Them Bones

Leake VIII

The canoes came across the River, row on row. They were full of guys dressed in their best feathers, their brightest jewelry, their gaudiest clothes.

They carried their best weapons, too. Spears, atlatls, bows, axes, clubs, shields, reed and leather armor, and knives. They could have wrecked any bar in Hong Kong.

But we were going out to meet the Huastecas for a ritual battle, a flower-fight they called it, and the way it was explained to me, the idea was to capture as many of the other guys as you could, not to kill them.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Took, as we watched the dugouts slide up the shore and the warriors jump out, whooping and hollering. ‘When you see some of our people knock one of the Huastecas down, jump on him a few times. Everybody will think you’re a fine fellow.’

‘What’s the purpose?’ I asked.

Took looked at me. ‘Well, you can’t have wars with your own people, can you?’

‘What happens to the ones who are captured?’

‘Ours, or theirs?’

‘Uh, theirs.’

‘Oh, they ransom them, usually. Mostly for pretty stuff. Clothes, ornaments. The Huastecas make nice rings and things.’

‘What about ours?’

‘Well, we usually try to ransom them, and they do send some of them back, but not all.’

‘What happens to the ones they don’t send back?’

‘I guess they eat them,’ said Took.

We fanned out, maybe two thousand of us in all, as agreed. I knew what Custer must have felt like on that bluff over the Little Big Horn, only now I was part of it. We were a day out of the village, heading west. We skirted the edge of some bayous. We headed through open rolling grasslands toward the setting sun.

At one bayou, Sun Man’s people, Took, and I broke away from the rest of the main group. We walked through water up to our knees, under cypresses and Spanish moss (I’ve got to think of another name for it) until we reached an opening in the waterway.

The trees here grow in a circle maybe two hundred meters across. All except for one. It was the biggest cypress I’d ever seen in my life, maybe eighty meters tall, five hundred or a thousand years old, maybe older. It was nothing but a trunk, except for one limb that started halfway up. The top of the tree was missing.

I noticed then that the Dreaming Killer and his Buzzard Cult people weren’t with us. I asked Took.

‘Religious differences,’ he said.

Sun Man raised his arms and yelled three times, like he does every morning. I caught enough of his chant to know that he was calling on the Big Woodpecker. Then we marched back out of the swamps and rejoined the holiday crowd heading for the battle site.

‘That was the tree in which the Great Woodpecker sometimes sits,’ said Took.

‘Oh?’

‘One of our great-great-grandfathers accidentally saw it one evening. He went blind, of course.’

‘Of course. Did he say how big it was?’

‘He said that before he went blind, he saw that it sat on the limb, and the top of its head was higher than the top of the tree trunk.’

‘That’s awfully big,’ I said. I had been expecting something maybe two meters tall.

‘Sure is,’ said Took-His-Time. He broke into some kind of song. Others took it up, including the Buzzard Cult people.

We watched their fires, and we knew they were watching ours. There was an old flood plain between two small bluffs about half a kilometer apart. We were on one, and the Huastecas were on the other. The battle would take place on the flat place between us tomorrow.

‘Better get some sleep,’ said Took, who had spread his skins out beside mine. We were eating a supper of jerky and ground cornmeal with a few walnuts mixed in. Took passed the waterskin over.

‘It could take all day, what with breaks for lunch and stuff,’ he said.

‘Pretty civilized.’

‘You won’t think so if you get caught, or off by yourself, which is the same thing,’ he said. ‘Stick close to a mob. If you get caught, they’ll probably come get you. Don’t let them cover your mouth, whatever you do. Keep yelling.’

‘Thanks. What really happens?’

‘Well, we sort of run together in a big bunch and hit each other, and drag off captives, then eat, then do it some more, and about two hours from sunset we all go home, and three days later we ransom, but that’s only chief man business. Our part will be over. If this were a real battle, we’d take heads instead of captives.’

I watched the bright stars overhead through the glow of the fires. It was early spring, and still cool.

