Werewolves at Tirad Pass

The Battle of Tirad Pass took place on Dec. 2, 1899, when 23-year-old Brigadier General Gregorio del Pilar and about 60 soldiers of the Philippine revolutionary army made their last stand in Candon, Ilocos Sur against 500 soldiers of the US Army. This was part of the Philippine-American War, and the Philippines’ defenders were not given any quarter to recover from the war for independence from Spain when the Philippine-American War broke out. This story is a very fictionalized account of what went down on that fateful day, as told from the eyes of a real journalist, whom I worked with for over a decade.

I was on my trek through Tirad Pass in Candon, Ilocos Sur, the site of Katipunan Brigadier General Gregorio del Pilar’s final stand. I felt my heart begin to pump wildly, as an angina-driven heart must in the thin air of the mountains. I’ve walked too damned much in this terrain where flat surfaces are few and far between and, if my heart hadn’t hit me first, my feet would have.

So I sat on a conveniently-placed rock — a piece of sandstone that is flat on top and smoothed by the ages. I must catch my breath. Then I caught a slight fluttering at the base of my makeshift seat, something soft touching the skin exposed by a hiked-up pants leg and my sock as I plant my behind on a convenient shelf of the sandstone rock warm from the sun.

My DSLR camera hangs heavy around my neck and I lift it to shoot a few photos from my vantage point. All the better to look busy while I catch my breath. Big, tough journo image, and all that jazz.

It does a body good to rest, or so this journalist has been told many, many times over the last quarter century. I never took their advice and so, here I am at this pass, almost passed out from walking the trail of our very own Thermopylae where 60 brave Indios laid down their lives for an incipient country.

Call it experiential journalism at its most ill-advised, but I felt the strongest push to come here, perhaps to touch the once-bloodstained stones lining this pass, and find some fresh new pathos for my story. So, okay, I’m 50-whatever and have a heart condition.

What can I say? I like pushing my body and, if someday it kills me, I can at least tell the guardian at the pearly gates that I lived. Boy, how I lived. Bodily frailty be damned. I am here to look upon an epic battle-ground over a century and a half later and, if I can, find a story yet untold.

Poet Ruel de Vera has his version of the Battle of Tirad Pass, a supposed letter by del Pilar to President Emilio Aguinaldo speaking of how hard it is to choose the men who would die in defense of this new country still so bloody from its birthing. At that time, this archipelago of coral and volcanic islands was caught in colonial transition from one conquering set of boots to another and not recognized as a sovereign land.

But I digress. My thoughts focus back on that fluttering at the base of my seat of sandstone as curiosity moves me. I stand up and crouch low to see what it is and feel about a bit to catch it in my fingers, this scrap of tattered fabric and brittle lace that may once have been a silk handkerchief, perhaps a scrap of that fabled hanky tucked into del Pilar’s breast pocket by a lady-love of his.

Who knows? Ah, but curiosity wins over caution in the battle for my heart and mind, and so I reach down into this dark crevice beneath the sun-warmed stone.

I tug a bit, and the fabric tears easily. An unspent bullet made for an old rifle — could it even be munition for a Mauser? — rolls out from under the rock. Hmmmm. Curious thing, this bullet — it glints with thin streaks of silver blotted out by intense black lines and cloudy gray whorls, very like silver, or, rather, tarnished silver. Could it be from that fateful day when del Pilar raised his saber to begin the battle between Filipino and American forces at this very pass?

Unlikely, my logical mind tells me. But who really knows? This trail where so much patriotic blood soaked the earth over a century ago is rarely used and even less remembered.

Looking about me, I pocket the bullet without thinking about what comes next, feeling like a thief. I justify my act of petty theft by telling myself the bullet belongs to no one — or it didn’t until I took hold of it. Possession, after all, is nine-tenths of the law. I cannot shake the feeling that I’ve just pocketed an undocumented bit of my history, and that feeling is both thrill and dread.

The mountain air is thin, cold, nipping at my heart’s core like a rabid chihuahua. It is time to go home to that inn I’m booked at, eat dinengdeng and enjoy the evening. Tomorrow is the day to go over the more oft-trod tourist route, the historical district where the somber bahay sa bato stand against the passing of time in neat rows lining cobblestone streets.

