Them Bones

Leake XIV

I rode west, and the trail wasn’t hard to follow. They must have walked eight abreast when they left the siege. It looked like someone had driven herds of cattle through the grass where they left the trail.

I was weak as a kitten. The jolting of the horse didn’t help. I kept it at a steady trot, stopping to rest and water it every two hours or so.

When it got too dark to see, I stopped for the night, hobbled the horse and fell into an exhausted sleep, a free-lunch counter for mosquitoes.

Dawn came up like thunder, and the noise caused me to have a splitting headache. I ate half the food I had with me for the whole trip, got some dirty water for my canteen, and rode again.

Soon I left the last of the country I knew. We went through flat land with high grass, water, pines. A rice grower’s dream, if there’d been any rice in this part of the world yet.

I was fevered and aching, but in pretty good shape for a guy who’d been given up for dead and been buried for three days.

I had to catch up to the Huastecas. Maybe they’d lost their minds, like Sun Man said after the battle. They never attacked villages, except those of their own which were in constant revolt against them. They’d never come this far east. They had never fought to the death before that battle we’d had with them last moon.

What the hell. Is everything going to fall apart just when I show up? Maybe Dreaming Killer was right; maybe the Death Cult is on the right track. Maybe Death is becoming the next big thing in this world, after centuries of status quo.

I think of Took, Moe, the others. Headed for the cannibal pot, or whatever the Huastecas use. I kick the horse into a faster trot.

Night again, though I ride blind until long after I should. The horse feels the way. It’s still like a two-lane highway through the grass. I stop when the grass changes to a packed-earth trail.

Morning. Calm. Outside the grove of trees in which we spent the night, the path goes straight as a bullet to the west. The land that way is flatter. A storehouse squats across the pathway. Somebody leans on a spear.

Their lands start here, then. I can’t be more than thirty kilometers from their regional capital. Only a few hours behind them. They should have reached the city last night. I doubt they let the captives slow them once they got this far.

So this is it: man vs. a society gone mad in a world he did not make. I ready my pistol and carbine while the horse grazes. I put on my helmet, and over that, and my back and shoulders, I drape the Woodpecker God costume.

Its giant beak hangs over my forehead. I tie the straps around my neck. I mount the horse, gentle it down, watch the stone house two hundred meters away. I hang my three grenades on the carbine sling.

A naked guy leaves the stonehouse at a hot trot, toward the west. A messenger, and what he has to say is all quiet on the Eastern Front. I wait until he’s out of sight.

Then I turn the horse out onto the pathway and ride for the blockhouse.

The guy leaning on the spear comes up, looks at me, puzzlement on his face. Then he starts to yell, and guys come out like bees around a bear, spears up, sleepy-faced. Their waking-up faces change to Os, all mouth and eyes. While they stare, I ride right over them.

A spear comes past, already falling. I’m gone.

About a kilometer and a half past them, I see the runner ahead, still in his casual lope. He hears the hoofbeats, he turns his head, he gives a little jump, and when he comes down he turns into a copper streak.

The distance between us actually widens a moment. This guy is fast. Then the horse’s hooves eat up ground. Ahead of the runner to the right of the path is a small stone shelter of some sort, maybe for travelers caught out in the rain.

We both close on it. I’ve got my club, and I raise it. He’s looking back over his shoulder at me; he moves ahead again; I lean over to hit him as we draw even.

There is a dull crash and he disappears as the edge of the rock house whizzes past. Like a left fielder after a line foul, he’s watching me and not the road, and he ran into the wall, face first.

I turn and watch him bounce once, sideways out into the pathway. I put up the club and watch my riding.

It’s like I’m pain in a body, and the runners are nerve impulses trying to tell the body that something’s wrong. Only I’m moving faster than they are. My intention is to give the Huastecas a toothache all the way down to their insteps.

I pass more blockhouses, and other houses too. I meet some runners. Some of the guards actually get off a spear or arrow before I go by.

The closest brush comes when I overtake one of the casual runners about half a kilometer before a blockhouse. There are cultivated fields all around now, but no one seems to be working them. A holiday? Of course. Come see the gods eat the mound-builders. Have a bite while you’re at it.

I’m thinking all this while the messenger ahead of me is in the low-running position. He looks like a cartoon, all arms, pumping legs, strobing bare feet. And he’s still got lungs enough to yell so they can hear him at the guardhouse.

There are four or five of them, they have lots of warning, they are awake. One of them’s giving orders, they’re fanning out, bracing their spears in the roadway, which is now four meters wide and occasionally paved. The guy giving orders is scared but grim.