I know it was just me, but I had trouble sleeping. Took called out in a dream. He woke up and looked at me.

‘My spirit is troubled,’ he said. He closed his eyes and was asleep again immediately.

‘Yee! Yee! Yee!’ yelled Sun Man, facing east. Up and down our bluff, other Sun Men were doing the same thing.

Not that everybody wasn’t awake anyway. Men had started moving around long before sunup. I know; I was one of them.

I was sharpening the point on my javelin. I had my own survival knife with me, and was depending on my club, which was about half the size and shape of a Louisville Slugger. I was hoping I wouldn’t get close enough to anybody to have to use it.

Sunlight came through a break between the clouds and the horizon. There were pines behind us, where we’d come from, and bayous past that. The land behind the Huastecas was more open. Far to left and right were sparse trees. The flood plain between us was smooth with sand and short grasses. It was about the closest thing to a playing field you could ask for.

After we stuffed our faces, the Sun Men moved around, talking with each other. Our Sun Man came back to us. Some other Sun Man had been elected battle captain.

‘Wait for the signal,’ said Sun Man.

We all filed up on the bluff. A like number of Huastecas faced us across the flat place. They started to rap their spears and clubs against their shields. I could barely make them out – feathered and furred headdresses, copper, maybe gold breastplates and armor. The racket increased, settled into a rhythm – chunk, chunk, chunk. It was my own heartbeat, my pulse. Jeez, those guys knew how to get on your nerves.

The Huastecas hit their shields harder, louder. The booming came like surf across the flood plain, wave after wave.

The Sun Man battle chief raised his arm. We were all quiet, tense. I licked my lips and regripped my club.

The Huastecas came down the bluff like a gold and copper waterfall.

‘Go get ’em, boys!’ said Sun Man.

We took off down the slope, whooping and hollering.

Our first hint that something was wrong came when a whole forest of arrows filled the sky from behind the Huastec bluff.

Those who had them stopped and put their shields over their heads. I climbed under one with three other guys. ‘Quit shoving!’ someone yelled.

The arrows whizzed half a meter into the ground around us, bounced off shields, stuck in people’s hands. There were screams.

‘Hey, you assholes!’ yelled Moe at the Huastecas. ‘You can’t use arrows!’

They were still running toward us, and another rain of arrows came up like a curtain.

Arrows also came from left and right.

‘Shit!’ yelled Curly.

This time arrows bounced off shields and ricocheted into arms and legs and chests.

‘Hell with this!’ Larry said; he dropped his spear and unlimbered his ceremonial bow from across his back, stringing it in a swift motion. He put two arrows into the wall of advancing Huastecas.

‘They mean business,’ said Took quietly.

We looked back toward the bluff. The chief Sun Man was jumping up and down pointing to both sides.

It was just like in an old Western movie. On three sides of us was a long continual line of Huastecas, with archers behind them. They seemed to have come from nowhere. Arrows sailed up again. The warriors running toward us stopped short, waiting for the arrows to fall on us.

The noise was like hail on a tin roof.

From under the shield with the other guys I saw the second wave of Huastecas start down the bluff – at least twice as many as in the first wave.

‘Every man for himself!’ yelled Sun Man. ‘This is death stuff!’

The Buzzard Cultists let out a tremendous yell and sprang out from under their shields straight toward the Huastecas.

Then the Meshicas were on us.

I saw a guy with a jaguar headdress raise a club so I pushed my javelin at him. It went right in. He was as surprised as I was, dropped his club and held his stomach around the spear shaft. He fell down, taking the short spear with him.

Then some sonofabitch hit me in the face with his shield as hard as he could. I didn’t have time to think. I was down and all I could see were his feet. So I smashed one of them with my club. He fell on top of me. I tried to get out from under him so he couldn’t kill me.

He turned dead weight. I got out from under. Somebody had stuck a javelin in his eye.

I pulled my spear out of the guy it was still sticking in. He gave me a startled look. He was still kneeling and holding his stomach. Guys were fighting all around him. He paid no attention.