I am going to take a calesa ride there instead of walking because I hate walking. Yes, yes, the air here at this pass is decidedly unfriendly and it is time to go while there is still a faint wash of late afternoon light to steer my feet by.

***

Back at the Mountain Air Bed and Breakfast, Joel Pablo Salud lays his head on his pillow and holds the bullet he had picked up at Tirad Pass to the light. It glints softly and he turns it over and around, looking at all its ridges and contours, deciding that, yes, it had been made for a Mauser rifle — the same kind of rifle Aguinaldo had purchased in Hong Kong for the revolution. It had a dent, probably from the rock, and some pockmarks where corrosion may have set in, but no other markings to indicate it had been discharged from a weapon.

Graven into the butt of the bullet, where the rifle’s firing pin would strike, was a numeric inscription carved into the metal: 98.25.

Knotting his forehead until a unibrow formed, Joel frowned and pondered over that numeric sequence. Isn’t that the intaglio hammered by silversmiths into their pieces to indicate the purity of the silver? He tests the weight of the bullet and it is heavier than most. Silver is a heavy kind of metal, but he would need to see an expert about this bullet, he decided.

Again he pushes away the notion that this bullet had come from del Pilar’s last stand. Impossible notion, he told himself, shaking his head and admonishing his fanciful thoughts to just know their place. Why, if ever, would they use expensive silver for Mauser bullets? Even in the Philippines, with its gold and silver mines in the Cordilleras, silver isn’t cheap. It never was.

Sleep comes slowly, stealing over Joel in degrees of lightness, smoothing his brow and his breathing, easing the syncopation of his enlarged heart to a more soothing rhythm. Without being aware of it, Joel sighs a wistful sigh as if even his psyche wants the story that the bullet seems to be an omen of.

Ah, the story I could tell if fact intersected with my mind’s fiction this well. With a sigh, Joel allows sleep to take him to morning’s light.

***

Gregorio del Pilar wakes into the daily battle of light and dark, the dawn’s cold dew touching what his banig and blanket did not cover. The encampment where he and his men settled for the night is quiet, the ashes of campfires cold and gray as his heart.

Goyo sits up to watch the horizon come to light through the vee of the valley as the camp begins to wake and the sounds of bayonets being honed and cannons being hauled into position begin to drown out the cock-crows in the distance.

I find myself watching a red dawn, an omen rising like an ominous tide peeping forth from the low-hanging clouds shrouding our pass in gray mists. My heart beats a march in my chest as I breathe in the chill of what feels like my last morning on earth.

The cold seeps into my locket and presses a frigid intaglio of gold filigree against my sternum. At least I have a keepsake from Dolores with me now, along with her handkerchief in my pocket. I look over my shoulder toward the second trench, our last line of defense, with my paltry unit of sixty men, skittish as their horses. It is so strange that I can still feel her lips on mine as I smile grimly toward my soldiers.

I am 24, a “boy general,” my title uttered in disdain more often than not. I am not some untried youth, and many others much younger have spilt blood for this nation we seek to bring to life. When needs are as pressing as this, even youth gives way to battle-ready toughness. I have the energy and speed men twice my age lack. And if that doesn’t compensate for my lack of experience, as my elders and betters like to call it, then that’s just too bad, because I am all they have, their last line of defense. Maybe someday they’ll respect at least that.

Boy? Many of the enemy would dispute that. Many of the women I have wooed would, too. But there is only one female who will, in the end, have me. Inang Bayan will hold me forever, for I am hers first and last of all. She was my cradle and she will be my grave.

For her, and only for her, I call on all that makes me a man. For her, and only her, will I push past my own youthful limits, regretting nothing, seeking victory or death. But I won’t lie to myself. Death is the likeliest outcome and the blood of many men will stain my hands ere the day is out.

Today, my victory will not be defined by a rout of the enemy. Today, my victory lies in the escape of El Presidente from the Americans who would kill him and ensure that my country is stillborn. My life is forfeit 23 days from Christmas, the best gift I can give her in these straitened times. The only gift I have left to give, actually.

