Nostalgia

A pulp of the Penitential Axiom

The Peruvian Andes — Wet Season, 1915

The highland sectors of the Peruvian Túpac Amaru Line have been shattered. After reversing the fortunes of an invasion of Quito, four Colombian Armies of the Andes descended upon the Province of Cajamarca and paid a terrible price to smash the Peruvian stronghold at the ‘Tortoise Shell.’ Now having laid low the whole of the Huancabamba Valley, the Colombians regroup to make their next Andean offensive against Bambamarca.

The Peruvian 1st Army of the Mountains is not idle, though. Reconnaissance parties and scouts search endlessly for opportunities to surgically weaken the inevitable Colombian offensive. In a bid to recapture land and later exchange it for time and blood, officers are encouraged to take all necessary measures to compromise Colombian designs…

Suboficial Segundo Diego de Valdés y Tuyepac, 28th Regiment of Foothill Infantry (Quechua), Peruvian 3rd Army of the Mountains

San Antonio, north northwest of Bambamarca, the Province of Cajamarca, the Kingdom of the Peruvians

6 November 1915

04:28

Valdés slid the razor up his neck. Black hair and shaving cream yielded before it as it flew over the scars and calloses. A slicing pain just above his Adam’s apple reminded him that the blade was new and still factory sharp. He stopped and watched in the candlelight as blood trickled down his unevenly smooth skin. It was like a raindrop making its way down a pane of glass. He let the wound bleed, telling himself he’d clean it up once it clotted, and shaved away the previous week’s anxieties. He picked up his washcloth to clean himself off when he caught sight of an arresting smile.

Bright eyes, white teeth, and a wide smile reached through time to give him pause. Men more skilled than he could not paint a finer portrait than that protected by a steel frame normally kept in his breast pocket. The subject and model was the very form of joy, despite the photograph being taken hours after war had been declared; she even wore the earrings he gave her that morning. Whenever the wind would blow across the Andes, it would hold her hair up as the envy of every Indian woman in the valley. Her snow-soft skin was as white as a pearl held up to a candle and quite as precious as one. Her eyes were always fluttering yet somehow always landed on him, anchoring him wherever he stood or sat until something else demanded his attention. She could sing an insomniac to sleep, calm an earthquake, and nurture dead plants back to life. He dared not ever compare her to angels or Helen of Sparta out of fear she would be insulted by such lowly comparisons; in his stranger dreams, he was the Paris whose judgement brought on this whole damn war to begin with. Only one word could properly define her with justice: Ileana.

One of the stable doors swung open and an officer stepped in. Valdés set the photograph down and saluted him.

“As you were, Suboficial,” Coronel Huapaya said, returning the gesture. “You wished to have a word with me?”

“Yes, sir.” Valdés wiped the water, blood, and shaving cream off of his face and turned to the regiment commander. “Am I correct in hearing that you are sending a party north towards Monteredondo?”

“You are, but I already have men selected for that. What’s it to you?”

“I have… someone special who lives there. I want to make sure she and her family are safe.”

“That’s cute, but if she has any damn sense at all she’d be anywhere else but Chiclayo.”

“I just want to be sure, sir. Besides, I know the area quite well. And you were asking for volunteers, weren’t you?”

“I have Aymara pathfinders for that. So what?”

“They don’t teach where certain footpaths are hidden behind trees and rocks leading up to farmhouses and granaries in pathfinder school.”

The Coronel looked Valdés over several times in silence. Valdés himself wasn’t sure what else to say other than the obvious. He had to admit that his commanding officer was in all likelihood correct, but he couldn’t accept the convincing rationality of it. The last he heard from her was towards the end of the Huancabamba Valley Campaign when the front lines were still north of her village. Her letter betrayed no concern about the encroaching war, yet all the same he told her to leave for Cajamarca or Cajabamba. He was still waiting for her response. Maybe something had happened and she needed to stay behind to take care of someone who couldn’t flee. Maybe she herself had fallen ill and needed help.

