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The air is gray with gunsmoke when Arturo spots him, a flash of brilliant green amidst the chaos and darkness. His horse rears beneath him, bullets zinging past his ears as he grips the reins in white knuckled terror, his eyes tracking the hooded figure dancing through the battlefield, dispatching one soldier after another.
“El Espadachín!” the men around him cry. They fire on the figure, a futile endeavor, even if their hands weren’t shaking on their triggers. The smell of sulfur thickens, joined by the tang of blood. One slumps from his horse onto the ground, even as El Espadachín bends to retrieve the blade from his throat. Another fires down at point blank range, his own bullet ricocheting off the first man’s steel canteen to strike him between the eyes as El Espadachín feints to one side, with a swish of his cape, as if he planned it that way.
The blade sings through the air, returning again and again like a trained bird to the hand of its faceless master as he steps between the falling bodies. His movements are frictionless and weightless, his feet seeming almost to float above the ground like a ghost, his long cape slipping like water from any attempt to grasp it. The hood covers his face in shadow, except for his eyes, which glow like a pair of green headlights from within the darkness.
This isn’t what Arturo signed up for. Desperate for money, lured by the promise of fortune, he agreed to join Señor León’s gang under what he now understands to be false pretenses. He tugs at the reins, turning to flee for his life, when a friendly bullet strikes down his borrowed horse, the four hundred kilogram animal falling on top of him and crushing his legs. The world inverts, the battle suddenly above him while the spray of dirt and the hammering of hoofbeats are happening all around his head.
Pinned to the ground, heart pounding in his ears, Arturo stifles a cry of pain and turns his face into the dirt. His only hope is to play dead, and pray that El Espadachín overlooks him. High above the valley, the mountains glitter with veins of emerald, rich beyond any rock formation occurring in nature, a treacherous mirage to tempt men to their doom.
Señor León’s boasted knowledge of the Encanto and its magical inhabitants has turned out to be little more than bluster. The magic is real alright, but it’s no El Dorado they’ve discovered between these glittering peaks; Instead, choking on fumes beneath his dead horse as the men around him burst with blood like fattened mosquitos, Arturo feels certain that Señor León has led them into the mouth of Hell itself.
The smoke clears, the corpses still, riderless horses galloping back through the mountains, and Arturo realizes with a lurch of dread that he is alone with El Espadachín. Lying frozen, straining not to give himself away by rustling the grass with his breath, he listens to the crunch of footsteps drawing nearer. The back of his neck is beading with cold sweat, which he can only hope will be mistaken for dew. He bites the inside of his cheek, desperate to stifle any reaction as the hooded shadow falls across him, but it’s no use. El Espadachín knows he’s faking.
The silhouette wipes its dripping knife on a cloth and sheathes the weapon at its hip, causing Arturo’s heart to sink. At least, if the blade had felled him in battle, it would have been quick: A jab to the throat, and it all fades to black. Instead, he finds himself trapped, like an insect beneath a glass, waiting for his limbs to be plucked from him one by one.
The footsteps stop, centimeters from his back, the green cloak wafting above him in the cool breeze, and he twists at the waist, thrashing with useless panic. A long finger reaches to prod his shoulder and his fear explodes into abject sobbing.
“Please don’t kill me!” he cries, covering his face with his hands. “I, I have a wife! And she’s pregnant! With twins!”
But it’s too late. Even if he lives, he realizes, even if he manages to claw his way out from under the horse, his legs are broken. He’ll starve to death out here, alone and far from any town, surrounded by the rotting corpses of his fellow recruits. Resigned to his fate, Arturo closes his eyes and prays for Allah to receive his soul.
But death is not forthcoming, much to his dismay. It seems El Espadachín has decided to draw things out.
“You don’t have a wife.” The dark wizard snorts at his thin sob story. “At least, not yet.”
Arturo peaks from between his fingers at the emerald shape bent over him, backlit by the rising sun. The voice issuing from beneath the hood is startlingly incongruous, and when it’s withdrawn to reveal the face of a man, framed with curly black hair, Arturo is thrown for a loop yet again. Glowing green eyes notwithstanding, this is not at all what he expected El Espadachín to look like. Devilry, he is quick to remind himself, is apt to take on a deceptive form.
“Relax,” says the wizard. His eyes stop glowing, fading to a more plausibly human, though still striking, green. “I’m not going to kill you.”
“Why, why not?” Arturo manages.
El Espadachín gestures this way and that with an indignant little stutter. “Well, I mean. Killing you while you’re on the ground, pinned under a horse, would be pretty gratuitous. Don’t you think?”
Arturo doesn’t have it in him to disagree. No longer bracing for immediate death, he can only clench his fists and whimper in pain.
El Espadachín sighs, dragging a hand through his hair. “Alright, alright,” he says. “Come here.”
Arturo stiffens as he is hooked under the arms and cries out in agony as he is yanked backward, putting new strain on his crushed legs.
“Sorry!” The wizard winces. “Sorry, sorry,” he repeats as he struggles to pull Arturo out from under the dead horse. “It’ll be better in a minute, just. Just bear with me.” He pants with effort, bracing his sandaled foot against the horse’s back.