I waded into six or eight guys who were fighting and started hitting all the ones with eagle feathers and jaguar skins.

Horns and bugle things were blowing. Drums rattled off in the distance. There were grunts and screams all around. Dust hung in the air. The sun glinted off metal. You couldn’t see jack shit.

A spear came at me, got larger, stayed the same, went past me a meter away. I saw the Huasteca who threw it and started for him. Five or six of his buddies came out of nowhere and started for me. Two of them sprouted arrows from the chest.

‘Sonofabitches!’ said Larry, behind me. He threw down his bow. His quiver was empty. He had time to get his obsidian-studded club out before the four Meshicas got to us.

One of them was covered with armor – breastplate, shinguards, epaulets. He wore a copper helmet with a long plume, and he had a shield. A kahuna of some kind. He came right at me. He took the point of my javelin with his shield and twisted it away. His club came down and knocked the spear from my hands.

Larry’s club came across and caved in the front of his helmet. His face looked like something from a Warner Bros. cartoon covered in ketchup.

Somebody got behind Larry and had his hands on his chin. I hit the hands, then Larry’s shoulder, then the hands, then farther up with my club. Whoever it was let go and ran off.

A spear butt got me in the head. Blue-green stars covered the tunnel in front of me. I swung. The tunnel went away. Larry was standing on a Huasteca’s chest, beating his head as hard as he could.

‘Sonofabitch!’ said Larry with each blow. ‘Sonofabitch!’ We were in a lull. Waves of men were crashing and roaring into each other with tin-can sounds. A horn blew close behind me. I jumped, looked around for my spear, found it.

Larry was through with the guy. He and I stood, heaving and panting, trying to see what was going on in the heat and dust.

Then the second wave of Huastecas ran over us.

I don’t know how much later it was when we were back on our bluff. Dust still hung over the flood plain. It was hot. I was so dry my tongue hurt. I could taste blood. I didn’t know whether it was mine or someone else’s.

Another rain of arrows came out of the dust. ‘Heads up!’ yelled Moe. They sailed into our position, pinning a few guys to the ground.

‘Sun damn them all to hell!’ said Sun Man. He had been wounded in the side and the arm during the battle. Two of our people were holding him up.

Took was watching across the plain. The dust was beginning to settle. We could see weapons, clothing, drums littering the ground. There were no bodies. We had taken our wounded and dead, and they had taken theirs. They had also taken about fifty prisoners.

We hadn’t taken any.

I was getting my breath back. I was covered with grit and dust mixed with sweat, blood, and grease. There were cuts and bruises all over me. There was a wet pain low down on my back. My javelin was a third of a meter shorter than it used to be. My club was gone. My knife was in my hand, dark red.

There were two human heads at my feet.

I didn’t remember where they had come from. I didn’t remember anything but the endless fighting and the thirst worse than any I had ever had.

The Buzzard Cult people were starting one of their chants.

‘Apocalypse stuff,’ said Took.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘The Huastecas have quit playing by the rules.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, Yaz. Things are changing. Maybe the Buzzard Cult people are right.’

‘You better believe we are,’ said Hamboon Bokulla, the Dreaming Killer, as his people finished their song. ‘And you better get with it, or be left behind,’ he said to Took.

Tired, bruised, beaten, we picked up our heads all along the line and started home.

Over on the other bluff, the Huastecas were already gone.

Next day, three kilometers or so away from the village, I realized what I had done.

We were passing a small creek. Our wounded were leaning on other warriors. Almost everybody was gimped up in some way. I walked to the creek and stood on its bank.

One after the other, I threw the heads as far as I could downstream. The last one’s eyes stayed on me in its flight toward the water as if it were a ballerina and I were its turning point. Guilty, guilty, the air whistling past the head said. It hit with a splash a few meters behind the first and sank immediately.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Took, standing behind me.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘They were pretty good heads,’ he said, and rejoined the struggling file of the Woodpecker people.