by RW Krpoun
“Captain, you want to bring the mounts around?” I asked as I buckled my cartridge belt back on and got it situated. Although I was the senior agent I preferred to keep orders casual when practicable- after all these were grown men, seasoned veterans, not kids new to the regiment.
“Sure.”
Nhi had re-packed her carbine and was slinging the case. I wondered why she didn’t keep it to hand, but didn’t inquire-choices about firearms are a personal business. “Let’s go see what we can see.”
Mac kept watch until we drew abreast and then fell in alongside. “What’s the plan?”
“Captain’s bringing the horses. You check the bodies of the two who were in charge and then take a look at what they were digging, see if you can get a read on what they were up to. If you find something on the two that you don’t recognize, be careful not to touch it.”
“Yeah.”
The fellow in the bedraggled dark suit didn’t look like a man who had been sleeping well or often, and did not seem overjoyed by the recent developments.
“Sit back down,” I advised him by way of a greeting. “See this lady? She would like nothing so much as to lop off your feet. She is also the nicest person in my group. Understand?”
He nodded as he resumed his sitting position.
“Who are you?”
“Doctor Jacob Wurfel,” he nodded, a weary, lean man in a suit that fit looser on him than it had when he had purchased it, unshaved and wearing a mustache which was once a stylish pencil line that was now growing out. He had an accent I couldn’t place, a vaguely Germanic tone.
“You don’t look like a sawbones.”
“I am not a medical doctor, but rather a scholar of archeology and history. My doctorate is academic in nature.”
“Where are you from, Doc?”
“I am a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Mexico to further my studies into the pre-colonial period of this region.”
“That a fact,” I said, using the muzzle of my Krag to turn the book he was reading to look at the spine, only to discover that it was a ledger, not a book. “So, tell me why we found you in the company of two madmen and a crowd of dead people.”
“I am a hostage of sorts, a captive.”
“How did you come to be a hostage?”
He sighed, both weary and visibly annoyed. “Five weeks ago I was hired to give a lecture; I was staying in Veracruz at the time. My purported employers instead took me captive at the first opportunity and I have since been forced to do their bidding.”
“You don’t appear to be wearing irons,” I observed mildly.
He kicked his left foot out, and I noticed that the shoe on that foot had a built-up sole. “A boyhood accident on horseback has left me with a pronounced limp; my chances of outdistancing the trottel are very slim.”
“So where is the person in the green coat?”
“His name is Cabral, and he left here some hours ago, with thirty of the dead as an escort.”
“All right, Doc, why don’t you give me the short version of why you’re here and what you know.”
He glared at me in a peevish sort of way, and I figured him for the sort to have a clear opinion of social status and the duties of the common folk, but clearly he was also very clear on the fact that we were a long ways from anyone else who cared whether he lived or died. “As I said, I am a scholar of the pre-colonial period of this region. I was abducted in Veracruz some weeks ago, one of my abductors being that man there,” he indicated Plug Hat.
“I was taken north and instructed to conduct research based upon my own materials and several accounts, possibly original material, of the earliest colonial days, as well as later material. Specifically I was told to track down certain items. I was at this undertaking until quite recently, when I was introduced to Cabral, whom I accompanied to Sinaloa. I expect you are the men we saw on the ridgeline as we were leaving.”
“We were.” I had dug out my notebook and was taking notes.
Mac trudged up. “Found two little statutes, each of those two had one. I left ‘em where they fell.”
“Good idea. And here comes Captain and Tobias. All right,” I turned back to Wurfel. “They had you doing research. In a nutshell, what research?”
“Using the material they provided and my own reference works I was to establish the likely hiding places of various items cached from private collections by Imperial supporters during the Second Mexican Empire, or covertly traded to the French during that same period.”
“And your captors thought these items were still in place?”
“It was a period of revolution and turmoil, with French troops propping up an outside monarchy, so yes, it was not unreasonable to expect that certain goods of high value were hidden against future need, only to have their owners meet unexpected ends.”
“So you found where the goods ended up?”
“A few of them; most of the items had been taken back to Europe by the French or ended up for sale at various places of exile.”
Captain joined us and I briefly brought him and Mac up to speed.
“So why are you still a captive?”
“They did not trust me, obviously. Until they had the items in their possession they were keeping me in hand.”
“Tell us about Cabral.”
“He spoke very rarely, and never directly to me. He speaks very proper but archaic Spanish when he speaks. His face is wasted and thin, as are his hands; I never saw him without the coat.”
“Is he the master of this undertaking?”
“No, there is certainly a person above him, but whom that might be, I have no idea.”
“How many normal people are in this business?” Captain asked.
“Cabral, those two deceased men, who are from Honduras if I am not mistaken, and at least four others I met, but those latter individuals were simply hired guns, as you say. And others, I am sure, although I have no facts as to their identity.”
“So Cabral took you to Sinaloa,” I prompted him. “Then what?”
