We’d abandoned thousands of the slower travelers when we’d doubled our pace, but the heralds were still going ahead, proselytizing villages and irrigation societies, making private visits to village cargo-bearers and promising them positions of power in return for the support of their war bloods, shrugging off threats from the greathouses, trying to overwhelm the old hierarchy by numbers, the same old story. By 16 Jaguar we barely had to do anything, we’d come up on a town and the people would hear the rattle-flutes and rush outside, strewing monkshood and fringed gentians in front of Koh’s train, and crouch by the side of the road, looking into the ground, chanting Koh-songs the heralds taught them as we walked through the middle of this weird audience that couldn’t see us. Then as they’d fall into lockstep behind us you could hear their travois poles scraping on the gravel in this unending hiss, and I could feel our bloods’ probably misguided optimism growing, especially when they came back from an audience with Koh. At least the girl had charisma. No matter how many people our outrunners said were chasing us, no matter what rationing and logistics and disease crises we had, no matter how panicked Hun Xoc and I were about getting the hell to Ix before the big hipball game before somebody could head us off, practically everybody seemed to treat the whole thing as a big holiday. Anyone close to Koh was a celebrity. The younger bloods gambled over who’d get to be in my third circle of “pets,” that is, guards/valets. That was outside, or on top of, the ten Rattler bloods who were assigned to protect me and my inner “sleeping circle” of three Harpy bloods. And I wasn’t even one of the major stars.
Before 24 Jaguar-the new incarnation of Grandfather Heat-rose behind the brown clouds, the whistlers said the Harpy emissaries were less than a sun away, and that there were only twenty-two of them. It was all about runners around here, like in a Greek tragedy, the way messengers keep coming in and saying “My King, I bear dreadful tidings from Paedophilopolis,” or whatever. Which maybe means those plays were more realistic than I’d thought. The king and the chorus and whoever were all hunkered in their bunker out of harm’s way, and all the dangerous stuff really did happen offstage. Anyway, before the sun’s midlife crisis we got hit by a rainless sandstorm called the Razor Wind. Ash sand burrowed into our leggings and rubberized sandals and our most tightly wound bandages and salved-together eyelids, and the skin painters covered us with salves and balms and ointments and shit, to the point where my testicles were frozen in this lake of goo, but it was either that or chafe city. No one could look ahead, you could only peek down once in a while at the trail in front of you, and most of us were holding on to some rope or rag dangling from the ass of the person in front, like circus elephants. After a quarter-sun Hun Xoc had to call it quits and sent word down the line for a noncombat halt. We were at a nothing old town called Coloa to triage the wounded bloods. A lot of them would have to kill themselves. The village wasn’t situated right to be much of a refuge, but 2 Hand spread our guest mats and set our backrests in the little mud council house. There were only two other decent buildings. We designated one for the emissaries and one for the captive Pumas. The bloods converted the square into a barracks and the converts overran the rest of the town, trying to find shelter, haggling with the locals, scrounging through garbage heaps for critters to munch on, crows, rats, anything that would normally be shooed away. Some of the converted families set up pathetic little offerings and started chanting. At first I thought they were praying for Koh, but as I listened more closely I could tell that as usual they were just praying to her.
14 Wounded ordered the porters to get the palanquins and sedan chairs together because he insisted that every and each blood had to ride into town just ahead of Lady Koh. Giving ourselves airs, I thought. It was like how people hire a limousine to take them to an event three blocks away because they need something to step out of. But then I didn’t say anything because it occurred to me that the idea might actually have come from Her Worshipfulship. Maybe Koh was a little insecure herself.
(22)
At our Grandfather Heat’s next birth we met three of the Harpy emissaries. They’d been among the bloods who’d adopted me in the cave, way back in the day, before we left for Teotihuacan. We exchanged cakes and did a whole “welcome, my brothers” trip. They kept making jokes about how 2Hand had lost weight during the trek, how his eyes had sunk so deep into his baby-fat face that they looked like two black pebbles in a bowl of dough. Actually, it really was like coming home, I felt a little cozy in spite of myself. Still, gloom hung over the situation like, I don’t know. I guess like gloom. Like, basically, a whole lot of hanging gloom. If the Harpies didn’t win the great-hipball game we’d lose everything, including the fillings in our teeth. Or at least the jade fillings. Maybe they’d let us keep any wooden ones.
