Hun Xoc followed. The trees were boxed in milpas set in check-dam terraces, laid out just like any poor person’s garden, or anyone’s garden, anywhere else in Mesoamerica, the same exact 91.2 by 92.2-foot rectangle with the same orientation to Kochab. Jotzolob ran between the milpas, uncultivated trenches that were combination dirt sources, rock dumps, irrigation channels, and flood ducts. My feet automatically found one of the main channels and we headed “upwater,” toes gooshing into the muddy bottom. The trees on either side gave us a little cover until we came to a clearing with intersecting aqueducts and four giant bulbous stelae of the Ocelots’ Watching Greatfathers sticking up in scarlet, emerald, and black against the deep cobalt sky. It was getting too dark to see things clearly. I did a quick head-check and climbed up out of the trench onto a milpa thigh-high with marigolds. A couple of these big flightless birds, rheas or something that the ahau kept as pets, walked stupidly toward me, maybe expecting me to feed them. Scram, I thought. Behind a grove to the south a couple of old Ocelot gardeners hobbled away from us to spread the alarm.
It didn’t look guarded, though. I guessed no one but the highest Ocelots would ever think of coming in here anyway. You can really do a lot with taboos. Just hang out in places where everyone else thinks they’re going to get fried by the bad mojo. Of course, they still get you eventually, but it does take them longer.
I got to the cistern. Too little. It wasn’t the right one. This wasn’t the actual source, just a way station, one of a bunch of little holding tanks. Their main feeder culvert sloped higher up the ridge toward the east slope of One Ocelot’s Mountain.
Damn. The place was a lot more detailed than Koh’s stupid model.
Higher up, I signed to Hun Xoc. I ran. That spot on the ball of my right foot was itchy. A weird red bird flew over my head and cut into the leaves in front of us, and after a moment I realized it was a lem-lem, a barbed throwing stick, basically a boomerang that doesn’t come back but which flies a lot farther than an ordinary stick. It took me another two beats to realize that meant Enemies Behind.
How far?
Left. Around the corner of a thick pepper grove. I dropped down into the prickly gulch. A point on the mace on my left hand cut into my thumb. Hun Xoc dropped down into the nettles next to me. We were both gasping too hard to say anything. I edged over to him through the wet stalks and held on to his arm. I put my head against his chest for a beat. He reached forward down into my wex — I guess you’d have to call it a loincloth or a breechclout or some other ridiculous term-and held on to my penis, trying to calm me down. Just a little casual military homoerotism. Breathe, I thought.
There can’t be that many of them. Some of them must have followed the Harpy standard. How far away were they?
Well, at least two terraces below. We can make it. Stay out of sight lines. It’ll still take them two hundred beats to find us up here. Well, one hundred. And also, those guys had just been watching the match, so they weren’t even winded. Except for Emerald Immanent, but he was just supernatural. I couldn’t resist bringing my foot up to scratch it. There was something there.
My foot couldn’t feel my fingers. And when my hand felt my foot, it felt too big.
“I’m stung,” I said, “the male foot.”
Hun Xoc let go of my Jed junior and took the foot in his hands. I could feel him digging the dart out of the puffy wound with a shell knife, but the sensation was far away. I listened to him him suck-and-spit. A timeless craft. Too late, though. I’m fucked, I thought. Oh, cripes.
I’m over the limit, it’s payback time. TILT, GAME OVER, INSERT ONE TOKEN FOR ANOTHER PLAY, 12, 11, 10, 9, 0.
Hun Xoc rubbed dirt into the wound to stop the bleeding. I noticed I wasn’t dead yet. It was like when you’re stoned and you look at your watch because you think you’ve been wherever you are for days and you’re going to be late for whatever and it’s only five minutes later.
We’re going the wrong way, I signed on his chest. You down-this-way go. I up-that-way go.
I stuck one eye up over the curve of the slope, like it was on a stalk, and looked around 220 degrees. I got an impression of figures advancing on us without really seeing them.
I know what I’m doing, I signed. I’m ready.
We looked at each other. He made the sign for “accepted” and vaulted up out of the ditch, running through the south jotzol, parallel to the rise of the peak. I jumped out and headed at right angles to him uphill. The trees ahead were wilder and thicker. They’d been allowed to branch relatively naturally because the area of the Source was the house of Chac. It was like the way an ahau’s house was always just sealed up and never touched after his death, unless his heirs enlarged it or an enemy canceled it. Something made me look left. Below me Hun Xoc seemed to trip and fall, knocked back and then jerked forward off his feet like a roped steer. He’d probably been hit with a string club, kind of a big sharp yo-yo. I looked around. I still couldn’t see the attackers but I could hear them stomping through the bracken below him, not bothering to be quiet. It was one of those instant-decision moments. Go and charge the Ocelots and try to disentangle him? But if I stopped, there wasn’t any point anyway. I turned and kept going. There was a breaking-glass sound of Hun Xoc’s mace going through jewelry and skin and an exhalation of air. We were both going to get taken in less than a minute anyway, I thought. Complete the objective.
