“I suspect I just met one of those men who would willingly roast my feet over an open flame,” I said.
“An excellent guess. His father, the War Lord, competes with Lord Janaab for the king’s favor. If you caused Janaab to lose favor with the king or other lords, the War Lord would not be disappointed. Or if he were the one who was able to obtain the codex. The War Lord is a cousin of the king, and some say he would like to be king.”
I grinned sourly. “I should have stayed in my village. There I only had to worry about snakes that crawled.”
“Flint Shield is not the only one of the king’s nobles who has animosity toward you. That a commoner killed the most sacred and dangerous animal in the One-World did not settle well with the young noblemen who seek advantage for themselves.”
“There is abundant blood on battlefields. Let them seek it there.”
“Flint Shield is the best warrior in Mayapán. He captures the most warriors for sacrifice, which is why he believes we will select him to replace his father as War Lord when his father grows too old to lead the king’s army. Unless his father doesn’t do something to stop the rumors that he is more capable of speaking to the gods than the king. That his War Lord receives more acclaim than he cannot set well with the king.”
“If Flint Shield is a warrior, he doesn’t have to be envious of me. He can gain great fame in battle.”
“Even so, the gods thirst for more blood, and there will be another war. He could never achieve in battle what you did the moment you jumped on that beast’s back.”
I didn’t know what to say. The gods had set me on a path, and I could only watch my back and hope that when a fight came, the gods would favor me.
“I must get back to my duties,” I said.
She shook her head. “I can’t let you return to the streets carrying a bad impression of the temple with you. You have come to a place of pleasure. So you shall now have it.”
31
The doors parted, and three young women stood perfectly still for a moment.
Naked.
All three were firm of flesh. The one in the center stood a foot forward of the other two. Reed slim, she had small, firm breasts, a flat stomach, and smooth thighs.
Most startling of all was that her private area was also bare.
Eyo! I have seen many naked women, young, mature, and old. While the women in some parts of our land go bare-breasted on all but the coolest days, most women cover their breasts—and the love nest between their legs, permitting only boys hiding in bushes to get a peek when they are bathing.
But I had never seen a woman whose love nest was bare. Only hers was naked. The other two had the expected hair.
Staring at her, I realized the priestess had not just shaved her private area, but from the way her skin shone, I could see that she lacked body hair also on her arms and legs.
I didn’t know if the lack of hair was a feature given to her by the gods, perhaps by Love Goddess Akna, or if she had shaved her body hair. Whatever the cause, I experienced surprise and then more manly feelings.
The three women entered and two of them, smiling, took me by the arm. I hadn’t noticed, but the High Priestess was gone, swallowed by the walls perhaps as I stared at the priestesses.
We left the chamber and went down a dark corridor and into another room. The priestess with the smooth-shaven body led the way.
We entered a room that had a small opening on the other side. After the two had removed my clothes, the tall priestess said, “You may enter the House of Stone Fire.”
I should have known from the heat in the air that the opening led into a sweat hut. I had never seen one built as part of a building; the huts were usually built in the coned shape of a beehive in the open.
Inside, I sat on a bench by the heated rocks in the center and immediately began to sweat. The lead girl entered behind me and threw herbs on the stones.
As she started to leave, I asked, “What’s your name?”
Her obsidian eyes met mine. “Sparrow,” she said, “my name is Sparrow.”
Sparrow reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t put a name to the feeling. Not her features so much as her presence. Looking into her eyes, I also realized she was the guide who met me at the temple door.
She left, and I leaned back to let the heat do its work. Sweating was the purpose of the hot room, sweating that cleansed the body and soul, healed wounds and cured sickness.
When I had sweated out my sins and my discomfort, Sparrow gestured for me to leave. Out of the sweat house, she led me to a cool pool of water, a tropical pond somewhere in the upper reaches of the temple.
I waded into the pool, and the girls came in with me. Using soft cloths, they rubbed me down. My manhood was stiff and hard, and I had fought it long enough. I reached for Sparrow to give it some relief, but she slipped away.
“Not yet,” she said.
We left the pool. I was dry by then and was invited to sit on a long bench.
“Close your eyes,” Sparrow said. “Relax and feel the gift of the gods.”
The three young women began to rub and caress my skin with soothing sensuous oil, their light fingers gently moving over my body, from the soles of my feet to the top of my head.
Sparrow was right about the gods. . . . I felt what a fallen warrior experienced when he went to the Celestial Heaven to be pampered by nymphs of the gods.
As I lay there naked, the women touched every place on my body with their caressing fingers and wet lips, then applied hot oil from my toes to the top of my head. At first my whole body trembled under their touch, but then Sparrow spoke softly in my ear, whispering not words but making sounds that flooded my body with warmth.
I stopped shaking as their warm, wet lips undulated on my own lips, and on my chest. Taking my member into her mouth, Sparrow massaged it with her tongue, her head gyrating and pumping.
I exploded so hard, I almost passed out.
I lay there a long moment, half-awake, half-asleep in a dream state. Lifting my head, Sparrow had me drink a potion. Again my soul soared, and I saw her naked flesh and beauty clearer than I had seen anything before.
I realized she alone was with me, that the other women had vanished, perhaps simply fading away, because I didn’t see them leave.
There was only Sparrow. As I lay on my back, she mounted me. Women in my village would not have done this, because a man does not let a woman mount him. It was a man’s privilege to ride the woman.
