The Sacrifice Game

by Brian D'Amato

  Koh and her eight-person escort had gotten into the east zocalo and were pushing toward the end zone. A gang of high-ranked Ixian Rattler converts followed alongside, throwing passionflowers and blue-curl blossoms on the path in front of her and waving petition bundles tied with big bright knots. I signaled to Hun Xoc, who caught the eyes of the rest of the team, and as I drifted over to the boundary line as casually as I could they pressed in behind me. She came up as if she were just scoping out the players. I didn’t look at her. Her escorts held up their traveling screens around her, as though they were shielding her from the sun, but actually to keep the Ocelots from seeing her talk to me. It wasn’t unheard-of for a major sponsor to talk with the players before a ball game, although it must have been the first time in a while that the sponsor had been female. I kneeled down on the court surface and she did the same, so that we were all alone in the sweaty jungle of legs.

  What if they don’t get here as fast as we think? Koh asked without a preamble, in her own sign language.

  I said I didn’t know.

  “This is my burden,” she signed, meaning her fault. She seemed pretty upset under her poker face. I didn’t know what to say, either, I felt bad about having gotten her into this and angry that she wasn’t getting us out of it like she’d said. It was like “Sorry, it’s my fault,” “No, it’s my fault.”

  She asked something else.

  I said I couldn’t understand. She leaned her head toward me, over the boundary line. They’re making me sit on the Ocelot side, she said out loud, in one of the code-languages she’d taught me, one we hadn’t used before. It wasn’t a whole separate language, it was more like Carney or Ubby-Bubby, where you inserted nonsense syllables, but it wasn’t something anybody else would be able to figure out right away.

  What do you mean? I asked, not believing I’d heard her right.

  As she explained it, this guy named “8 Smoking Peeper,” who was the head of Star-Rattler’s cult in Ix—the one Koh’s messengers hadn’t been able to reach—was standing in a swirl of emerald on the Ocelot side, of the north lateral platform of the court, and he’d asked for Koh and her attendants to come and stand at his right hand. The Ocelots had co-opted him. And even though Star-Rattler didn’t have much of a cult here he was her primary relative, and it was something she couldn’t say no to without starting a fight. She had to be gracious about being chaperoned. It was a big deal for a woman to be allowed to watch the match at all.

  It was a teeth-gnashingly clever move. Even besides almost certainly setting her up to be captured. One special feature of pitzom as it was played here in the lowlands was spectator participation: each person on each of the two main platforms—the Harpies standing above their goal-peg on the south and the Ocelots above theirs on the north—was allowed a short stick like a miniature hurley called a hatchet or baat, another onomatopoeic word close to the English equivalent. Oddly to the twenty-first-century way of thinking, interference was allowed. Whenever a ball bounced up close to the favored spectators, they would lean precariously down over the banks, stretching out their baatob, trying to deflect the ball away from their goal or, if it lobbed high enough, to swipe it toward a member of their own team. Since the longest-armed supporters could barely get their short baatob down within an arm length of the goal, the bats connected only when the ball lobbed too high, and the spectator-participants ever really influenced the ball game on only a couple of shots. So it worked the supporters into a frenzy without much affecting the score.

  But the serious deal was everyone who stood on one of the platforms was officially in the ball game, on that side’s team, just like the ahau in the center, playing through his proxies below. So the Ocelots were forcing Koh to “play” on the Ocelot side, even if no one in her group even touched a ball.

  Dammit. Maybe the Ocelots weren’t so dumb as we thought. I wondered how much they guessed about 2JS’s part in the end of Teotihuacán. I can’t believe nobody had thought of this, I thought. No, believe it. Incompetence is forever. She was as good as captured.

  Say you have a commitment to stay here, I said.

  That’s not a good idea, she said, they’d take it as a huge insult and start the fight now.

  She was right.

  This isn’t good, I said, they’ll capture you in a hummingbird heartbeat.

  I know, she said. She said maybe they wouldn’t get to torturing her right away. If the battle goes all right you can surround the Ocelot House and trade me out.