Left.
Hun Xoc. Damn. Don’t think about it.
The trench leveled out. This has got to be it, I thought. I spun around twice. The crest was laid out like a big rustic pyramid, with a cyclopean platform in the center and relatively straight hewn steps leading down to the four directions. There was a rough star of clothes and jewelry and human and animal gristle and bones on the platform, like the offerings had been laid out carefully but then picked over by the jaguars. Where’s the cistern? There wasn’t even any aqueduct.
I ran around the platform, kind of frantically. No well.
Stairs. Back down. No, up. Stairs too big. Everything wrong size. Clearing. Same one? Hump in the center. Maybe that’s it.
No, too small.
No, that’s it. I picked out the main feeder aqueduct that led into it from the spring source in the side of the mountain. I hadn’t seen it before because it was covered over with U-shaped limestone slabs, almost like a regular old pipe.
Okay, Tonto. Just across this little clearing here. One milpa. Fifty-four regular steps. Fifty-three if you stick out your chest at the tape.
Just go.
I’ve got about ten more beats of total freedom, I thought. In that amount of time I can do whatever I want.
Just don’t look like you’re going for the well.
Just go.
Okay.
I dashed out. They came out to meet me.
Thirty more steps. I was limping. I couldn’t feel my leg at all. Numb past the knee. Probably not anything fatal, I thought, they really want to bring you in kicking. Assuming they’ve got their act together. “We’re going to kill all the men, rape all the women, and steal all the cattle,” I yelled. “And for Gog’s sake, get it right this time. Disperse, ye rabble, die, ye scurvy scum, arrgghh, die!!! ”
I’ll never really get this down, I thought, I just can’t take it enough to heart. Twenty more steps. I could tell there were about a billion people around, or at least it seemed like a billion, but only one was really close. Keep going, he’s not on me. No, he’s on me. I had to turn around. Of course, it was Emerald Immanent, surprise, surprise. He just had to do his whole hero thing and add “Twice-Born-9 Chacal-Capturing” to the front of his name. If Emerald Immanent didn’t cover himself with glory they’d all just be on top of me all at once in about two p’ip’ilob, and they’d just take group credit for the offering.
Emerald Immanent, the Ocelots’ star striker, slashed at my bad leg with a long-handled hunting saw, trying to hobble me. I rolled behind one of the steles. It had about a fifteen-finger-width diameter and was coated in smooth, thick, black, white, and green paint like it had been dipped. There was the swish of air over a sharp surface and a dramatic constellation of sparks as his flints glanced off the stone. Tiny shards spattered through the air and one of them got into my right eye. Great, just what I needed.
“Kuchul bin ycnal,” Emerald Immanent growled. “You’re a runner.” It meant I’d abandoned the ball game because I was afraid we’d lose.
“Xejintic ub’aj,” I said. It meant “Vomit on yourself” but it was like saying “Bullshit.” I didn’t have any voice left, so I kind of stage-whispered it.
“Lothic ah tabay,” he said. “You were beat.”
“ You were beat,” I said. “Beat, beat, beat.”
I let go and bolted for the well. Someone had gotten ahead of me. I butted into him and twisted around him to the side of the cistern. My hands grabbed relief-work starfish-glyphs and I could feel the firm resonance of the hundreds of cubic tons of water on the other side. It was streaming fast despite the drought, still more than enough to serve the whole city. The rim was only at chest height. Just get over it, I thought. The guy grabbed my pigtail but it was still two-thirds fake and the extension pulled off in his hand. More people grabbed at me. I edged back and rolled up onto the wide lip, trying to look like I was panicking. The octagonal opening was only a rope-length across. I could feel negative ions blasting up out of it and I was all refreshed all of a sudden, somehow thinking clearly even though my body was a firecracker string of unbearable pain. They were dragging me down off the rim. You’ve got to act more, I thought. Otherwise you’ll be giving it away. It’s not enough to just dress up, you have to act. I wrenched up and back, shifting my weight to pull at least one person up with me. The blood got his elbow around my throat as I edged us off-balance and we tipped back into cold.