I’ve dispatched my letter to President Aguinaldo, my heart heavy with grief over what is to come, what must be so that he can raise a nation. It is not a human sacrifice I take lightly, this offering of lives and blood. It does not even matter if I like or respect the man who is our President. I leave my motherland in his hands and pray he has the wisdom of age that I probably don’t — and quite possibly never will.

It is, in the end, the farewell to a personal future so that others may have what I deny myself and my men. Though not directly of my blood, though they come not from my loins, the children of this nation of our dreams will carry our fire to immortality.

It is my job to make sure the nation survives its birthing. It will be their job to make it great. I wonder which of us has the heavier burden, for, after this day, my problems will be over. Theirs will have just begun.

So I close my eyes and savor the sound of my native Ilocano one last time, a poem, perhaps, chanted by the men behind me. Maybe it is a whispered song of prayer to whatever Gods will listen, if they listen at all. We shall hear only the reports of guns and the clangor of bullets, bayonets and sabers soon enough.

How unusual it is that, at a time when I should be calling on Jesus and the saints I find myself recalling the old gods I’d never known. How strange that I’ve cleared this camp of all bamboo out of concern for the men under my command who have never been Christian but are as Filipino as I am, though they may not even be human. Will the old gods curse me for taking on the people they have cursed? But I know that if this battle turns in favor of the enemy, that the most savage of the people who live in this land must also fight.

El Presidente would surely laugh at me if I told him I’d selected men believed to be Aswang to join this army of dead men walking, if only to give myself even the smallest advantage of winning. Because if they do not die and we lose, then these Aswang will ensure that the enemy does not go unpunished.

Uttering a wordless prayer to whatever deities may be listening, Goyo ends his introspection and stands to check if his men are ready for battle, speaking a bit with each one before moving on to inspect his horse and what spare accoutrements of war they bring to the field: The stone barricades and trenches that cut a zigzag swath up the pass he’d sworn to defend at all costs.

***

Joel awakes from dreams that speak of darkness and fearsome creatures, beings not human — or perhaps not fully human. The bullet he’d been contemplating before he slept sits on the nightstand by his bed in the dark of the witching hour.

Without bidding, the dreams come back to him with startling recall: I’m walking through a camp full of Filipinos lying on woven palm leaf mats. They’re wrapped tight in rough blankets and some of them are talking in their sleep, as if to reassure mothers or sisters that they will be fine. The campfires are out and the embers have died to ash.

I turn to my right as a small noise calls my attention to the padding of booted feet walking with haste and purpose through the camp. A man is walking between the rows of sleeping men, a sack upon his shoulder giving out a muffled clinking as he pauses at the first man in the line, picking up a little pouch and replacing it with another from his sack. He repeats this process across the line and moves on to the next row.

I wonder what is in the sack so I follow the man, who seems taller than most and stockier than the rest. He has the build of a blacksmith — or at least that’s what my fanciful imagination says. His skin is dark, perhaps from constant exposure to the sun, and his eyes have that flat blackness that is just not natural in a person. I wonder what he is about?

The man walks to the tall stand of banana plants off to the side of the camp, the one from which these sleeping soldiers had pulled some saba bananas for their merienda earlier in the day. There, between two stout banana plants, is a slim woman with her abundance of dark curls left unbound down her back. She is dressed in a simple baro’t saya, her gingham skirts rustling softly as she moves forward to meet the man.

“It is done,” the man says in low tones, his voice grim.

“Then my Goyo will be safe?” The woman’s question seemed to bore into the man, stop his forward momentum with just its softness.

“It is done,” the man says again. “As for your Goyo being safe, that is entirely up to him, Dolores.”

The man reaches a clasped hand out to Dolores and she reaches out a hand of her own, open, palm up, under it. The man drops a small metal object into it and she withdraws her now-clasped hand.

“That is what I put in the pouches I swapped,” the man says, his voice flat and bland. “I can only hope that will help our cause, because Goyo would not listen to me when I spoke of this to him before he made that foolish decision to try and hold this pass.”

The woman nodded, that simple gesture full of worry and grief, and she wrapped the small piece of metal she’d been given in a handkerchief of fine silk and lace.