He sighed. “You saw the outcome for the population. When Cabral was firmly in control I was set to examining a set of knives made of volcanic glass, verifying their providence. Such things are simple enough to counterfeit, you see. Most of those, however, were the genuine article. Cabral dispatched two armed men with three of the knives, their destination unknown to me, before we left Sinaloa. I also used a small collection of very rare books in Sinaloa to refine my research. When that was complete Cabral sent my findings off with an armed man, and we set forth.”
I picked up the ledger and moved away, motioning the others to follow me. The ledger was filled with neat handwriting in a language I did not recognize-it certainly wasn’t German. “What about the digging?” I asked Mac as I passed the ledger to Nhi, who glanced at the writing, shrugged, and passed it to Captain.
“They were looking, and looking hard,” the big man said grimly. “They unearthed some packing crates that had been in the ground a good while, got clay pots and figures in ‘em.”
“All right.” We moved back to Wurfel. “So, what items were you researching for your captors?”
“I began with a list of over a two hundred items all of which dated well before the arrival of the Spanish, and when we left Sinaloa the list was down to twenty. I expect that most of the items still on the list were there simply to ensure I did not know exactly what they were looking for.”
I drummed my fingers on the stock of my Krag in annoyance. “What were you looking for here?”
“A cuauhxicalli, which is an altar-like stone vessel used by the Aztecs to contain human hearts extracted in sacrificial ceremonies. Such an item is normally decorated with animal motifs such as eagles or jaguars. This particular vessel was smaller than most, and it was decorated with a pattern of skulls and sea creatures; very unusual, in fact.”
“And I bet Cabral took it with him.”
“He did. The rest remained here with orders to search for more
items, but nothing we found was out of the ordinary.”
“Who cached the goods here?”
“In this specific case, a French civil servant who tarried too long before departing.”
“Which way did Cabral go?”
“Southwest.”
“When?”
“Perhaps an hour after dawn.”
“You know, doc, if I have to keep prying facts out of you, I’m going to start motivating you by lopping off a finger.”
“What is it you want?” he snapped. “I have been dragged across half of Mexico for little understandable purpose, and forced to be in the company of unspeakable creatures.”
“What I want is help understanding what is going on. The dead walk, a necromancer is raising an army of crazies, and he has forces digging up the countryside looking for old stuff. There’s a war going on, you damned fool.”
“This is none of my making nor any of my concern.”
I sighed. “All right, let’s try it this way: what do you know that is of sufficient use to me that it would justify leaving you alive?”
He studied my face, then took a quick survey of the group: Nhi had caught a beetle and was watching it crawl from hand to hand, Mac was cleaning his nails with an ivory pick he carried for that purpose, Tobias was thoughtfully rooting in a nostril, and Captain was still thumbing through the ledger. “I have not been myself; it has been a very trying time for me.”
“I understand.”
“I know nothing of the master of this endeavor nor what his or their plans may be. I was simply a captive expert, nothing more. However, I can say that they are in this area looking for specific items, all of which are pre-Spanish era items, and all of which involve either the natives’ sacrificial practices or their study of astronomy. To be factual, those two endeavors of the ancients are, in my opinion, intertwined. They concealed from me which specific items on the list they were most interested in.”
“There are two points which may be of interest to you: firstly, in Sinaloa they forced the owner of the rare books I mentioned to assist me. When he was done they turned him into one of them,” he waved a hand towards the line of dead crazies. “Before that, he concealed some notes he had compiled in the room we were working in. They are still there, I expect. I certainly did not take them. He was given a different list than I, a shorter list, and worked on it alone. I expect that by the time he was done he knew the number and type of items the group was actually seeking.”
“Secondly, Cabral intended to seize an old presidio along our line of march, a place held by the Church, but abandoned the idea after looking at its defenses.”
“Which was his primary job: the presidio, or this digging?”
“I do not know, but I took the impression that he was not overly concerned about passing the presidio on by. This dig was certainly important to him. I have the impression this group was to return and maintain watch on the presidio once they were done digging.”
“What are the little statues those two men had?”
“As hard as it is to imagine, that is the method by which the trottel are commanded. Cabral had a somewhat larger such item, and the four gunmen had none.”
“Why didn’t the crazies attack you or the gunmen?”
“I can only assume it is because each morning one of the men would rub their statue on the breasts of our clothing.”
“Where did they get the statues?”
“I do not know; they had them without recourse to my efforts and I’ve never seen their like before.”
“What items did you lead them to?”
“The knives, which I’ve mentioned, and I would add that the three they took were unlike those I am accustomed to seeing-I don’t recall ever seeing volcanic glass that color before. Also eccentric flints, celts, and stone ewers for certain; perhaps other items, although which specific ones I cannot say with certainty.”
“You can read Spanish, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“What about shorthand? Could you read shorthand written by a Spanish-speaker?” I held out the notebook from the cavalry outpost.
He studied the lines. “This is done in the Gregg method of shorthand.” He traced a finger across the lines. “The author is tracking some of what I was researching-celts and eclectic flints. Not just the type, but the same specific examples thereof that I had been set to investigating.” He read on. “He suspected the knife collection in Sinaloa was significant.”