“Alright, fine,” the Coronel sighed. “Only because we need good reconnaissance to defend this town. You’d best hurry up though, they leave in fifteen minutes.” Valdés was out of his tent and ready in five.

The field weather observers reported that it was currently 9° Celsius with a humidity of 68% and a tender 12 kilometer an hour breeze meandering over the Andes; cloud cover was significant, but rain unlikely. Valdés could smell it coming, though, even in the biting cold of the dark, dewy morning. Not only that, but he could feel some of his joints swelling a little. The Andes had plenty of wisdom to spare wrapped up in the beauty of a land that did not need to be the way it was. The Tahuantinsuyu understood this perfectly well and it served them faithfully, yet the university costerados had more faith in the complicated and inaccurate machines they dragged up the mountains from Lima and Trujillo.

Valdés knew better than these machines and their educated masters. He rolled a dozen extra .30-06 clips and hand bombs into his poncho. He questioned himself briefly on the wisdom of bringing a poncho on top of an overcoat which itself was over the regular mountaineer uniform, but the sun would provide little warmth and the coming rain and windchill would keep the temperature below 12°; hypothermia in a familiar land is still hypothermia. The only other equipage he carried was extra medical supplies in case the reds ravaged anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in between them and the Peruvians. Aside from that, Valdés shed everything unnecessary and only carried the essentials: his Cuzco 1895/09, his Huancahuari 1901, ammunition, grenades, bayonet, spade, and champi. Even if this was just a reconnaissance and skirmishing action, and even if he was only part of a picket, Valdés wanted to make sure the Colombians knew whose home they had plucked up from the ground and destroyed. And if they hurt Ileana at all…

“Suboficial Segundo?” a man asked. Valdés stood up straight and looked behind him. A couple junior noncommissioned officers stood in the light of a kerosene lamp. “We’re ready when you are,” the taller of them said.

He nodded and turned back to his crucifix. “Merciful Lord of life, I lift up my heart to You in my suffering and ask for Your comforting help. I know that You would withhold the thorns of this life if I could attain eternal life without them. So I throw myself on Your mercy, resigning myself to this suffering. Grant me the grace to bear it and to offer it in union with Your sufferings. No matter what suffering may come my way, let me trust in You. Amen.” He crossed himself and placed the crucifix back in his breast pocket. “You two are with the party going north?”

“Yes, we are. We’re from G and H Companies, one hundred thirty nine men in all.”

“Alright. Who’s in charge of this party?”

“I was, but I guess now you are, Suboficial.”

Valdés paused for a second. “Lost your officers?”

“All of our Tenientes died in the avalanche, and our Capitanes not long after. We lost a lot of men out on the Shell.”

Valdés sighed. “We all did. So what the Hell are these bastards doing in this country?”

The two NCOs explained the situation as far as they knew it. Aeroplanes flying over the area caught the Colombians moving into staging positions not far from Bambamarca and the corps commander thought that they were looking to bring on a general engagement soon. The reconnaissance party’s job was to travel in a generally northern direction until the enemy’s position and situation could be established and disrupted. And so soon after forcing them out of the Huancabamba Valley; he cursed the Brazilians for losing their nerve to fight.

“That’s very specific,” Valdés noted.

“Coronel Huapaya said you knew the area, so he left the details up to you.”

“Huh, fair enough, I guess. There’s an abbey not far in that direction, Santa Catalina. If those mongrels haven’t already leveled it, they’ll certainly be using it as a forward depot or camp. We’ll find them there. There’s a hidden trail about half a kilometer that way, it leads from Santa Catalina all the way straight to Bambamarca. It’s called the Old Abbey Road. I’m not sure if it’s on anyone’s maps, ours or theirs, but it won’t be too hard to find if they occupy the abbey. We’ll have to cut through the woods to get onto— actually no, there should be a small trail I used to frequent somewhere around here. I’ll find it.”

“In the dark?”

