The animal hide robes spread on the floor absorbed some of the force of his fall, but he still landed with bone-jarring force. He whipped the spear shaft at Tenoch’s head. The glancing blow barely slowed down the high priest as he leaped at Preacher.
Grappling fiercely, they were locked together and rolled over and over among the furs. Each man’s left hand gripped his opponent’s right wrist.
Preacher knew he didn’t have the strength for a long fight and needed to end it quickly. He tried to gouge the broken end of the spear shaft into Tenoch’s throat, but Tenoch was well-rested and enormously strong. He held it off.
Tenoch rammed his knee in the direction of Preacher’s groin. Preacher writhed out of the way and attempted to return the favor, but Tenoch took the blow on his slab-muscled thigh. Inexorably, he brought his right hand closer to the mountain man’s face. Tenoch’s fingers were hooked like talons, and Preacher knew if his opponent got a chance, Tenoch would pop his eyes out of their sockets like grapes.
With his strength fading, Preacher couldn’t hold the man off much longer.
A terrified scream filled the chamber. He glanced over from the corner of his eye and saw that Eztli had Nazar down and was hitting him. He tried to fend her off, but lithe and stronger, she wrapped her hands around his throat and began banging the back of his head against the floor.
Preacher couldn’t do a thing to help him. He had his hands full. As Tenoch loomed over him, leering, Preacher raised his head and butted him in the face. Tenoch grunted in surprise and pain, and his grip on Preacher’s wrist slipped.
Preacher jammed the broken end of the shaft into the side of Tenoch’s neck. The high priest howled and rolled away as blood welled from the wound. He thrashed a couple times and then lay still. Preacher rolled onto his side, came up on his knees and then his feet.
Nazar’s face was turning purple from Eztli choking him.
Preacher took a couple steps and hit her from behind, swinging a fist to the back of her head. He might have drawn the line at killing a woman in her sleep, but he was willing to hit one to keep her from strangling the only ally he had left in the city.
Eztli pitched forward, stunned. She landed on top of Nazar, her hands falling away from his neck. He gasped for breath, looking pretty groggy from the lack of air and from having his head pounded against the floor. Still conscious, he was able to sit up as Preacher rolled Eztli’s senseless form off him.
Nazar rasped something in his own language, then said, “She . . . was going to kill me!”
“Did you expect her to do anything different?” Preacher glanced at Tenoch, lying a few yards away with a pool of blood slowly spreading around his head. “Come on, we gotta get out of here.”
Nazar rubbed his bruised throat. “What about . . . her?”
“We’re takin’ her with us,” Preacher said.
“That is a bad thing to do.”
“We’re doin’ it anyway.” He began looking around for something he could use to tie Eztli’s hands and feet.
He wound up using the knife to cut strips of hide from one of the robes spread on the floor. He would have rather had something better, but sometimes a man had to make do with what he had on hand. He bound her wrists together behind her back, then lashed her ankles together.
She was starting to come around, and Preacher knew she would yell her head off soon. He crammed a piece of hide in her mouth and tied it in place to serve as a gag. As the last of the fogginess cleared from her eyes, she glared murderously up at him and started making muffled sounds.
She was probably cussin’ him out in Aztec, he thought, but as long as she couldn’t raise the alarm, he didn’t care.
“What do we do now?” Nazar asked hoarsely.
Preacher lifted Eztli and draped her over his shoulder. “Now we light a shuck.” When Nazar frowned at him uncomprehendingly, he added, “We get outta here and head for the cliffs.”
Nazar nodded. “I will lead the way.”
“Good, ’cause I ain’t sure I know how to get back out of this maze.”
Nazar knew the path and led Preacher through the dim corridors. Eztli tried to squirm off his shoulder, but he had a tight grip on her. Under much different circumstances that might have been a pretty pleasant experience, but he knew good and well all she wanted to do was kill him.