  Right, I said, but we both knew it was too much to count on. There would be too many screw-ups, it was just the way things are. Do you still have the earthstar blood? I asked. The earthstar compound.

  She said yes.

  I tried to remember what I knew of the layout of the Ocelot district. We weren’t far from the most-holy ch’en, that is, in Spanish, cenote, a giant half-sunken cistern. In this case it was the main source of drinking water for the south bank of Ix, and it had been a cornerstone of the Ocelots’ power since before the third sun, an ever-gushing font of calc-free H20, like Elisha’s Spring at Jericho.

  Well, maybe I could actually do it. We’d have a ready-made diversion, that was for sure. And down on the court we wouldn’t be surrounded by Ocelot guards like the bloods in the stands.

  Hmm. I really might be able to get there. Just out the west end of the court, into the popol na’s zocalo, that is, the main plaza, into one of the Ocelot compound’s “women’s doors”—which ought to slow down any pursuers a bit—and then onto the roof and up one of the aqueducts straight to Grandmother’s House. No threat, no sweat.

  I’ll run for the Great Cistern, I said. If it looks at all possible. Maybe that’ll give you some extra time even if they get ahead in the battle.

  She thought about it for what seemed like about sixty-eight beats.

  I’ll try to feed Lord Earthstar, she said. She meant she ought to do an offering to get him to release the full power of his dried blood. I gestured like, okay, whatever. I was being pretty tough, I have to admit, but then I ruined the effect by telling her not to let any of her people know we were going for the Great Cistern. It was kind of an insult to tell her that, because it was like saying her bloods might crack under torture, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  She whispered to Coati.

  Don’t let them give you any water in the basket, I said. By basket I meant the place in the Ocelot house where they kept high-level captives under suicide watch. Like the one 2 Jeweled Skull had kept me in.

  I don’t drink water anyway, Koh said. It was kind of a drought-season joke, like “Lips that touch water shall never touch mine.”

  Coati came back and handed Koh a red-and-white-wrapped uah’ach, a sort of ceremonial nine-layered tortilla bread women were supposed to give to players before the ball game. Koh messed around with it for a second behind her screens, came forward, and presented it to me over the wall of the pen. I gestured “Accepted,” tore open the dyed corn-husk wrapping, and took a bite. It wasn’t very good.

  Koh spoke to Coati again in the same language. Get to 2 Jeweled Skull, she said, or if you can’t get to him, get to Hun Xoc. She told him to let them know what’s going on with the earthstar compound. Maybe they could get back to Harpy House and hold out for a day or so. Make sure they keep it quiet as long as possible, though, she said.

  She turned back to me. “Xka’ nan’ech lo’mob kutz,” she said. “Smoke faster than the flies can bite.” It was sort of a casual jokey leave-taking salutation, like “Be good.” She left. The commotion behind her guards picked up, the Ixian Rattler’s Children shouting questions at her in this sort of respectful howl, asking for predictions on the score like she was a combination of the Dalai Lama and Nick the Greek, which, in fact, she basically was. I thought she was going to ignore it, but all of a sudden she turned inside her semitransparent screens and spoke through Coati:

  “Now, 10 K’atun, 1 Deer, 11 Thought,” he/she said,

  “Before the thirteenth bal
l rolls up the green,

  Look out for ingrown blue hair knots in your walls.”

  ( 33 )

  There was a trough between the waves of shouting and then a higher crest as the people started reacting to it and asking what she meant. I didn’t get what the carajo she was talking about either. It was like, ease up on the Delphic Sybil trip, babe.

  I watched her turn and lead her escort back down the walkway, around the east end zone of the court, and up a side ramp onto the south platform, through hundreds of hostile-looking Ocelot princes in jaguar skins and emerald-green feather spikes, all of them probably waiting for the signal to grab her and rip her into bite-sized morsels. They saluted her and she had to salute back like we were totally honored to be with them. Ocelot guards moved her forward toward the lip of the court, to where the Ixian Rattler-adder was standing at the coveted second rank. Lady Koh and the Rattler Adder greeted each other in public sign language. I pictured little thought-balloons bubbling out of each of their heads saying I’m going to kill you.

