“Hunh,” Tok Pakal said.
Erkan held his hand out silently, and Tok Pakal gave him two stones. Tok Pakal said, “Kan Chak is getting to be a very good player. Qikab dare not let him win another.”
“What?” Corban watched the two men coming back to the center of the field; Kan Chak, the winner, who was shorter, slimmer than Qikab, kicked the ball in short rolls in front of him.
“Never mind,” Tok Pakal said. “There are some things you need not know. Here, are you hatching those stones? Make a bet.”
Corban said, “Qikab will take the second end. Two stones.”
Tok Pakal gave a burst of laughter, and turned to Erkan. “You see. He learns fast.” He leaned back in the chair. “And well, and saves me. I can’t very well bet against my own nephew, especially against a halfman, so you take the bet, Erkan.”
Erkan shrugged. “I will.” His eyebrows waggled up and down. “Corban,” he said, “you can be too clever.”
Corban turned his gaze toward the field. Kan Chak was facing against Qikab again across the ball, which lay on the ground below the lopped tree. Halfman, Corban thought. Shorter, slenderer, not even really the same color. Not a full-bred Itzen, a makeshift Itzen, cobbled together with local stuff like the coverings of the palanquins. He understood why Qikab had to beat him.
Qikab did beat him, this time, racing down the field a step ahead of Kan Chak and staying always between him and the ball, flinging his arms out sometimes to pen the other man behind him as they ran, and Erkan paid Corban two stones. While they brought the ball back up the field, he said, “Did something happen, yesterday?”
Tok Pakal grunted at him. “Much happened. What in particular?”
“During the storm,” Corban said. “I heard the drums talking. Was there a fight? Where did that arrow come from?”
Erkan made a noise in his throat. Tok Pakal shook his head. “You don’t need to know that, Corban. Don’t ask.” He waved his hand at the field, where Qikab and Kan Chak were facing each other over the ball. “They’re starting. Bet with me.”
Corban said, “Two stones that the halfman gets this end.”
“Ah,” said Tok Pakal, with a smile. “You learn very well, my friend. Taken.”
Qikab won that end, and the next part of the game began, which looked to Corban like a constant knot of bodies churning around the ball, kicking and screaming. The ball arced up into the air and fell back, the men banging it high again with elbows and knees. Now and then one or two of the players would come out and sit down, panting, to get their breath. Corban tried to watch Kan Chak, at the center of things; he saw that each time Qikab sat down to rest, Kan Chak took himself out also, but never sat. His eyes always on the other man.
Corban saw also that the whole aim of the work now was to drive the ball up and over the limb of the tree again, and he turned to Tok Pakal and said, “Two stones that Kan Chak will—” He had forgotten the phrase; he held out his left arm and swung his right fist over it.
Tok Pakal laughed, reached out, and roughly palmed his shoulder. “Score first. Yes. Very good. The tree limb marks the crease. Watch.” His eyes shone, following the game. “Ah!”
Down there Qikab suddenly broke free of the pack; with his hip he knocked the ball high, toward the tree, and rushed after it. Kan Chak was after him. The bigger man reached the ball a step ahead, and with both hands batted it up again, but it fell short of the tree, and Kan Chak rushed in and struck it away.
Corban said, “Double the bet.”
Erkan muttered something in his throat, hunched down in the corner of the palanquin, in the shadow there. Tok Pakal’s eyes shone, fixed on the game, his mouth drawn back in a forgotten grimace. “Done,” he said, with a sharp nod.
The ball flew out of the pack, and Kan Chak followed it, Qikab on his heels. Their bodies gleamed; their feathered helmets and the knee pads and arm guards they wore gave them the look of great birds in a violent dance. Kan Chak reached the ball first, one hand out to push Qikab back, one foot planted, and the other swinging. The ball sailed up, a misshapen brown blob against the broad blue sky. It wobbled gracelessly in the air; it curved off to fall on the far side of the tree from the crease. All the men converged on it, grunting and shouting.
Beside Corban, Tok Pakal let out his breath in a whoosh. “Close.”
