While the others discussed how long they should wait before continuing along the path to keep from spooking the lone man with the alpaca, Jay raised the camera and wandered the perimeter of the light gap, hoping to encounter something remotely interesting. There were stumps where trees had been cleared, and about a million hoof prints in the damp earth, but it was otherwise unremarkable.
Raindrops tapped his shoulders and drained in cool lines through his hair, down his neck, and along his spine. It felt wonderful after so many hours of being sticky with sweat from the humidity. As long as this didn't turn into another tropical deluge, he'd be happy if the storm never stopped.
He panned along the edge of the jungle one final time, and was just about to stop recording when something caught his eye. At first, he thought it was another one of those strange butterflies, but it appeared to hover in the shadows at the base of a tree trunk without flapping its wings. He zoomed in and stumbled backward in surprise. Another painted man crouched in the darkness, unmoving, watching Jay even as he filmed him. A sharp-toothed grin slashed the man's face, and then he vanished.
"Hey," Jay called without turning. "There's another one out there."
He panned the camera from left to right, but there was no sign of the native.
The forest had fallen quiet, save the soft sound of rain dripping from the higher reaches onto the groundcover.
"Are you sure?" Colton asked.
"Of course I'm sure. I have him on film. He was right over there." Jay pointed vaguely off to his right, and turned to face the direction from which they had come. A blur of black streaked between two trees. "There's another."
The rest of the group closed in around him, their conversation forgotten.
There was more movement off to his left. He whirled in time to see another shadow vanish into the brush.
"They're all around us," Jay said.
"Stay calm," Colton whispered. He placed a steadying hand on Jay's shoulder. "Everyone form a tight line. We're too exposed here. We need to get out of the open."
Rippeth resumed the point, flanked by Colton. Morton brought up the rear, walking backward, while Sorenson and Webber slipped into the middle of the group with the poles that supported the crate on their shoulders, ready to drop it and go for their weapons at a moment's notice. Together they advanced into the unnatural twilight beneath the trees. No one spoke. The tension mounted.
Jay kept the camera to his eye, but moved it to either side of the path too fast for the aperture to reconcile. He saw motion in every shadow, and felt the weight of unseen eyes.
Why didn't they just attack?
And then it hit him.
They were being herded, driven like cattle, but toward what?
V
12:43 p.m.
During the half-hour after leaving the clearing, they had walked in an unnerving silence. Sam tried not to think about her encounter with Merritt in the bushes, although she was acutely aware of the lingering sensation of his warm breath on her lips. Best to just keep him behind her and focus on what lay ahead, which proved easier said than done. The natives had never come right out and shown themselves, yet they made their presence continually felt in sporadic glimpses of dark forms moving through the shadows and the snapping of twigs when she knew good and well that these men could move through the forest without making a sound. What exactly were they doing? Sam and the others were being ushered toward something, or were they instead being driven away? It wasn't until they arrived at an impasse that she had her answer.
A great wall rose thirty feet above their heads. It was covered so densely with blooming vines that she had to sweep them aside to reveal the construct formed of three-foot cubes of chiseled limestone. The abutment reached up into the canopy where it blended into the branches and leaves, and extended as far as they could see in either direction. Her heart skipped a beat. It was a fortification, but what was on the other side that needed protection?
Dozens of moss-covered stone columns capped with charred iron grates stood sentry every twenty-five feet or so.
"Over here," Rippeth called. He had opened a curtain of vines to expose a dark gap in the wall.
Merritt stepped up beside him, and together they pulled away the vegetation to uncover a rectangular opening. It was roughly six feet tall and three feet wide. A doorway.
"What now?" Galen asked. His face had paled to a chalky white.
The rustling sound from the bushes behind them made the decision for them.
Rippeth held a finger to his lips for all of them to see, then raised his pistol and walked slowly out of sight. Sorenson followed, face grim, gun raised. After a brief hesitation, the rest fell in behind them, leaving Morton and Webber to defend their rear.
Sam trailed closely behind Leo through the veil of vines on the opposite side of the wall, and emerged into shadows beside a large stone that appeared to fit into the gap through which they had just passed. It was attached to a system of pulleys and primitive wooden gears.
She drew a sharp intake of breath. It felt as though she had stepped through some invisible temporal barrier into the past. All of her professional life had been spent chasing history, and here she stood face-to-face with it in all its glory.
"It's amazing," she whispered, looking this way and that, absorbing every minute detail in hopes of committing it to memory.
Dahlia and Jay funneled in behind her. Sam heard the director whisper for her cameraman to stay at her hip, to record her reactions and get footage of everything she so much as looked at. The recorder started to purr and she forgot all about them in her excitement.
So much of her work was composed of guesswork predicated upon supposition. Her job was to piece together the lives of people who were no longer around to tell their own tales, and now she had the opportunity to evaluate just how right, and wrong, she had been. She forgot all about the fact that she was being herded into the fortified city.
