Chapter 117: Betrayal
"Come out with your hands up!" shouted Sargento Guzman, while the bayonet-fitted rifles of the escolta aimed at the closed door.
A few soldiers were hugging the walls near the edges of the yard, occasionally risking a peek around the corners to check for enemy movements. Everyone was tense.
Just about twenty meters ahead stood the cluster of houses that formed a perimeter around the presidencia. These were the homes of Buenavista’s small elite—families that had held onto government posts in the far-flung town for decades. For them, it had been practical to live around the seat of power.
This was also the site of a massacre. When the pulajanes overran the town weeks ago, the gobernadorcillo and several principales had been caught in their homes instead of at their haciendas. According to our scouts, the cultists had dragged them out and executed them publicly—some hacked down, others shot, some beaten with farming tools in front of their servants.
Being this close to the presidencia made the soldiers uneasy. Why would enemy fighters not only surrender, but do so right here, when they could have escaped through the back door? It didn’t add up.
I watched the scene unfold from the relative safety of a hut across the street, opposite the bahay-na-bato. In a wayside shed, I sat in a rattan chair, waiting for the shallow wound on my head to stop throbbing.
A soldier stood beside me, assigned to keep an eye on my condition while I rested. I recognized him. He was the same young man who had stayed behind me in Kasily, standing watch while I entered Alicia’s house to clear out pirates. The same soldier who’d torn his undershirt to make a bandage for me after the firefight earlier.
I turned to him. "What’s your name?"
He blinked, surprised by the question. "Jorge Estrada, sir," he replied quietly.
I nodded, letting the name settle into memory.
Then my attention snapped forward again.