After a few minutes, they reached the long hallway that led back to the building’s entrance. It was empty, just like before. They hurried along. At the door, they realized the torch in the bracket next to it had gone out, since no guards were on duty to replace it.
Their bodies were still lying nearby in the shadows of the alley where he had left them, Preacher supposed.
Nazar went first, opened the door, and stuck his head out on the end of his long neck. He peered up and down the street then motioned for Preacher to follow him.
The thick shadows that cloaked the street were very welcome. In the gloom, even Preacher’s keen eyes could barely make out Nazar as he followed the little priest.
“Are you leavin’ the valley, too, once we get to the cliffs, or do you figure on turnin’ back and tryin’ to take over here?”
“I will remain with my people, but you must promise me that you will never allow Eztli to return.” Nazar paused, then added in a grumbling tone, “I still think it would be best if we killed her.”
“Nope, she’s gonna get me outta here with a whole hide if we run into anybody who wants to stop us,” Preacher said.
That comment prompted her to kick and make noises behind the gag, but he just tightened his grip on her. He went on. “If you wind up in charge here, you don’t plan on keepin’ up with those sacrifices, do you? I’d hate to think I was leavin’ you here to cut folks’ hearts out.”
Nazar shook his head. “The practice of human sacrifice had dwindled away to nothing before Tenoch and Eztli revived it. I will let it disappear again.”
Preacher grunted. “Glad to hear it.”
“There is much to be admired about our Aztec heritage, but such wanton spilling of blood is too much. With Tenoch and Eztli gone, their followers will no longer enslave the rest of us. We will return to our peaceful ways.”
Preacher hoped Nazar was right, but he had a hunch the little priest might be too optimistic. One of the other warrior-priests who followed Huitzilopochtli might decide the time was ripe for him to take over. If it came down to a fight, those who followed the ways of war always had an advantage over those who believed in peace.
It all went back to what Audie had said about barbarism being the natural state of mankind. To some folks, blood was only meant to be spilled, and in the end, theirs would be the ultimate triumph.
Preacher put those grim thoughts out of his mind and concentrated on following Nazar. When they were close to getting away, it wouldn’t do for him to get lost and wind up wandering around in circles.
He came up closer behind the priest and asked, “Will there be guards out there at the cliffs?” He was worried that Audie, Nighthawk, Boone, and the others might have run into trouble.
“I do not know,” Nazar replied. “I would not be surprised. Tenoch is very protective of the Path of the War God. It is, after all, the key to his power—”
A sudden shout behind them made Nazar fall silent. Preacher’s heart slugged hard in his chest as he swung around to look back the way they had come. A group of warriors charged into sight around a corner, several of them carrying torches.
And leading the way, a huge war club studded with sharp stones clutched in both hands, was a man he had figured would have already bled to death.
Tenoch.
CHAPTER 32
Damn. Was he ever going to be able to kill that sidewinder? Preacher wondered fleetingly. The neck wound he had inflicted on the high priest should have done it. By the time he and Nazar had left the chamber with Eztli, Tenoch had already lost so much blood he never should have regained consciousness.
But obviously he had. A bloody bandage
was tied around his neck. He had pulled on a leather girdle decorated with shiny stones like the one he had worn during the sacrifice Preacher and Boone had witnessed the day they came to the Aztec city.
Eztli started squirming harder and trying to yell through the gag. Nazar let out a frightened yelp and started to run.
Preacher’s every instinct told him to stand and fight. Running away was fine for Nazar, but it went against the grain for him. Unfortunately, outnumbered the way he was and burdened with the captive priestess, he knew that a battle couldn’t end well for him.
He turned and fled, too, with Tenoch and the other warriors howling after them like a pack of wild dogs.
Preacher had lost sight of Nazar. The little priest was pretty nimble when he wanted to be. Without him to lead the way, Preacher was running blindly, but maybe he could give the slip in the thick shadows that were almost everywhere. He darted in and out of the darkness, hoping he wouldn’t run head-on into some unseen obstacle.
