by Jeff Posey
Tuwa needed no light to see. He already knew what she meant. A shiver ran from his spine to the back of his neck.
“I see,” he said. A single dark mark on the tip of each finger.
“We make them with wet splinters of wood coated in fine cedar ash. One each for Mother Earth, Father Sun, Sister Moon. Find fingers like these and you will find a friend.”
“I know them,” Tuwa said. “I’ve seen them before. On the hand of the woman who raised me. I’ve seen her make the mark on others.” She had, in fact, given him the same marks.
“Who?” she asked.
“Nuva, the albino woman. She took the place of my mother in the house of my Grandfather. The village women there treated her poorly.”
“I have heard stories of her, Grandson,” she whispered. “She may yet live. A secret White Priestess who never comes into the light of the day is said to live in the palace of The Builder, but I do not know if it is the woman who raised you.”
Tuwa’s heart pounded. “Could it be her?” The last he knew, she stood in line for sacrifice behind Grandfather. With Chumana at her side. Could they have escaped?
“I don’t know, Grandson. The world has been crazy these last three summers.” Her voice faded to an exhausted whisper. Tuwa patted her hand.
“You have helped us, Grandmother. I am grateful. Sleep now.” He found a worn turkey-feather blanket and tucked it around her.
He stood, needing to think. He walked fast into the night along the road to the north, the way Ihu had escaped. Choovio and Sowi followed close, and the other orphans hesitated, then abandoned their posts and strung along.
Tuwa only vaguely noticed them following and began to jog until he came to the hill where Ihu had bested him. He stood in silence watching the world and thinking. Stars smeared across the dark heavens. The growing half-moon would set soon and plunge the rolling prairie into starlight-only darkness. He startled when he noticed Sowi and the others coming along beside him.
Sowi, in a fit of agitation, spoke first. “Did you hear what that Eldest Woman said? Thousands of warriors. Crawling all over the place, like ants! What are we doing here? We’ve got to get out, now!”
Some of the others murmured in agreement.
Tuwa looked at them in surprise. “You should be at your posts! We must go back.”
“No,” said Sowi. “We must talk. There’s too much going on. The Pochtéca is no good to us right now. Staying here doesn’t make any sense. We’re all going to be killed when that bald-headed Ihu guy gets back with a bunch of those warriors. I don’t want to be here for that. Do you? And we don’t have much time.”
“Tomorrow morning. Or three days,” said Choovio. For the largest of the Pochtécans, he had the fewest words and the softest voice.
“We can get a long way by morning. And far, far away in three days,” said Sowi. “Unless they all run like Ihu.”
The words stung Tuwa. He was The Pochtéca’s eldest and top boy. But because he didn’t catch Ihu, he felt his power ebb and said nothing to defend himself.
“What if The Pochtéca never gets better?” asked one of the orphan boys.
“Yeah, we need a new top man,” said another.
“I remember how they used to do it back home,” said one. “Everybody who wants to be top man turns his back, and everybody else talks about them until we decide who we want.”
“Yeah!” said several boys. Even in the dim light of a setting half-moon, they looked like a bunch of tramps, with homemade and second-hand clothes, thin as saplings, muscles like knotted vines. They leaped around like young animals when they had no loads to carry.
“I’ll be top man,” Sowi said. He gave a challenging look to Tuwa and turned his back.
“The Pochtéca is not gone,” said Tuwa. “The Eldest Woman will heal him.”
“Until he wakes up, we need to choose,” said a boy called Earless whose left ear had been torn off in a skirmish two summers ago.
Tuwa looked at Choovio who held his gaze. They were the logical next choices.
“Come on, Choovio. You’ve got to do it,” Earless said.
Choovio still looked at Tuwa, who shrugged. Choovio turned his back and faced north.
“And you, Tuwa. Obviously,” said another boy.
Tuwa faced east and listened to their arguments.
At first, they wanted to run away as fast as possible. Which meant Sowi made sense. But then a darker note entered their discussion. One boy said his parents and all his siblings had been killed here. A handful of other boys seconded.
