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many other tribes from this region, the Chancas saw :he
arrival of my countrymen as a means of breaking the yoke of Incan
tyranny. They were quick to offer their ser vices to the Governor
as informers and as guides, in return for which they received
muskets and metal swords, for the tribes of New Spain have no
concept of bronze or iron.

As Renco informed me of his mission and his capture at the hands of
the Governor, I saw over his shoulder a Chanca tribesman who was
also being held captive inside the San Vicente.

His name was Castino and he was an ugly brute of a man. Tall and
hairy, bearded and unwashed, he could not have been more dissimilar
to the young articulate Renco. He was an utterly repulsive
creature, the most frightening

form I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes

A sharpened piece of white bone pierced the skin of

his left cheek, the characteristic mark of the Chancas.

always stared malevolently at Renco's back when ever I came to
visit the young prince.

The day he told me of his mission to retrieve the idol,

was extremely distressed.

The object of his quest, he said, was locked inside a vault

.inside the Coricancha, or sun temple, at Cuzco. But Renco

that day learned—by eavesdropping on a conversation

two guards on board the hulk—that the city of

Cuzco had recently fallen and that the Spaniards were

inside its walls, sacking and looting it unopposed.

I, too, had heard of the taking of Cuzco. It was said that

the looting taking place there was some of the most rapa cious of
the entire conquest. Rumours abounded of

Spaniards killing their fellow soldiers in their lust for the

mountains of gold that lay inside the city's walls.

Such tales filled me with dismay. I had arrived in New

Spain but six months previously with all the foolish ideals

of a novice—desires of converting all the pagan natives to

our noble Catholic Faith, dreams of leading a column of soldiers
while holding forth a crucifix, delusions of building

high-spired churches that would be the envy of Europe. But

these ideals were quickly dispelled by the wanton acts of

cruelty and greed that I witnessed of my countrymen every

day.

Murder, pillage, rapethese were not the acts of men

fighting in the name of God. They were the acts of

scoundrels, of villains. And indeed at the moments when

my disillusionment was at its greatest—such as the time

when I witnessed a Spanish soldier decapitate a woman in

order to seize her gold necklace—I would wonder whether

I was fighting for the right side. That Spanish soldiers had

taken to killing each other during their plunder of Cuzco

came as no surprise to me.

I should also add at this juncture, however, that I had

heard rumours about Renco's sacred idol before.

It was widely known that Hernando Pizarro, the Gover nor's brother
and chief lieutenant, had put up an incredible bounty for any
information that led to the discovery of the idol's whereabouts. It
was to my mind a tribute to the rev erence and devotion that the
Incans paid their idol that not one of them—not a single one of
them—had betrayed its location in return for Hernando's fabulous
reward. It shames me to say that I do not believe my countrymen, in
similar circumstances, would have done the same.

But of all the tales I had heard of the looting of Cuzco, nowhere
had I heard of the discovery of the treasured Incan idol.

Indeed, if it had been found, word would have spread faster than
the wind. For the lucky foot soldier who dis covered it would have
been instantly knighted, would have been made a marquis by the
Governor on the spot and would have lived the rest of his life back
in Spain in unreserved luxury.

And yet there had been no such tale.

Which led me to conclude that the Spaniards in Cuzco had not yet
found the idol.

'Brother Alberto,' Renco said, his eyes pleading, 'help me. Help me
escape this floating cage so that I can complete my mission. Only I
can retrieve the idol of my people.