“He is a man.”
Gathelaus had caught up to them and overheard the conversation. He cuffed the man’s ear for the remark. Gathelaus glowered. Mixamaxtla gave each a stern look and put his finger to his mouth. Each went quiet, but it was too late.
“Who is there?” called the old man. “I am old and without gold and cranky I’m told,” he chuckled to himself. The Northman remained silent, watching with a worrisome look on most of their faces—they could not understand his language. Mixamaxtla did not translate because he did not want to break noise discipline.
“Who are you? Who is out there?” asked the old man again. “I can hear you.”
“I will go talk to him,” said Mixamaxtla. “Maybe I can get some information.”
“Wait, how do we know if we can trust him?” asked Ptemauc.
“We don’t,” said Mixamaxtla.
“What are they doing?” Niels asked Gathelaus.
“Going to talk to him,” said Gathelaus. “And find out what we can before we rush into the jaws of a trap.”
“This is a bad idea,” muttered Ptemauc.
“So are yours,” said Mixamaxtla. He walked toward the old man, holding his hands out in a sign of peace. “I am Mixamaxtla, traveling to the city of the Sorcerer.”
“I am Alokan. Why would you want to go to that awful place? Are you one of them?” asked the old man. Mixamaxtla could see him better now as he neared. An old man with long gray hair, wrinkled brown skin, and a curious look on his face as he beheld the big gladiator. “So are you one of the Sorcerer’s men?”
“No,” answered Mixamaxtla.
“Where are your companions? I heard more of you.”
“They are there. We go to the city of the Sorcerer, contrary to his purposes. I guess you are not a friend of theirs either?” said Mixamaxtla.
“Nay, I am not. Once I lived in the city of Ixmal, but when King Ixcoatl deeded it to the Sorcerers I was forced out. I lost three daughters to them, and it was not through sacrifice. I will never forgive them that. I would do them harm if I could, but I am an old man.”
“Then it is through the workings of the old gods that I found you, you can aid us,” said Mixamaxtla.
“Old gods, which gods? Xolotl, Tlaloc, Kama-Zotz?”
“Nay, none of the Nine,” answered the burly Tultecacan. “Do you not remember the ones from before the Nine?”
“I have heard of those gods, but they mean little here. Here, every city, every village, every home has its own god. Though some gods are bigger than others. My home guardian Te-Hum-Pec, could not hope to contend with the likes of the Nine. He could not even do anything against the sorcerers,” said Alokan.
“Sorcerers? Why would you mention them?”
“He owns the city, he owns this road. His warriors made it a point of reminding me as they passed.”
“Passed, how long ago?”
“Half a day, this morning. They had a score of women from Canatucke with them. I have never seen them before now, ugly creatures, so pale like worms. You are seeking them! But why?”
“Yea, we are. We mean to rescue them before they are sacrificed to dark gods of stone,” said Mixamaxtla.
“It cannot be done, there are too many and the Sorcerer, he is too powerful. It is said he cannot be killed. Ixcoatl has sent assassins I have heard. All have failed.”
“He is dead now.”
“No, he isn’t. He came down this very road only three days ago. I saw him myself. He had been slain it’s true, we heard, but he awoke himself from that deep eternal slumber. He lives, still to follow his dark god’s design. You best take your men and go back to your own lands, forget these women, find new ones. I will tell no one of your being here.”
“I thank you, Alokan,” said Mixamaxtla “But it is my duty to save those women.”
“All of ours,” said Gathelaus stepping forward. He had spoken in broken Tultecacan, it made him sound like a barbarian, the accent horrid but Alokan could understand him all the same. The others appeared out of the gloom and Alokan stumbled back, his hand pressed against his chest. Alokan joined them as they continued down the dark road together. Gathelaus’s group thankful for a guide, and the old man for their uninvited protection.
“The times are changing fast, Alokan,” said Mixamaxtla. “It is fortuitous for us to have met on the road tonight.”
“If you say so. I only hope that I am not seen and implicated with whatever trouble you get into,” he said.
“We will not get you into any trouble. No one need know you helped us with anything,” said Mixamaxtla.