That dream was nothing compared to the one that came after it, though, the one where he’d seen the camp of the pursuing American troops below the fortified trail.

Del Pilar may have counted on the advantage the high, pointed peak above Tirad Pass afforded him and his men, but it wasn’t nearly enough, as history would show.

The Texans had made a much more comfortable camp beneath the clear stars of the December night, with tents and padded bedrolls, their supplies sufficient where the natives’ were wanting.

This camp is quiet, but not grim. In fact, the Texans seem to be in good spirits as a full yellow moon plays peekaboo with the clouds. The soldiers are talking quietly in small groups as their officers enter the command tent where an Igorot tribesman by the name of Januario Galut awaits.

The soldiers shed their uniforms, to a man, and drift into the small copses of trees dotting the camp. The moonlight streaks over their pale skins and those skins break down the midlines of their backs as they hunch down to fall on hands and knees, thick canine fur sprouting out to replace bare skin.

The Texans are werewolves and Januario Galut is walked out of the command tent to witness their change.

“Now, Mr. Galut, you have a choice: Take us through a safe pass or I can hand you over to these here wolves,” one officer says, his deep drawl broad and boastful. “You can choose your fate.”

With that, the officer takes Januario’s native vest, his only defence against the sharp bite of December cold this high up in the mountains, and tosses it to a group of werewolves, who sniff it and pass it on to the next group — and so on until it came back to the hands of the officers surrounding a very visibly frightened Januario.

“Here you go,” the officer on Januario’s right says, his accent a bit less broad than the other officer who’d spoken earlier. “They all know what you smell like now. They’ll be able to track you without seeing you. They’ll also be able to find you if you don’t do as you’re told. Your tribe is nothing but a light snack to them.”

The dreams fade slowly, leaving Joel alone in the morning mist as he walks out onto the small balcony of his room to set up his laptop, since falling asleep again is unlikely.

Joel checks his phone for messages, taking a gander at the time while he’s at it: 4:30 in the morning. Not a bad start for getting some inroads done on his Editor’s Note before setting out in search of coffee and breakfast, then.

***

Goyo checks his pocket watch as he secures saber to sword belt: The watch face reads 6:00. It is time to mount his horse and lie in wait for their foes. His men are taking up their positions, their Mauser rifles already loaded with ammunition.

Americans advance up the trail, their pale uniforms stark against the dark rock and lush greenery. Goyo smirks as he raises his saber high, ready to give the signal for his brave men to open fire. He knows they have already taken aim and are sighting their targets.

His saber sweeps down in a flash of steel and sunlight and the silence of the valley is ruptured by gunfire. The Americans in the kill zone fall one after the other, looks of shock and anger on their faces.

In the valley below, the Americans pepper the air with screams and curses. “Silver! Those sons of bitches are using silver bullets,” one blond man screams as a bullet tears into his arm. “It burns!”

There is no shelter in this kill zone: It is all dirt and rock wall that make for perfect bullet ricochets. Goyo has chosen his battlefield well and the young general mentally pats himself on the back with all the hubris of his years.

“Fuego!” Goyo shouts, the exuberance and battle-lust in his voice ringing across the valley as he sights another enemy and squeezes off another shot. “Keep firing!”

The Americans take what shelter they can from the terrain, some falling flat against the ground and others crouching by rocks and boulders on the path. They are the lucky ones in the valley that has become a slaughterhouse run red with their blood.

As this all plays out, the Americans’ alternative plans go into motion: The Texans’ sharpshooters are sent up to a hill to retaliate, shaving down Tirad Pass’s defenders one bullet at a time. The Filipinos begin shooting now at both the hill and valley, their fire divided.

The Americans call in Januario Galut and the Igorot tribesman silently leads a select set of saber-wielding soldiers whom their officers held back from the frontal assault down a narrow, winding pass to the rear of Del Pilar’s men. The mission is now to outflank the stubbornly suicidal Filipinos who have kept up their volleys of cannon and rifle fire. Until they do, Tirad Pass will not be taken.

For an eternity, it seems, for five hours could stretch into infinity when battle is this pitched, the volleys of bullets and cannonballs rock Tirad Pass.