The runner ahead of me gives one last burst and heads off into the field, trampling corn, duty forgotten.

I kick the horse and head for the waiting guards.

What they tell you to do with an arrow that’s not in a vital spot is to push it through until the head protrudes, break off the shaft, and pull it back out the entry hole.

On horseback, that’s not as easy as it sounds. The arrow was in the meat of my left arm. It already had an exit hole. I spurred the horse, got a kilometer past the guardhouse, then reined in.

I pushed the head the rest of the way out, screaming all the time. It felt like the world’s worst zit pain all the way through my body. The arm went numb. I took out my bayonet, cut the arrowhead off, then tried to pull the shaft back out.

There was no way I could do it. I closed my eyes and yanked. The shaft came out of my arm; I came out of the saddle.

I held on somehow.

Behind me, they’d started a fire. Daring and resourceful guards were getting word to the city. The King of the Huastecas would probably reward them with my head when they caught me.

I slapped a local anesthetic and an astringent on the hole, tied a dressing on the arm with the other hand, and turned the horse off across the fields, paralleling the roadway.

The city was like a white Oz. The suburbs, cornfields, sunflower stalks, old pumpkin vines, and small adobe huts had blocked my view long enough. When I came to a cleared plaza in one of the hamlets and saw the city, I thought I was on another planet.

It had a wall around it, but not a very high one. There was a river to discourage attack. What showed over the walls were gleaming brown and white buildings three and four stories tall. The tops of flat pyramids rose above those. There was some hullabaloo going on at the central one. That was my target.

The causeway over the river to my right was solid spears, shields, and headdresses. The one to my left (the arm with the quickly returning pains) was sparsely defended, though the guys there were ready and waiting, too.

I headed into the river between the two bridges. The lathered horse plunged in. The water wasn’t deep; I don’t think the horse swam for more than a few seconds before it found bottom again, came up, plunged ahead. The bridge on the right emptied as the guards all ran back inside the city to cut me off.

From inside the city came the muffled sound of horns and drums.

The horse found gravel and bucked ahead. The guards on the left got ready. Arrows flew by me from the wall left and above.

We tore across the small beach. The suburbs and fields lay to the left, the city wall to my right shoulder. The guards on the causeway milled around, some heading back into the city, some running to the beach end of the bridge.

I kicked the horse and we went up, hanging in the air, shuddering, to the roadway toward the gate. Spears went by; one slid along the horse’s neck and ricocheted back into the water.

We were up then, inside the gate, riding down two bowmen who tried to stop us.

Before we got here, it had seemed like the whole city was waiting for us, but as we went farther, I realized we were only some minor administrative inconvenience to the populace at large.

The streets themselves were deserted; the horse’s hooves echoed off the empty houses. There were yells, and horns blowing behind me, other sounds from a side street. In the main plaza were the noises of muffled drumbeats and a ceremonial horn.

It was high noon.

Not even Ben-Hur made me ready for the scene in front of me. I slowed the horse to a trot. I came out of the narrow gate street into an open concourse beyond which lay the plaza.

In the center of the city, looming over it, the great white pyramid took a bite out of the blue sky. At its top, two fires in front of the temple poured smoke into the air.

Along the steps all the way up were armed guards.

At its base were other guards, and Took’s people and other mound-builders, lined up in single file. The Huastecas, thousands and thousands of them, watched from the plaza, a gaudy smudge of headdresses, red and purple, jaguar skins, black hair, gold, copper, parrots, and obsidian, row on row on row.

Some of Took’s people were strung in a line up the pyramid. At the top five priests waited. A moundbuilder reached the top step as I reined in. Four of the priests grabbed him, pulled him backwards, chest up, over a rounded stone. The fifth priest, covered with something that looked like flapping gray rags, lifted a big black knife.

He brought it down. Blood went everywhere. He hacked and pulled. Another lump of blood flew into the air. The priest pushed his hand in the chest, hacked with the knife again. Something slid across the mound-builder’s leg, onto the slab top. The priest reached down, picked it up. Blood dripped from it; it slipped through his fingers onto the victim’s body.

The priest grabbed it again, held it up, then threw it into the leftward of the two fires.

The crowd yelled as the heart went into the flames: ‘Huitzilipochtli!’

The other four priests pushed the body to the left, over the pyramid steps, where the guards rolled it down the sides.

The festivities had just started. One body had already reached the bottom, two others were partway down. Huastecas wearing nothing but breechcloths picked up the first one and took it off behind a screen, stage right.

