Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun(33)

The fighting was still going on when they reached the mill—explosions tearing the soldiers’ jeeps, trucks, and tents apart, blood-soaked bodies sprawled all over the yard. Vidal barely recognized Garces emerging from the smoke, covered in blood and soot.

“They came out of nowhere, Capitán!”

Vidal pushed him aside.

It was pouring, as if the sky were teaming up with the rebel beasts. Yes, that’s what he would call them from now on. Beasts from the woods. The rain mixed with the smoke and made it hard to see where the attacks were coming from, but Vidal didn’t remove his sunglasses. Their own reflections in the dark lenses—that was all he wanted his men to see until he’d regained control over his emotions. His mask was slipping and the eyes were the first to betray the rage and fear hidden behind it.

They’d been tricked like a bunch of rabbits by a fox, his equipment, his men, all reduced to a mess of rain-soaked trash. Vidal could hear the forest laughing at him, the forest and the cowards hiding under its trees.

“They have grenades, Capitán!” Garces’s eyes were wide with fear. “There was nothing we could do.” The soldiers all knew their capitán would find someone to blame and to bleed for this.

Only now did Vidal notice that the barn doors stood wide open.

He nearly crushed the sunglasses when he took them off with his gloved hand. Garces didn’t dare follow him into the barn. The provisions, the medicine . . . the rebels had taken everything, even his tobacco. The doors, though, were still intact. No trace of explosives. Vidal inspected the lock. No sign of forced entry.

“Capitán!” Serrano ran to his side. His face couldn’t hide his relief that Garces and not he had been in charge of guarding the mill this morning. “We’ve surrounded a small unit. They’ve taken cover up the hill.”

The hill. Good. That would make the beasts into weak rabbits. Vidal straightened the cap on his wet hair. Yes. This time he wouldn’t let them get away.

It was not much of a hill they had run to. The few rocks on top were the only cover the rebels had.

Vidal led the attack himself, shooting as he ran from tree to tree. This time he would kill them before the forest could hide them again. As always, when he went into battle, he was holding the watch in his left hand. It was his good-luck charm, its broken face pressing against his palm, its ticking urging him forward. Sometimes it sounded like a metallic whisper: Come on, Vidal. I saw the death of your father. I want to see yours. How long will you keep me waiting?

He’d ordered his soldiers to attack the rebels’ position from all sides. Bark splintered around them in the cross fire, but he knew their foes would soon run out of ammunition. There were probably a dozen of them, maybe fewer. They were hopelessly outnumbered.

The hunt didn’t taste as good as it usually did. Vidal had allowed himself to be fooled by the prey. No revenge would erase that shame. But at least he could make sure no one would live to tell the story. He hid behind a tree to reload his pistol. Serrano took cover behind a tree to his left.

“Go ahead, Serrano!” Vidal yelled, stepping out to take another few shots. “No need to be afraid, this is the only decent way to die!”

He took cover again and inhaled deeply as he slipped the watch into his pocket. It still protected him. Obviously, his time to die hadn’t come yet. Another few shots, bullets missing him by an inch, while his soldiers screamed around him and fell on their backs to stare with empty eyes up into the branches and the pitiless rain. Back behind another tree to push fresh bullets into the pistol, and out once more through the metal rain, up the hill, chasing prey out from behind the rocks, making them regret that they’d dared to make a fool of him.

Vidal took cover one last time. Rain dripped from the peak of his cap into his eyes. Corpses were sprawling their limbs over the rocks like pale roots torn out of the ground. Only two rebels were still fighting, but when Vidal ordered another attack they fell with muffled cries, hit by several bullets.

Oh, the silence of Death. There was nothing quite like it. Vidal often wished he could record it and listen to it while shaving his face. Its silence was only disturbed by the sound of the rain pouring through the trees and falling onto the lifeless bodies, soaking their clothes until they seemed to melt into the ground.

Vidal walked up the last stretch of the hill, followed by the soldiers who’d survived the attack. Their losses were nothing compared to the rebels. The first one Vidal stopped at didn’t stir. He made sure he was dead nevertheless by firing twice into his silent face. It felt good. Each shot neutralized some of the poison the shame of being fooled had left in his blood. But he needed to find one who could still talk.

Serrano came, as always, running like a well-trained dog when Vidal called him to his side. They found another two of their enemies lying between the rocks on top of the hill. They were only boys, maybe fifteen years old. One was dead, but the second one was still moving. He was pressing his right hand against a bullet wound in his neck, his pistol beside him. Vidal kicked it away.

“Let me see,” he said, pulling the boy’s bloody hand away from the wound. He said it almost gently. Vidal enjoyed being calm with his prey.

The boy still had some fight in him, but it was an easy task to pull his hand off the wound. He had no strength left and for sure not much life. The throat was covered with blood.

“Can you talk?”