Chapter 127: Visitor
By midday, I had dispatched both of our ships to their respective missions.
Señor Alcantara and the gunboat were tasked with transporting our dead and the prisoners to Boac. Once there, he was to coordinate with the cathedral for proper burial rites. On his return, he would bring Captain Roque and half of the recruits currently garrisoned in the cabecera to relieve the Buenavista detachment while my main force pushed onward to Torrijos.
Eduardo, meanwhile, took the Garay warship down the coast. A hundred and fifty rifles had been secured in crates aboard, along with Dimalanta himself, bound for Santa Cruz. The plan was to rearm the stripped recruits there—disarmed by Sadiwa weeks prior—and have them converge upon Torrijos from the east under Captain Méndez, with Dimalanta’s guidance.
The maneuver was meant to divert some of the pressure from my battered core force. Despite everything, I had no choice but to rely on them again for the main thrust. And to think—I could only afford them a single day’s rest. Tomorrow we move. Any later, and the momentum we fought so hard to gain would be lost.
My body was still recovering from the fighting. I ached all over, and a dull feverish haze had started to creep over me from exhaustion. So, after giving the officers and platoon leaders their respective assignments, I retired to the room at the convento.
Just as I was beginning to drift off, there came a knock on the door.
A visitor requested for my audience.
I would have refused, had it not been the same old man we encountered during the fighting yesterday—back when we were inching our way to the church.
He was waiting in the sala, near the entrance. The room, bare of furniture or embellishment, had been spared the worst of the destruction. The plain stone floor bore only faint reddish stains now, which stubbornly remained despite the soldiers’ scrubbing. The windows had been opened to air out the lingering scent of blood and smoke.