“We told The Pochtéca we came for revenge,” one of them said, “and I meant it. I want to kill as many of these evil ones as I can before I die.” Others, mostly those who had not rebelled, said no, let’s get out of here, now. But the ones for whom this had been home said revenge, fight, kill. One said, “We’ve got to clean up where we came from, even if we die.” If they decided to fight, they would need strength, which meant Choovio made sense.
Tuwa realized how much they had all changed. Growing up, vengeance was not tolerated. Every effort had to be focused on honoring the sky gods by observing and recording what happened in the sky. Every village of the north that he knew of detested violence. But three summers of running with The Pochtéca in the violent lands south of the canyon had turned them into warriors. Tuwa felt torn. He wanted to return to a home as peaceful as it had been in his youth. But he was willing to enforce a return to peace with whatever violence it took.
After a long period of quiet a boy said, “There are too many to fight.” Another boy muttered, just barely audible, “Unless we fight smart.”
A boy said, “We should get them to tell us what they want to do next. Then we’ll decide on that.” All the boys agreed. They told Sowi to turn around and speak.
Sowi told them his plan. Leave everything behind and run until they could run no more. After a week or ten days of running, they would be safe.
“Which way?” a girl asked. Tuwa smiled. Feisty Kopavi. He liked her.
“Away from Center Place,” said Sowi. They questioned him. South? From where we came?
“No, no,” said Sowi, hesitating. “West, maybe,” he said. They seemed to think west made sense. Certainly not east. Not directly into the rising sun. That’s an affront to the sky gods.
Then they called for Choovio. He stood and said nothing.
“Tell us what you would do,” said Earless, almost whining. Others added their voices. “You must say something,” said an older boy. “It’s your duty.”
Choovio stood long, the rustle of wind through their hair and clothes and grasses seemed to quiet their panic. Tuwa admired his calm. Grandfather would have liked this nearly grown Choovio. Finally he spoke. “You run. I stay, I fight.”
It took the orphans a few moments to realize the advantage of this. They would run like Sowi suggested, but Choovio would sacrifice himself to slow the pursuers. Tuwa’s heart flared in anger. They would let him do that? And Choovio, named for the antelope that resembled him not at all (he should have been named for the bear or buffalo) would really die to protect the cowards who ran? Tuwa admired Choovio’s courage. He had the strength of one of the Twin Giants of their home village. Tuwa looked up at Grandfather’s favorite stars, the ones in the pattern of a snake moving across the sky, and prayed for the strength of the other Twin Giant.
Next they asked for Tuwa. He turned and faced them. Kopavi stood in the middle, jostling for position as hard as any boy. Tuwa took a deep breath and swallowed. He had been thinking about what Grandfather would do. He would fight smart, like the boy had said. So smart, he couldn’t lose. Not because of strength. But because of wisdom.
Tuwa heard Grandfather say, Cut off the head of the snake. He knew exactly what it meant. Sneak into Center Place Canyon, find places to hide, then watch and wait for an opportunity to kill the top men. The High Priest. Tókotsi. Pók. Tuwa smiled. No one would expect that. And they wouldn’t need an army of warriors to accomplish the
ir revenge. A small band of highly motivated orphans would do just fine, especially if they found help from the secret sisterhood of women with tattoos on their fingertips. But what of The Pochtéca? They needed a hideout, a place for The Pochtéca to heal and rest, and to make their plan of attack. After what had happened, maybe The Pochtéca would forget about his trade and join them in revenge.
He looked at their faces, illuminated by the half-moon falling to the western horizon, the middle-night stars overhead. They reminded him of the children who used to listen to Grandfather tell stories under the ancient piñon tree in the middle of the village. A story came to him and he started to speak, imagining that his voice came from the throat of Grandfather.