Pushing his hands against the ground, Arturo lends what’s left of his own strength to the effort of freeing his legs. Between the two of them, they manage to shimmy him out, and he collapses back into the dirt. At some point, he must have wet himself in fear without realizing it, because the front of his trousers is damp with piss.
“Here.” El Espadachín reaches into his cloak and produces a small parcel of folded napkins. “Eat this.”
Arturo watches in disbelief as the terrifying figure, who he just saw slaughter his entire gang, offers him what looks like a little chocolate cookie.
“It will heal your legs,” El Espadachín insists, pushing it into his mouth.
Too frightened to refuse, Arturo accepts the wafer, chewing and swallowing with numb precision. As soon as the food hits his stomach, a strange warmth spreads down his legs to pool in the soles of his feet. He can feel the bones fusing, the flesh repairing, the pain lifting like a cloud, until all at once he finds himself sitting up in the grass, fully healed. He flexes his toes and brings a stupefied hand to his chest, wondering if he’s just made a deal with the Devil.
When he turns to look up at El Espadachín, the wizard has drawn his cape across the bottom half of his face with one hand, while he makes a wiggly gesture with the other.
“Listen well, Arturo Mohamed Nasser,” he intones, “for I have peered into your future!”
“Wait, how do you know my name?” Arturo asks.
Dropping the hem of his cape, El Espadachín rolls his eyes. “I’m magical, remember? Try to keep up.”
“Oh. Right.” Arturo stands, on legs that shake, despite their miraculous healing, and is surprised to find that El Espadachín is a little bit shorter than he is.
Face to face, the man is not what he would call intimidating. His brilliant green eyes are large and expressive, his prominent nose and nervous hands somewhat detracting from what is an otherwise bookishly handsome appearance. His age is difficult to estimate, looking plausibly anywhere between thirty and fifty years old, and there is a certain uncanny quality to him, an inner glow that marks him as other than an ordinary human being. And yet, his manner seems impossibly gentle and unassuming for someone whose shirt is still splattered with the blood of his vanquished enemies.
He rubs the inside of his elbow, noticing when Arturo’s gaze falls upon the prone body of Señor León, whose slack jawed face has already drained to a greenish white. “Sorry about all this, uh, unpleasantness.” He shifts from one foot to the other, rubbing the back of his neck. “I know it’s pretty gruesome,” he stammers, indicating the severed throats. “A lot of blood, eh. But you know, I, I, I do it that way because it’s quick. So hopefully they don’t, you know, suffer too much.”
Arturo's mouth feels sticky and dry. Maybe he should be apologizing for misjudging this man, or djinn, or whatever he is, who after all, is only defending his home.
El Espadachín bows his head, his voice growing painfully soft. “I guess he was probably a friend of yours,” he says. “I, I’m so sorry.”
“No. Not really,” says Arturo, dazed. “In fact, you’re probably a lot more honorable than he was. I don’t think he would have spared me, if I were his enemy.”
“Ehehe, well.” Still clutching the inside of his arm, El Espadachín gives a nervous smile. Then, as if remembering to stay in character, he makes a sweeping gesture with the corner of his cape. “As I was saying: Your future!” he exclaims.
Arturo stands straight as a pencil, the evidence of his mortal terror still cooling on the front of his pants. Has the quick and devious Espadachín healed his broken legs, only to torment him with a cursed fate?
“Go to Panama City.” The wizard reaches again into his pocket for a paper and pencil and begins to scribble something down. “There, you will meet a Colonel Victor Ramos de Santos y Castillas. He will give you a job in his workshop refurbishing radios.”
“I, what?” Arturo blinks at the paper being crumpled into his hand, his brain tripping over the surreality of the situation. “A Colonel who?”
“Well.” El Espadachín has a light, chatty laugh. “He’s not a real colonel, it’s just an affectation. See, he’s a bit of an eccentric, pretends to have fought in the War.” He waves the matter away. “It’s not important. Just go to that address.”
Arturo looks from the paper to Señor León’s vacant eyes and severed throat.
El Espadachín brushes dirt from the front of his jacket and gives him a brisk, avuncular pat on the shoulder.
“There is another path for you,” he says. “You are not doomed to a life of crime. Work hard, keep your head down, and one day, your future wife Josefina is going to walk through the door of that shop, holding her broken radio, and you’re going to look back on this conversation and think: ‘Wow, I’m so glad I listened to that creepy fortune teller guy.’”
Arturo stands there, dumbstruck, wind rustling the paper in his outstretched hand.
“Well?” El Espadachín makes a shooing gesture with both hands. “What are you waiting for?” He points beyond the emerald mountains. “Go, Arturo Mohamed Nasser! Fulfill your destiny!”
With a slow nod, Arturo slides the folded paper into his pocket, his eyes never leaving the wizard’s face. Then, something in him snaps, and he turns and runs as fast as he can through the mountain pass, as long and as far as he can while he has the breath in him, never once looking back, until he can almost convince himself it was all just a dream.