Corban said, “Double the bet again.”
“Aha.” Tok Palml clapped him on the back. “A gambler born, perhaps? Done!”
“This time for my knife,” Corban said.
The smiling face before him froze a moment, startled, and then tightened into a frown; Tok Pakal’s eyes glittered with the first heat of anger. Abruptly his face loosened, and a look of sly amusement came over him; his eyebrows went up and down. He smiled, and nodded.
“Very well. For the knife.” He swung back toward the game.
The Itzen ballplayers battled back and forth for a while, neither team ahead; Corban saw that only Qikab and Kan Chak could kick for the crease and the score, but he could not see how the others played, except to shove and crash into each other, and slam into the ball. The ball came loose again, kicked in a long looping drive toward the palanquins, and Corban saw how lumpy it was now and when it hit the ground it stopped.
Tok Pakal growled in his throat. “This would not happen in Mutul.” He called out suddenly, and stood up, and the game suddenly ceased. Corban sat back, alarmed, thinking if this were over, he would not get Tok Pakal to the point of betting the knife again.
But Tok Pakal was only ordering a change in the ball. He spoke and pointed, and somebody ran out and picked up the dead ball. From a box by the palanquins Qikab took another, this one considerably more round, its leather cover clean as a new calf. Tok Pakal sat down again.
Qikab ran forward, the ball in his hands, and made to kick it; all the men before him rushed back away from him, and he held the ball in his hands instead and ran half the way to the tree with it. Tok Pakal groaned, one hand over his eyes. A yell went up from the other players, who rushed at Qikab, and then Qikan did kick the ball, shooting for the tree limb.
Kan Chak leapt up out of the thronged players, his arm stretched up, and with his fingers knocked the ball up into the air. Wheeling under it he launched his body out to meet it as it fell. He seemed to hang in the air, his body taut, shining, and his legs swung, one back to balance and the other forth to strike, and with that thigh he smacked the ball up over the tree limb.
A yell went up from the watchers. “Great play,” Tok Pakal murmured, on Corban’s left. Out on the field, half the players were cheering and leaping around, beating each other on the shoulders. Qikab also roared; he spun toward Tok Pakal, brushed his hands together insistently, and shouted something. Tok Pakal hunched himself back into the shadows of the palanquin, his face twisted in distaste. Glancing at Corban, he said, in the low language they shared, “If he hadn’t run with the ball to start with he could complain about use of hands.”
“That’s justice,” Corban said. Kan Chak was jogging toward them, his cheering team behind him. Tok Pakal gave a short surprised laugh, still looking at Corban, and got up and went to greet the winner. Corban reached over to the table and took back his knife.
C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N
Ekkatsay leaned heavily against the rock. The heat of the day pressed down over him and he could smell the storm building in the air; his skin crawled. He felt utterly out of place. He was glad that Miska had pulled them up here into this shelter, deep in the hills and away from the plain and the terrible host there, but he itched to go back where he belonged.
It was the Sturgeon Moon, perhaps not here where nothing was the same, but certainly at home, and he had to get his people into winter quarters. But Miska would not leave here. Miska paced around the camp, crisscrossing the hollow among the rocks, walking and walking, his head down, and would listen to no one, and he would not lead them home.
The little girl Miska had somehow found out here sat on the other sid
e of the hollow, wrapped in her raw-colored fur. Ekkatsay drew his gaze from her, and made a sign with his hand, under the cover of his other hand, knowing spirit work when he saw it.
There was a lot of spirit work going on here. He glanced at Hasei, standing next to him in the sun.
“They’re not men. They’re insects, or made of stone, or they have a spell that protects them. Our arrows can’t hurt them. How can we fight them if we can’t kill them?”
“Miska killed some,” Hasei said.
Ekkatsay glanced around him; his own men were off into the west on a hunting party, trying to get some meat. Only Miska’s Wolves were in this camp now. He slid his hands down his thighs. He knew Miska had kept him here so that the rest of the Bears wouldn’t simply go home.
“He said he killed some. No one saw him. Or them.”
