Preacher's Bloodbath

by Johnstone, William W.

  Talbot chose that moment to make a break for it. Preacher knew the man intended to betray them, so he wheeled around to give chase, but Nighthawk beat him to it. The big Crow bounded after the fleeing man, reached out, and grabbed Talbot’s shoulder, jerking him to a halt. Talbot opened his mouth to shout an alarm, but he barely got a peep out before Nighthawk’s big right hand clamped over his mouth and stifled the yell.

  Nighthawk didn’t stop there. He slipped his left arm under his right, took hold of Talbot’s shoulder in an iron grip, and held the man steady while his right hand pulled back sharply, twisting Talbot’s head so far to the side that his neck snapped with a sound like a breaking branch. When Nighthawk let go of him, the man folded up in a limp heap.

  “Umm,” Nighthawk said quietly.

  “You’re right,” Audie said. “We never would have been able to trust him. Even if we’d stopped him from alerting anyone now, he would have tried to betray us again at the first opportunity. Fear dissolves some men’s resolve.”

  With that threat taken care of, Preacher quickly said his good-byes. He shook hands with Boone, Audie, and Nighthawk. Zyanya tugged on Boone’s arm, urging him to hurry. The group faded away into the darkness, leaving Preacher and Nazar standing in front of the prison.

  “Now we must hurry as well, to the temple—” the priest began.

  The scuff of a foot on stone warned Preacher. He turned in time to see that one of the guards had regained consciousness. The man had picked up his spear, and he lunged forward with the point streaking toward the mountain man’s heart.

  CHAPTER 27

  Preacher reacted instantly. He still held the other spear, so he used it to parry the deadly thrust. The shafts clashed against each other as he turned the guard’s spear aside.

  The next second, as the guard’s momentum carried him closer, Preacher reversed his motion and buried the head of his spear in the warrior’s chest. The man gasped in pain and shock. Preacher drove forward with his feet against the paving stones, forcing the guard backwards until the man hit the wall of the prison.

  The spear head ripped all the way through his body and grated against the carved stone wall behind him. The man’s head slumped forward and his arms drooped in death. His spear clattered on the ground as he dropped it for the second and final time.

  Instead of trying to pull his spear free, Preacher released it and let it fall to the ground with the guard’s body. As he stooped to pick up the second spear, he heard a gurgling sound and looked over to see Nazar straightening from being bent over the other guard.

  A dark pool was already spreading around the man’s head. Nazar had slashed his throat with the same knife he had used to cut the prisoners’ bonds.

  “I regret taking the life of any of my people,” he said quietly, “but they were followers of Tenoch. Their hearts already belong to the War God. Now their spirits do, as well.”

  “You’re a priest. Don’t that make you one of ’em?”

  Nazar shook his head. “Not all of us are devoted to Huitzilopochtli, nor do we like seeing one group of our people enslave the other.”

  “Well, however you feel about it, I’m glad you’re on our side right now,” Preacher assured him. “Lead the way to that temple you were talkin’ about. It ain’t where Eztli took me that other time, is it?”

  “No. It stands before the Great Pyramid.”

  The two men hurried along the street in silence. The hour was late enough that no one was out and about. The city seemed eerily deserted, although Preacher knew there were hundreds of Aztecs nearby in the buildings they passed, but as long as the city slept and no one raised the alarm, that was the only thing that mattered.

  As they approached the Great Pyramid, the huge edifice loomed over them. Preacher didn’t like the looks of it. He remembered all too well the time he had spent up there at the top of it, baking in the merciless sun.

  Nazar veered to the side before they got there, and led Preacher toward another large building, though the pyramid dwarfed it for sheer size. The impressive building resembled Eztli’s domicile, but it was larger and more ornate than the building where the high priestess lived.

  It made sense that Tenoch had claimed the fanciest place in town for himself, thought Preacher. A fella as arrogant as the high priest wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less.

  A couple guards were posted outside the door, visible in the light from a torch stuck in a bracket on the elaborately carved wall. Nazar drew Preacher into an alcove, pointed to the two sentries, and whispered, “I will distract them, but you will have to get close enough to finish them off.”

