me. Run!

He draws alongside, leans over, throws his right arm around my waist. Those muscles are titanium steel. Hauls me off my feet. That course I took in self-defense. My spread fingers jab for his eyes. He’s too fast. Knocks my hand aside. Does something to a control board. Suddenly we’re elsewhere.

This day the Peruvians brought to Caxamalca another load of the treasure that was to buy their king free. Luis Ildefonso Castelar y Moreno saw them from afar. He had been out exercising the horsemen under his command. They were now bound back, for the sun was low above western heights. Against shadows grown long throughout the valley, the river gleamed and vapors turned golden as they rose from the hot springs of the royal baths. Llamas and human porters plodded in a line down the road from the south, wearied by burdens and many leagues. Natives stopped their labor in the fields to stare, then got hastily on with it. Obedience was ingrained, no matter who their overlord might be.

“Take charge,” Castelar ordered his lieutenant, and put spurs to stallion. He drew rein just outside the small city and waited for the caravan.

A movement on the left caught his glance. Another man emerged afoot from between two white-plastered, thatch-roofed clay buildings. The man was tall; were both standing, he would top the rider by three inches or more. The hair around his tonsure was the same dusty brown as his Franciscan robe, but age had scarcely marked a sharp, light-complexioned visage—nor had the pox—and not a tooth was missing. Even after weeks and adventures, Castelar knew Fray Estebán Tanaquil. The recognition was mutual.

“Greetings, reverend sir,” he said.

“God be with you,” answered the friar. He stopped by the stirrup. The treasure train reached them and went on. Shouts of jubilation sounded from within the city.

“Ah,” Castelar rejoiced, “a splendid sight, no?”

When he got no reply, he looked down. Pain touched the other face. “Is something wrong?” Castelar asked.

Tanaquil sighed. “I cannot help myself. I see how worn and footsore those men are. I think what a heritage of ages they carry, and how it has been wrung from them.”

Castelar stiffened. “Would you speak against our captain?”

This was an odd fellow at best, he thought: beginning with his order, when the religious with the expedition were nearly all Dominicans. It was something of a puzzle how Tanaquil had come along in the first place, and eventually won the confidence of Francisco Pizarro. Well, that last must be due his learning and gentle manners, both rare in this company.

“No, no, of course not,” the friar said. “And yet—” His voice trailed off.

Castelar squirmed a bit. He believed he knew what went on beneath the shaven pate. He himself had wondered about the righteousness of what they did last year. The Inca Atahualpa received the Spaniards peacefully; he let them quarter themselves in Caxamalca; he entered the city by invitation, to continue negotiations; and his litter carried him into an ambush, where his attendants were gunned down and cut down by the hundreds while he was made prisoner. Now, at his bidding, his subjects stripped the country of wealth to fill a room with gold and another room twice with silver, the price of his liberty.

“God’s will,” Castelar snapped. “We bring the Faith to these heathen. The king’s well treated, isn’t he? He even has his wives and servants to attend him. As for the ransom, Christ”—he cleared his throat—“Sant’Iago, like every good leader, rewards his troops well.”

The friar cast a wry smile upward. It seemed to retort that preaching was not the proper business of a soldier. Outwardly, he shrugged and said, “Tonight I will see how well.”

“Ah, yes.” Castelar felt relief at sheering away from a dispute. No matter that he too once studied for holy orders, was expelled because of trouble with a girl, enlisted in the war against the French, at last followed Pizarro to the New World in hopes of whatever fortune the younger son of an impoverished Estremaduran hidalgo might find: he remained respectful of the cloth. “I hear you look every load over before it goes into the hoard.”

“Someone should, someone who has an eye for the art rather than the mere metal. I persuaded our captain and his chaplain. Scholars at the Emperor’s court and in the Church will be pleased that a fragment of knowledge was saved.”

“Hm.” Castelar tugged his beard. “But why do you do it at night?”

“You have heard that too?”

“I’ve been back for days. My ears are full of gossip.”

“I daresay you give much more than you get. I’d like to talk with you at length myself. That was a herculean journey your party made.”

Through Castelar passed a jumbled pageant of the months gone by, when Hernando Pizarro, the captain’s brother, led a band west over the cordillera, stupendous mountains, dizzyingly deep ravines, brawling rivers, to Pachacamac and its dark oracular temple on the coast. “We had little gain,” he said. “Our best booty was the Indio general Challcuchima. Get the lot of them together, under control. . . . But you were going to tell me why you study the treasure only after sunset.”

“To avoid exciting cupidity and discord worse than already afflict us. Men grow ever more impatient for division of the spoils. Besides, at night the forces of Satan are at their strongest. I pray over things that were consecrated to false gods.”

The last porter trudged past and disappeared among walls.

“I’d like to see,” Castelar said. Impulse flared. “Why not? I’ll join you.”

Tanaquil was startled. “What?”

“I won’t disturb you. I’ll simply watch.”

Reluctance was unmistakable. “You must obtain permission first.”

“Why? I have the rank. None would deny me. What have you against it? I should think you would welcome some company.”

“You’ll find it tedious. Others did. That is the reason they leave me alone at my task.”

“I’m used to standing guard.” Castelar laughed.

Tanaquil surrendered. “Very well, Don Luis, if you insist. Meet me at the Serpent House, as they’re calling it, after compline.”

—Stars glittered keen and countless over the uplands. Half or more of them were unknown to European skies. Castelar shivered and wrapped his cloak tighter around himself. His breath smoked, his boots rang on hard-packed streets. Caxamalca enclosed him, ghostly in the gloom. He felt glad of corselet, helmet, sword, needless though they might seem here. Tavantinsuyu, the Indies called this land, the Four Quarters of the World; and somehow that felt more right than Peru, a name whose meaning nobody was sure of, for a realm whose reach dwarfed the Holy Roman Empire. Was it subdued yet, or could it ever entirely be, its peoples and their gods?

The thought was unworthy of a Christian. He hastened on.