War of the Raven by Andrew Kaplan

Author:Andrew Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497677982
Publisher: Open Road Media

13

Cordoba Province, 1868

AHEAD, IN the distance, death was waiting. It could be seen by the presence of the chimangos, carrion hawks, circling in the blue sky. Earlier, one of the gauchos, Gaspar, had hamstrung a cow and killed it so that they could use its horns for tethering the horses. They cut loin steaks from it, that they barbecued over a fire of grass stalks and cattle chips. They sat around the fire, eating and washing down the meat with mate. There was no hurry about going on. The dead would wait.

A strong wind was blowing. It came from the north, from the Chaco lands, and the horses stirred uneasily at their tethers. Bernardo, Gideon’s rastreador, looked up, his nostrils widening as he sniffed the wind.

“After this comes the pampero,” he said, naming the terrible wind that swept up the Pampa from Tierro del Fuego and the bottom of the world.

“Of a certainty?” Gideon asked.

“After such a north wind, always,” Bernardo said, watching the horses. “Norte duro, pampero seguro.”

“What of the Captain Montoya? Will he be able to meet us as agreed?”

“Easily,” the gaucho shrugged. “He is only two leagues behind us, maybe less. Look!” he said, pointing. “You can see the smoke from his fire, as he no doubt sees ours. This pampero will not come till sunset. You can still see the birds.” He gestured toward the chimangos, a column of black shapes swirling over the quinta. When Gideon looked that way he could see the distant plantation as a blue-green island of trees in an otherwise featureless sea of pampas-grass. Waves of grass made by the wind raced endlessly to the horizon. Gideon watched the waves as a sailor does the sea and thought about what they would find when they got to the quinta. Not much, he thought. The Indians wouldn’t leave much.

After three years of war he had learned that. What else had he learned, he wondered, glancing around their encampment. He had less than twenty men left, all gauchos except for the Negro, Joao, he had purchased from that Brazilian sergeant. Some had stretched out on the ground for a siesta, their faces turned up to the sky like dead men; the rest were still eating.

He had learned that a man faced more danger from his own side than from the enemy. That was always true, but in this land there was nothing more true. The worst were the Paraguayans. He had learned that after the Argentines had captured Humaita. Not even in the Crimea had he ever seen anything like it.

The fortress at Humaita was made of mud and stone and wood and the square inside the walls was carpeted with bodies. And on the ground north of the fortress were more bodies, most of them headless. From the parapets they could see the Paraguayan machete squads still working, cutting down their own Indian troops, their punishment for having lost the battle. In the midst of the retreat, a group of Indian slaves

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