"You bastard," Don Carlos swore. "I will make your death a slow and painful one for this."
He kicked out at me, but the blow was a glancing one. I was starting to my feet when Don Carlos dashed through the gate to retrieve his errant flares. Why was he so protective of those damned flares when he had the loaded flare gun in his hand? He could send the signal anytime he pleased.
No matter, I thought. Stop him while he's preoccupied with those extra flares. I rushed through the gate, careful to time my leap so that I didn't go over the side of the hill with the giant. Don Carlos was stooping over, his hand scooping up one of the flares, when I hit his wide buttocks with my shoulder.
He stumbled forward, both hands outstretched, a flare in one hand, the flaregun in the other.
I waited, knowing that he had lost his balance and was teetering on the edge of the precipice. Even as his arms were windmilling, trying to regain balance, I heard a staccato burst of gunfire from beyond the palace. Obviously, Uturo and his friend weren't idle during this critical time. I hoped they had recruited enough fellow tribesmen whose hatred for Don Carlos overcame their loyalty, but that might be too much to hope for.
Right now, it looked as though Don Carlos was winning his war with balance. He was doing less windmilling with his arms. He was about to settle back on his heels, safely back from the ledge.
I paused only a short time, considering letting the man live now that he was obviously losing this battle in the clouds. But I had learned from bitter experience that an enemy is never vanquished by those who show premature mercy. If he fired that flare, it would be all over, no matter what happened up here.
I reached out and gave him a push. A hard one.
He went over. A combination scream, bellow and final order burst from his lips, but not even the fates were any longer listening to orders and appeals from Don Carlos Italla.
It was all over, I thought.
And then I heard the soft whoomp and saw the flare arc high in the dark sky. Even in his moment of death, Don Carlos had sent the signal for the bloody revolution to begin.
Damn, I cursed myself. I shouldn't have pushed him, not yet. I should have yanked him back from the precipice, wrestled the flare gun from him and then pushed him over. But then, I decided, I might not have had the option. He might have prevailed in the battle over the gun, pushed me over the side and then sent the signal.
With a sick feeling, knowing that bloodshed had already begun far below as a result of Don Carlos's signal from Alto Arete, I turned back to the palace. I had no weapon, except spare gas bombs, but I fully expected to pick one up from the first dead man I came across. I hoped against hope that that first dead man wouldn't be Uturo or his friend, or anyone else friendly to our cause.
At the side of the palace, I found a dead guard, one I had shot from the roof earlier. I took his rifle and ran to the front of the palace. Sporadic gunfire was taking place in the courtyard and I rushed up to the porch for a better view, ready to add to Uturo's gunfire.
I wasn't really needed just then. As I searched the courtyard for an enemy to shoot, I saw several guards emerge from a barracks with their hands up. They were shouting:
"Stop shooting, stop shooting. We give up."
Other guards emerged from bushes and from behind stone fences around the courtyard. When a couple of dozen of them had assembled, still holding up their hands, Uturo, his fellow warrior and a number of armed monks emerged from other buildings. Uturo had found the friendly monks without Sagacio's help.
We had won the war on top of the mountain, but it must be a far different story down below, in Nicarxa. And I was certain that I had lost Elicia, that she had been killed in that exchange of gunfire with the wine-stealing guards. If not that, she'd been killed by the guard Don Carlos sent to find her. If not that, the explosion surely had torn her to shreds.
I had already guessed that the explosion had come from the arsenal alongside the wine cellar. Why it had been blown up, I didn't know, but I did know that anyone in or near that wine cellar had to be a sure goner.
There was no feeling of victory as I marched into the courtyard where Uturo and his friends had rounded up all the guards who had remained loyal to Don Carlos. They all turned to look at me.
"Don Carlos Italla is dead," I whispered to Uturo, "but he lived long enough to send the signal. I'm afraid our victory up here is only temporary. Unless we can convince these people otherwise and keep the word to ourselves that Don Carlos is dead. In time, maybe we can use his headquarters in the clouds to mount a counter-offensive and throw out the Cubans. It'll be a ticklish business, though."
Uturo looked as defeated as I felt. He eyed the collection of guards in the courtyard and shook his head sadly.
"Such a good fight," he said sadly. "We did well, under your leadership. And it goes for nothing."
While we were standing there trying to figure out what to do next, the door to the guard station opened and a whole group of monks came strolling out. I recognized them as the religious followers of Intenday, the fanatic from Apalca, Don Carlos Italla's ally.
Uturo spun around, preparing to shoot the monks, but I stopped him. I don't know why — a feeling, a hunch. I had seen a familiar figure behind the monks, and that figure was carrying a Russian automatic rifle. That figure had herded the monks outside. That figure was Elicia.
My heart took an extra leap when I finally recognized her. I strode around the assembled monks and went to her side.
"I thought you were dead," I said. "My God, how did you come out of all that alive? How did you capture these Apalcan monks? How…"
"In time, Nick," she said. "Right now, I think I'm going to faint."
She was true to her word. She passed out even before the last word had passed her lips. I caught her and carried her into the guard station. I put her on a bullet-riddled couch and looked around for something cold to put on her forehead. She was as pale as death and I was about to tear off her clothes to look for wounds when Uturo and the Apalcan religious leader entered the guardhouse.
"This man says he has something important to tell you," Uturo announced. "He is Intenday. Perhaps we should listen to him."
I looked up and saw the wiry little man with the brown bald head and enormous eyes. There was no mistake; this was Intenday, the Apalcan religious leader I had seen that morning on the trail when he had come out of his tent for breakfast. I gazed past him, at his fellow monks and, sure enough, there was the fat monk who had been the fellow fire-tender of Nuyan, the man I had killed to infiltrate the ranks of the monks. He didn't seem to recognize me, but then how could he? He had never seen my face.
Intenday was a man who still stood on ceremony. As I rubbed Elicia's wrists to bring circulation around, he stood regally at the head of the couch and spoke in a soft, measured way:
"We had reached agreement with Don Carlos to commence the holy war at sundown and to purge both our nations of corrupt leaders. I thought it the best way — the only way — to accomplish what all holy men desire. I sought an end to corruption, to disease, to poverty, to tyranny. I believed I was right. I believed Don Carlos Italla was right."
That's the trouble with this world," I said, rubbing Elicia's arms and peering anxiously into her too-pale face. "Everybody thinks their side is right and they always resort to the wrong ways to prove it. And Don Carlos was a worse tyrant than the men who now rule Nicarxa and Apalca."
"This I learned too late," Intenday said. "When I knew just how much of a monster Don Carlos really was, it was too late to change my mind about the agreement. We became his prisoners here on the mountain and against our will he was to send the signal that we were in agreement. But you must Know…"