“Can you guide us on unseen paths to the city of Ixmal?” asked Mixamaxtla.
“Yea, I know a road less traveled than this one. It forks off the city of Mayapan and goes in a southwest direction through some jungle and hills. You won’t have to go into the city, just skirt along its walls. It will still be dangerous, there are guards we will have to sneak past, but it can be done.”
“It sounds good. Do you think we could beat them to Ixmal?”
“Not unless you had wings, and even then, I doubt it. And in that venture, I hope you will just let me go,” said Alokan.
“You are not our prisoner.”
“Good, then we can work together.”
As they walked on down the road, Mixamaxtla approached Gathelaus.
Within only a few short hours the road led them as much as the man did to a fork in the road—the outskirts of a great silent city not much farther on. Gathelaus looked upon the city of Mayapan with wonder. It stood impassive to their very existence, its stout walls guarding great sacrificial pyramids, temples laden with bright ochre without and jade within. Torches blazed like eyes from the gatehouse, staring out at them. It was as if a huge dragon sat waiting to devour them, licking its chops—holding dominion over the night.
“I know you are weary, but it is not safe here, even at this hour,” said Alokan. “I will go inside and see where the guards are patrolling, I will return shortly.”
Niels opened his mouth to say something but was silenced immediately by Mixamaxtla. The big Tultecacan’s finger to lip gesture was menacing in the half light. The old man strode to the gatehouse and entered after briefly speaking to the two guards. The wind and night wildlife made it impossible to hear the conversation, but they let him pass inside. The near naked guards gave no reaction to whatever it was Alokan had said to them.
“I don’t like this,” said Niels.
“For once I agree with him,” said Ptemauc.
“It couldn’t hurt to be prepared,” said Gathelaus.
“You’re right. Let’s back away from this position to those trees farther down the path. If we were betrayed we will not be where they suspect,” said Mixamaxtla. They crawled on their bellies like serpents until they were at least forty paces from where they had been. Out of the possible sight of the guardsmen, they lurked down the path to a thick clump of trees. They’d waited an impatient half hour when Alokan returned, peering blindly in the darkness.
“My friends, my friends?” he whispered all too loud. “Where are you? I am blind in this darkness.” Mixamaxtla mimicked the call of an irritating night bird. The old man struggled toward it. “My friends?”
“We are here.”
Finding them, Alokan breathed a great sigh of relief. “My friends, there is hardly anyone awake and moving about the city, just the usual few guardsmen and they are staying within the walls. We should not have any trouble cutting right through the city a half mile. The guards inside are drunk on heavy wine and could not be stirred even when I kicked them.”
“You kicked them?” asked Galen.
“Yes, they are city guardsmen, they are scum,” said Alokan.
“I don’t know how I feel about going through the city, drunk guards or no,” said Mixamaxtla. “Is there no other way past?”
“There is, we could go along the wall and then past the Black Pool of Sacrifice. It’s where many in the city get their water.”
Mixamaxtla looked to the others and they all nodded. Anything was better than going through the ominous looking city. “Lead the way, friend,” said Mixamaxtla. He walked just behind Alokan, letting him lead his nag down a narrow trail. They had not gone far before Alokan had tripped several times over roots and vines.
“Will someone else come ahead and warn me of these roots and holes?”
“I will,” said Gathelaus. He drew his war club and stepped ahead of the others. He prided himself on his night vision. He also enjoyed taking the point in these settings. It did not matter what Lachoneus had said to him so many years ago, “Stay in the middle of a caravan if you want to live. Never take point or drag at the end of the line. It’s too dangerous, trust me.” But Gathelaus thrilled at the hunt, the rush of being the first to fight, to attack or be attacked. He would never ask anyone else to do it. It was his.
He kept a good ten paces ahead of Alokan and Mixamaxtla, forever alert in the night for danger. As they went deeper into the forest, the torch lights of the city faded like dying orange stars, dimmed by the growing foliage. Nearly a quarter mile down the trail, a spider web of trails converged to a broad, well-beaten clearing, littered with various outcroppings of rock.
“The pool is just beyond, we shall meet the road to Ixmal in moments beyond,” said Alokan.
