Help me identify the title of this story

[AniThyng]

Ok, google has failed me here.

I'm looking for the title of novel whose premise is that it is written as a straight up science fiction space opera type adventure, but then the zinger at the end is the revelation that everything was actually an account of a spanish conquest of south america and that the protaganist is in fact an historical conquisidor, just that the style and words were used to suggest the image of space ships and alien invasions, e.g. "power rock" for gold, the wooden ships of the spanish are described in such a way that you assume they are some sort of solar wind powered vessels, etc..

Can anyone help?

[Lord of the Abyss]

I can't recall the title. I do recall that the term "power guns" was used for their weapons, and the reveal was literally in the last sentence of the story; something like "And then Hernando Cortez, conqueror of Mexico, died." I think it may have been a short story not a novel though. It was a long time ago.

[AniThyng]

It's incredibly frustrating, I can't believe the keywords "gold" "science fiction" "ships" "power" and "cortez" (it might have been pizarro, i can't be sure) just don't give me even a single lead in google. But I'm glad you've supplied proof I didn't hallucinate the whole story.

[Slacker]

It is definitely a short story/novella. I remember reading it in Omni or Asimov's years and years ago.

[Oskuro]

Reminds me a bit of the plot from The Fountain, but it has no relation.

[AniThyng]

Well fuck me, I stumbled upon it (again) at last - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despoilers ... den_Empire . The hilarious thing was I was reading all about the Lord Darcy novels a while back and skipped over this entry for the author. So yeah, it was Pizarro, and the last line was "And thus died Francisco Pizarro, the Conqueror of Peru. ".

[Emerson33260]

Interested readers may download the story free in its entirety, along with some nice Kelly Freas illustrations in some of the formats, here...

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/24091