They were dressed as porters but had no packs. Had they been at rest, that would be expected, but these men were coming down the road toward us at a quick pace. A group of porters on the road without packs was unlikely. Few porters dropped off a load without picking up another.
The second thing that caught my eye was that the lead man had a sheathed short sword and the others had spears. None had shields, because more than anything else, shields would have identified them as warriors.
I looked to my porters to tell them to get in position to fight, but they were already hurrying away, on the run down the road to the large encampment area. Each of them carried a stick to fight off thieves and wild animals, but they had had the same reaction to the oncoming men that I had: The advancing men were warriors, out for a kill.
“Six Sky!” I yelled. “Under attack!”
My companion was nowhere in sight.
I didn’t dare run for fear I’d get a spear in my back. With four spears cast, at least one was likely to find its way between my shoulder blades.
The commander would be the one with the sword, and he was outpacing the others, eager to get the credit for my death.
I drew my obsidian short sword, but immediately switched it to my left hand and drew out a small wood handle with a stone tied to it. It was a hammerstone, a tool I had spent half my life using to pound a chisel. During breaks from works and rare time off, the men of the village would compete at throwing the stone tools.
I waited until the charging man was nearly to me before I let it go. He saw me getting into position to throw. He held up both arms, forearms forward, and I realized that under his clothes he had hard wood braces strapped to his forearms that would act like a shield to stop or ward off a blow.
I let the hammerstone go with all my might when he was almost atop me, not aiming for his head but for his knee. It hit his knee, pulverizing it, I’m sure. He screamed, and I sidestepped as he fell forward.
I sidestepped again, dodging a spear cast, and caught the spear thrower with a slash across his chest as he came in with a dagger.
Three more came at me. I knew it was hopeless without Six Sky, but as I engaged the front man, an arrow suddenly hit the chest of the man behind him. Then the third man let out a scream as another arrow found his throat.
The spearman I struggled with saw something behind me I didn’t see and tried to break loose and run, and my sword blade caught him on his right side where his neck met his shoulder, biting deep into his flesh.
I swirled around to see who had joined the fight on my side and saw two archers: a very short, broad man, almost dwarflike, and a slender figure I took to be a woman, disappearing into the jungle.
I yelled to them, but they kept going.
The leader of the group was on the ground, screaming with pain from his broken knee. I started for him when Six Sky suddenly appeared and put his own spear into the man’s back.
We stood looking at each other; the man on the ground between us had stopped his screaming to take the time to die. The spearman who had caught an arrow in his chest was dying a little slower, but much more painfully, foaming at the mouth.
“I’m sorry, I was too far away when I heard your shout,” Six Sky said.
“I’m sorry, too. I was about to find out from him,” I gestured at the man on the ground, “who sent him.”
“No one sends these people. They’re bandits.”
“They’re no more bandits than we are. Look at the quality of his sword.”
Six Sky picked up the sword. It was a better weapon than his own.
“They’re warriors. Flint Shield obviously found out I would be on the road to Tulúm. Your twisted ankle permitted them to catch up with us.”
Six Sky dropped to his knees. “Forgive me, Pakal Jaguar. It is my fault. If I had watched my step—”
“It proved convenient for you to relieve yourself at the very time I was to be attacked.”
Six Sky suddenly lurched up at me with the sword he had picked up from the fallen attack leader. I was expecting the movement, but he moved faster than I thought he would, and the edge of the blade grazed my abdomen.
My own blade came around and sliced off Six Sky’s sword hand at the wrist. The stump sprayed blood on me as he waved it wildly as if he still gripped a sword.
He stopped waving the hand and stared stupidly, puzzled, at the bloody stump where his hand had been. He reached for the blade still in the severed hand with his left hand, and I chopped off his left hand at the wrist.
He stared up at me, his mouth agape, both hands gone.
“How much did Flint Shield pay you to lead me into a trap?” I asked.
He shook his head. “For pleasure,” he said. He pitched over and fell flat on the ground, facedown.
I understood what he meant. He was not present when the guards under his command ran from the jaguar attacking Lord Janaab, but the cowardliness of his men had doomed him. He knew it would be sooner than later when the High Lord replaced him as commander of the guards and offered his blood to the priests.
I gathered clothes to change into because mine were bloodied, though my own wound was little more than a scratch. I selected the best of weapons before I dragged the bodies into the bushes and hid the other weapons.
Now I offered his blood and the blood of the others to Chaac, asking him to send rain in return for the generous blood flowing in the clearing.
I also offered blood to thank Kukulkán, the mighty Feathered Serpent, for letting me win the battle . . . and pleaded with him to permit me to win the fights to come.
41
I walked away from the scene of carnage, slipping into the jungle to hide and sleep rather than joining the rest area for porters ahead, where I would have to answer their many questions.
I had many unanswered questions myself. Not who or why I was attacked, but the identity of the two archers who came to my rescue.
Removing the arrow from one of the dead spearmen, I carefully cleaned off the bloodied tip before I examined it. From the ugly way the man had died, I was certain the tip had contained a poison.