There had been a light breeze blowing in off the coast carrying the tangy scent of the sea upon it, but through the guidance of a higher power, the wind shifted and brought the strong musk of Tultecacan sweat.
Catching the scent just as they entered the clearing, Gathelaus shouted, “Back! It’s an ambush!” A dozen arrows flew blindly in the darkness. Several hit their mark, and men cried out. Galen narrowly missed being skewered to a tree as he brought up his shield.
“He led us into a trap!” screamed Niels as he raised his sword at Alokan.
“Nay, I did not.” He cowered on the ground. “Only for my daughters.” He said no more as an arrow transfixed his neck. Two score of Tultecacan warriors charged from behind rocks and underbrush, as many more stayed behind with bows yet relaxed.
“Form a defensive perimeter,” shouted Mixamaxtla, pulling a battle club. The only one now outside the perimeter was Gathelaus.
“There are too many to be defensive. Charge!” he yelled, drawing forth his flint-lined paddle. Into the fray of warriors he charged with grim satisfaction. He cleaved a swath through the Tultecacans, taking them by surprise. Without anyone meeting them for battle, Mixamaxtla led the men forward to assist their wayward berserker brother. The Tultecacans wore little and their bodies gleamed with sweat and oil in the dim moonlight, making it easy to see them, even in the dark. With a dozen slain and near as many heavily wounded, the Tultecacans began to retreat. A number in the rear actually dropped their bows and ran headlong into the darkness of the forest.
Young Jaxolec, met with a club to the head, would not rise again. Ptemauc, in turn, laid low Jaxolec’s slayer. Mixamaxtla bested the apparent leader of the force as Niels and Xoloc ran down two more who sought to flank them.
Gathelaus traded blows with two brutes on the rocky edge near the pool. Water glimmered and rippled thirty feet below as small stones tumbled in with the shuffling of their feet. Slicing upward with his weapon, the stern Northman buried his war club in the side of his nemesis. His enraged companion leapt at Gathelaus, who brought the obsidian sword to bear and tore the head of the war club out of the first to bludgeon the attacker. The sheer force of the leap propelled both of them off the edge and into the murky waters below. Gathelaus hammered at the foe all the way down. All went black.
****
With the enemy fled, they stopped to take stock of the situation. “Exetotom is dead, as is Jaxolec,” said Ptemauc.
“Did he betray us or not?” asked Niels.
Galen shrugged. “I can’t understand anything they say.”
“He swore he did not at the last, but I do not know. I trusted that he would not betray us but perhaps he did for his daughter’s sake as he said. Maybe someday we will know for sure, what matters now is that we put distance between us and whatever Tultecacans can be rallied to come after us. Those that ran off will surely exaggerate our numbers, so we can expect a hundred or more to be coming this way soon,” said Mixamaxtla. “Where is Gathelaus?”
“He fell into the pool or whatever it is,” said Ptemauc. “A big Tultecacan tackled him and they both went down.”
They gathered to look in at the edge but were greeted only with their own reflection and the dim red moon against a deep azure sky.
“Is there a crocodile or something in the water?”
“I do not know,” said Mixamaxtla. “These pools rarely have such creatures, there is not typically enough room or food for them to live.”
“But they call it the pool of sacrifice.”
“They do not sacrifice to crocs, but the god of the waters and the underworld, both Tlaloc and Kama-Zotz,” said Mixamaxtla.
“So we have lost Gathelaus, Jaxolec, and Ishocan, we go on,” said Ptemauc. “I know its not what we want, but its what we have to do.”
“Perhaps we should give up?” said one of the gladiators. “Without the Northman, all is lost.”
Mixamaxtla narrowed his eyes at him and then attempted to climb down the edge of the pool. As he found a foothold and put weight on it, it fell away and crashed into the water. Xoloc gripped Mixamaxtla’s shoulder strap and pulled him up.
“It’s no good like that, I have a short rope, we’ll lower you down,” said Niels.
Mixamaxtla understood his meaning, nodded and they secured him around a tree and then let him down slow.