“Preacher!” a familiar voice suddenly croaked. “Over here!”
Preacher angled toward Nazar’s voice. The priest appeared at the mouth of an alley, clutched Preacher’s arm, and drew him into the darkness. There were no paving stones, only hard-packed dirt that their feet slapped against as they ran.
Nazar pulled Preacher to the side, pausing in some sort of alcove. The priest was breathing so hard Preacher worried the searchers would be able to hear him and follow them to the hiding place.
He put his mouth next to Nazar’s ear and whispered, “Be as quiet as you can, old son. Too much huffin’and puffin’ is liable to lead those varmints to us.”
“I . . . I know.” Nazar groaned softly. “I am not meant for such danger as this!”
“Trouble’s got a way of findin’ folks whether they’re meant for it or not. Where are we?”
“I do not know. This is a quarter of the city where I do not go. There are rough people here . . . thieves, concubines, those who play at games of chance and death. . . .”
“I oughtta be right at home, then,” Preacher said dryly. “Where do you reckon that bunch went?”
Shouts answered his question before Nazar could. Tenoch and his warriors were close by. Preacher saw torchlight reflected off the wall of a building across the alley.
The light didn’t get any brighter, though, and the shouts didn’t get louder. The searchers weren’t coming down the alley. They’d paused in the main street and seemed to be arguing about something.
Tenoch’s voice roared out and put an end to the wrangling.
“What are they sayin’?” Preacher asked.
“Tenoch is dividing his forces to search in more places,” Nazar explained. “And he is sending a runner back to the temple to bring more men.”
“Sure wish that fella had had the sense to go ahead and die when he was stabbed in the neck,” Preacher muttered. “I thought sure he was dead when we left outta there.”
“Tenoch has declared that no mortal man can kill him,” Nazar went on. “He claims to be blessed by the god of war, to be the living embodiment of Huitzilopochtli in this realm.”
“Every fella who ever drew breath can be killed. Sooner or later, I’ll prove it with that varmint, too.”
“I begin to fear that day will never arrive.” Nazar whispered urgently, “Quiet! They come.”
The light grew brighter as one of the warriors carrying a torch started down the alley toward them. Preacher could tell from the voices that at least three men were in the group. The odds weren’t as bad as they could have been, but they weren’t good. Not only that, but the other men in the search party were pretty close by, too. The commotion of a fight would draw their attention.
Still, it looked like it was going to come down to that.
Before he could slide Eztli’s bound form off his shoulder and set her down so he could move around, he heard a scraping sound behind him.
Nazar put a hand on his arm. In barely a whisper, he said, “This way.”
The priest had found a door or some other way out of the alcove, Preacher realized. He backed up, following Nazar, and found himself in even deeper darkness. Nazar shoved the portal closed behind them.
“Where are we?” Preacher whispered.
“I know not. But we will wait here until Tenoch and his men are gone.”
Eztli kicked her bound feet against Preacher’s side and made noises.
He told her, “Hush up. You realize I’m the only reason you’re still alive, don’t you?”
As far as he knew she didn’t understand any English, so she probably didn’t know what he was saying. She could figure out what he wanted by his tone of voice, though.
Several minutes dragged by. Preacher thought the search party must have moved on.
Nazar believed the same thing. “I will go look. See if it is safe for us to leave.”
“Be careful,” Preacher said unnecessarily. He knew Nazar wasn’t going to take any more risks than he had to. Courage wasn’t what fueled the little priest. His ambition and his hatred of Tenoch were enough to do that.
Preacher couldn’t see anything and couldn’t hear anything except Eztli’s breathing, which sounded angry. After a few moments, his instincts told him that they were alone. Nazar had gone somewhere and hadn’t come back.