It reminded her of the Chachapoya fortress at Kuelap, but with an undeniable Inca influence. The central path upon which they crossed into the city was several feet lower than everything else around it. Circular huts crafted from the same rock as the fortifications had been built upon elevated stone platforms and surrounded by cornices, with a single opening for a door facing the main walkway. While maybe only six feet tall and twelve feet in diameter, their conical, thatch roofs rose just as high as the fortress walls into the overhanging trees, where they tapered to sharp points. The faces of curious men, women, and children peered out from the shadowed openings before quickly ducking back out of sight. Massive kapok trees grew between the familial dwellings, their branches laced tightly overhead, except where they were pruned so as not to violate the integrity of the odd roofs. No vines or lianas dangled from the trees, yet entire colonies of epiphytes and bromeliads bloomed from the moss-covered trunks and branches in beautifully orchestrated shades of pastel yellows, purples, pinks, and blues.
The stones that lined the walkways and the borders between the structures were carved with decorative friezes, crafted with intricate zigzag and rhomboid patterns and sculpted designs. Here she truly recognized the Inca influence. There were depictions of serpentine, feline, and avian gods, especially one that appeared to be a combination of all three; faces of men in elaborate headdresses; and a series of images that appeared to tell the story of moving from one village to the next. And all of the designs were filigreed with gold.
Sam turned to her left at the sound of running water. A thin stream, channeled by low, smooth blocks, bisected the path perpendicular to the one they traversed. There had to be a spring somewhere ahead that pumped the water down the gentle slope, and somewhere out of sight was surely a mechanism of reclaiming it.
Stone domiciles passed to either side, perhaps twenty in total, before the path opened into a wide circular courtyard roughly forty feet across. Thick-trunked trees grew from the flat stone terrace at regular intervals. The lower branches had been trimmed back to the trunk
s to encourage proliferation in the upper reaches. Monkeys screeched above and green parrots with red rings around their eyes cawed and darted just overhead. The tree in the center had a thinner trunk than all of the others and broad, eleven-fingered leaves that folded open like hands. Sam recognized it as a cecropia tree, a sophisticated evolutionary anomaly that fostered a symbiotic relationship with a colony of cecropia ants. The ants helped the tree by defending it from herbivorous insects and mammals, while the stems and branches were riddled with hollow passages that provided a suitable home for the colony, and food in the form of glycogen that grew from the Müllerian bodies on the undersides of the leaves. One species was contingent upon the other to survive.
To her right were two circular stone stages separated by a short staircase, at the top of which was a much larger rectangular building with six trapezoidal doorways. The upper walls were designed with a step-fret frieze, while the remainder featured a mosaic of multicolored quadrangular stones. They were carved with more historical images, many depicting a god with the face of a snake, the eyes of the jaguar, and a receding crown of feathers. Sam imagined the domicile served as a palace of sorts for the ruling family, in front of which various rituals were performed.
Jay stepped in front of her to get a better view through the lens, then ducked back in line.
"Talk to me, Sam," Leo whispered into her ear. "You're the expert. What are we looking at here?"
Sam was still trying to decide. She had definitely formulated a theory, but she didn't want to be rash. She needed to be certain before she said the words out loud.
Leo's eyes locked on hers. His question wasn't one that required a simple answer. There was another question lurking beneath the one he had vocalized. He wanted to know if they were going to have to fight their way out of the village. What could she say? She was piecing it together as fast as she possibly could, and she was every bit as overwhelmed as the rest of them.
She averted her gaze and stared past Leo. Through the maze of tree trunks she could see several tall stone tiers ascending the steep slope of the mountain that served as the rear fortification. At the top of each retaining wall grew green tufts of plants, one of which she could readily identify. Maize. It was only then that she knew beyond any shadow of doubt who this lost tribe was.
"They're Chachapoya," she said, again meeting Leo's eyes. "We had thought that after the conquest by the Inca and then the Spanish occupation that their bloodlines had been diluted into the general population. But this tribe must have somehow eluded capture by leaving the traditional tribal boundaries of the Utcubamba and Marañón Rivers." She became more and more animated as she spoke. "All of the buildings and the layout of the village are Chachapoyan, but the artwork on the friezes and the main building are Incan. And do you see that terraced garden over there? You'll find the exact same thing at both Kuelap and Machu Picchu. These people fled here nearly five hundred years ago to elude the conquistadors. They've survived in complete isolation for longer than the United States has even existed."
Leo narrowed his eyes. "Both the Inca and Chachapoya were warring tribes."
"And they could have already killed us if that was their intention."
"We need to know right now if things are going to get ugly."
There was movement to her left. Sam whirled and saw three black-painted faces leaning around the trunks of the kapoks. Each man held a bow with an arrow notched, pointed directly at them. She glanced to her right in time to see more scrabble up onto the stone platforms to cover them from above.
"Just keep moving," Colton whispered from ahead of them.
Across the twin stages, in one of the middle dark openings of the large dwelling, the shape of a man took form from the shadows. He lingered in the darkness a moment longer before stepping out onto the stone platform and into the light.
"My God," Sam gasped.
VI
1:05 p.m.