The line of Took’s people and other strangers stretched across the plaza and back up into a building. The crowd was going to be very tired by the time the show was over. The priest and the rounded rock were already covered with blood.

There was a commotion and horns behind me as the gate guards got closer. Some of the crowd near me turned and saw:

The Woodpecker God of Took’s people astride a huge dog on the road at the edge of their plaza.

I pulled the carbine from its boot and opened the action a little to break the partial vacuum and let river water trickle out of the barrel. The crowd near me drew back, confused, yelling.

The running feet behind me got closer.

The next victim had reached the top of the pyramid. Eager hands reached for him.

The head priest lifted his knife as the moundbuilder went across the slab.

I blew the top of the priest’s head off. I saw the other priests’ reactions just as the sound reached them. Why is our boss exploding his head and flying into the temple wall?

He slid down the alabaster wall, hair sticking to its surface.

The other priests turned toward the gunshot. I shot away the two holding the left arm and right leg. The other two let go.

There was pandemonium. The whole crowd in the plaza came to its feet. Took’s people turned and saw me, then pointed and yelled.

I kicked the horse and headed for the pyramid. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, a moving wall of mouths, eyes, screams to either side.

I fired into them a few times for effect, then started on the guards on the pyramid steps.

Took’s people were the first to come loose from the crowd. Something snapped in them; they turned and jumped everybody near them who had a weapon.

The intended victims all up and down the pyramid squatted while I shot into the guards around them.

Then I was at the bottom of the steps and rode up them.

Guards leaned around from the other sides of the pyramid, threw spears or shot arrows, then ran.

Took’s people surged around me as I rode upwards. Moe came bouncing down from farther up. He picked up a spear and turned to watch the plaza.

Took yelled from the mob below. I turned the horse sideways, saw him, and waved. The city was a swirling, kicking mass. Too many warriors were standing still at the back center of the plaza around a white-poled sunscreen.

That must be where they keep their kahuna.

I fired into it.

For a few seconds the guards stood grim-faced while I shot them, then they broke to right and left, leaving richly dressed guys crawling over dead bodies for cover. I shot into the most swazee-looking bunch.

Two or three guards jumped in front of one of them. I shot them, but the magazine ran dry before I got a clear shot at the guy in the middle.

I slammed another magazine in, switched to automatic, and sprayed the emptying plaza.

We were on the pyramid, and they were behind all the buildings. The roof of the one across the way, the tallest, was covered with archers.

‘How do we get out of here?’ I asked.

‘How about the way you came in?’ asked Moe.

I looked that way. It was full of the shadows of spears and shields.

‘Pretty grim,’ I said. ‘What about over there?’

There were screams below as arrows came in. Every minute we stayed up here, someone was going to be killed.

I was still on the horse, which barely had room to stand. The men and women near the bottom were pressing up against us, trying to get away from the plaza. I didn’t blame them.

I felt a dull thud and an arrow vibrated from the Woodpecker God’s bill. I broke part of it off.

‘It all looks bad,’ said Took-His-Time, just below me. Another flock of arrows sailed in, causing a rush as everyone tried to get behind the few shields we had. Most of the people on the pyramid had only spears, clubs, or knives.

I meant to ask Took sometime what it was that had turned his people from a line of docile sacrifices into fighters who had killed a few dozen of their captors and taken their weapons.

It was getting hot on the pyramid. I was sure the Huastecas were planning to send us a cool rain of arrows.

‘Choose some goddam way!’ I said to Moe.

‘The way you came,’ he said. ‘Once we get to the gate, every man for himself!’ They passed the word around the steps.

‘Follow me, then,’ I said. I turned the horse to start down the teocalli. I fired toward the street we headed for. The sides of a building exploded in rock dust. A Huasteca screamed, a sound I was beginning to like.

The first moundbuilders came off the pyramid. The Huastecas ran out from all the other buildings in a rush, throwing spears, clubs, and axes. They stopped, and the archers on the buildings sent another flight of arrows into us. A lot of us went down, some screaming, some not.

Then the Huastecas renewed their charge.

Still on the steps, I swung in the saddle and blasted left and right.

The moundbuilders and Huastecas collided. The Huastecas who’d been waiting in the gate street came running out into the open. I fired into them. They stopped, jumped around, ran away.

‘Go! Go! Go! I yelled down to our people in the plaza.

They ran toward the street, scared, fighting, yelling, screaming.

More Huastecas came from everywhere.

The horse hit the plaza running.

Three arrows grew out of its neck. It collapsed. I rolled to my feet, still shooting.