Matthew Reilly - Temple

I spun. And saw Hernando Pizarro standing before me with a pistol in his hand, levelled right at my chest. Then, before I could so much as move, I saw a flash of fire flare out from the end of the pistol, heard its loud report echo out all around me, and almost immediately I felt a tremendous weight slam into my chest and I was thrown backwards. I collapsed to the ground instantly, after which I saw nothing but clouds—dark storm clouds rolling across the starry night sky above me and it was at that moment that I realised to my extreme horror that I had just been shot. I lay on my back, my teeth clenched in agony, looking up at the cloudstrewn sky, a searing, burning pain shooting through my chest. Hernando bent over me and took the idol from my loose grasp. As he did so, he slapped me lustily across the face and said, ‘Die slowly, monk.” Then he was gone. I lay on the stone steps in front of the temple, waiting for the life to drain out of me, waiting for the pain to become unbearable. But then for some reason that was beyond my ken, my strength, rather than fading, began to return. The searing pain in my chest subsided and I sat up instantly and patted my chest at the point where the bullet had created a hole in my cloak. I felt something there. Something soft and thick and square. I extracted it from my cloak. It was my Bible. My three hundred page, handwritten, leather bound Bible. In the centre of it was a tattered round hole that looked like the burrow of a worm. At the farthest extremity of the burrow I saw a warped sphere of dull grey lead. Hernando’s bullet. My Bible had stopped his bullet! Praised be the Word of the Lord. I leapt to my feet, exhilarated in the moment. I looked for my sword, couldn’t find it anywhere, gazed out over the clearing. I saw Renco on the far side of the clearing, fighting with two swords against two sabre wielding conquistadors. Two Incan warriors grappled with a pair of Spaniards not far from where I stood—they seemed to be the only other men left alive on the rock tower. And then I saw Hernando—with the idol in his hands— hurrying away into the foliage to my right, dashing down the stone stairway there.

My eyes went wide. He was going for the rope bridge. If he got there, he would almost certainly cut the bridge and leave us stranded on the tower, stranded with the rapas. I hurried after him, bounding across the clearing, hurdling a rapa as it lay on the ground tearing into the body of a dead conquistador. I flew down the stone steps two at a time, my heart racing, my legs pounding, chasing after Hernando. As I rounded a bend in the stairs, I saw him about ten paces in front of me, stepping out onto the rope bridge. Hernando was large and muscular, and he moved as such. I was smaller, more nimble, faster. I gained on him quickly and dashed out onto the bridge after him, at which moment, with absolutely nothing else to call on, I hurled myself—swordless—at his back. I collided with him most heavily and we fell together onto the thin floorboards of the rope bridge, high above the canyon floor. But such was the weight of our landing that the floor boards beneath us shattered like twigs and to my utter horror we fell straight through them, down into the abyss… But our fall was brief. With a sudden, jarring jolt the two of us came to an abrupt halt. In the terror of our fall, Hernando had reached out for a handhold, had grasped for anything that would stop his fall. What he had found was the free end of the rope that was still tied to my right wrist. Now the rope lay stretched over a lone floorboard on the rope bridge, with Hernando and myself dangling from both of its extremities! And so we hung there like counterweights hanging from a pulley, at different ends of the same rope, with dangling cords of the partially broken rope bridge hanging down all around us. Through force of luck—bad luck in my case I hung below Hernando, my head down near his dangling knees. Hernando hung up higher, just below the remaining floor boards of the bridge. I saw that he had the idol in his left hand, while he held onto my rope with his right. He reached up with his left hand, trying desperately to loop the idol over the rope bridge’s surviving floorboards and garner a handhold. Once he succeeded in doing that, I realised, he would be safe to let me fall. At present, my weight—small though it was compared to his—was the only thing holding him up. I had to do something. And quickly.

‘Why are you doing this, monk!’ Hernando roared as he reached for his salvation, so close now. ‘What do you care about this idol! I would kill for it!’

As he raged, I saw one of the thin cords dangling down from the rope bridge above us one of the cords that had previously held up the bridge’s handrail. If I could just…

‘You would kill for it, would you, Hernando?’ said I, trying to distract him as I endeavoured to untie the length of rope that was tied around my right wrist—the rope that connected me to Hernando. ‘That means nothing to me!’

‘No?’ he shouted. It was a race now, a race to see who would get to his objective first— Hernando to the floorboard above us, me to untie the rope that joined us together.

‘No!’ I called back—just as I succeeded in releasing myself from the length of rope.

‘Why, monk?’

‘Because, Hernando, I would die for it.’

And with that, having now freed myself from the rope tied to my wrist, I reached out for the thin cord dangling down from the bridge above me and grabbed hold of while at exactly the same moment I released my grip on the length of rope connecting me to Hernando. The response was instantaneous. With the counterweight at the other end of his rope now gone, Hernando fell. Straight down. He fell past me, his body a streaking blur of screaming humanity, and as a fitting final insult, as he whistled by in front of me, I reached out and plucked the idol from his grasp.

‘Noooooo!’ Hernando screamed as he fell. And as I hung there above the abyss—dangling one handed from the rope bridge’s cord, holding the sacred idol in my free hand—I watched the look of absolute terror on his face get smaller and smaller until, finally, it disappeared into the dark abyss beneath me and soon all I could hear was his screaming. It would stop a moment later at the same time as I heard a distant, sickening splat. I arrived back in the clearing some time later, the idol in my hand. The sight which greeted me was like a glimpse of the underworld itself. In the flickering light of the torches that littered the clearing, I saw the rapas kneeling over the ranks of dead conquistadors, gorging themselves on fresh human flesh. Pointed silver helmets lay strewn everywhere, glinting in the firelight. It was then that I saw Renco and Lena and three of the Incan warriors standing over by the portal, holding swords and muskets in their hands—the only survivors of the cats rage, thanks largely to their fighting skills and the layer of monkey urine that covered them. They appeared to be searching for something. The idol no doubt.

‘Renco!’ I called.

‘Lena!’

I regretted it as soon as I did it. One of the rapas lying on the ground in front of me immediately looked up from his feasting, disturbed by my shout. The massive beast rose to its feet, glared at me. Another cat beyond it did the same. Then another, and another. The pack of giant cats formed a wide circle around me. They held their heads low, their ears pinned back. I saw Renco turn and see my predicament. But he was too far away to be of any help. I wondered why my own layer of monkey urine was no longer keeping the cats at bay. Perhaps it had been scraped away during my scuffle with the wily old conquistador inside the temple or maybe it had rubbed off when I had fallen to the ground after being shot by Hernando. Whatever the case, I thought, this was it, this was the end. The lead rapa tensed its whole body, prepared itself to pounce. And then— the first drop of water hit the top of my head with a loud smack. It was closely followed by a second drop and then a third, then a fourth. And then, like a gift from God himself, the skies parted and the rain came tumbling down. Oh, how it rained! It came down in sheets—thick drenching sheets—big fat drops of water hammering down on the rock tower with tremendous force, smacking down against my head, smacking down against the idol. And at that moment, thank the Lord, the idol began to sing. Its song becalmed the cats instantly. They all just peered at the dripping idol in my hands, their heads cocked to one side in response to its melodious highpitched hum. Renco, Lena and the three warriors came over to where I stood, shielding their torches against the rain, skirting around the pack of entranced rapas. I noticed that Renco held Bassario’s fake idol in his hand.