As the sharpshooters from Texas keep up their punishing fusillades, Januario and the Americans he leads creep slowly up on the rearguard of Goyo’s men and, with howls and battle cries, the Americans fall upon the defenders of Tirad Pass, their sabers falling sharply and decisively.

As the melee begins, Goyo stands and raises his chin, trying to make out where the roars and battle-cries are coming from. Beside him, his adjutant yells a warning: “Get down!”

Too late. A Texan sharpshooter finds his shot and takes it: Gregorio Del Pilar falls to the ground, his general’s uniform overtaken by a spreading stain of blood spilling from his neck.

By the time the battle is over, all the pass’ defenders lie dead. Januario covers his eyes in grief and shame, unable to speak his apologies as the victors strip the slain of all they own, including their dignity, for the Filipinos are left naked as the day they were born, their wounds exposed to flies and the harsh cold of the mid-morning air.

On the American side, 30 soliders are dead and nine more walk wounded, mostly those who had attempted to assay the valley Goyo had sculpted into the perfect kill zone.

Januario asks to stay behind to tend the dead and the Americans let him. One small tribesman, after all, is no threat to werewolves.

The Igorot lets out a series of strange wails, beating his breast and dancing about madly among the corpses. He raises his hands to the heavens and keeps up his godawful racket long after the Americans had quit the field of battle, satisfied that they’d kept Emilio Aguinaldo from linking forces with the elite Tinio Brigade.

As darkness begins to claim Tirad Pass, Januario’s keening ebbs to low chants, and several bodies left in pools of their own blood begin to stir, the seemingly dead coming back to life.

Januario squats before them, his hands held up in supplication as he speaks to them in halting Tagalog: “I could not stop them from forcing me to show them how to attack you from behind. But I did see you were Aswang and I did not tell them that only charred bamboo stakes would kill you.”

The red eyes of the revived Aswang, a full half of Tirad Pass’s defenders, dot the early evening darkness like feral stars. The Aswang snarl their pain as their wounds begin closing and bullets pop out of the wounds they’d wrought.

“Get out of here before we decide to eat your liver,” Goyo’s adjutant tells Januario. “We will track these sons of dogs down and, to a man, kill them. Then we will eat them with relish.”

***

Mid-morning comes quickly and Joel finds himself at a small eatery at the wet market — the best place to go for native cuisine if you want to try the local fare.

Time for a lunch of bagnet and longanisang Vigan, with all those fresh katuray flowers in a salad, Joel decides. Then perhaps I can review all those photos I took and check what the local museums and historical societies can offer by way of data for the stories I have planned.

The bullet in his pocket makes for a weighty reminder amid his handful of coin, its low metallic clink a counterpoint to the high jingling of lighter metals.

He sits down to wait for his order when a small black cat comes strutting by his bench, cool as you please, and sits on its hindquarters beside him, washing itself.

The cat rakes Joel over with its light amber eyes, sniffs the air and mewls at him, as if addressing him.

“Yeah, cat, what do you want?” Joel’s question is par for the course. He has a clowder of cats back home in Manila and he’s no stranger to the meows of felines. “My food isn’t here yet, so you’ll have to wait just like I do.”

The cat mewls again and walks forward, rubbing its head against his leg. Joel reaches down to give the feline a bit of scratching behind one ear, something all cats enjoy. The cat purrs and, after a few moments, pulls away, turns around and jumps on the bench across him.

Then the cat becomes a woman dressed in a red gingham baro’t saya, the kind of garb that is not at all strange in the historical district of Vigan, but is definitely out of place in this wet market where everyone else is dressed in shorts, t-shirts, singlets and jeans.

Joel puts a hand over his heart, trying to assure himself he hasn’t had a heart attack yet. He looks over the woman again and blinks once, twice, thrice — just to ensure that he did, indeed, see a cat turn into this woman sitting so demurely before him.

“Good morning, Joel,” the woman says softly, her voice a warm sursurrus just like the cat’s meow. Her black hair cascades down her shoulders and back in a glossy fall of curls as she leans forward and winks one amber eye at Joel. “No you aren’t seeing things. My name is Dolores and I have come to tell you a story.”