Find the Feathered Serpent

Chapter 9 Battle of Blood

The scream seemed to hang in the court like the tattered fragment of a shredded banner. And then, instantly, the Mayas were on their feet, tables overturned, lush, ripe fruit spilling to the ground like colored beads ripped from a necklace. Torches were ripped from the wall, flashing through the night air with the brilliancy of screaming rockets. There was the thud of heavy wood against solid stone, the voices of the women raised in frightened cries, the hoarse cries of the men as they reached for weapons, swords slithering from belts, spears rattling, slings unfurled.

Shields were raised, and sweating torsos gleamed in the light of the torches now smoldering on the stone floor of the court.

The invaders were small, dark, squat men with the bodily appearance and coarse black hair of the Mayas. They bore crude weapons, and they screamed lustily as they charged forward across the court. And yet, in spite of the resemblance to the Mayas, there was something different about them. Their hair was longer, matted and twisted, and their bodies were covered with filth. They were almost naked except for tattered, dirty loin-cloths slung haphazardly about their waists. They were barefoot, too, and they ran with the swiftness of a people hardened to a life of wilderness.

It was almost as if Neil were looking at two sides of the same race: one civilized and the other barbaric.

The word barbarian had barely crossed his mind when he felt Talu’s slender hand tug impatiently at his arm. Neil turned, and the priest beckoned with his finger. Swiftly Neil followed the old man. Dave and Erik ran after them, along with the other unarmed Norsemen. Talu led them into a stone building resting on a low mound of earth. To Neil’s surprise, three Maya soldiers immediately took positions before the single entrance, their spears raised.

“I don’t get it,” Dave said.

“I imagine they’re trying to protect us,” Neil suggested. “We’re their guests, you know.”

“Those other guys don’t strike me as being nice playmates,” Dave said wryly.

The Mayas and the barbarians seemed to pause momentarily, like players in a tennis match, surveying their opponents for a brief, respectful moment.

Their weapons gleamed dully in the flickering torchlight, and their faces appeared drawn and tired, the way the faces of men in war always look.

Suddenly the battle burst like a balloon filled with blood. There was an insane rush by the barbarians, their feet padding across the court, their voices raised in wild threat. Onward they charged, screaming all the way, their weapons waving over their heads, their bodies sweating freely. They were horsemen without horses, wild in the fanaticism of their reckless charge.

The Mayas held their ground like a solid stone wall, spears extended, swords ready, faces impassive. The barbarians crashed into that wall with the strength of a runaway bull. The wall bent in the middle, swayed backward, and then surged forward again.

The barbarians retreated a little way, then turned and charged again, pitting their frenzy against the stolidity of the Mayas, their faces impassive as the barbarians swooped down again. Swords flashed and screams tore the night. The wall held for an instant, like a frayed rope about to split, and then it ripped apart, men scattering, arms flaying wildly, legs thrashing.

Neil watched as the great battle began in earnest. Man pitted himself against man in a sweating, bleeding, furious struggle.

The Mayas fought in little groups, their arms swinging swords, spears jabbing out, spilling barbarian blood. The barbarians, on the other hand, were like a flooding stream that rushed over everything without direction, without purpose.

Four shaggy, half-naked men seized a Maya and pinned him against the stone wall, their swords slashing again and again until the man hung like a tattered cloth. They turned, the blood fresh on their hands and their swords, swept across the court to where a group of Mayas were battering away at the barbarians who had surrounded them. They leaped over the heads of their fellow men, crashed into the Mayas, two meeting instant death on the tips of spears, the others flailing wildly with their swords.

Then, bursting into the court with a fresh band of heavily padded soldiers, was the captain with the scar on his face, the one Talu had called Baz.

His face was grim, and the scar stood out in vivid relief against the tautness of his cheeks. The light flickered over his face like the fires of hell on the face of a demon.

“Baz!” the cry went up from the Mayas. “Baz!”

Like a fury unleashed, he slashed across the court, his sword cutting a wide swath around him, barbarians falling like grains of wheat before the power of his thrashing arm. His soldiers stamped along behind him, caught in the fire of his charge, men fighting for their city and their home.

A terrible grin split Baz’s face in two, and his teeth gleamed, his eyes like two fiery coals embedded in his head. He shouted, his voice tearing through the night like the scream of a motherless coyote. He burst into a group of barbarians, lifting them, throwing them, slicing, cutting, gouging, kicking. The barbarians dispersed, regrouped and charged across the court again.

But this time the Mayas were strong behind the leadership of the screaming, bloodthirsty Baz. Like a tireless machine, they rolled across the court, the barbarians falling before their sharp swords and spears. The stones ran red, and their feet splashed in the blood and they forced the invaders back, back, killing, furious now in their first taste of victory, anxious to annihilate the foe, anxious to pound him into the very stones underfoot.