“The regiment is headquartered in the building I was born in. I know where I am. We’ll march up the Old Abbey Road, all quiet like, until we find the enemy or someone who knows where he is. We’ll send a runner back with notes and remain as a screen until the Coronel says otherwise unless some irresistible opportunity arises. Questions?”

After answering basic issues about logistics, the two NCOs set off to prepare their companies to disembark. Valdés stayed a moment and regarded the black sky. He could tell that the moon was trying to make itself noticed through the overcast but only in vain. It was a shame too, he loved the night sky up in the mountains. It wasn’t like down by the coast where the heavens hung over the land like a heavy curtain or the rainforest where they stayed well enough away from the wilderness. Instead, the mighty peaks of gods and emperors held them up for all the world to see.

Then, for a brief moment, the moon found a hole in the cloud cover. It peeked through, shined its light on San Antonio, and disappeared before the clouds could punish the transgression. Valdés smiled. He remembered one time he and Ileana were admiring the constellations, as they were wont to do, when she asked him something about the moon. He couldn’t remember what the question was, but it somehow ended in him explaining that it was a saucer of silver purer than any ever mined out of Upper Peru; it was a mirror made of a holy metal so that God could reflect His grace and love onto His children even when the sun fell, and so that we wouldn’t be separated from our Father during the Devil’s hours. He promised he’d take her there some day to see God.

He wondered what the Old Man was doing these days.

The Old Abbey Road, northwest of Bambamarca, the Province of Cajamarca, the Kingdom of the Peruvians

6 November 1915

05:49

Valdés took five volunteers and ventured out in front of the scouting party for ambushes, listening posts, or pickets. He expected there to be resistance for over a kilometer, but the only thing the trees yielded were childhood memories. He was surprised at how untouched the woods were by the war and even time in general; each one was exactly as he remembered it and the Old Abbey Road still walked the same way it used to. He commented on this out loud without realizing it as his eyes flew through the tree canopy.

“Uh, Suboficial Segundo,” one of the volunteers said, “the war isn’t even two years old.”

“Hmm?”

“You said you were from here? And, just now, that it seems like it hasn’t changed a day since you left? The war started less than a year and a half ago.”

“It did? Wow, it… really doesn’t feel like it.” A familiar bend in the road caught his attention and he stopped the scouts. “Here, one of you run back and tell the others it’s all clear. From this point on, we risk being seen or heard from the abbey.”

“So what will we do?”

“Let me think about it.”

Valdés left his rifle with one of the scouts and ventured off the Old Abbey Road by himself. He crawled through the trees until he reached one with wooden boards nailed to the trunk. He climbed them and entered a treehouse he built in 1905. He and Ileana were both fourteen back then and both made liberal use of it, either individually or together. Ten years later, the frequent maintenance showed itself well in the fact that it was still usable. It felt less spacious than before, but he chalked it up to him wearing his kit.

The view was as amazing as it usually was: the east, west, and south windows all looked out into the woods until they were obscured by leaves, but the north window offered an unobstructed view of Santa Catalina Abbey. Decades ago by royal decree, the highland wilderness had been cleared away for the abbey, which consisted of the gothic cathedral, the village to the south, and the work fields everywhere else. The twin bell towers in the cathedral’s westwork stood over everything but the mountains; it was the only place with as good a view as the treehouse, as the handful of times the nuns allowed him and Ileana up there — and the dozens of times they didn’t — proved.

Like everything else, it was exactly the way he remembered it except for one thing: the Colombians had the abbey and turned it into a staging point. Lone pickets made their patrols some meters from the tree line, tents were pitched near the village, latrines were dug a sanitary distance away, and screw pickets leaned against bales of wire waiting to be deployed. Valdés took his binoculars out to confirm a few minor details and looked beyond the village. Artillery observers were on the roof of the cathedral. He couldn’t find the guns themselves, but figured they were either in the field or perched somewhere prominent with a telegraph line running from the batteries to the observers. Valdés figured that some genius forced these men to occupy the abbey late in the night and after some long march from further north, ignorant of either the proximity of the Peruvians or the state of the men he sent. It didn’t matter to him though; the mistake made was about to be a mistake exploited.