  She was totally isolated up there. If a fight started, our bloods would have to roll down into the playing trench, claw their way up the slick bank to the opposite platform, and try to grab Koh before the Ocelots behind her pulled her backward. They’d never make it.

  Nobody seemed to be watching me. I bent down like I was messing with my sandal, tore open the nine-layered tortilla with my teeth, and pulled out something I recognized, a whitish, double-bladdered bag. The earthstar compound. I dusted some cornstarch off the bag and handed it behind me to Armadillo Shit. I pointed to my hip padding and he reached in through the quilted layers, positioned the bag in the hollow on the left side of my groin, and tied it down with slack ends of weasel gut from my yoke harness. I stood up and Armadillo Shit whisked some bits of offering-confetti and torn-up betting contracts and morning-glory blossoms and dyed feathers and crap out of my helmet.

  A long “Eeeee,” a sort of performatively awed gasp, spread through the stands and away into the city. The Ocelots’ hazing team had just brought out a captive harpy eagle, and some of the Harpies in the stands tried to get down to the court to rescue it and had to be held back. Meanwhile Harpies’ mockers had brought out a baby ocelot, and from what I could hear they were starting to yank it around on its leash and poking at it with skewers. I’d say the audience went bananas except that’s not a menacing enough fruit. Torturing specimens of each other’s totems was basically a declaration of war. This thing wasn’t ending with the last goal.

  DOOOONG.

  It was a note like a chord of D, C, and F sharp way down on the black keys at the left end of an old Boesendorfer, and it came from a slit-gong made from a cedar tree the size of the body of a 707. Hun Xoc walked past me, his waist yokes swinging in opposition to his steps, forward into the playing trench, and took his marker. Only three players from each side were allowed on the court at one time, but including the coaches there were six people on each team. Everyone on our team had a name with the word red in it, so our coach “Teentsy Bear” was really named 3 Red Pine, and Hun Xoc’s full name was 1 Red Shark. Red Beak was going to be our other starting striker, or forward, and then 5 Red Wedge—we called him 5-5—would be our starting “zonekeeper,” which was like a goalie. Red Cord and I were going to be on the bench at first and then substitute in when they needed us.

  On the Ocelot side, Emerald Feral Dog—the coach—was going to start Emerald Immanent—a giant, who must have been at least five six—and Emerald Howler—the one we called “Fat Monkey-Bitch”—as strikers. Their starting zonekeeper was going to be Emerald Snapper—“Fatter Monkey-Bitch”—and Emerald Screecher and Emerald Jog were the bench. Emerald Immanent was making not-quite obscene gestures up at the Harpy stands. I’m going to pop you, you fat fuck, I thought. Up in the stands the drivers were chasing away a vendor hung with gourds of hot honeyed and salted pine-tea and sweet cacao. A couple of independent bookies hopped acrobatically through the stands taking last-minute side bets on individual players. I checked my personal inventory, the same little pre-ball-game ritual I always did. I felt the weasel-gut cords holding my knee- and elbow-padding. I untied my main torso harness, loosened it slightly, and retied it. If it was too tight it could cut you. An insei came by with a charger full of rosin and ashes and I dipped my hands in it and spread it over my arms while he rosined my feet. From here I could see most of the Ocelots’ emerald mul past their end zone, and beyond that a bit of the eastward curve to the mainland, and above that and to the right a glimpse of the wall-and-platform complex that surrounded the Ocelots’ sacred Great Cistern.

  Maybe it really could be done, I thought. Stranger things had happened. It’d be totally unexpected. Surprise. Surprise, like that Ana Vergara said. Surprise is your copilot—

  I noticed everything had gone completely silent.