The back of the barbarian resistance was broken. Like a crippled snake, the foe slithered away from the city, pursued all the way by the ferocious Baz and his warriors.

The screams died on the night, and the smoldering torches faded and winked out, replaced by the cold, hard stars overhead.

The barbarian attack was over.

Neil slept fitfully that night, dreaming of the unkempt invaders and of the warrior Baz.

It was not until three weeks later, when Neil could converse with Talu in a halting, broken version of the Maya tongue, that he learned that those barbarian attacks were not infrequent.

“They come from the south,” Talu said, and Neil strained his ears and his mind to grasp the meaning of the Maya language. “They come often, and each time they come in stronger numbers. I fear they will completely overrun the city some day. And then what will become of us? What will happen to the Mayas?”

Neil’s knowledge of Maya had not come easy to him. The day after the barbarian attack, Talu had introduced Neil to a boy and a girl of approximately his own age.

Talu had pointed to the boy and said, “Rixal.”

Neil smiled and acknowledged the name.

The priest had then indicated the young girl and said, “Tela.”

Neil nodded profusely and repeated both names, “Rixal,” pointing to the muscular, brown-bodied boy, and “Tela,” his finger extended toward the shy, grinning girl.

The two of them had taken him under their wings then, two well-appointed teachers who led him around the city, pointing out buildings and courts, plazas and pillars. At first they chattered on and on in Maya, but Neil’s ears were deaf to the language.

After a week of constant exposure to the language, he began to pick up simple words and concepts. Words such as, “eat,” and “sleep,” and “boy,” and “girl,” and “temple,” and “palace.”

It was then that Neil learned the pyramid-shaped buildings were temples, and that the clustered rooms atop the low, fiat mounds were the palaces of the nobles and city officials. Rixal and Tela were brother and sister, and they lived in one of the palm-thatched huts on the outskirts of the city. Ordinarily they worked in the fields during the day, but they had been chosen to serve as guides for Neil and were thus excused from their normal duties.

Rixal was close to seventeen, and Tela was fifteen.

Neil learned their ages the hard way, during the second week of his education. By that time, his knowledge of Maya had increased enough for him to make his wants known in simple, direct phrases.

They had been eating, and Neil pointed toward a plum, indicating that he wanted one.

Rixal reached into the wooden bowl and scooped three plums into the palm of his hand.

“No,” Neil said in Maya. Then, not knowing the Maya word for one, he shook his head and held up one finger.

Rixal understood immediately and handed Neil one plum. And that had started them off on numbers and the Maya system of counting.

They sat at a low table in front of one of the temples, the table having been set up in the court for Neil and his guides. Rixal rose and tugged at Neil’s hand, leading him to a patch of dry earth beyond the court. He knelt then, and held up one finger.

Neil nodded.

With the end of a stick, Rixal poked into the sand, making a large dot. He pointed to the symbol, •, and held up one finger again. Neil smiled and nodded.

Rixal then held up two fingers and poked into the dried earth again, twice this time. ••.

Neil nodded in understanding again. Rixal repeated the process until he was holding up four fingers, with four dots in the sand.

Then he held up five fingers. He moved the stick across the sand in a long symbol.

Neil understood that the bar was five. Rixal dropped the stick near his knees, held up five fingers of one hand and one of the other, and made the symbol in the earth. This was six. It continued: was eight: was ten: was nineteen.

Neil understood now and drew some symbols in the sand to show that he knew what they meant. Rixal was delighted, and he chattered in rapid Maya to Tela, who was no longer shy in Neil’s presence.

Then Rixal dragged Neil to one of the huge pillars embedded in the earth at various spots around the city. He pointed to the faces carved on the stone, and began holding up fingers again. Neil realized that there was probably a face symbol for each number, too, but he had had enough teaching for one day.

He held up his hands in protest, and Rixal and Tela laughed uproariously. They went back to their fruit, and Neil made a mental note to look into the Maya face symbols at a later date. It was while they were eating that he used his new-found knowledge to scrawl his age on the table top with a charred stick, using the bars and dots system that Rixal had taught him.

The weeks seemed to float by lazily. Neil was so busy with his sight-seeing and his absorption of the language that he’d almost forgotten about Dave, Erik, and the time machine. One day, he went down to the beach alone, walking through the forest, and making sure he marked a trail this time.

The machine stood on the white sand, its rotors still badly twisted, the surf whipping whitely onto the beach behind it. The ocean was a clear green, stretching as far as the eye could see. Neil stood on the edge of the forest, looking at the machine and the ocean, his heart suddenly filling with a terrible loneliness for home. He walked to the machine and opened the hatchway.

“Dave,” he called.

“Yeah?” came the shouted answer.

“It’s Neil.”

“Hiya, stranger. Just a second, I’ll be right down.”