He stood up to climb down from the treehouse, but someone whispered to him “It’s so beautiful…”

“Hmm?” Valdés looked around and outside the treehouse and found no one. He figured he just misinterpreted some stray sound and descended the tree.

Valdés sent one of his other scouts back to San Antonio to inform Coronel Huapaya what was about to happen. In the meantime, he drew a map of the abbey and north end of the woods in the dirt. The rest of the reconnaissance party caught up with him and quietly stood around the Suboficial Segundo.

“I need thirty volunteers and the Jackhammer team. Gather around behind me, please.” When the required mountaineers and light machine gun crew stepped forward, Valdés began his explanation squatting over his map. “The enemy possesses Santa Catalina and I believe they intend to use it as one of many jumping off points to attack Bambamarca. They know we will attack them at this point but are unaware that they are too slow; through either incompetence or bad intelligence, they have chosen to encamp without making the proper provisions against incursions such as the one I’m about to send us on. I want our two Potato Diggers just inside the tree line about twenty meters off either side of the road, and the main force will similarly spread out under concealment of the vegetation. The Colombians should soon be forming up for Reveille, so that is when we strike; they haven’t done it yet and I’m assuming that their commander is giving them a necessary yet fatal rest. The thirty volunteers, Jackhammer crew, and myself will flank them on the left when this happens, creating a killzone that ideally will wipe out the lot of them. This assault team will sneak over along a gulch down that way and, after this is done, storm the abbey itself. The main force will follow up behind us and keep up the momentum. Now, I don’t know how many of the rat bastards there are, but if we do this right we ought to be able to force them anyway and set their plans back one or two steps. Who’s the best shot here?”

“Patiño, front and center!”

A short boy armed with a Springfield-Domínguez 1908 with an offset scope stepped forward from the main force.

“Perfect. There’s an old treehouse to the right side of the road about thirty paces off. Climb up and take out any targets of opportunity: officers, mortar crews, machinegun crews, artillery observers on the roof of the cathedral, whatever. Don’t start until we start shooting and don’t stop until they either force you to move or stop giving you targets. Now go.”

“Yes, Suboficial Segundo!”

“Alright… It’s fairly simple, no? Just an ambush and storming a castle. We could throw off their whole design for Bambamarca and force them back onto our terms. We’ll adapt to the situation as we need. Remember: crawl like snakes, pounce like pumas, and let your lead fly like condors.”

Santa Catalina Abbey, northwest of Bambamarca, the Province of Cajamarca, the Kingdom of the Peruvians

6 November 1915

05:51

Valdés was happy to find the gulch untainted by time or foreigners and even happier to find that the wet season it hadn’t flooded it yet. The trickle of water that rushed past the assault team carried with it echoes of Ileana’s voice. Right around Inti Raymi of 1896 he was skulking about when he heard what he thought was an angel. He followed the sound down the gulch into the woods and found Ileana sitting on one of the banks with her feet in the shallow water. She sang all there was to be sung: psalms, folk songs, lullabies, patriotic songs. Not even the nuns could sing like her. He had been enamored with the angel’s prayers ever since.

“We should head home now…”

He turned around to find no one. He swore up and down to himself that he heard something — the soundwaves physically beat against his eardrums — but no culprit could be found. One of the riflemen with him looked at him sideways; they were under strict silence, so questions could only be asked through queer facial expressions. Valdés shook his head and kept walking.

The banks of the gulch were steep, but not so steep that they presented themselves as trench walls. Each man in the assault team laid down with his rifle shouldered, peering only just far enough above the ground to see the village. Even the Jackhammer crew kept its piece, in reality just an automatic self-loading rifle fed by a belt, close to the dirt with its bipod folded. Those with grenades took them out and dug small holes to place them in. Valdés did the same and looked further down the gulch. He could see much of the work field on the far side of the cathedral. Not a few poor bastards had apparently hauled batteries of Gran Bolívars across the mountains and pitched them where the nuns used to grow yuca. Most were aimed at San Antonio with some towards Bambamarca — none were crewed, and all three visible batteries of four guns each were guarded by two sleepy riflemen. He hadn’t planned on the exposed flank — he also worried for a moment about being spotted, but realized that the early morning cloud cover made for excellent concealment at a distance — but some intuitive Sargento or Cabo organized a squad to cover the enfilade. After the assault they could figure out how to turn the guns around and give the Colombians back their shells.

