It was not much of a hill they had run to. The few rocks on top were the only cover the rebels had.
Vidal led the attack himself, shooting as he ran from tree to tree. This time he would kill them before the forest could hide them again. As always, when he went into battle, he was holding the watch in his left hand. It was his good-luck charm, its broken face pressing against his palm, its ticking urging him forward. Sometimes it sounded like a metallic whisper: Come on, Vidal. I saw the death of your father. I want to see yours. How long will you keep me waiting?
He’d ordered his soldiers to attack the rebels’ position from all sides. Bark splintered around them in the cross fire, but he knew their foes would soon run out of ammunition. There were probably a dozen of them, maybe fewer. They were hopelessly outnumbered.
The hunt didn’t taste as good as it usually did. Vidal had allowed himself to be fooled by the prey. No revenge would erase that shame. But at least he could make sure no one would live to tell the story. He hid behind a tree to reload his pistol. Serrano took cover behind a tree to his left.
“Go ahead, Serrano!” Vidal yelled, stepping out to take another few shots. “No need to be afraid, this is the only decent way to die!”
He took cover again and inhaled deeply as he slipped the watch into his pocket. It still protected him. Obviously, his time to die hadn’t come yet. Another few shots, bullets missing him by an inch, while his soldiers screamed around him and fell on their backs to stare with empty eyes up into the branches and the pitiless rain. Back behind another tree to push fresh bullets into the pistol, and out once more through the metal rain, up the hill, chasing prey out from behind the rocks, making them regret that they’d dared to make a fool of him.
Vidal took cover one last time. Rain dripped from the peak of his cap into his eyes. Corpses were sprawling their limbs over the rocks like pale roots torn out of the ground. Only two rebels were still fighting, but when Vidal ordered another attack they fell with muffled cries, hit by several bullets.
Oh, the silence of Death. There was nothing quite like it. Vidal often wished he could record it and listen to it while shaving his face. Its silence was only disturbed by the sound of the rain pouring through the trees and falling onto the lifeless bodies, soaking their clothes until they seemed to melt into the ground.
Vidal walked up the last stretch of the hill, followed by the soldiers who’d survived the attack. Their losses were nothing compared to the rebels. The first one Vidal stopped at didn’t stir. He made sure he was dead nevertheless by firing twice into his silent face. It felt good. Each shot neutralized some of the poison the shame of being fooled had left in his blood. But he needed to find one who could still talk.
Serrano came, as always, running like a well-trained dog when Vidal called him to his side. They found another two of their enemies lying between the rocks on top of the hill. They were only boys, maybe fifteen years old. One was dead, but the second one was still moving. He was pressing his right hand against a bullet wound in his neck, his pistol beside him. Vidal kicked it away.
“Let me see,” he said, pulling the boy’s bloody hand away from the wound. He said it almost gently. Vidal enjoyed being calm with his prey.
The boy still had some fight in him, but it was an easy task to pull his hand off the wound. He had no strength left and for sure not much life. The throat was covered with blood.
“Can you talk?”
The boy gasped for air, staring up at the clouds that were covering his face with rain.
“Damn it.” Vidal got up and drew his pistol.
When he pointed it at the boy’s head, the fool reached up with his bloodstained hand to push the muzzle aside, his fading eyes filled with defiance, almost mockery. Vidal yanked the pistol out of his grasp and took aim again. This time the boy pressed his hand against the muzzle, but the bullet went easily through flesh and bone. Vidal put another bullet into his rebellious head.
“These are useless. Neither of them can talk.” Vidal waved at the bodies covering the ground around them. “Shoot them all.”
Serrano had watched the assassination of the boy uneasily. Vidal suspected Serrano sometimes imagined his own head beneath his capitán’s pistol. Garces for sure didn’t have such thoughts. He went to work as ordered.
“Capitán!” he called. “This one is alive. Just a wounded leg.”
Vidal stepped to his side. One look at the injured rebel was enough to make him smile.
“Yes, this one will do.”
24
Bad News, Good News
Soldiers are usually silent after lost battles. Vidal’s men, though, were shouting and laughing when they returned from the forest. Mercedes knew something terrible must have happened. The other maids were standing in the kitchen doorway watching the turmoil in the yard when she came running into the kitchen.
“What happened?” She was so breathless from fear she could barely speak. When had she last breathed calmly? She couldn’t remember.
“They caught one. They caught one alive.” Rosa’s voice was shrill with panic. Rumors were she had a nephew in the woods. “They’re taking him to the barn!”
They all knew what that meant.
Mariana called to Mercedes when she ran back out into the pouring rain, but Mercedes couldn’t make herself be cautious. Not today. The fear she felt was a beast devouring her heart.
“Mercedes! Come back!” Mariana’s voice was hoarse. The other maids gathered around the cook like a flock of frightened hens, their faces stiff with both fear and hope: fear that Vidal’s men would drag Mercedes into the barn; hope that she might find out who they’d caught.
Who had they caught?
“Pedro!”
Mercedes whispered her brother’s name as her feet slipped in the mud.
“Pedro!”
She’d almost reached the barn when she saw the soldiers dragging their prisoner in through the open door, his legs helplessly ploughing the muddy ground behind him. Mercedes took another step to glance into the barn, but all she could see were the soldiers, their rain capes shimmering in the dark, tying a limp figure to one of the wooden beams inside.
“Mercedes?”
Vidal was standing behind her with Serrano at his side.
“Capitán.” She was surprised the sound her lips formed made any sense. She could barely take her gaze off the prisoner. His head was hanging down, his face hidden under a dark cap. Her brother wore a cap like that.
“I need . . . to check on the supplies in the barn.”
Surely he heard how desperate she was. Even to her own ears she sounded like a lost little girl. Luckily Vidal was far too eager to get to his prisoner to pay any attention.
“Not now, Mercedes,” he replied impatiently. “I want no one in the yard or the barn. Check on my wife, if you’d be so kind. . . .”
She nodded obediently. But she couldn’t move. She just stood there and watched Vidal take the cap off the prisoner’s drooping head. He raised his face and looked at her.
Tarta.
His eyes were as wide as those of a lamb being dragged into the slaughterhouse. Wide with the knowledge of what was about to come. Mercedes felt his gaze like a hand reaching for hers, but Tarta didn’t give her away. He didn’t scream for help, he pressed his lips together, determined to be brave, those lips that broke words like porous clay.