“One day Grandfather took me to the biggest rattlesnake den I have ever seen, and a giant snake sunned itself on a rock. Many other rattlesnakes came from the hole, and I was afraid to step anywhere for fear of them, but Grandfather did not hesitate. He told me to stay and watch while he crept around in a wide circle. I saw him near the rock with the giant rattlesnake. He squatted with his staff and waited. Finally, when the morning grew hot, the snake began to slither away, and when its head wound firmly among a few stones, Grandfather dashed out and grabbed its tail. He pulled hard until the snake held tight by only one coil around a rock near its head. Then like a flash of lightning, Grandfather jumped to the head and slapped his staff down to pin it. He stood on the staff while the snake’s body coiled around his legs and the rattle made a sound like a hard winter wind through dry tree branches. He pulled his sharpest flake-knife, bent low, and sliced off its head. That night we ate snake meat to possess its spirit and he buried the head outside the house to poison anyone who tried to harm us. He gave me the rattle so that I would always have warning of danger.” Tuwa reached into his talisman pouch, pulled out the rattle, and rattled it. The orphans shuddered and took a step back.
Did they understand the parable? Would Grandfather leave it at that, or would he say it more plainly? But before he could say or even think another word, Choovio interrupted.
“Someone comes,” he said.
Tuwa followed Choovio’s gaze north and saw a dark mass of people moving over the crest of the hill where he’d last seen Ihu. Glinting in the last of the half-moonlight, he saw a bare head. Ihu. Leading Másaw Warriors. Running toward them.
Keep This Quiet
From a deep shadow protected from the light of the half-moon, Pók spied on the new arrivals, hard cases from the distant Old South. He ordered his Palace Guard to pull back as usual and watched the new ones ransack an outdoor kitchen, scatter food, strip an old cook naked. They knocked her to the ground as if to rape her, but no man volunteered. They jeered each other about their lack of manhood while the woman wailed like a wounded elk calf. Their leader was a giant of a man, a full arm-length taller than Pók, upper arms thick as the trunk of a young tree. The big man stomped the cook’s legs and arms, then urinated on her and left her gagging to breathe. He had a bent toward excessive cruelty that Pók both admired and regretted. To lose such a specimen grieved him, yet Pók smiled. This man would give him much power.
Wearing a stonemason’s cloak and holding new and exquisitely sharp flake-stone blades in each hand, Pók approached and stood before the big man.
“What’s this?” the man bellowed, gazing down at Pók with a look of anticipation. His men laughed. Pók knew how the sight must amuse them, their thick, powerful leader towering over an insignificant and foolish rock carrier. The disproportion must be striking. Pók wished he, too, could watch from their perspective.
“You just cost me a cook,” said Pók, dropping the stonemason’s cloak and revealing his tunic with the mark of Másaw painted a very rare bright red. He doubted the newcomers would recognize the full significance, but they would know it meant something.
“What?” demanded the big man. He scanned behind Pók, looking around for guardsmen, but he would see none. Pók’s orders were explicit: remain hidden until first blood.
“When you have no cook, you have to eat your food raw,” said Pók.
The big man laughed and looked back at his fellows. “Raw or cooked makes no difference to the likes of us.”
The man’s hair was matted and twisted with grease and bits of sticks and pine needles. The mark of Másaw on his tattered vest barely showed through the grime. When he grinned, Pók appreciated his full upper row of nicely sharpened teeth.
“You have a big spirit,” said Pók.
The man grunted. “I am a big man.”
“I have three questions for you. Are you ready?”
The big man’s eyes went to Pók’s discarded stonemason’s cloak, the immaculate tunic, and the knives in each hand. “Who are you?”
Pók allowed the silence to become uncomfortable as he flattened his lips into his famous lizard grin. The big man shifted his weight back.
“Desert, or jungle?” Pók asked. The early Southerners who discovered Center Place Canyon were refugees from the storied South, a place so full of plants and trees and insects, and so warm and moist, Pók couldn’t fully imagine it. The latest Southerners mostly came from the desert north and west of the jungle lands. He could imagine desert very well.
“We eat jungle people,” said the big man. “Raw or cooked, alive or dead.” His men peeled with laughter.
“How many men have you killed and eaten?”
The big man’s eyes went from Pók’s painted tunic to his face. “Where are your men?”
“Why did you kill and eat them?”