And we wouldn’t win. The hipgall game would be worked. And the fix would be tight. If we won, it would be like getting a real upset in a World Wrestling Entertainment event. It couldn’t happen. If the Harpies persisted in trying to win anyway, the ball game would be called against them, the Harpies would object, and a fight would start, which the Ocelots were confident they would win. Then they could justifiably take all the Harpies’ possessions and probably a good chunk of them as captives. After that, the other raptor clans in the area would retrench and make deals with the Ocelots.
It was dark inside the audencia tent and the sand over the hide-covered smoke holes sounded like a cymbal brush on a floor tom. I kept thinking about the all the converts outside, huddled in their little camps, their exposed skin shredding away. We sat in an abbreviated version of our circle, with the three leaders of the Harpy delegation in their hereditary spot at the eastern point, and then Hun Xoc, 2 Hand, 1 Gila, 1 Gila’s eldest son, two of the old greatmothers from the Rattler House, Koh, Coati, and me. We could each have one attendant behind us and I’d picked Armadillo Shit. As I said, normally a woman wouldn’t be let anywhere near here, but just like Alligator Root was kind of a third sex and could go in the women’s courts, Koh and her greatmothers could come into ours. A couple of the town cargo-bearers scurried around setting out basins of fish oil and big wide-rimmed pots of rock-heated water. We were the biggest thing that had ever happened in town and they’d already all sworn sempiternal devotion.
2 Dead Coral-one of the ordinands under 20 Blue Snail, who was 2JS’s sort-of in-house heirophant-was the head of the delegation, and even though he was being friendly he gave me a touch of the creeps. He greeted us speaking as 2 Jeweled Skull, which took a while, since it was a ritual form, like telling you how to insert the metal fitting into the buckle and how items have tendency to shift during flight or something. When he got to the actual news from Ix it didn’t sound good. Like I may have said, 2 Jeweled Skull had been called out by 9 Fanged Hummingbird, the ahau of the ruling Ocelot House of Ix, to a hipball game, kind of like a trial by combat. In this case the stakes were the Ixian Harpy Clan’s stores and trading rights against the heads of the Ocelot Clan’s Emerald Brethren, that is, their hipball champions. Basically it was a way to scale down a civil war. But from what the emissaries said, this one wasn’t likely to scale it down too effectively. Most likely the ball game wouldn’t even get to the second half.
Of course, the subtext of all this was that 2JS was really asking us to relieve him, and hoping to win the battle with our help. 20 Blue Snail-a duckbill-mask-wearing underling who was 2JS’s best Sacrifice Game player, but who wasn’t even in Koh’s league, or even mine, lately-took some time comparing long lists of bloods and auxiliaries on both sides, but the gist was that 2JS and his pledged allies would have about forty percent the strength of 9 Fanged Hummingbird and the Ocelots. If our convoy got back to Ix in time, Koh’s forces would easily tip the balance. Then the other Raptor clans would step in and help 2JS, and the Ocelots would be recent history. 2JS would become at least the de facto k’alomte of Ix, maybe keeping 9 Fanged Hummingbird on as a puppet ruler. Maybe he’d even take over completely, although since the k’alomte always had to be
a cat, to do that 2JS would have to get himself adopted into a feline clan.
At any rate, the Ixian branch of the Star Rattler cult would become Ix’s most powerful non-clan-based organization. Koh would set up shop near the Star-Rattler’s mul-which was in a good location in Ix, “downtown,” I guess you could say, but which currently wasn’t large and wasn’t very well funded-and 2JS would have to keep her and her followers happy. And one of her conditions would be that the ruling coalition would have to build my tomb, to my specifications. And if that got done in time, I could get the gel mixed up, get buried per the ROC specifications, and the next thing I knew I’d be back in the merrie olde twenty-first century with a headful of Sacrifice Game expertise and a revitalized Will to Power.