"Here," Colton whispered. He reached around Merritt from behind and pressed something against his belly.
Merritt knew the object by feel, and tucked the pistol under his waistband.
He didn't like this. Not one bit. They had been herded into the city walls, and now they were sitting ducks, far too exposed as they slowly walked through the central courtyard. He hadn't fired a weapon in half a decade, but that didn't worry him nearly as much as how quickly the skills and the ability to kill without reservation would undoubtedly come back to him.
From the edge of his peripheral vision, he watched the natives take their posts behind the trees to his left, while they simultaneously assumed the higher ground to his right. His fist found the grip on the pistol too easily and his index finger caressed the trigger like an old lover.
What were they waiting for?
With his free hand, he pulled Dahlia behind him so that he was between her and the natives. Her blonde hair stood out like a bull's eye.
His heart pounded. Not with fear, but in anticipation.
The man who had emerged from inside the stone building strode to the edge of the platform and surveyed them as though they were no more significant than a line of ants marching through his kingdom.
He stood a full seven feet tall with the ornate golden headdress, from which both real and filigreed feathers stood like the rays of the sun to frame the crown that covered the man's forehead and brow. It reminded Merritt of the one he had discovered in Hunter's rucksack, only instead of golden teeth along the front rim, these appeared to be made of bone. The wrinkles on the man's face placed him somewhere in his fifties to sixties, yet his body was as muscular and toned as that of a man half his age. He bared his teeth as he watched them pass, showcasing brown triangles that knitted together like the fearsome jaws of a shark. Worse still was the fact that even beneath the thick application of black paint, the scars covering the man's body were clearly visible. Long, straight scars transected his chest and abdomen, and curved around his shoulders and biceps. His legs had been carved in numerous directions to create divots in the flesh where the scars intersected. Even his face had been slashed in such a way that it appeared cooked. His right eye was lower than his left, and the cheek beneath was thinner, the bones more prominent, as though a large section of meat had been torn away. He wore only a gray skirt woven from alpaca wool, from which hundreds of dark feathers hung to his knees. There were even feathers in his hair and hanging by leather straps from the wide holes in his ears.
Upon closer scrutiny, Merritt could tell that the other natives on the circular stages to either side of the stone staircase were similarly scarred, though to nowhere near the same degree.
He imagined some rite of passage ceremony like a bris, only instead of being circumcised, these boys were cut to within an inch of their lives. What kind of monsters were they dealing with here? Any tribe willing to torture its own members would surely be willing to do far worse to them.
The man, whom Merritt could only assume was some sort of leader or chief, inspected them like livestock, as though he were accustomed to the sight of strangers walking through his village. He bellowed something Merritt couldn't understand in a deep, thunderous voice.
As one, all of the natives lowered their bows. The arrows remained notched, but at least they were no longer an immediate threat.
Merritt looked back at Sam. A puzzled expression crinkled her pale face. When he turned back to the building, he saw only the silhouette of the man disappearing into the dark doorway.
"What just happened?" Merritt whispered.
"Just keep walking," Colton said, picking up the pace. He caught up with Rippeth at the front of the line and the two men spoke in hushed tones.
Merritt noticed he had unconsciously fingered the safety off on the weapon, and clicked it back on again. As much as the feel of the cold steel in his hand repulsed him, he couldn't bring himself to release it. He drew reassurance from its familiar power.
They walk in formation through a small village in the sand. He adjusts his grip on t
he Heckler & Koch HK416 clasped in his hands. Terrified faces peer out from behind boarded windows in whitewashed buildings scored by sand and smoke. The horrible silence. He fears the attack will come at any moment, from anywhere and everywhere, and the knowledge of what they will do to these people, what they have already done...
The path forked at the edge of the central courtyard. One branch veered to the right toward a series of staircases that ascended the sheer slope to where topless women tended to flourishing crops in stone-walled gardens. They weren't slathered with paint like the men, and had far lighter skin than Merritt would have expected, only a few shades darker than his own. The women stopped and watched them as they reached the intersection, and resumed their tasks when Rippeth led them down the path to the left, which descended toward the outer fortification.
Painted men continued to parallel their progress from the shadows. They darted from behind one tree to the next, weapons at the ready.
Ahead, a lone figure stood before an identical contraption of pulleys and gears to the one they had seen upon entering the village. The large stone that served as the door was still fitted in place. An alpaca grazed at the base of an agave plant beside the path. It was the same man they had encountered in the light gap. He gripped the handles of the gears and looked to the other natives as if seeking permission.
"You'd better open that gate," Rippeth said. "Now."
He raised his pistol and pointed it at the native's chest.
The man quickly recoiled.
An arrow sang through the air.
Rippeth cursed and his weapon fell from his grasp. He grabbed his right hand by the wrist. Half of the arrow protruded from either side of the base of his thumb. Blood flowed freely from the wound. Cradling the hand to his chest, he dropped to one knee and reclaimed his weapon in his other hand. He pointed it toward the trees, where now all of the natives had their bows raised.
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