Reveille sounded from a bugle in the village. The buildings that once housed everything that a chapter of nuns needed to run and maintain an abbey now produced only the tired husks of foreign invaders in neat ranks and files. Based on their sluggish movements, Valdés guessed that their arrival had not been more than three hours ago. The impunity of the bugler suggested that they had no idea they were so close to the Peruvians or that they thought their royal adversaries were in no shape to fight after Huancabamba. Once the invaders were in formation, the two M1892/03s hidden in the trees calmly informed them of their error.

At the command of “Burn them!” the assault team joined in the berating with rifles and the RACA. The serenity of early morning in the valley was broken under hundreds of kilograms of hot brass. The assembled Colombians, about a battalion’s worth by Valdés’s estimate, all scattered after swathes of them were cut down. There was no need to aim; even with the regular bolt action rifles, any given bullet was likely to pass through more than one man if something harder than flesh didn’t stop it. The assault team was also just within grenade range and some were thrown as soon as the machineguns started barking. Many missed, but a few were able to land within the scattering mob and take advantage of their proximity. Some knelt and tried shooting back, but were felled in their error. The rest darted for the cover of buildings in the village. They ran through their own encampment to get there and the Peruvian bullets ripped apart tents and collapsed inert campfires just to hunt them down. To their left, the men covering the gulch’s enfilade picked off any guards they could.

Valdés dug into his ammunition belt for another clip; the distance between the Colombian formation and something solid was so great that he managed to shoot off an even fifteen rounds before most of them were either hit or behind cover. He rammed a fourth clip into his Cuzco 1895/09 and stood up. He waved at the tree line and Peruvian mountaineers emerged charging across the field.

“Come on, boys!” he urged. “We’ve got them on the run! Put them to the bayonet!”

The Peruvians of the assault team, barring the RACA crewmen who were reloading their gun, surged out of the gulch fixing bayonets. They swung around the grassland south of the village, vacant only because it tended to flood during nasty storms, and sprinted for the village before they themselves were caught in the open. Before the war, Valdés always imagined that God designed the mountain ranges and valleys as places for Him to sit down for a few minutes without destroying anything important; he attributed Santa Catalina’s chosen location to this explanation. Whatever the veracity of this, the Colombians taught him well that such wide open locales were as dangerous as splintering rocks. Urgency carried him across the grass with equal burden as animosity. Even so, he couldn’t hear any bullets flying towards them. The air, normally overburdened with hot brass in these occasions, was completely weightless and questioned why his body was still bent over. He existed between worlds: the beautiful abbey and the ugly scores of Colombian bodies, the safety of home and the danger of foreigners, the mist of childhood and the blood of war. He kept running before the past gave way to the present.

Rifle fire started boiling out of the abbey village. By the time it got to a serious volume, most of the assault team was already braced against a building or peeking around a corner to return fire. The Jackhammer crew and began setting up the M1892/03 along the Old Abbey Road, but Valdés stopped them. A Maxim gun barked, chipping away chunks of the planks that made up the buildings. Two men on the other side of the road from him threw grenades and they exploded to some unknown effect.

“Hold onto that!” he told the gunners. “We’re going to flank them again!”