20 Blue Snail said even though the Ocelots had gotten the gossip from Teotihuacan about our role in wrecking the place, they still couldn’t disinvite us. We’d be welcome as clansmen of the Harpies. Delegates from both cat and raptor clans were coming from all the important cities of the highlands and lowlands. Even Severed Right Hand was officially invited, although since he was still only at Ka’an, near the coast, he’d be too far away. And for every official guest there’d be at least ten peripheral people arriving in Ix over the next few days, vendors, traders, smart oddsmakers and destitute addict gamblers, prostitutes, clowns, wandering families, whatever.
Finally, 20 Blue Snail said the buzz was that Koh’s Star-Rattler’s cult was growing “in four directions,” that is, all over the world, and that 2JS was interested in helping serve Star Rattler. Koh was impassive, of course. I couldn’t tell whether he was just flattering her. Then, as though it was an afterthought, he mentioned that the date of the ball game had been moved up two suns. He said it was for some astronomical reasons, but also that the Ocelots were behind it. Anyway, it gave us only eleven days to get to Ix.
There’s no way, I thought. The fastest marching rate for the whole army-even discounting the elders, the women, children, the sick, the dead, and the inessential baggage-couldn’t possibly be over a jornada, that is, about thirty miles per day, and we had over three hundred miles to go in eleven days. We could do it if we forced four or maybe even just three extra marches, but the line would get strung out and even the bloods would be exhausted when they entered Ix. I looked at Hun Xoc and Koh and could tell they were doing the same calculations. As far as I knew no group this size had ever moved that fast. We’d have to set a record.
Hun Xoc asked permission of the rest of the circle to speak in house code.
Everyone signaled that it was all right.
“The Lady Koh’s four hundred clans won’t make it,” Hun Xoc said.
“They’ll have to seek asylum somewhere else.”
Not true, 20 Blue Snail answered in the same language, Koh’s children can’t stay outcasts for much longer.
What he meant was that the main thing Koh needed was to stabilize her base. She might be able to afford to keep the cat clans as enemies for a while, but to do that she’d need to reach some sort of stable rapprochement with as many of the other international (to use the word loosely) ruling families as possible. As of now, she could count only the Fog lineage and the rest of 3 Talon’s aerial clans, and maybe the Ixian Harpies, as friends. Settling respectably in Ix as an invited clan leader-at least temporarily-would be her best chance.
I looked at him. You couldn’t read anything under the duckbill mask. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much he looked like one of the plates in this nineteenth-century book on the Maya by Stepanwald. I pretended to ease myself back and used the motion to sneak a look at Koh. I had the feeling she understood what 20 Blue Snail was saying, and that he was right.
They passed the speaking cup to Lady Koh.
She asked when we’d have our meeting with 2JS. I guess she didn’t want to deal with anyone but him and you couldn’t blame her.
He can’t come outside Ix to meet you, Hun Xoc said. From the way he said it I got the feeling 2JS was under polite house arrest. 20 Blue Snail said we wouldn’t all be able to talk when we got near the city, either, we’d be in a ceremonial procession and under constant observation. It was going to be like an inauguration or royal ball. For now, all we could do was accept the invitation and get there.
Then we need to get a few beats alone with him just before the hipball game, Koh said.
20 Blue Snail said he’d try. And if a fight breaks out, what then? he asked.
The Rattler’s children will support their host, Koh said.
The Ocelots won’t let all of your followers into the court district, Hun Xoc said. At most they’ll let in two or four hundred of the highest bloods. The rest will have to stay as close as possible outside and wait for our signal.
Koh signed that was good enough. We voted “agreed.”
