The Serpent Road: A Science Fiction Novel

by Anthony James

  “Haracan,” he called, his voice desperate. “What should I do?”

  The Elder said nothing, but merely extended his arm, pointing at the approaching troops.

  Tohil turned to look at them. Just then, a jaguar, this time not a warrior, but the animal itself, ran between the lines of warriors from end to end of the field. Everyone paused to watch it. Then it was gone, and the vast horde in front of him resumed their implacable march.

  “Haracan!” Tohil cried out at the top of his voice.

  The middle figures then raised long blowguns, not to their mouths, but to their shoulders. All around them, as if that had been a signal, the warriors started to charge forward, waving their weapons, and screaming battle cries, the noise rolling across the grasses in a wave.

  At that instant, vast streams of fire issued from the blowguns, shooting out towards him, creating a wall of flames that obscured anything behind.

  In that moment, far into the distance, the mountains began to crumble.

  Then the fire was upon him.

  “Tohil,” wake up. Quapar was shaking him, leaning over, a concerned expression on his face. “You were dreaming, calling out.”

  His breath was coming in short gasps. There was sweat upon his brow and his heart was pounding. All around him were trees, his companions all looking at him. He took a deep steadying breath and looked up towards the sky. The flames had gone. At least for now. He took a moment to try to compose himself.

  “I’m sorry,” he said hesitantly. “You’re right. It was a dream.”

  He tried to work some moisture into his mouth as his heart settled.

  “What did you dream?” asked Xquic.

  Tohil shook his head. “Let me wake up. I need to make sense of it. It was probably nothing.”

  He didn’t believe that. Dreams were things of prophecy. They held omens and clues. The Elders said they had dreamed of the temple opening, but those dreams came from things that they ate and things that they drank. Could he be starting to have those sorts of dreams, without having taken anything to prompt them? He sat up, leaning his back against a tree and closed his eyes, trying to remember all the details of what he had seen. His breathing was starting to come back to normal now. What had the jaguar meant? Why had the mountains all fallen? Those figures in the centre had been Seelee. Of that, he had no doubt. And the Skulls and the Bird People, they were clear. Already they were struggling against them. But a large battle, a vast host of enemy warriors…what did that mean?

  He owed the others an explanation. If he did not offer one, they’d keep asking, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to share everything that he’d seen.

  “I was fighting Bird People and Skulls at the same time,” he said. “There were hundreds of them.”

  “Is that all?” said Acab.

  “I was alone. I only had my bow. There was no cover.”

  Hopefully that was explanation enough.

  “But there was a jaguar there, and fire,” he added.

  “Well that much is clear,” said Xquic. “The jaguar protects us, and it gives us fire.” Quapar nodded in agreement.

  “So that’s a message,” he said. “You are being protected.”

  Tohil looked slowly around each of their interested faces. “No,” he said. “I cannot believe that. The enemies had the fire.”

  “Did it burn you?” asked Xquic.

  “No…I…um, no. I don’t think so.”

  “See, the jaguar protected you.”

  Tohil bit his lip. “If it means that, it means that we are being protected. All of us together,” he said finally.

  He got a couple of accepting nods for that.

  “Anyway, it was just a dream.” The effects of the dream state were starting to leave him now. It was early. They would be able to cover more ground if they started now. Forestalling any further discussion about the dream, he headed off into the trees.

  “We should get ready to move,” he told them as he moved away from the group.

  By the time he returned, Tepeu, Tzité and Quapar were still not in sight, but the others had already started gathering their things together. Tohil set about collecting his own. He was feeling a little hungry. They hadn’t eaten much the previous evening, but he wanted to reach the river, have some fresh water before they prepared any food. They’d have to think about hunting again soon as well. Seven people consumed quite a bit of the provisions that they were able to carry with them. Fresh food would be good. Corn meal only went so far and it would not be long before they ran out of that as well unless they could find somewhere to replenish their supply. There was so much to think about, travelling with a group of people. Things that he’d never had to think about before.

  oOo

  The boys had been right; the way became increasingly more difficult as the day progressed. The light forest that they had been travelling through since the time they left the old city drew in further as they descended. The constant calls of the native life accompanied their passage, but though there might be opportunity for hunting, they had to concentrate on their path. Once or twice, Oquis was forced to use his macuahuitl to slash a way through overgrown vines and thick scrub, slowing them even further. Tohil was still troubled by his dream and the images kept running through his head.

  There was more than one jaguar deity, and he knew that well. True, there were the protector gods, but there was also another, also associated with fire and this one loomed large in his thoughts. He was the god of the underworld, leader of the night. He took the dark sun form that the solar deity turned into when the sun passed below the horizon. This other jaguar god was also associated with black sorcery. What those Seelee figures had done in his dream could be nothing more than magic, and dark magic at that. There were two sorts of magic. Both were powerful, but one was associated with the light and the other belonged to darkness and war. He wondered briefly if the Elders were faced with similar dilemmas when they dreamed. Did they need to interpret what they saw, find the true meaning, or was it simply clearer for them?