“What are you called?”
Pók sighed. “You do not need to know. But they do.” He turned to the men behind the big man. “I am the master of men like this.” He gestured to their leader. “I am the master of all men like you.” He lowered his head and raised his arms to present himself to them. “I realize I do not look it. I appear to be a short common man, no beak in my nose, hair cut short like someone put a bowl over my head and removed only what stuck out.”
The men shifted and eyed one another. The big man slid his front foot back and lifted his hands as if to leap.
“But you will learn my spirit is bigger than this man. Much bigger. I am as strong as one of the Twin Giants, as a hundred great bears, as thousands of big men like this one.” Pók took a step toward the tall man, whose eyes widened in his first show of fear. It was well-warranted, and Pók rewarded it by lunging into the man’s torso as the giant arms clenched him. Pók raised one knife to the man’s throat, and punched with his other hard into the top of his stomach below the chest bone, a well-practiced move. Pók’s knife and hand sawed into the man’s stomach flesh with amazing ease, and a gush of warm liquid spilled onto him. Pók stepped into the flow and thrust his arm past his elbow into the man’s chest, twisting and cutting. He wrenched the knife until he felt the man’s strength ebb out of him. He pulled his arm out and saw that the blade in his other hand had nearly severed the man’s jaw. The big body twitched and fell with a splat.
A dozen guardsmen rushed in and tied the new men by their ankles to a pine log that served as a bench near the open kitchen. One guard poured a jar of water while Pók washed his hands and arms. He left his face, clothing, and hair spattered with evidence of what he had done.
He stood in front of the new men, wide-eyed with shock. “You have a new leader now. One much stronger and much bigger than your old one,” he glanced at the body of the giant man lying in the dust. “You will soon learn to follow and respect me…or not.” He shrugged. He truly didn’t care. Either they did what they were told, or they were meat.
He turned to the captain of the guard. “As long as it takes until it’s gone.” He pointed at the body of the big man. “They eat nothing else. Raw. No cooks. He cost me a cook.”
Back to the new men, he said, “Eat hearty or starve. I do not care.”
He left to return to his quarters where he would celebrate his recent kill with a young girl who hadn’t learned to shrink from him yet, but an ai
de interrupted. “A runner is here,” he whispered. “A new runner, a young one. He insists on reporting to The Builder.”
“Bah,” said Pók, pushing the aide aside. “Let me talk to him. Take him to The Builder’s round chamber. Make him wait until I arrive.”
The aide left, and instead of going to his rooms, Pók crept back to a corner of shadow to watch the new recruits. He lingered there, conscious of the waiting runner, wanting to see what the recruits decided to do with their fallen leader. In record time, when the half-moon sank to its lowest point in the sky before setting, all but one had begun removing the flesh from their leader’s body and chewing the stringy pieces. Pók nodded. Not a bad conversion. All but one, who would be another meal for his fellow recruits in a few days. He was pleased and began to saunter to The Builder’s chamber.
Pók expected the same usual boring report from the runner, but he always insisted on hearing them before The Builder. He learned long ago that information—or even just the appearance of having information—gave one as much strength as killing worthy adversaries. Especially in a place like Center Place Canyon with its layers of priests and Owl Men and Southern Alliance council members, a manmade fantasy land of political posturing and religious fanaticism thicker than a congealed bowl of man corn. But all of it relied on one man, Pók, and the hundreds of Másaw Warriors at his command. Without them, the canyon would wither and die from lack of food and labor.
So it was a small but imperative thing for him to instill in this runner the rules of his job. Only new, enthusiastic runners from outlying towns, who truly believed they served only The Builder as High Priest did not understand who they truly reported to. Pók went up a ladder and across a small courtyard to The Builder’s round chamber, a room lit by the single sputtering flame of a yucca fiber wick in a bowl of bear fat. Pók loved that smell and paused to appreciate it with his eyes closed. Only The Builder’s chambers burned with that rich, rare smell. He found the runner standing in full formal regalia, the feathers of his headpiece nearly touching the ceiling. He looked frightened.