The water was warm at the edge and only came to his knees, he took one step and found the drop off. He fanned his arms outward as he swam, feeling for anything. He dogpaddled for a minute or two before finding a brawny arm with a bracer upon it. Gathelaus? No, it was the body of the Tultecacan that Gathelaus had slain on the way down. Sure that his blood brother was near, Mixamaxtla frantically began swimming and searching the pool. Xoloc was lowered down as well to help look.
After some time, Mixamaxtla found that the pool opened up at one end to an underwater tunnel. He swam in briefly, holding the rope, but came back out breathing hard. “I can’t see anything nor feel anything but rock, the tunnel goes off in numerous directions. I can’t find anything. If we tarry much longer, we shall be discovered. I wish to find my blood brother’s body at the least but we must leave to rescue the daughters. Let us go,” said Mixamaxtla. He seemed to be saying all of that more for himself than the others.
As they hiked farther into the jungle, he did not speak for a long time. “We shall rest here,” he said. “Niels, first watch, Xoloc second, Galen third, Alamek fourth. I will be last.” He laid down for a fitful sleep.
Alamek awoke Mixamaxtla after the sun was nearly risen. “You needed the rest,” he said.
“I thank you, but we all needed the rest, you should have awoken me sooner,” said Mixamaxtla.
“It’s alright, I know what it’s like to lose a brother… the emptiness,” said Alamek.
“It just doesn’t feel right. If only I knew for sure he is dead.”
“He is dead.”
“If I could have just seen a body I could accept it better. Right now I can’t, and that’s what bothers me,” said Mixamaxtla. He stood and stretched. “Let’s march, we have burned enough time already.”
A range of hills rose higher than anything yet on the green jungle landscape. The hills stretched out before the men, beckoning them to climb and see what they held. Mixamaxtla had the men stay off the road, away from the now a constant procession of travelers moving up and down. From atop the highest hill, Mixamaxtla guessed he could see all the wheeling crossroads. “That is where we need to go, to find our proper directions. I don’t know which road would be the right one anymore.”
‘We are with you,’ signaled Xoloc.
“Thank you, my friend.” Mixma
xtla said a prayer in his heart that Gathelaus was not dead and that, in any case, he would see his blood brother again someday, even if it was on the other side.
The Giant and the Dwarf
Gathelaus awoke with a stinging, sticky face. The blood had long since caked and dried, yet everywhere else was cold and wet. Crawling onto the cold, smooth rock he bumped his head. It throbbed as a new wave of pain washed over him, giving a sense of heretofore unknown wounds and hurts. A new scrape on a goose egg from the battle.
The battle?
Silence, shrouded in deeper shadows than the abyss of Gehenna. Cold stillness that teased him to wonder if he was dead and cast into outer darkness. But no, he had no worry about that, it was not where he was bound.
Absolute wet darkness, was he blind? No hand in front of his face could be seen, if not for his breathing he would have thought himself deaf as well. The pain was real enough. He was not dead.
“Mixamaxtla? Mixamaxtla? Niels? Xoloc? Galen?”
What happened? Where was he?
He remembered the ambush, charging the Tultecacans, slaying a dozen of them, until one carried him over the edge into this, the Black Pool of Sacrifice, Alokan had called it.
If he alone fell in, where were the others? They would not leave him here to die, unless they could not retrieve him. Was it night? Why couldn’t he see the stars?
Feeling his way about, it soon became apparent that there was only cold stone above and below him.
“As above, so below,” he laughed. “Maybe I am not blind.”
Crawling the rest of the way out of the water, he felt gingerly, so as not to bump his head again. There was dry area just over a slump of rock. Feeling for whatever he could, he found a hint of dry wood so ancient it nearly crumbled in his hand. Pulling a flint from his bag, he struck it against his steel dagger. It sparked and he could see.
Tearing some roots and other odd tinder out of the jumble before him, he gathered enough to light a decent, if temporary, blaze. The flames cast ominous shadows on the misshapen wall of stone. Behind another pile of rubble, it looked like the cave continued, but how had he come to be in here? The dark waters encircled him on the tiny island of rubble in a wide half-moon. It seemed that an abyss had opened up to devour on both his left and right hand.
FIERCE: A Heroic Fantasy Adventure (BRUTAL TRILOGY Book 2) Page 26