“Could you stay with me instead? I’m… kind of lonely these days… And scared…”

Valdés turned around; all he saw were his mountaineers waiting for him to lead the way. He knew he heard someone, even with the gunfire there was no denying it. It even felt familiar, but…

The shutters of the building they were covering behind swung open. Valdés looked up and stared at a Colombian rifleman. He stared right back at him for a long second. The Peruvian moved first, plunging his bayonet into his opposite’s neck. Another appeared next to him with an automatic. Valdés dropped his rifle and grabbed the outstretched arm. Startled mountaineers poured rounds into the window as he pulled his man out. Someone threw a grenade and another shot the Colombian in the head. Once the grenade exploded, someone looked inside and reported everyone dead.

Valdés swung everyone on his side of the Old Abbey Road around several buildings. They passed stables, granaries, the orphanage, and some of the nuns’ quarters. The Colombians they found were still disoriented from the massacre and swept aside with ease. The Maxim at the very northern end of the road wasn’t much better; foodstuffs and crates had been stacked just high and wide enough in front of the gun to at least conceal its crew. Despite this, the Jackhammer gunner stepped up and, with his gun slung over his shoulder and the butt in a cup on his belt, blew all four of them away. Valdés was glad no one had the wherewithal to surrender.

“Well, that was fun,” one of the Peruvians remarked once the shooting in the village started to die down. “Now what?”

“Is anyone hit?” Valdés asked.

“I’ll go check.” The sky moaned and the roof of the granary exploded. “Shit! Shit! Artillery!”

“Calm the fuck down, alpinist, it’s just a spigot mortar! Everyone hug the cathedral wall!”

Those of the assault team that were with him did as they were told. Valdés saw down the Old Abbey Road the rest of his men sprinting out of the open and into the village. Two in particular ran straight down the road and slammed into the wall near him as another mortar shell fell in the road behind them.

“Is that coming from behind the cathedral or on top of it?” one of the company Sargentos asked.

“Has to be behind; they’re not coming in steep enough to be on top,” Valdés answered. “Which means we didn’t kill all of them. You two take your companies and clear the farms of those squatters. I’ll take my men inside and evict any stragglers. Take the Jackhammer with you.”

They nodded and left to gather their men and Valdés dismissed the RACA. He took the alpinists he had and they stacked up on the westworks entrance, dodging machine gun fire from somewhere out in the yuca field.

“Be quiet. They could hear us…”

Valdés froze. The voice no longer had a direction, but its face finally came to him: Ileana. Ileana was calling out to him! But why? But how? He couldn’t be hallucinating, not unless some strange ailment had taken him by surprise. Ileana herself wasn’t among his men, otherwise someone would have noticed by now and she would be saying more than sparse, strange sentences.

“Do it.”

A Cabo opened one of the heavy wooden doors and the assault team entered the narthex. Valdés reached for one of the holy water fonts on his way in but found it empty. Empty too was the nave, with rows upon rows of pews enough to seat about six hundred but servicing none. He always preferred it that way; the presence of people always dissipated the liminality of the Lord’s house. The vivacity of the paintings, reliefs, and statues clashing with the loneliness of the red votive candle suspended above the silver gilded tabernacle; or at least it normally would, since the candle — nor any of the other ones for that matter — was not lit and thus disappeared into the dark distance. Angels sang their praises for only the Almighty to hear, the saints of the four Gospels looked down to impart their knowledge onto no one, the Sacred Heart of Jesus painted above the chancel burned and bled for none to adore, and the light trickling in through the stain glass windows showing the stations of the Cross offered illumination only for the sake of there being light at all. Echoes of Kyrie Eleison and Agnus Dei lingered in the still air, which clung onto the scent of Jerusalem incense. This was, without the presence of others, a place suspended in time and space; the cathedral was built with the plan of European Gothicism with in the style of Andean mortar and stone, but from the inside it was hard to tell. For all he knew or cared, he was in between Earth and Heaven, between dead and alive but parallel to Purgatory. It especially felt so on days when he and Ileana came to pray in one of the twin side chapels, south dedicated to the Widower King Tiyuwilu and north dedicated to his beloved wife Feliciana. Ileana herself never irritated his sense of wonder inside the cathedral, rather she emphasized it. He could never rationalize how such a girl could take human form, even when his entire religion hinged on such a concept.