  By midday after a long sweaty trek through the thickening forest, the air heavy around them, it became clear that they were getting closer to some water source. The insect life grew more profuse and varied. They were forced to slap at sweaty skin, or brush away flying creatures that hovered around their faces. Finally, they could hear the unmistakable sound not too far away, and following the noise, they broke through scrubby bushes at the edge of a small river. Crystal water flowed down a series of light brown rock terraces, breaking in mini waterfalls at each step.

  Acab immediately dropped his gear and stepped straight into the water, leaning down to splash himself, scooping up handfuls and letting it trickle over his head. The rest of them needed no encouragement and they quickly followed suit. In moments, they were splashing and laughing, even the usually taciturn boys. Tohil watched them for a second or two and then looking up and down the river, got rid of the things he was carrying and stepped into the cool stream. He lowered himself into the water and let its coolness surround him. After a time, he stood, looking up and down the river again. They could make a temporary camp here. It looked safe enough, but they couldn’t stay on the river itself. When the afternoon rains came, this place would be awash and the river could easily double its size.

  “Listen,” he called to the others. “Let us see if we can find a place to set up, away from the water a bit. It will rain later.” He looked up at the sky, but there was no sign of building cloud yet.

  “We can do a bit of hunting, rest, before the rain comes. Eat. What do you say?”

  “I will scout that way,” said Tepeu, pointing upstream.

  “And I will go there,” said Tzité without pause, pointing in the opposite direction.

  It was as if they both wanted something useful to do. That wasn’t a bad thing, he thought as he lowered himself back into the cooling water and let the thoughts that had been troubling him drift away with the stream.

  “The speec
h of Balam-Quitzé, Balam-Acab, Mahucutah, and Iqui-Balam is different! Oh! We have given up our speech! What have we done? We are lost. How were we deceived? We had only one speech when we arrived there at Tulán; we were created and educated in the same way. It is not good what we have done,” said all the tribes under the trees, under the vines.

  — Popol Vuh, Part III, Chapter 5

  TWELVE

  Four days it took them to reach the great river marked on Tohil’s map, and then another day to find a place where they could comfortably cross, wading with their belongings held high above their heads in an effort to keep them dry. Once across the other side of the river, yet more forest presented and with it came a sense of discouragement that steadily grew within him, but also a feeling of resignation. If this what they needed to do, then this was what they would do. Tohil could sense the weariness growing among his companions, but it was a weariness of the heart, not the body Once or twice, he pulled out his map, trying to determine how far they had already travelled and how far they had still to go. By his calculations, they had come a little over half way to their destination, in distance, but there was no way of knowing what obstacles or impediments to their progress they might yet face. He made a point of showing it to the others, anyway—less now for them to travel—but it didn’t seem to do much to alleviate their spirits, nor his own. He was at a loss how to find the motivation that they’d need. As he looked around the group, he felt helplessness growing within him, like a sigh that came unbidden.

  After one more full day of marching through the trees, growing increasingly despondent, things began to change. The vegetation thinned once more, and they emerged into light and grasses and open fields that at least served to allay that pressing feeling of sameness that dogged them through the forest during the past week.

  Back when they had been attempting to cross the river, Tepeu and Tzité had told them of long canoes that merchants used to navigate the waterways and transport goods from one end to the other, the entire length of the river. Tohil wondered at first how they might know this. His own village was familiar with visiting traders bearing goods upon their backs, gems, feathers, salt, always salt, but nothing like what the boys had described. There were many mysteries, it seemed, for which he had no immediate explanation. He thought to press the boys more about how they had come to their knowledge, but finally dismissed the thought. He himself knew many things after all, that he had not necessarily seen for himself, but had been passed to him from tales relayed by his own Elders.

  For a time, they travelled through open grassland, making good progress now that they were out of the forest. The grass here was greener, not as long or as yellow as the plains they had crossed a few days ago, days that seemed like weeks or months by now. Fewer clouds clustered in the sky, and the rains when they came were lighter and not so frequent. They were nearing the change of season, already. To Tohil, it felt like it had come too rapidly, as if they were moving through a time that moved at a different speed.

  In the middle of that afternoon, something appeared, some sort of structure that grew rapidly to cross their path, stretching from end to end of the horizon like a vast, long wall. As they grew nearer, Tohil saw that it could indeed be a wall. As the gap narrowed and the details resolved, it began to look just like the walls they had built back home, packed earth piled in the same way that they built the earthen embankments that surrounded their village.

  “What is that?” asked Acab. “Why would anyone build that here?”

  It was a good question. The thing was massive, stretching in both directions as far as they could see and taller than their heads. Tohil could barely imagine the amount of effort it would take to construct a thing like that.

  All of them had stopped their march to look at it. Tohil turned about, looking in every direction seeking something that might warrant such a defensive structure, but there was nothing. Open grassland, a few trees, absolutely nothing more. Quapar, having seen what Tohil was doing had obviously come to the same conclusion as he looked around them as well, searching.

  “Perhaps it’s on the other side,” he offered.