“Why is he investigating these items?”
He flipped through the pages, then chose a point and read for a few minutes. “He is an official of some sort-an investigative body, certainly, but not an officer of the conventional judicial system. I would guess he is in the secret police, probably charged with political issues.”
“That makes sense.”
“What about this?” Captain took the notebook from Wurfel and turned to the page with the sketches. “We thought it might be a Chinese scroll.”
The scholar studied the sketch. “That is not Chinese, nor a scroll; it is a pre-Columbian codex.” Seeing our looks, he clarified. “Pre-Columbian means any period before the Spanish arrived. A codex is a form of book used by the natives of Central America of that period. The pages are made of stucco applied to a sheet made from fig-bark and lime paste, and each panel is fastened so it accordion-folds with the others; stretched out all at once they can be a dozen feet long. Normally they are inscribed on both sides of each panel.”
“Did you locate any codexes for your captors?” I asked.
He chuckled. “In July 1562 Bishop Diego de Landa began the systematic gathering and destruction of all native writings that pre-dated the Spanish arrival, and such was his efficiency that there are only three intact Pre-Columbian codexes left, all of which are in Europe.” He sighed. “de Landa was perhaps the foremost expert on the old peoples of this part of the world. Virtually all study of those peoples and times draws heavily upon his research.” He glanced at the heaps of crazies. “As a matter of fact he justified the destruction of the codexes and a rather brutal inquisition of the natives as being necessary in order to combat the continuing practice of human sacrifice and magic.”
“Maybe he was onto something,” Captain observed.
“Wait a minute-some of that pottery in those packing crates you birds dug up has something that looks like writing on it,” Mac objected.
“You are correct, it is writing,” Wurfel nodded. “And the stepped pyramids and other key structures are covered in writing. But de Lanza specified codexes, books, scrolls, or any item of cloth, skin, or plant matter that bore writing. Writing on stone, pottery, or solid wood was ignored.”
“I wonder why?” Mac said.
The scholar shrugged. “No one knows. de Lanza could read their language, although so far as I know no one living still can.”
“So far nothing we have identified as part of this scheme has writing on it, except for this codex,” I mused. “Maybe there were things the natives only trusted to the codexes.” I took the notebook back. “All right, let’s get this business wrapped up. Mac, sort out the mule-loads so the Doc here can ride Perch. We’ll deal with the statues and get back to the presidio.”
I dealt with the statues personally. Each was about the size of a king in a normal chess set, made of rough-textured black stone. They both looked worn, as if very old and heavily handled, and what exactly they were supposed to depict wasn’t readily clear; as I raked them onto a shovel with a piece of board I got the impression of a seated or squatting figure with tentacles or snakes, but to be honest I did not look too closely.
We filled the wagon they had used to transport the tools and their personal luggage with scrap wood, deadfall, and wooden-handled tools; I put the statues on top and stood on the seat to have the proper angle to shatter each with a bullet. A can of kerosene and match finished the destruction process.
“Anything of interest in those two’s stuff?” I asked Captain.
�
�A lot of Mexican pesos, loot from Sinaloa being my guess. A couple decent pairs of glasses; I let your girlfriend take her pick, and she pounced on the Zeiss pair. Nothing else of interest-they were small fry, one step up from dirty-shirt privates.”
“So what’s our next move?” Mac asked as we headed back, Wurfel wincing as he rode the pack saddle.
“Drop off the guns and the doc at the presidio, then see if that note really exists in Sinaloa. That would go a long ways to showing if Wurfel is shooting straight.” I hesitated. “You see anything…strange in Cuba?”
“Strange? Hell, the only thing I saw was fightin’ and the bottom of a rum bottle when we weren’t fightin’. It wasn’t pleasant country and the Dons weren’t the pushover that Hearst claimed they would be.” He frowned at the horizon. “But the local darkies were a funny bunch; some put a good store by that voodoo stuff. Never saw anything that indicated it worked, though. I figured it was just a way to scare the locals.”
“Yeah. In China they burned joss and had a lot of look-see stuff, part just old custom and part superstition. They build a short section of wall in front of doors because demons can only travel in straight lines, that sort of thing.”
“Ignorant heathens,” Captain nodded.
“The Moro believed in all sorts of stuff. They made these little bundles of junk, they called them agimats, which were supposed to deflect our bullets.”
“Work much?”
“No so’s you would notice. Takes more than a chicken bone with some feathers on it to stop a .30-40 Krag.”
“They learn fast?”
“Not really. In the jungle there was always lots of branches, vines and junk to deflect incoming fire, and you had to figure half the kids they sent us had their eyes closed or were shooting too high, so there was enough misses to encourage their way of thinking. By the time the smarter ones got it through their head how bullets really work, odds are they had a chunk of lead in their gut. Plus they chewed these leaves that made them loco.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“We saw those statues being used to control the zombies, and you heard what Wurfel said. Maybe what you and I saw overseas are legends passed down from days when stuff really worked.”