“I… I can’t breathe…”

It was her again, her voice still without direction. She had to be hiding in the cathedral; it was the strongest structure for kilometers and had plenty of places to hide in the event of something like a firefight. But where would she be hiding? The organ was as good a spot as any; they once played hide and seek and she spent hours in it while he looked for her. Valdés gestured to his men for five to go upstairs with him and the rest to fan out and clear the nave and side aisles.

Outside, the fighting raged on. Mortars fell, men screamed, and guns cracked at each other. He couldn’t tell what was happening, but trusted the acting company commanders with the chaos. He was more worried about how this chaos was too loud for him to listen for signs of life up in the choir. It was darker than he would have liked too. The pipe organ was installed in the lofts over the choir on the east end of the cathedral and hardly any light was getting through the clerestory windows to see much. He went up one intermediate landing, then another. Heavy shells started exploding outside. They couldn’t have been Peruvian, one hundred forty men and dropping were storming the abbey. But then again, so too were there Colombians defending it.

Two steps after leaving the stairs, something hit Valdés in his left side. Whatever it was, it was physically inside him. He felt it twist and attempt to dig itself out of his abdomen. He started falling over and a boot helped him down. He hit the loft floor and swung his rifle around. A man’s silhouette stood over him with his own rifle. Valdés yanked the trigger, trusting the light from the clerestory that his target was Colombian. Someone shouted something about a grenade but was drowned out by it exploding. The shockwave and dust shot out from the stairwell, snuffing away what little light there was to offer. This caught his attention before the searing heat swelling up inside him, and he worked the lever of his rifle until it was empty. Then he tended to his sudden overheating.

Another firefight broke out, this time down on the cathedral’s main floor, but Valdés didn’t care; he was burning up in the 10° weather and needed to get his jacket off. He got his poncho roll off, but his web belt impeded any further progress. He clawed away at it until he felt something slick flowing across his left palm. The heat he felt all came from inside him where this slick substance was flowing from. The heat then turned ice cold and shot through his whole body, as if a single nerve strain had been sliced in half. This finally clued him into the fact that he had just been stabbed.

“Shit. Shit… Shit…” he heaved. He felt around for his rifle but could only find hardwood planks and his own blood. He braced himself against the banister and hauled himself back onto his feet. Now what? There was still shooting going on downstairs, so he wouldn’t be of much help. Maybe one of the others could at least stop the bleeding for him. Valdés called out to his men for help, but none came. Instead, a man stood up in front of him groaning and coughing. They looked at each other. A shell exploded close to the cathedral. They kept staring at each other. Another shell landed, this time blowing out a part of the north wall. They kept staring. Several more shells, this time caving in a chunk of the clerestory and roof. There was suddenly light in spite of the smoke and dust. Each man saw the other’s uniform and reached for something.

The Colombian was faster. He produced a trench bayonet before Valdés could unbuckle his revolver holster. He slashed at his hand, leaving a long gash in its wake and forcing the Peruvian to drop his sidearm. At the same time, the Colombian rushed his opponent. Valdés twisted his body and threw the Colombian past him. He next reached for his champi while the Colombian recovered. He attempted to swing down on his head while his back was turned, but he was too slow. He missed his head, but smashed the man’s right wrist. The Colombian screamed but still held onto the knife. A sloppy swing with it was narrowly dodged and countered with another champi strike, this time to the back of a leg to little effect. The Colombian then spun around and rushed Valdés again. This time he couldn’t get out of the way. He tried holding him back but was too weak. The Colombian pushed both of them through the loft banister. They fell some fifteen meters onto the rubble of pews, terra cotta tiles, stone, and glass. Somehow, they spun as they fell and Valdés ended up landing on the Colombian. The momentum of the fall rolled him off of his opponent and tossed him down the pile of architectural refuse.