Hasei stiffened. “I won’t listen to this.”
“If they can’t die—”
“I won’t listen.” Hasei went away from him; his course across the hollow intersected the course of Miska’s restless endless pacing and Hasei paused a step to let his sachem go by. Ekkatsay lowered his head. Miska was mad, he thought. They had to go home. He watched the Wolf sachem walk and walk across the hollow in the rocks.
Hasei went across the camp from Ekkatsay, wanting to get away from him, thinking if he stayed close to the Bear sachem the sense of what he had said might leak into him like poison. He knew Miska had no idea what to do.
The child Ahanton sat in the shade of a gray rock. He went over and sat next to her, feeling sorry for her; nobody knew what had happened to Epashti or Corban. He had some dried meat in his pouch, and he broke some off and held it out to her.
She gave him a shy look, and took the meat. Hasei studied her while she ate it. She would be beautiful someday, he thought. She was not of the lineages forbidden to him and so he could marry her when she was of age. The cloak around her drew his eyes, the strange web of the colors, and he began to think of words for this. Rainbow net was wrong, he cast that away, not a rainbow, although sky colors. The child sat still beside him, chewing. He put his hand out to the cloak, feeling the texture, not like hide, more like moss—the deep red faded at the edge to a sunset hue. Wandering in the words like a meadow he tried to find something in the blue, in the soft mossy touch on his fingertips.
She said suddenly, “I have dreamt of you.”
He started, jerked out of the dreamy wordflow. She turned her eyes on him, her eyes gray like Corban’s, like the Forest Woman’s, and he remembered suddenly where she had come from; he shrank back a little, as if he had come too near to the fire. He said, “What did you dream?”
“I dreamt of you in a tree. You were upside down in a tree.”
She pulled the cloak around her and looked away from him, no longer interested in him. He sat rigidly wondering what that meant, that she had seen him in a tree; he climbed trees often, scouting for Miska, and one of his special emblems was the red maple tree. Now he could not find the warm dreamy word-river. Stunned back into the cold present he sat wondering what was going on, and what would happen next.
There was only one thing to do: follow Miska. He fastened himself to that, and let it lead him.
In the afternoon there was no ball game. The drums beat a steady slow thrum. The Itzen gathered around the palanquins, Qikab with great show taking his place in the one next to Tok Pakal’s. Kan Chak stood outside the palanquin, nearby.
Corban stood with Erkan beside Tok Pakal’s palanquin, and watched a little huddle of men come into the camp, stooping as they came and scraping the ground with their hands. An old man led them, leaning on a stick, and seeing him Corban stiffened with recognition. These were the Kisko hunters from across the river, who had taken Epashti and Ahanton prisoner.
The Kisko carried heavy baskets, so large each basket needed two men to haul it along; they set them down in a row before Tok Pakal, and then they lay down before him, their faces in the dirt. Corban turned his eyes away, unwilling to see this.
Afterward, he went off past the drum line, to make water, and the dwarf came after him. Erkan said, “You can be too clever, Corban.” He snapped his finger at Corban’s knife. “That made him angry.”
Corban said, “It’s my knife. Who is Kan Chak?”
“You shouldn’t pay attention to any of that.” Erkan rubbed his nose. “Well, maybe you should. Kan Chak is Itza Balam’s son, like Qikab Chan, but his mother was a low woman.”
“Itza Balam.”
Erkan made a sign with his fingers, lowered his voice, whispered. “The Lord of the Serpent Wand. The master of Cibala. Tok Pakal’s, and my and your master, now. You could see a lot more of him than you’d like, when we go back to Cibala.” He gave Corban a deep, significant nod.
“When will that be?”
“Soon. They’re done here.”
“Done,” Corban said. “With what?” He stopped, near the drums; the sun was going down behind the tree-covered ridges to the west. A low mutter of thunder sounded, but the sky was clear, spread with light from the setting sun, the wind still and the air soft.
