Page 38 of The Lost Guardian
José laughed. “No, they did not.” He took another sip of pisco and continued.
“Huáscar had the support of Cusco, the empire’s capital, but Atahualpa was heavily favored by a faction in the north. His army was large and motivated, and the two brothers battled over the title.”
“Civil war,” Ali said, clearly knowing this much already. “With no care to how many people were killed in their quest for power.”
Santiago agreed. “It was a bloody one. Lasting nearly a decade.”
“And Atahualpa won,” Ali said. “That much I remember.”
“He did. In 1532, Cusco was taken, Huáscar was imprisoned, and Atahualpa was named the new emperor,” Santi confirmed.
José leaned forward. “It’s important for you to understand the position the empire was in when it fell. Still recovering from civil war and battling ravenous new diseases from Europe, which would eventually wipe out more than half of the Indigenous population.”
“Some historians claim that number could be closer to eighty or even ninety percent of the people,” Santiago added softly. He wasn’t sure why Dr. Fernandez was being conservative. Some historians included him.
Ali looked horrified, but José simply nodded.
“Which brings us to the beginning of the end,” the professor continued. “In 1532, the same year as Atahualpa’s victory, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and two hundred of his men arrived at the Incan town of Cajamarca.”
“The city in the north,” Ali inquired, “near the hot springs?”
“Sí. You’ve been?”
“Yeah.” She smiled, wistful. “I took my sister.”
Santiago wished she would say more, but Ali only sipped her drink, so José continued instead.
“Cajamarca is where Atahualpa’s most devout followers resided. He was there, along with his army of more than eighty thousand soldiers, when Pizarro and his men arrived.”
Ali’s eyebrows shot up. “I bet the Spanish weren’t expecting that.”
“I can’t imagine what it must have looked like,” Santiago said, “two hundred men in the face of eighty thousand.” He had pictured the scene many times, but the number was so large as to be unfathomable to him.
“By then, the Spanish had been pillaging cities and towns, slaughtering innocents, and accumulating what gold and wealth they could find,” José went on. “Atahualpa met with Pizarro, unconcerned with the small display of force his men posed. He demanded that the Spaniards return what they had stolen from the Incan people.”
Santi knew the rest of the story was hotly debated, and he looked forward to hearing Dr. Fernandez’s interpretation of it firsthand. He sipped his electric pisco.
“Apparently”—José’s voice grew thick with irony—“Pizarro’s two hundred slaughtered seven thousand Incan soldiers and captured Atahualpa, without a single casualty on their side.”
Ali scoffed. “So say the victors.”
Santiago schooled a goofy grin. He had thought those exact words the first time he heard it.
José pointed a finger at her. “Precisely, young lady. Since the Inca never had a written language, what records we have are accounts from Spanish conquistadores or priests. Very few bothered to learn Quechua to provide accurate transcription. And of those who did learn the language, there are, as we are aware, always biases.”
The professor went on to detail Atahualpa’s capture, his astronomical ransom, and Pizarro’s betrayal. Though they both knew the story already, neither he nor Ali interrupted.
José was a natural storyteller. And Santi, for one, hoped to translate this lesson into his own teaching someday.
“This is what brought me to your grandfather.” José turned to Santiago. “I came across a missive from Pizarro himself, confirming that on the night Atahualpa’s body was taken, the entire ransom simply…disappeared.”
The professor’s eyes shone. “He confirmed that none of it, not a single golden coin, had ever been found.”
Santiago heard Ali’s sharp inhalation of breath. He understood her reaction; he felt lightheaded himself.
“You corroborated that it was written by Pizarro?” he asked.
Dr. Fernandez looked affronted, and Santiago remembered who he was speaking to.