Neil waited while Dave climbed down the aluminum ladder. When Dave stepped out into the sunlight, he grinned in near-embarrassment and extended a grimy hand toward Neil.

Realizing that the hand was covered with grease, he withdrew it hastily and wiped it on the back of his dungarees.

He held it out again and Neil gripped it tightly.

“Long time no see,” Dave said.

“They’ve been showing me around the city,” Neil explained, feeling a little awkward. He was usually asleep by the time Dave returned at night, and Dave was up and gone long before Neil awoke. “I’ve been learning a lot.”

“Good,” Dave answered in earnest honesty. “You’ll have a lot to tell your father when you get back.” His face clouded. “If we get back,” he added.

“Is it that bad?” Neil asked, looking at the rotors at the top of the machine.

Dave’s eyes followed Neil’s to the twisted rotors. “Oh, I can fix that, all right. I think. It’ll just take a lot of heat and some steady pounding. I’m worried about the time mechanism.”

“Has something happened to the crystal?” Neil asked, a faint touch of panic in his voice.

“That’s just it,” Dave replied. “I don’t know. I’ve been over every inch of the panel and I can’t find the trouble. She’s as dead as yesterday, though; that’s for sure.”

Neil hesitated. “Think you can fix her?”

“I don’t know,” Dave replied slowly. He grinned. “How’d you like to spend the rest of your life in Chichen-Itza?”

Neil gulped hard. “I… I… is there a possibility we might have to?”

“A strong possibility,” Dave said, suddenly sobering.

“Well… I suppose if we have to…”

Dave clapped Neil on the shoulder. “Say,” he said, changing the subject, “I am glad you came down to the beach. I’ve been dying for a cigarette all morning, and you have my lighter.” He held out his hand.

Neil dug into his back pocket and fished out Dave’s lighter. Dave took a cigarette from a crumpled package and put it between his lips. He clicked the lighter and the top snapped up, but no flame appeared.

“Darn,” he said.

He pressed down again, the top rising to expose the wick, a faint spark snapping momentarily into life.

“I really should throw this away,” Dave said, “but I’ve had it since the Army.”

“Sentimentalist,” Neil joked.

“Yeah,” Dave said, “just sentiment. I agree.” He pressed down with his thumb again, and this time a weak flame sprang up. Quickly he cupped his hand around the flame and lighted the cigarette, dropping the top over the wick immediately to conserve fuel.

“Here you are, my boy,” he said. “Keep it well.” He gave the lighter back to Neil.

“Maybe you’d better hang onto it,” Neil suggested.

“Nope. I’ve got about eight cigarettes left. If I had the lighter, I’d smoke them all in a few hours. This way, I can only afford that luxury when you’re around.”

“Okay.” Neil pocketed the lighter again.

“Say,” Dave exclaimed, “about time for chow, isn’t it? Come on, I’ll walk you back to the city.”

They started back through the forest, Dave leading the way.

“I know this woods like the back of my hand now,” Dave said. “I can even find my way back at night.”

They walked in silence most of the way, while the monkeys swung in the trees overhead, gossiping noisily.

When they reached the edge of the forest, the city in plain view, Neil stopped and faced Dave. His face was serious, and his blue eyes looked into Dave’s searchingly.

“Dave. Will we really have to spend the rest of our lives here?”

Dave squinted at Neil, concern on his features. He rubbed a hand over his broken nose as he said, “I don’t know, Neil.” Softer, then, “I don’t really know.”

They walked into the city, and Dave left Neil as he went to wash up. Neil saw Erik standing beside a tall tree, talking to Talu, or at least trying to talk to him.

Talu was shaking his white-thatched head vigorously when Neil approached.

“What’s the trouble?” Neil asked in Swedish.

Erik grinned and ran a big hand through his fiery beard.

“Nothing, Neil. I was just asking our friend if he would feel safer if my men and I gave him our weapons again.”

“And?” Neil asked.

“You saw,” Erik said. “He refuses. He thinks we need our weapons for protection in the woods.”

“What’s there to fear?” Neil asked Talu, switching tongues.

“Many animals,” Talu said. “Jaguars…”

He stopped, his eyes glued in fascination to the branch of the tree overhead. His words seemed to catch in his throat, and they gave way to a slight intake of breath, an almost soundless cry.

Neil’s eyes darted rapidly to the hanging branch.

Curled there, the powerful muscles of its body wrapped tightly around the branch, slithering downward, jaws opened wide, flat, ugly eyes dull, fangs pointed and bared, was an enormous green snake.

Neil gasped as the snake reared back and halted in its downward glide.

With a quick sideward motion, Neil threw Talu to the ground, tumbling on top of the priest.

“Erik!” he screamed. “Be careful! A snake!”

The flat, ugly head drew back like the taut string of a bow.

Then, without warning, its jaws stretched wide to reveal a yawning red chasm, its fangs gleaming whitely, it struck!