Erkan said, “They’ve taken plenty of captives now, and talking like that today to those river people, that settles things with them for a while. And we took plenty of maz, they’ve been saying how much it is, a very great harvest this year. We can go back to Cibala in glory. Itza Balam will be well pleased. He’ll see that Tok Pakal deserves to command four palanquins, he’ll give him more, next time.” Erkan gave Corban a sly look. “He’ll find you very interesting too, I think.”
Corban was still caught in the first rush of understanding. He said, “What are they going to do with all these captives, then?”
“Take them back to Cibala, to learn to work.” Erkan turned briskly, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s go find something to eat and get under a roof, I don’t like being outside when the moon rises.” He hurried off in his rolling short-legged trot, back toward Tok Pakal.
Corban turned his back on the Itzen camp, and looked out over the drum line, onto the broad plain now in the gathering gloom of the night sparkling with hundreds of little campfires like a field of embers. He felt as if Erkan had hit him over the head. For the first time he realized that these people were all slaves, that this was a slave raid. He had been a complete fool not to see, blinded by the glories of the Itzen, by his own little dreams, not to see what was going on in front of him. He remembered thinking all these people were wives and children, following the army; he remembered knowing they were miserable, out in the rain and the wind, and yet he had not understood.
He knew he was a slave, now, too. That was what Tok Pakal had meant, that time, agreeing Corban would never go back—what that sly look had meant, also, over the knife, since even if Corban took back the knife, Tok Pakal still owned Corban. Tok Pakal with his kindness, his pats and orders, would make of Corban something like the dwarf, that he could talk to and relax with, because he meant nothing.
Or give him to another Itzen lord, another collector, as Erkan kept hinting, perhaps his brother, the evil Itza Balam.
“Animal-Head.”
“Hah.” He whirled, startled, every hair turning.
Behind him, in the last light, stood Temuscah, the leather man who had first captured him. The soldier leaned on his spear, somber. He said, “I hear you are side by side with Tok Pakal Chan himself now. Lucky you.”
Corban said, “It all depends on how you look at it. Did Qikab ever reward you for bringing me to him?”
Temuscah coughed a short, humorless laugh. “No, are you joking? The mighty Qikab Chan remember a mere slogger? I just wear the leather.” He rapped his armored chest, which bonged softly, like a hollow tree, a little drum.
Corban said, “Well, keep watch, and soon maybe you’ll be repaid.”
Temuscah sneered at him. “Yes, one of those devils in the hills will kill me. Good keeping, Animal-Head. I’m sorry I let them have you.” He went off along the drum line, his spear on his
shoulder.
Corban turned toward the campfires again. Now that he was seeing what was really there, he thought about Epashti, and his spirit sank.
He had left her in the path of the Itzen only hours before they moved. She had certainly been taken. She and Ahanton were out there, somewhere, in the sprawling camp that glittered like the plains of hell. She and Ahanton would be carried off into slavery, like all these other people.
His heart contracted, sore. This was his fault. He had not done justice to Epashti. He remembered how she had fought to save the burned child; abruptly he understood how she had fought to save him, too, as she saw it, coming with him, trying to help him. And he had abandoned her in the middle of enemies, given her up for a selfish dream.
His sister had said he would find what he was looking for, if he went into the west. He remembered now thinking he was asking the wrong question. At last his eyes opened and he saw. This was the city he had been searching for, this swarm of wretched people, this was the city of the just.
He had never known what it would look like and now he understood why. He had always thought he was different from other people, that he at least saw what was wrong, and that was why he was so out of place. But he was no different from everybody else, he was just as willfully stupid and cruel as everybody else. He belonged where he was, and if he wanted justice he had to make it himself.
She was there, Ahanton was there, out in the night country before him, lost like stars in the dark. He had brought them here and he had to rescue them. He couldn’t go looking for them. If Tok Pakal found out about his family, he would use them to keep Corban always on his chain.
His gaze roamed over the patternless fire-strewn plain, every little flame a captive. Slowly it came to him that to save Epashti and Ahanton, he had to free them all.
The thunder rumbled in the distance, the sky laughing at him, a little man who knew nothing. But his mind calmed. He began to see a way before him. His hand going to his knife, he imagined himself on.
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