  “Keep their eyes on you and I’ll do it,” Preacher promised. “Just give me your knife.”

  Nazar hesitated before handing over the blade, but only for a second.

  Preacher waited as Nazar strode forward boldly and entered the circle of light cast by the torch. If the wizened little priest was nervous, he gave no sign of it. The guards raised their spears as he approached, then relaxed as they recognized him. They appeared to be puzzled as to what he was doing there at that time of night, however.

  He began speaking in a rapid, urgent voice, no doubt spinning some sort of wild tale to keep the guards’ attention while Preacher slipped through the shadows at the edge of the street until he was edging along the same wall of the building where the guards stood at the entrance.

  He stopped where he was still hidden by the darkness and hefted the spear, judging its weight and balance. He did the same with the knife, which was a regular hunting knife that must have been taken from one of the captive fur trappers, rather than a sharpened flint weapon of the sort the Aztecs used in their bloody rituals.

  When he was confident that he was familiar enough with the spear and the knife, he moved forward and struck rapidly. As he reached the edge of the torchlight, he heaved the spear with deadly accuracy. It whipped past Nazar, who didn’t seem to be running out of steam, and struck the guard on the left of his chest, the head penetrating so deeply the man died instantly on his feet as his heart was skewered.

  Nazar had the sense to throw himself to the ground out of the way, so Preacher had a clear shot at the other guard. He threw the knife with a snap of his wrist, making the knife revolve once in its flight before the blade lodged in the guard’s throat. The man dropped his spear and made a choking sound as he pawed at the knife. He succeeded in pulling it free, but that just made his bright red blood spray out with more force. He collapsed, falling forward across Nazar.

  With a look of revulsion on his turtle-like face, the little priest scrambled out from under the corpse. His buckskins were stained with the man’s blood. He glared at Preacher as the mountain man hurried up to him.

  “Sorry,” Preacher said with a grim smile. “But as long as it ain’t your blood, I reckon you’ll live.”

  “Gather the weapons,” Nazar snapped. “There will be more guards inside.”

  Preacher picked up the knife and wrenched the spear loose from the first guard’s body. He didn’t give the knife back to Nazar but tucked it into his makeshift loincloth then took hold of the larger of the two men and started dragging him toward the shadows.

  “What are you doing?” Nazar asked impatiently.

  “This fella’s leggin’s and moccasins look like they’ll fit me close enough. I can move around and fight better if I got some clothes on.” Preacher could tell by the way Nazar muttered something in response that the priest wasn’t happy about the delay. He ignored that and quickly got dressed in the dead man’s leggings and moccasins. The shirt was too soaked with blood to bother with. Preacher tried to put on Boone’s shirt, but it was too small for his shoulders. Better to go bare-chested than to have the garment binding on him, he decided.

  With that done, he picked up the spear and rejoined Nazar at the door.

  The priest said, “There will be more guards inside. Let me go first.”

  “Fine by me. You’re the one who knows your way around. Just be
careful.”

  Nazar swung the door open, straining to budge its heavy weight. The hallway inside was dimly lit by torches. Preacher didn’t see any more guards, but he took Nazar’s word for it that they were there somewhere.

  Figuring it would be a good idea, he dragged the other dead guard into the shadows, too, so that if anybody happened by, the carcass wouldn’t be lying out there in plain sight. He couldn’t do anything about the blood splashed darkly on the paving stones, but maybe that wouldn’t be quite so noticeable. The stones were already pretty dark in places.

  Back at the doorway, he looked along the hall but didn’t see Nazar anywhere. A grimace tightened the mountain man’s lips. The corridor inside was long and straight, with no doors that he could see. He didn’t understand how the priest could have gotten out of sight so quickly.

  Standing in the open was just asking for trouble, Preacher told himself. He stepped into the building and eased the door most of the way closed behind him, leaving a small gap between the door and the jamb so he could grab the door and get it open in a hurry if he needed to.

