The Bandits' Lair

The sun has already settled in the morning when Chuy and two servants walk towards the stone house to deliver the coffee pot and the tray of suman, puto and bibinca to Teniente Leon's receiving room.

The captain interim is seated on a high chair opposite a hard wood table. On his right sits Fray Luciano who stayed for the night after the dinner. Teniente Leon believed him to have had too much wine and feels it was safer for the friar to just spend the night at one of the spare rooms in the stone house. Another civil guard has his back curving on the table opposite them.

Silently, Chuy enters the room without anyone on the table bothering to glance at him. He gestures for the maids to settle the trays on the side table and ask them to quickly leave afterwards. The old man turns his back on the three gentlemen as he prepares to pour coffee into the cups as he quietly listens;

"These are the things that we found at the bandits lair after it has been raided," the civil guard starts

He lays a bundled cloth on the table and unloads its contents

"They resided near a cave on the north. Upon our arrival at the place, we were only able to find ashes of their small village. On the site there were carcasses of carabaos and bones of chickens which they might have fed off from. The whole place was almost charred. They seemed to have known that we were coming and had fled altogether before we arrived, burning their village down to erase their traces"

After he finishes unloading the cloth, the friar and the lieutenant see five pieces of booklets inside it; three of them have been burned to the sides. The friar picks one up and inspects it carefully. The booklet has a hole on each side on its top with fiber strings attached to them. The friar struggles to decipher what is written on the booklet since most of its pages were badly burned. Although there are still two unburned booklets, it is still a challenge to read through them since the contents were written in badlit, the region's ancient form of writing.

"Padre, it has been believed that these booklets contain their orations," Teniente Leon interrupts, "they believed these booklets are their amulets. They would wear them around their neck as necklaces; or around their waists as belts or their wrists as bracelets. The bandits have penchants for red trousers for men and red cloth hanging on the side skirts for women. The civil guards who had an encounter with them referred to them as those who wore red "

"These natives are armed with long blade bolos and are rabid fighters. One report had it that the civil guards in the nearby town who encountered them were both frightened and amused with how these natives fought them. They courageously face their rifles as if believing themselves to be shielded from its bullets only to be lead to their deaths," the civil guard adds

"What was mostly intriguing was of a report of an encounter near the Lamunan river where the civil guards claim that these bandits march toward them waving a white flag. The civil guards thought of this gesture as the bandits sign of surrender, the civil guards let their rifles down only to be surprised by their attacks. The natives appeared to have not known what a white flag means in a war," Teniente Leon claims as he carefully blows the heat off his cup of coffee and sips from it after.

Chuy sways across the room distributing the cups of coffee at the hard wood table to the friar and the civil guard.

"Is that a bible?" Fray Luciano squints as he gestures to the civil guard to hand him a burned book that lays on the table as part of the seized belongings of the bandits

As the civil guard hands him the burned book, the friar gasps for air when he starts to turn its pages.

"For years there had been resistance leading to revolts against the government and all these revolts revolve around the natives trying to revive their old religion," the friar pauses to sip from his cup of coffee and puffs a tobacco, "but this?," he pauses to blow out the smoke, "I have not heard of any resistance group holding the Holy Bible with them,"

"But look at it being badly burned. I supposed they intended to burn it as a sign of disobedience to the church, Padre" says Teniente Leon

The friar looks over to the unbundled cloth and slowly pulls it over to him

"You see, this bible was burned along with these booklets. From what I know about the reason why they burned them was to hide any of their traces, is that right?," he pauses to ask confirmation from the civil guard who nods in agreement,

"If reports are to be believed that these bandits have high regard to these prayer booklets that are also claimed to contain their oration against our rifles; then I would assume that they may have had the same high regard to the Holy Bible," Fray Luciano puffs his tobacco longer, "it just does not add up, Teniente, their booklets are written in their ancient texts and it is kept along with our bible. If my intuition is to be believed then we might be facing with a pact who are not necessarily after reviving their old religion, but to fuse it with ours!"

Teniente Leon stares at the friar then glances at the civil guard as if waiting for him to respond;

"Anything, Jaime?"

The civil guard gently shakes his head in response along with a heavy sigh while Fray Luciano continues to turn the pages of the burned bible.

"When the first priests stepped in to this land, the natives were in communion with their nature, they treated literally everything around them as alive and breathing. They were worshipping the stones next to them, the sun which they believed gave them life. They also talked to the wind, to the trees and to the animals as if they were talking to other people. They had high regards to the rivers and the ocean. They had horrible rituals and beliefs. These natives worshipped a number of deities who they believed to be the guardians of nature whom they talked to summon good harvests, to ward off pestilence and drought in exchange of bloody sacrifices," the fray pauses turning the pages and takes air in, "it took us several years to lead these natives against their pagan nature and we were successful. But this new threat is unique on its own"

Teniente Leon and Jaime silently stare at the friar as he sips on his cup. They remain silent for few minutes when Chuy leaves the receiving room.