Not many archers used a deadly poison on their arrows, though the method was well known. Using a poisoned tip made it easier to kill a man or animal because merely a graze would kill. But the poisonous tips also posed a danger to the archer himself and to others around him who might be pricked by accident.
Assassins frequently relied on poisoned arrows.
If the men sent to attack me had had poisoned weapons, I wouldn’t have been surprised, but that the two who came to my aid used them as professional killers would, I found dismaying.
The woman for certain I had seen before—she was about the same size of the cloaked woman who left me the library message on the city wall, though I had not seen her face either time.
The man with his strange build would have stood out anywhere, so I doubted I had crossed his path before. He was fortunate that he was simply short and not a dwarf. Few dwarfs survive to become mature adults. Their features are so similar to that of many of our gods, they are sought after by the temples for sacrifice.
What their motives were for helping me, how they knew I would be attacked, and why they kept their presence and identities a secret was known only by the gods.
42
In the morning, I set out on the road, at a faster pace than before. My carriers were gone, probably on their way back to Mayapán. They would carry a tale of the attack, as would other travelers who found the bodies because of the stench.
I gave a message to a Mayapán-bound merchant to carry to Lord Janaab. My report to the High Lord of the attempt to murder me said little: We were attacked by Mayapán warriors, I survived, Six Sky did not.
I said nothing about Six Sky’s treachery for a good reason. I was certain that it was Flint Shield who sent the attackers and enlisted Six Sky to leave me alone when the ambush would be executed. Six Sky had neither the resources nor the guile to arrange an ambush by fi
ve well-armed warriors.
If I revealed the guard commander’s treachery, the assumption would be that he was responsible for the attack, leaving my enemy free to arrange another attack. I also didn’t dare name the War Lord’s son as being behind the attempt to kill me. But at least now, Flint Shield might hesitate to send more killers after me because my message made it clear that I was not attacked by roving bandits, but warriors from my own city.
As my only known enemy, he would be suspected of the attempt to murder me. In good times, killing me would cause him no more trouble than if he had stepped on an insect. Openly murdering the Jaguar Oracle in these bad times was not a good idea, which was why he attempted an attack far from the city.
The attack removed any doubts in my mind that Flint Sky had been rushing the ceremonial center gate to keep it open rather than to stop the attack. He didn’t go through an elaborate scheme to have me murdered when I was under the protection of both a High Lord and the king just to allay his anger over my affront. Silencing me was an even better reason.
I now knew more about a powerful enemy in Mayapán and a false friend who led me into an ambush. But the revelations had come at the price of more mystery as I continued to ponder the identity of the two who had come to my rescue with poisonous arrows.
They could not have happened upon the attack and decided to throw themselves into it. The woman had to be the same one who left me the message on the wall. Besides, no one in their right mind would have stepped in to assist a single man against well-armed attackers. Had it been a random act of rescue, they would have stayed to accept my thanks and a reward.
It was no coincidence. The two had repelled the attack expertly, as if they had expected it and had been waiting for it to happen.
Waiting for it to happen.
How could they know that Lord Janaab would send me to Tulúm? Or what Flint Shield planned? Perhaps even Six Sky’s treachery?
With so many complications, another thought nagged at me.
Was Flint Shield’s only motive for harming me the insult that I gave him at the city gate and his fear of my exposing his treachery? Taking offense at a commoner’s remark was the privilege of nobles, having them put to death was also a right they could usually exercise with impunity, but Flint Shield had been offended by me before the gate incident.
Thinking back about his actions at the temple, I was certain he had burst into the High Priestess’ private chamber because he knew I was there. He had seemed a little out of breath. A man who was as strong and in as good a physical shape as he was would not have gotten out of breath simply by going up the temple steps. It would have taken more effort than that.
Had Flint Shield become angry when he went to the temple and found a commoner in the High Priestess’ chamber?
Or had he been told I had entered the temple and rushed over there to confront me?
I now realized he had gone there because I had entered. The proof had been obvious, but I had ignored it: I went to the temple in the afternoon. Nobles did not go to the temple until dark, after the workday. His reason for being there that early had to be that he was told I was there.
Who told him was also apparent: Six Sky had been following me.
That meant there was a connection between Six Sky and the War Lord’s son before the incident at the gate.
I mulled that one over. It wasn’t probable that Flint Shield and Six Sky had a connection before my slaying of the jaguar humiliated Six Sky and made young warriors of noble descent jealous. Or was there a possible connection? Both Lord Janaab and the War Lord competed for the king’s ear. Had Six Sky been in the War Lord’s secret employment even before he fell out of favor when his men ran from the jaguar attack?
Regardless of whether Lord Janaab’s own guard commander came to be in Flint Shield’s camp before or after he fell from favor, something else about Six Sky became apparent: He also had arrived at the gate late during the invasion.
The night before I left for the gate, I had casually let Six Sky know that I would be leaving the palace earlier than usual. I deliberately did that because I knew he followed me each day, and I didn’t want him to report to Lord Janaab that I had sneaked out.