  9 Fanged Hummingbird’s music started, a single giant flute, getting nearer and nearer. The crowd in the Ocelot stands parted and a tetrahedral box floated into the center of the stands on the shoulders of dwarf bearers. The box was covered with iridescent emerald-green hummingbird feathers, like something that had dropped from a Platonic heaven onto the shoulders of 9FH’s two attendants. He could see clearly through the screen, but to us on the sunlit side it looked as opaque as enameled metal. As they set the box on the mat-throne at the highest riser the shrill cheer-chord rose again, each side repeating its chorus over and over, off-rhythm with the other side, trying to drown them out: the Harpies chanting, “Ch’ uchu’ b’aj, jab k’eseic k’uul, ch’ uchu’ b’aj, jab k’eseic k’uul,” We shine up high, we tear off your jaws, we shine up high, we tear off your jaws, we shine up high, we tear off your jaws, and the Ocelots chanting, Chupa’yal bak, chuyu’baj tox, We flash bright-dark, we chew on your hearts. Down on the court we saluted him:

  “You far over us,

  Lord of the Razor,

  You far over us,

  Lord of the Javelin,

  You far over us,

  Closest to One Hurricane,

  You far over us,

  Dearest to Iztam Na,

  You far over us,

  Ruby-browed Captor of Eleven Wind of Motul,

  You far over us,

  Sun-eyed Captor of Sideways Coatimundi of Caracol,

  You far over us,

  Avenger of the capture of Sixteen Ocelot,

  You far over us,

  Retriever of the skull of Four Ocelot,

  You far over us,

  Captor of eighteen times four hundred bloods and sixty-one bloods,

  You far over us,

  Subjugator of twenty times twenty cities,

  You far over us,

  Lord of the Twice Four Hundred Cities,

  You far over us,

  Overlord of four hundred times four hundred towns,

  You far over us,

  Nine-Fold King of Sacrifices,

  You far over us,

  You out of range of our offerings,

  You far over us,

  You over the four hundred times four hundred times four hundred thralls under us,

  You far over us,

  You far over all those over us,

  You far over us,

  Earthquake-born, whose real name no one can guess,

  You far over us,

  Whose manifest name is 9 Fanged Hummingbird,

  Deign you to look down over us,

  Grant us your clear sight extending far, far over us, protecting us,

  You, far over us,

  Overlord,

  9 Fanged Hummingbird.”

  Then, as slowly as sufi dervishes, we spun around and around to salute the four directions, the two competing ahauob, the five great houses of Ix, all these visiting indignitaries, Lady Koh, the lords of the dawns and the lords of the dusks, and other notable guests from as far away as what’s now the southern shore of Lake Nicaragua. As Hun Xoc used to say, we practically saluted our own asses.

  There was a blast from a tree-horn.
The temple precinct sank into silence like debris settling after an explosion. The cantor launched into his megaphoned spiel,

  “Now twenty, fifty-two, two-hundred sixty,” running through the litany of great exploits his generation of the greathouses of Ix had endured on this court, and encouraging the young players of today to try to match the skill and stony resolve of the players of old even though they’d be bound to fail and everything, on and on. I was only smoggily aware of it. The referees entered in their long feather robes, one from each corner of the court, censing the trench with their big twisted cigars. Their decisions were final and could be capricious, but they were all over seventy years old, without children, and serious about the hipball game as a sacrament. And they were all from a single presumably nonaffiliated monastic clan, and it would be almost but not quite unheard of for them to slant the calls toward one side, since their order’s survival had traditionally been dependent on its impartiality. Still, a corrupted individual could always have been planted a long time ago—

  The cantor had finished his recitation. While you could still hear the outlying criers had finished repeating it the Master of Hipball—or Magister Ludi as we Glasperlenspiel fans might translate his title—announced the stakes.

  “Four hundred score dependents each,” he said.

  The main bet was always supposed to be chunchumuk, even money, but it was bartered out in a complicated and, I think, kind of artificial way. While he talked, punters and bookies in the audience were already holding up fingers asking for nine-to-two odds against the Harpies, which even I thought was on the long side. I remembered I’d forgotten to get my own bet in and then decided it wasn’t important. The Magister Ludi was about to finish when 2 Jeweled Skull’s herald’s drum sounded. The chanter let the herald take the floor.