Had the priest abandoned them? That seemed unlikely, after all the risks he had run to help the prisoners escape. He was probably just double-checking to make sure it was safe for them to leave the place of concealment.
Preacher stiffened as his keen ears picked up a noise from somewhere behind them. Eztli began making more muffled sounds. He shifted his grip on her and closed a hand around her throat so she couldn’t make any sound at all. “Best be quiet,” he breathed into her ear. “I don’t want to, but I’ll break your neck if I have to.”
She stopped wiggling around.
Preacher held her against his broad chest. She smelled of herbs and spices, and once again he was reminded that he had an armful of warm, firm female flesh.
It really was a shame the only thing she wanted to do was cut his heart out, or at least watch Tenoch do it.
Somebody was moving around close by. The possibility that Nazar had circled around and was coming in behind them seemed unlikely, but Preacher couldn’t rule it out. He was weighing whether or not he should whisper the priest’s name when somebody struck flint and steel, and the resulting sparks were momentarily blinding to eyes spent so long in the dark.
Preacher squinted against the glare as a torch flared to life. He had his right arm around Eztli and held the spear in that hand. He let go of her and allowed her to slip to the floor as he swung the spear up to defend himself.
As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a ring of warriors surrounding the two of them. Eight or nine spears were leveled at him. If he so much as twitched, they could make a pin-cushion out of him.
A voice spoke, filling the room with harsh, guttural words, and seldom in his life had Preacher been so surprised.
He was shocked. He knew the words. He had heard the language many times before, usually when he was in trouble.
One of the spear-wielders had just demanded to know who he was . . . and had asked the question in the Blackfoot tongue.
CHAPTER 33
Preacher’s war with the Blackfeet went back a long way. Many years, in fact, to the days of his youth when he had first come to the mountains in the company of a couple veteran fur trappers who had taken him under their wing. It was a Blackfoot band that had captured him and threatened to burn him at the stake, giving rise to the incident that had earned him his name.
In the light of the torch, he looked at the men surrounding him as he tried to gather his wits. For the most part, they appeared to be the same sort of Blackfeet he had encountered many times, although the slightly different cast of their features told him they had some Aztec heritage, as well.
Preacher’s mind worked rapidly. He recalled Audie telling him about the Aztec
s who had come to the valley after being banished from their home in Mexico, some four hundred years earlier. They had found Indians already living there, had subjugated them, intermarried with them, and gradually assimilated them into their latter-day Aztec civilization.
Some strains of the Aztec bloodline had remained more pure, and judging by what Preacher saw, so had some of those belonging to the valley’s original inhabitants, who must have been Blackfoot. They had kept some of their old ways alive, including the language. It was the only explanation that made any sense.
The man who had spoken repeated his demand to know who Preacher was. Outside the valley, most Blackfeet were aware of his identity, whether they had ever crossed trails with him or not. Warriors spoke of him with respect, despite their hatred for him, and mothers told their little ones stories about him to make them behave.
But the folks who had grown up in the valley, shut off from the rest of the world with no contact between them and their bloodthirsty kin knew nothing about the man called Ghost Killer and White Wolf. . . .
“I am called Preacher,” he said in the Blackfoot tongue. “I am a friend to your people.” That was an outright lie, of course, but he didn’t see any point in telling them the truth.
Their eyes widened, and several murmured in surprise. They probably hadn’t expected to hear their ancestral language from the white man who had barged in with a naked high priestess draped over his shoulder.
“You speak our tongue,” the spokesman said.
“As I told you, I am a friend.”
Another man said, “I know you. You are one of the prisoners brought here to be sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli.”
“I was,” Preacher admitted. “Now I’m just a fella who wants to get out of this blasted valley with his whole hide.”
The first man pointed his spear at Eztli. “What are you doing with her?”
It was obvious from the sound of his voice that he didn’t have any fondness for the high priestess. In fact, most of the men were glaring at Eztli as if they wanted to use their spears on her. They all hated her.
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