  Oquis then shrugged and headed for the wall, clearly intending to find out. Moments later, he was clambering up the side of the bank and had reached the top. He stood there, scanning both directions and then beckoned the rest of them forward.

  “You need to come and look at this,” he called.

  As soon as he reached the top, Tohil understood why,

  The top surface of the wall was flat and as wide as it was high. Smooth, even paving stones were laid symmetrically across the entire width and length, stretching to the horizon in both directions. Each stone was identical, similarly cut, and shaped, one like the other, the pale stone seeming almost white, with virtually no space to be seen between them except for tiny straight cracks.

  Tohil suddenly realised; this was the white road they had spotted from afar, the same one that was marked on his map. He lowered himself to a crouch, reached down with one hand and felt the smooth hardness of the stones and the even edges. He looked along the length of the road in both directions, then over the other side, but that way lay only more grassland and a few sparse clumps of vegetation. Why would someone build something like this? And how? It must have taken years to construct. And they didn’t even know yet how far it extended. It was clearly not meant to be defensive.

  “I wonder how old it is,” he said as he regained his feet.

  “Look at the stones,” said Xquic. “They look like the stones we saw in the temples.”

  “Maybe smoother,” said Quapar. “They look newer than the ones in the temple building. Whiter.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think they are newer,” said Tohil.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter either way,” said Acab. “It makes it easier. We’re supposed to follow the white road, right?”

  Tohil dug out the map, laid it on the ground and traced the white road’s path with his finger.

  “Right,” he said. “For a long way, but not all the way.”

  It did, however stretch almost to the base of the mountains, long and straight with one large bend near the middle. He looked in the direction of the mountains. Clearer here, but still smudged with haze in the distance. The large central peak seemed to have clouds trailing from the top.

  “Well, we can camp up here, have a good view of everything around us. Build a fire,” said Acab.

  “Yes,” said Oquis. “The only problem is, if we can see everything, then everything can see us.”

  “Especially if it goes through more forest,” added Xquic.

  “But we can defend ourselves better up here,” said Acab in a tone that said he thought the others were being stupid.

  “Not against arrows and darts,” said Quapar quietly.

  “You’re all right,” said Tohil with a frustrated sigh. He didn’t want this to develop into a full-fledged debate. “We are supposed to follow the road and it makes sense to do it up here on the top of it. When we need to stop, depending on where we end up, we can decide where we make camp.”

  He turned to the boys then. “Do you know anything about this road?”

  Together, they shook their heads.

  “All right then,” said Tohil, “let’s get going.”

  It quickly became apparent that travelling along the road’s surface was easier than trekking through the forests. It was straight, even, no hills to contend with or slippery, sloping declines, even though, after a while, the solid stone surface began to be hard on their feet. They could see for miles from this elevated position and would have ample warning of any approaching threat. Still, however, Tohil was forced to wonder who would build such a thing and how. He tried to picture hundreds of workers, perhaps thousands, digging, packing piled earth, carrying the stones one by one and carefully setting them in place. The sheer magnitude of the effort made it hard to imagine. The stones would have had to be transported vast distances. There was nowhere nearby that looked
like a ready source of raw materials. Possibly, they could have used the river, the large canoes that the boys had spoken about, but that was still only part of the distance and stones were heavy. There were no vehicles, no animals. There never had been. Just people. Unless they had used something else, and what could that be? Tohil simply couldn’t imagine. Once again, his thoughts came back to the Seelee. Who knew what they might have been capable of? They could have used some sort of other magic, maybe similar to that of the Dark Serpents. He didn’t even know if the Dark Serpents were alive. Perhaps they had been responsible.

  Together, they trudged on, without incident or conversation for some hours, leaving Tohil with his thoughts. They stopped to eat cold provisions and then resumed their march, a couple of them complaining of sore feet, but never Tepeu and Tzité who simply strode on resolutely.

  Towards mid-afternoon, it was Quapar who noticed something different off in the distance in the direction of their travel. Whatever it was, they would be upon it soon enough. He reported a cluster of dark figures, seemingly gathered atop the roadway. They were too far away, for now, to make out details properly. Quapar, by far, had the best eyes of the group, and it was not long before he was able to report more about what he was seeing.

  “I think they are people,” he said. “But they don’t look like warriors.” He shaded his eyes with one hand. “It’s hard to tell.”

  There seemed to be a lot of them, whoever they were, meaning that their small group would be far outnumbered. He was glad that they didn’t seem like warriors. He did not fancy facing that.

  “Can you make out anything else?” he asked.

  “A lot of them seem to be carrying something. Big packs.”

  As they closed the gap, Tohil was able to make that out for himself. There were about two dozen figures as far as he could tell, and it looked like about half of them were similarly burdened, carrying large, oversized packs upon their backs, arms stretched behind them, supporting the weight. All those carrying the loads were strung out in a single line though, one after the other. He could tell now that three or four of the group carried weapons, but the remainder were dressed very differently, cloaks, feathers, other adornments, but still difficult to make out the details this far away. They others had clearly seen Tohil’s group as well, because the group had stopped, those carrying weapons moving to the group’s front and taking up defensive positions.