  Holding the spear at the ready, he catfooted along the corridor. The soft moccasins on his feet made no sound on the stone floor.

  Every few steps, he paused to listen. The place was quiet . . . or almost so. As he stopped for the fourth time, he heard something and realized it was a murmur of voices. He couldn’t make out any of the words, but since whoever was talking probably was speaking the Aztec tongue, he wouldn’t have understood it anyway.

  Suddenly, a man let out a pained yelp.

  That was Nazar, Preacher thought, hurrying forward. As he came even with a woven tapestry hanging on the wall, he heard more noises from behind it.

  The tapestry covered a doorway. He thrust it aside and stepped into a room where Nazar was struggling with two more guards. One had hold of him, and the other, wearing a big grin, was about to smash the little priest’s brains out with a war club.

  CHAPTER 28

  Preacher leaped forward and rammed the spear into the guard’s back with such force that the point went all the way through his body and tore a bloody exit wound in his chest. The war club slipped from the dying man’s fingers.

  Preacher caught it before it hit the floor.

  The other guard was so surprised by his comrade’s grisly, unexpected death that Nazar was able to writhe desperately out of his grip. With the priest out of his way, Preacher swung the war club with one hand and crushed the second warrior’s skull with brutal efficiency.

  As that man’s corpse crumpled to the floor, Nazar stared at Preacher and exclaimed, “Never have I seen anyone kill so swiftly, so skillfully! Are you certain you are not the god of war himself in human form?”

  “Not hardly,” Preacher said. “I’ve had to get good at killin’ because so damn many folks have tried to kill me over the years. Only reason I’m still here is ’cause I was able to beat ’em to it.” He hefted the war club, freshly stained with blood, and nodded approvingly. “Reckon I’ll take this along with us. It’s a handy little thing.”

  He put his foot on the dead man’s body to brace it while he pulled the spear free then Nazar pushed the tapestry aside and they returned to the dimly-lit corridor.

  “Any more guards in this place that need killin’?” Preacher asked in a whisper.

  “I do not know. Probably not, but there could be.”

  “How come those two were fixin’to murder you? You’re an important fella around here, ain’t you?”

  “I was,” Nazar replied with a bitter edge in his voice. “There was a time when I would have been high priest. But Tenoch rose to power after the Great Shaking by claiming that Huitzilopochtli was responsible for rending the earth and opening a path out of the valley. His followers were warriors, so they have been able to force their will on everyone else in the city.”

  “Leavin’ you out in the cold, eh?”

  Nazar shrugged his scrawny shoulders.

  It could be that Nazar had decided to help them because he was jealous of Tenoch’s power, Preacher reflected. And maybe Nazar wanted the beautiful Eztli for himself, although Preacher couldn’t quite imagine those two together. Maybe it was really Nazar who wanted Tenoch dead more than Zyanya did.

  None of that was important. No matter what Nazar’s motive for helping them might be, he and Zyanya were the only friends Preacher and the other former prisoners had in that lost valley.

  The corridor began to turn sharply back and forth.

  The Aztecs didn’t seem to care much for straight lines in their construction, thought Preacher. Everything was angles and bends with them.

  Nazar lifted a hand and motioned for Preacher to stop as they approached another turn. He was glad that the priest seemed to know where they were, because he sure didn’t. Nazar tiptoed up to the bend to peek around it, then crooked his fingers to summon Preacher.

  Another short corridor lay around the turn. After a few feet, it opened into a large chamber. Broad marble steps led down to a sunken area piled with furs for sleeping.

  Tenoch was stretched out facedown on those furs, snoring. His powerfully muscled body was nude.

  Beside him, also asleep and equally unclothed, sprawled the sleek reddish-gold form of Eztli.

  Nazar pointed at the slumbering forms and whispered, “Kill them. Kill them both!”

  So he didn’t want Eztli for himself after all, thought Preacher.

  “I promised you I’d kill Tenoch, but I don’t much cotton to the idea of killin’ a woman in her sleep.”

  “You fool! She is just as dangerous as he is. No, she is more dangerous! Either of them would torture you to death and smile as they did it.”

