The Hunt:

The silence that had fallen over Mabila’s plaza did not break; it shattered. It happened with a speed that left no time for thought, only for the primal instinct of steel and sinew. Gonzalo Silvestre had vanished into the cacique’s chosen dwelling. Moments later, one of Tuskaloosa’s principal men, clad in a magnificent feather mantle, made to exit the plaza. When Captain Baltasar de Gallegos tried to stop him, asserting that he could not leave, the Mabilian shrugged off Gallegos’s hand with contempt and loosed an arrow from a bow he had concealed beneath his cloak. The shot was true, striking Gallegos’s back where his mail did not cover.

That single arrow was the signal. It was as if the very walls of the houses exhaled warriors. From every low doorway, from behind every corner, a torrent of armed men poured into the small plaza, their war-cries a deafening roar that drowned out the frantic shouts of our captains. The air became a thicket of flying arrows, hissing past our helmets, thudding into wooden shields, and finding flesh with sickening accuracy. They were not firing from a distance, but from so close that every shaft struck with terrible force.

Chaos reigned. The men who had been standing at ease were now locked in a desperate melee. The horses, terrified by the shrieks and the sudden press of bodies, reared and plunged, useless in such a confined space and offering only larger targets. I saw a fine charger from Castille go down, its neck bristling with cane shafts. The Adelantado himself, ever at the forefront, was fighting with a fury I had never witnessed, his sword a blur of silver, his voice a bellow of rage and command, rallying the few of us in the vanguard.

We were a small island of steel in a swirling sea of native fury. They came at us with long bows and heavy, skull-crushing war clubs. My own sword felt heavy in my hand as I parried a blow from a club that would have shattered my arm. The press was too great; we were too few. To remain in the plaza was to be butchered. The order came down, roared from man to man over the din: “To the gate! Outside! For Spain and St. James!”

The retreat to the narrow gate was a nightmare of hacking and stabbing. For every warrior we cut down, two more seemed to take his place. They clambered onto the rooftops, raining down arrows and stones upon us. We left our baggage, our supplies, our pearls from Cofitachequi—everything—in the lodges where they had been stored. All that mattered was reaching the open ground beyond the palisade where our horsemen could form up and our main force, hearing the battle, would be rushing to our aid.

I remember stumbling over the body of a comrade, his face a mask of surprise, an arrow through his throat. I remember the splintering crash as a club glanced off my helmet, sending sparks across my vision. We fought our way through the gate, a bloody, desperate handful, and emerged onto the bare, open ground outside the walls, gasping for breath, turning to see the full horror of our situation. The vanguard was broken, our supplies were lost, and the battle for Mabila had only just begun.

To Be Continued…