Eyo! My life had become complicated since I left the task of a simple stoneworker and became a hero.
PART VIII
43
Dr. Monica Cardiff studied the men as they filed into the conference room and seated themselves at the big oblong mahogany table. President Edward Raab strolled in, wearing a custom-tailored black Brioni suit, the kind made famous by Pierce Brosnan in his James Bond films. With his craggy good looks, easy manner, and ingratiating smile, he was the most popular American president in years, and one of her best students when he was an undergrad at Berkeley in her Catastrophic Studies Program.
The man following the president in the military uniform with four gold stars blazoning his shoulders was General Richard Hagberg. His nickname was Hurricane Hagberg, and the general did move, gesture, talk, and shout like a force of nature. With a stocky, heavy-shouldered build, he had a nose like a badly busted knuckle and a grin like a tiger’s smile. At first Cardiff had dismissed him as a fascist bastard and a demented moron, but then when Rita “Reets” Critchlow had been kidnapped by Apachureros in an attempt to steal the first of Quetzalcoatl’s prophetic codices, General Hagberg was the one who’d ordered the special ops team into Chiapas to rescue her—in violation of international law and jeopardizing his own career.
Rita was as good a friend as Cardiff would ever have, and Cardiff realized immediately she would owe the son of a bitch forever.
Not that she found his belligerent manner and loud language any less off-putting.
Dr. Cardiff thought of Bradford Chase, a big bear of a man, who almost never smiled, as General Hagberg with brains. Former Director of the CIA’s Directorate of Covert Operations, Chase was the man who had organized and run the black ops team that went into Chiapas, wiped out an entire cadre of Apachureros—the most powerful drug cartel in Central America—and saved Reets. He’d personally mounted that illegal operation to save her friend. Cardiff suspected she wouldn’t like his politics any more than she liked General Hagberg’s.
But now she owed him, too.
Monica Cardiff did not like owing people.
She rose and placed briefing papers on the table in front of the three men. The president’s Chief of Staff had warned her she had only fifteen minutes and that she was to stick to her report—nothing else, nothing extraneous. Nor did they seem any too eager to be here. Talking softly to themselves, they were clearly preoccupied with other business.
Nodding at her, they muttered their brusque, inane greetings and sat down.
Ignoring her briefing papers, they then took out the Defense Department memos from the previous meeting, placed them over her stack, and began perusing them.
Not a good sign.
The Chief of Staff had warned her to stick to “global threats,” but she could not restrain herself. “What’s happened to Coop and Reets?”
They had disappeared in the wilds of Mexico three months before with a small army of Apachureros hot on their trail. They had not been heard from since, and they all feared they’d been kidnapped or killed.
“If we had something, Cards, you know we’d tell you,” President Raab said.
The other two men lowered their heads and buried their faces in their Defense Department reports.
“We have to find them,” Dr. Cardiff said, “for the work if nothing else. The codices they sent us clearly state that we will suffer the same disasters that obliterated the Toltecs—the greatest of all the pre-Columbian cultures—one thousand years ago. They are not only on their way to discovering the nature of that threat, they believe they’ll find corroborating evidence that those cataclysms are almost upon us.”
The other men, utterly entranced in their Pentagon briefing papers, treated her as if she didn’t exist. Only President Raab looked her in the eye. ??
?Cards, I told you before that you would discuss them with me in private only, not at meetings.”
“Because we have a rat here, informing on them to the Mexican Mafia?”
“Monica.”
Christ, the president is calling me by my first name, not Dr. Cardiff or even Cards, the nickname Reets and Coop gave me.
A very bad sign.
“That’s what they said when they broke communications with us and went into hiding down there.”
The president continued his mute stare. The others sank their faces even deeper into the briefing papers.
“How else could the Apachureros have known where our people would be every step of the way and where to ambush them?” Dr. Cardiff pressed on. “We were the only people who knew their itinerary and plans.”
“We can’t help them if they’re in hiding,” General Hagberg said, not even looking up from his papers, blatantly ignoring her accusation.
“They had to do it—to protect themselves from us. From someone in this room.”
There. I said it.
“General Hagberg, Brad,” President Raab said, “please read Dr. Cardiff’s notes. They are only four pages. When I saw them, I felt them important enough to warrant an instant meeting. Read.”
Now the president lowered his eyes, too, reading her report a second time.
Well, at least they were reading them.
What the hell, she turned her own eyes to her report . . . even though she’d only read it maybe twenty times already.
She had nothing else to do till they were done.
44
“A press-pulse extinction?” President Raab asked Dr. Cardiff, putting down her briefing paper and looking up at her.
“Our studies of the advanced vertebrate extinctions indicate that environmental pressure—press for short—had degraded the soon-to-be extinguished species so thoroughly that when the catastrophic strike, or pulse, occurred, those species were already in grave peril, if not half-dead. The extinguished species could not recover from the blow, which then annihilated countless species root-and-branch.”