  Preacher didn’t doubt that, but his mind was working and his thoughts went back to the plan he’d had briefly, a couple weeks earlier. With Eztli as a hostage, his chances of getting out of the valley alive might improve considerably. “I’ll take care of Tenoch then we’re gonna grab Eztli. I’ll keep her quiet while you lead the way outta here.”

  Stubbornly, Nazar shook his head. “No one knows that I betrayed them. All the guards who might have seen me are dead, and Zyanya is on her way out of the valley with your friends. Once Tenoch and Eztli are dead and you are gone—”

  “You can grab that power you wanted all along, is that it?” Preacher interrupted him.

  Nazar glared at him. “You wanted my help, and now you question me!”

  “It was that little gal of Boone’s who brought you in on this, not me. And I don’t care what you do once I’m gone. All I know is I’m not gonna put a spear in that woman’s heart or stove her head in while she’s sleepin’. That just ain’t the sort of thing I can do.”

  Nazar made a disgusted sound and whispered, “Such worthless argument is the practice of lizards and idiots! Give me back my knife. I will kill her.”

  Preacher shook his head. “I don’t intend to do that, neither. You can come with me, and if you need to, grab her and keep her quiet while I’m dealin’ with that big varmint.”

  Nazar looked like he wanted to argue some more, but after a moment, he jerked his head in a nod. “Come. We have already wasted enough time.”

  Preacher leaned the war club against the wall, figuring a spear thrust would be the quickest, surest way of killing Tenoch. He didn’t want the high priest putting up a fight. Preacher had regained some of his strength after the torture he had endured, but he wasn’t at his peak. An all-out battle against Tenoch was too risky.

  A small flame guttered from a wick in a vessel full of oil, casting a dim, flickering light over the sleepers as Preacher and Nazar approached them. Preacher felt no compunction about killing Tenoch in his sleep. He had done the same thing to dozens of Blackfoot warriors over the years because he knew they would be all too happy to kill him if they got the chance.

  Logically, he knew he should feel the same way about Eztli, but he couldn’t quite cast aside the way he had been raised. Evil or not, she was a woman.

/>   A beautiful woman, he thought as he ran his gaze over the smooth skin made even more tawny by the candlelight. Her long hair lay over her shoulder like a sweep of pure midnight. Her breathing was soft and regular.

  Preacher and Nazar abruptly froze as Eztli made a small murmuring sound and moved. She was just shifting around in her sleep, though, and her breathing smoothed out again in seconds. Preacher stepped closer and raised the spear, preparing to drive it home in Tenoch’s back with both hands and all the strength he could muster.

  The thrust had not yet fallen when he realized a subtle change in Tenoch’s snoring.

  Preacher’s instincts began to clamor in alarm. The high priest was shamming! He knew an enemy was slipping up on him and was only pretending to be asleep, waiting until the intruder was close enough for him to make his move!

  Even as that flashed through Preacher’s mind, the mountain man lunged forward and brought the spear down with blinding speed. Tenoch was incredibly fast, too, and rolled aside at the last instant. The spear point went through the sleeping furs and hit the stone floor with such a powerful impact that the shaft snapped, leaving Preacher holding only a length of polished wood. Tenoch kicked out and slammed the sole of a bare foot against the side of Preacher’s knee.

  Preacher staggered from the kick but managed to stay on his feet. He slashed at Tenoch’s head with the broken shaft. The high priest blocked it with a hastily upflung forearm.

  From the corner of his eye, Preacher saw Eztli struggling to wake up. A state of confusion obviously gripped her, and before she could figure out what was going on, Nazar threw himself on her and clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her from shouting.

  Tenoch rolled again, avoiding another swipe of the broken spear, using his momentum to surge lithely to his feet. He and Preacher faced each other across several feet of stone floor.

  Tenoch grinned. “Pree-char.”

  Obviously, Eztli had taught him the mountain man’s name.

  He said something else, but Preacher didn’t understand it. However, it seemed almost like Tenoch was glad to see him.