The Sacrifice Game

by Brian D'Amato

  We can make it, Hun Xoc signed in the direction of the Yellow Gate, we can get through them.

  We can’t make it, I signed back.

  ?!?!? he signed.

  I pulled his face in front of mine so that the Rattler bloods couldn’t see and gestured to the wall with my eyes. He looked into my eyes—which was like a really aggressive, inquisitorial thing to do—and I gave him a look like “It Must be Done!” and he accepted it.

  I pulled the Rattler captain over and whispered into his ear. You’re going to take the last three of your bloods and my standard and get down to the Yellow Gate, I said.

  He started to object. Koh’d probably told him he couldn’t leave me no matter what. Then he thought better of it and ran off at the head of his little group in that awkward way you run on unfamiliar ground at night. They won’t even make it to the gate, I thought. The amputee limped after them but Hun Xoc said, “Not you,” and pulled him back. He didn’t have much mileage left on him.

  Just the two of us left, I thought. Better anyway. Hun Xoc boosted the amputee up onto the wall and made him lay his torso prone over the thorns. I could hear him biting through his lips to stifle his shriek. Behind us Emerald Immanent’s posse was only just around the curve of the causeway, less than a hundred paces off. Hun Xoc lifted me up onto the amputee’s hot, oily back. It shivered a little as it crunched down into the spines. I couldn’t resist taking a quick look back down at the court. It looked like Harpies had sent shock squads around through back alleys to come up behind the Ocelots’ formations and attack their flanks. What had happened to Koh?

  Don’t think about it, I thought. Just take care of your end. I hopped onto the poor bastard’s seventh cervical vertebra, grabbed his pigtail with both hands, and vaulted over his head down onto the invisible foliage below. Hun Xoc climbed up him and slid down next to me. I got my head up out of the dewy sego-lily leaves and looked for the cistern.

  Eyes. Hot orange-green eyes in a scary-clown face, a jaguar colored with blue powder. I looked into the eyes and breathed. It was a big jaguar, just watching us in that lazy-alert way.

  I am not afraid, I thought, and started counting. At twelve the cat turned and disappeared between a pair of these twisty ancient trees all inlaid with arabesques of tourmaline and spondylus shells. It was a weird transition from the urban setting we’d been in. Behind me Hun Xoc was ordering the amputee to get off the wall. I guess he hadn’t even seen the jaguar. He pulled up the kid’s bloody face with both hands and pushed it upward. The amputee must have gotten the idea because he arched his back and pushed himself off the thorns with what must have been his last erg of free will. I listened to him clatter onto the causeway.

  It’s got to be that way, I thought.

  I pointed. I pushed up and hunt-ran around the trees, uphill of the cat.

  ( 40 )

  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, the
re 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.

  ( 41 )

  People used to tell me I remember everything, but of course there is too much of everything for anyone to remember. It’s really just that the type of things I do remember are different, like I might be able to quote the script of a movie I’ve seen, but I wouldn’t be able to say whom I saw it with. Movies and other things tend to exist in a sort of limbo memory space. And for a while after we tipped back into the Great Cistern, events for me shifted into that unmarked class of sliding space-time. Maybe in another way it’s like if you’re listening to something or watching a movie on a disk and you’ve hit the REPEAT button and then fall asleep in your chair while it loops over and over. You might remember the scenes perfectly clearly, but not how they fit together or which repeat you saw them on. It was like an in-and-out dozy state when you might be sort of remembering a dream while you’re dreaming it, or getting ready to dream it again and sort of seeing it coming and getting ready to remember it. It never quite seems to be happening at the time. Instead it’s like you’re visualizing what’s going to happen or trying to make sense out of what’s happened already, and even though the events are all clear enough they’re not correlated against any clocks, internal or external. I certainly remember that feeling of knowing we were irrevocably off-balance. I don’t remember falling or hitting the water. I think my heart stopped for a beat and a half. I realized the blood I’d pulled in with me was still choking me, and I remember reaching over with my right hand and finding a shard of obsidian that was still stuck in my left one. I got it out, tightened my fingers around it, twisted my arm back, found the protuberances of the blood’s left floating ribs, felt up the costal arch, and cut through under the base of the sternum. He reacted but his grip didn’t relax and I could tell I didn’t have much consciousness time left. I got the feeling we were still sinking instead of floating up, maybe because of all his quilted padding and heavy spondylus shell wrist cuffs and ankle cuffs and everything. I dug the knife in again, got the tips of four fingers inside his skin, finger-crawled up under his xiphoid process, and cut through the diaphragm up into his hot pericardial cavity. I was in the wrong position to get all the way up to his heart but I found the inferior lobe of his left lung instead and grabbed it. It felt like a wet sea sponge. I yanked on it and it mushed and collapsed, but it must have triggered some real alarm because the blood’s whole body spasmed so that I could push clear of him. I gasped at the release and a croquet ball of water forced itself down into my throat. It was about halfway pleasant because I really did need a drink but more pressed into my lungs and I got a blast of preconscious reptile panic.