(23)
You could have individual conversations in the “smoke,” the after part of the mat circle, when you were all just hanging around, not necessarily at your own position, and it was even considered polite to doze off. Sleeping’s a big part of bonding. It’s hard to describe the cozy factor of the huge foster family and my growing place in it. The clan definined who and what you were so strongly and so completely that, as naturally as F = ma, you’d be willing to die for it in a beat. It, and not you, was you. Anyway, at the southwest end of the round room, Hun Xoc, 1 Gila, and 2 Hand were getting their knee calluses massaged and drinking out of the balche pot through long bullrush straws. On the white side, I mean, the northeast side, near the little door, the two Rattler greatmothers were still sitting bolt up on their backrests and chatting together, smoking and weaving elaborate shrouds on little hip-strap looms. Coati was stirring the fire. The emissaries had already done their big leave-taking, so they wouldn’t have to go through it again, and Zero Porcupine Clown had taken them off to their own over-storm house with a bunch of the Rattler Clan’s sex workers and gamblers, a few of whom were also trained listeners and mnemonists, just in case they said anything. Koh had told the gamblers to let them win. Most of them would escort us to Ix, but a couple of runners were going to rush back to 2JS as soon as the storm let up. I was reclining on top of my two dressers and pets, and the younger brother was rubbing oil into my feet and ankles, which were still scabby from volcanic ash. I guess maybe that sounds a little odd. But it wasn’t in a sexual way. In fact, none of us were supposed to do any sex on the trip, even though the local chicks and dicks all wanted to service us godlings, because the adders said our semen trail would make it easier for Severed Right Hand’s hit squads to track us. I was just leaning on them because they were used to it and it was cold and I was entitled to the service. There was more touching in general around here, although if you touched someone you weren’t supposed to that was it for you. Supposedly Shang emperors used to sleep on mounds of people. Anyway I was just calming down enough to close my eyes when Koh kneed over to me. Her big quilted turquoise-blue manto was tied a little like a giant stiff bathrobe. My dressers propped me up into a more formal attitude. Koh settled into her position on the mat and unrolled another world-map version of the Sacrifice Game board, a less elaborate traveling model. On this one the central circle represented our own army or migration or whatever, and she piled stones in it representing how many different types of people we had, 62-score full bloods, 9-score sick or wounded bloods, 410-score scouts, dressers, and calligraphers, about 700-score converted men and roughly 1,202 score converted women and children, 812-score porters, 2,108-score thralls and captives, and over 3,500-score stragglers who really didn’t have any reason to be with us. Of course, the Star Rattler societies in other cities were revitalized by Koh’s success, and they were pledging tens of thousands of new converts, but until her chickens got here she wasn’t counting them.
She subtracted stones for how many of each grade of person we were likely to lose to raids and how many to attrition and starvation. A lot of people don’t have a head for logistics, how many bowls of gruel each soldier ate per week or whatever.
They want to hear how a lone hero won a whole war single-handed. Koh was the opposite. She wanted to reduce the uncertainty as much as possible before she even started to do her really serious calculations.
Koh set out carved disks representing the major cities, with a saucery green one standing in for Ix, and then started laying out glyphic stones into them. I recognized the stones that represented 2 Jeweled Skull, 9 Fanged Hummingbird, Severed Hand, 3 Talon-who was the patriarch of the shall-we-say “international” alliance of aerial clans-and our troops and followers, and a lot of the other clans, and us. But in general I could still understand only about ten percent of her visualization. Pretty soon she was using little brown seeds that represented hypotheticals, often in doubles and triples. She positioned the hit squads that were chasing us in four different possible spots. She guessed at food sources and weather along the route into Ix. And when she’d come to the end of her own knowledge she started asking me things. What did I think the other Caracara Greathouses were up to? How much has 2 Jeweled Skull asked them for help? What was his real relationship with the small Rattler Society of Ix? Why hadn’t the Ixian Rattler Feeder responded to her messages?
Why do you think the Ocelots are so confident? she whispered.
I said I guessed that actually a lot of them were terrified by the end of Teotihuacan, but that some of them were thinking they might be able to fill the gap and carry on the business of the empire with a bigger cut for themselves. They’d have to get rid of the Harpies first, though, and so they’d spent quite a bit in bribes to the supposedly neutral hipball officials, probably much more than 2JS could afford.
The Sacrifice Game jd-2 Page 15