More shells struck Santa Catalina Cathedral. Their angle suggested that the Colombians were the culprits. They were going to level this place, either to throw off the Peruvian assault or deny them the structure. Every single fiber of Valdés’s body either hurt grievously or would start hurting once the adrenaline wore off. He had to move, though; there was no priest to administer Extreme Unction in the same parish he had received every other Holy Sacrament except Matrimony and Holy Orders. Everything from the ribs down felt like they were about to give out and his arms were just shy of broken, but by some miracle he managed to get back on his feet.

He looked around. Peruvian and Colombian bodies lay prostrate underneath the rubble. But his sacrifice and theirs was not acceptable to almighty God. At any rate, the mortals seemed intent on closing the bridge between the dead and living. Serenity was run through now. All that was left was the conclusion of this petty squabble. Up on the dome, smoke billowed out from the Sacred Heart and blood trickled down from it. Each drop, once it fell from the Heart, transfigured into a rose petal. Like snowflakes and ashes they fluttered down and piled up in the crossing.

“H-help… Help me… please…”

Ileana! Her voice had a direction now, coming from outside the cathedral to the north. Valdés looked for the nearest exit. Light coming from the north transept suggested that the Colombians had completely demolished it. He stumbled down from the pile of rubble he was on and limped down the nave. He kept both hands on his bayonet wound, muttering to himself that his intestines were definitely not leaking and it could be taken care of later. He hobbled past the pile of bloody rose petals, stumbled across the fallen stone, and fell out of the cathedral onto the grass.

Rain fell as heavily as the shells did. One turned the dirt to mud, the other churned it up and threw it everywhere. Men all around were caught in the open, divided between their loyalties to self-preservation and to their mutual hatred. Rifles and machineguns barked at each other and siege gun shells ate men whole: to the east, the worsening quagmire turned into a sloppy gladiator pit where they clobbered and stabbed each other; to the west, both sides attempted to use the cover of the same gulch to flank each other; to the north, fields of maize, yuca, and beans, and beyond that the rectory for Santa Catalina’s two priests, four deacons, and three subdeacons. That’s where Ileana was. She needed his help. He needed her.

Valdés ran. How he was able to even stay on his feet to begin with was a mystery. Everything that wasn’t broken was bleeding, yet all of it was ignored because the Colombians had put Ileana in danger. He didn’t care that almost half of his trousers were red, nor that the mud sucked up one of his boots, nor that bullets whizzed past him in every direction. Only that the fields that he and Ileana ran through so many times over the years gave way like clouds to a bird. He was across the grass, down the unnamed dirt road, up the hill, and through the rectory’s front door.

Provisions had been stocked up in a corner of the living room: food, water pales, medical equipment scavenged or improvised. Aside from these and scattered furniture, the rectory living room was unoccupied. It was dark, the most light came from the door that he just burst open. The whole room reeked too of garlic or horseradish, except there were clouds of a sweet scent lingering here and there.

“Ileana!” Valdés called out. “Ileana! Where are—?”

He stepped forward, but his shifting shadow revealed someone lying in a corner. It was a man, a suited gentleman with his arms embracing nothing. No, he was reaching out to something, a bed of wild roses directly next to him. He was like a ragdoll; his eyes were wide open, unflinching, untrembling. The flowers were in an odd arraignment next to the body, but Valdés couldn’t quite make out why it felt familiar. He let go of his wound and stepped closer. His skin was beginning to yellow and flake, taking on the color of ripe wheat. Underneath the garlic and horseradish was some other putrid smell: the dead man had shit himself. Then Valdés recognized the shape of the roses: it was Ileana’s exact profile. She lay there huddled in this corner with this other man reaching for her embrace. And they both had matching wedding rings on, Ileana’s placed onto the pedals of one of the roses in the left hand.

“Oh.”

It was the last thing Diego de Valdés y Tuyepac saw before a 26.8 centimeter shell bore through the rectory and exploded in the living room. After the Peruvians and Colombians finished pulverizing the Santa Catalina Abbey out of existence, he was declared “missing in action.” His body was never found, laid restless underneath sediments of rubble and mud, just out of arm’s reach of Ileana with echoes of “I love you…” lingering in the wind.