  Last thing, I thought. I dug the bag of earthstar powder out of my crotch and fumbled with the knots. I couldn’t get it open with my shredded hands. Some of the shard was still stuck in the metacarpals of my right hand, though, and I stabbed the side of the little bag, twisted a hole in it, and punched the bag inside out though the hole, releasing trails of numbing death through the water. I even managed to cut the bag off its thong and let it sink, although consciously speaking I’d forgotten that it had been weighted with pebbles. I floated.

  And that was basically it for a while. I don’t remember being wet, although being underwater doesn’t feel wet anyway. I do remember gazing at the circle of faint sky-blue below me, the opening of the well—although it was r
eally above me—and considering whether to blow the rest of my carbonized air supply out through my lungs and die in one of the most pleasant ways possible, in the center of a jade sphere in the hands of the well gods, listening to the resonance of the water, room, womb, tomb, flume, shroom, plume, room, whoomb, boom, twroooowmb, twoooooommmmmmm.

  TWO

  The Taste of Screams

  Figurine of a Diety Impersonator in a Duck-Billed Mask

  Found Downstream of the Ruins of Ixnichi Sotz

  Curious Antiquities of British Honduras

  By Subscription • Lambeth • 1831

  ( 42 )

  There’s no memory in there of my being grabbed. But there was a moment somewhere when my numb wet head seemed to swell to mul-size in air that felt like dry heat. Grab air. Nose full. INHALE, no, hard chunk. Spit it out. Spoot it eett, GET IT OUT!!!, and there was this sensation of swallowing myself, like the way if you put a dragonfly’s tail in its mouth it’ll eat until it dies. At some point I realized that someone stuffed my left hand into my own mouth, the embedded shards of flint cutting through my upper lip. I blew my nose and opened one nostril and managed to breathe through that.

  I think after that there’s a longer period that I don’t remember at all. And in a way that’s sad because the moment of your capture is one of the most important in your life. It’s a sacrament. But I don’t remember hearing my captors’ speeches, or my saying any of the little poems of submission, or anything. I do remember wearing ceremonial bindings, like the ones I’d been wearing on the mul, and I remember being in total dark smelling dead people near me. They smelled like they’d been beheaded, maybe, or eviscerated, which lets them drain a bit so they don’t get quite so smelly as people who die from disease. You don’t usually smell in dreams, I thought. Does that mean I’m awake? My swollen tongue scraped against cakes of blood on my inner cheeks. My leg was cold and big but when I finally got my bonds twisted around so I could reach down and feel it, it didn’t seem to be around. There was something fleshy there, according to my hand, but it was utterly numb, like I was touching someone else’s leg, and it seemed swollen like I had elephantiasis. Before, after, or during that whole dark period I remember being prodded and surrounded. I reached out and felt their fur leggings. They were made of baby-ocelot skin, the kind only 9 Fanged Hummingbird’s personal guards got to wear. What’s happening with the earthstar compound? I wondered again. Is it working? If it’s working, some people should be acting strange by now. They should be acting too happy, anyway. Right? Or maybe they’re onto it. Maybe they’re being smart, they’re only drinking water they’ve held on to for a while. Hell, hell, hell.