I was ready to shake her off, but she leaned down, her breasts pressing against my chest. Again she made the strange cooing sound in my ear that so inexplicably calmed my nerves.
Sitting upright, my hands on her breasts, she tightened the muscles around my male part as she levitated up and down with agonizing indolence, creating a hot wet sensation that no hand or mouth could have accomplished.
I exploded again when she gasped and groaned with the release of her own dammed-up desires.
Afterwards we lay together, Sparrow still atop me, my male part languishing in her garden. As power flowed back into my lower parts, I rose, with her still in me, her legs wrapped around my waist, my member impaling her, driving her unrelentingly until once more the grace of the gods obliterated us.
32
Before I left the Temple of Love, Sparrow and I shared a long, languid kiss, not a coming together of two people who had shared a moment of sexual pleasure, but that of lovers who had lost each other decades past and then rediscovered their secret selves.
Afterwards we sat together and were served cool juices, fresh fruits, meats and fish like those on the High Priestess’ table. She asked me about my work, and I told her about my duty checking all the inscriptions in the city.
“Even the king’s palace,” I said, “not only the outside walls, but I have to enter all the public corridors of the palace and ensure that the inscriptions are accurate.”
She was so fascinated with my work, and I felt so important describing it, I le
aned closer and told her in a confidential tone that I had even more important duties.
“I am to find an ancient codex that holds great secrets,” I told her.
Most of the time she said little, just cooing a bit as I boasted about my accomplishments.
When it was time to leave, I left reluctantly. I was connected to her in a way I could not explain.
As we parted, she leaned up to nibble my ear for a last time and whispered, “Trust no one.”
Then she slipped away, leaving me at the top of the stairs that led back down to the street, where I was left with the reality of my unexalted position—that of Lord Janaab’s faithful retainer.
Back to being envied by people with the power of life and death over me.
Trust no one.
The words stayed with me, echoing in my ears, floating in front of my eyes, roiling in my head.
What does she mean? Why did she say it?
She didn’t have to tell me not to trust Lord Janaab—I was his servant; he was master; he could paint me red on a whim and would. He would keep me on only so long as I was useful to him. Or Flint Shield, who humiliated me, drew my blood, and declared himself my enemy. Or Six Sky, who spied on me.
Was the warning about the High Priestess?
Out on the street, I suddenly realized that my lips had been flapping nonstop when I boasted about my work to her. Even about the secret codex, a subject that was forbidden.
When she said trust no one . . . had she meant herself?
A warning that what went from my mouth to her ear would be reported to the High Priestess?
I thought about the feminine figure that had placed the message on the wall about the blind man at the library. It could have been her. But it also could have been most of the female population of Mayapán.
I had a feeling that I had not seen the last of Sparrow.
I wondered if I would ever get another invitation to the Temple of Love.
My talent as an oracle told me that I would see both the High Priestess and Sparrow again.
Or perhaps that was my male member’s wishful thinking.
PART VI
33
Coop was picking off Apachureros with her 7.62 when she first heard the chopper. The sight of it buoyed Coop’s spirits . . . at first. An AH-1 Cobra “Huey,” it was an ancient Vietnam War relic, swooping in behind them less than three hundred yards away.
Ah, what the hell, she thought. It’s not state of the art, but then most of the vehicles down here are antiques. Anyway, the only opposition is a demented bandit gang armed with semiautomatics. No problemo.
Then she got a closer look. More than just old, this one had clearly been scraped up off some third world junk heap. Its Gatling-style multi-barrel machine gun mounts and M56 four-pack TOW (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided) missile launchers were not only empty, but its fuselage was a crazy quilt of rusted-out, poorly welded scrap-metal patches, riddled with gaping bullet holes and ripped-apart seams, to boot.
On closer inspection, it did have some sort of tripod machine gun bolted to its cabin bulkhead, its muzzle pointing out the narrowly open hatch. Instead of strafing the Apachureros on the flank, however, the craft landed well behind their fire trench, the machine gun muzzle pointed directly at . . . them.
Boy, they do want that codex, Coop noted.
Jamesy was manning the Browning M60. Putting down the 7.62, she grabbed the shoulder pack containing the codex urn, and, pressing it to her chest, she slipped the straps over her shoulders. She took off her belt, shoved it through the straps, pulled it down across the middle of her back, and tightened it across her lower chest.
“What are you doing?” Reets shouted at Coop above the hammering of the machine guns.
“You three secure that chopper. Reets, you get there first. Tell them I have the codex strapped across my chest. If they turn that machine gun on any of us, they lose the loot.”
“Shoot you, they shoot the money?” Jamesy yelled at her with an appreciative smile. “You think like me. I like it.”
“I don’t like it,” Reets said.
“Have your guns out when you enter that chopper. Don’t let them disarm you. They may kill us all once they get that their hands on the codex.”
“I still don’t like it,” Reets said to Coop, unable to refute her logic.
Coop pulled Hargrave off the Browning and pushed him toward Reets, who repeated what she said. By then Coop was crouched behind the big gun. Keeping the codex below the rocks and dirt-filled sandbags, she hammered away at the bandit army.
Reluctantly, her three friends raced toward the chopper, H&K 7.62s in hand. The two men covered their retreat, picking off bandits with their assault rifles, while Reets raced on ahead, explaining that Coop would follow last with the codex strapped across her chest.
“Shoot us, shoot her, you lose the pesos!” she roared above the din of the rotor.
34
The sixty or seventy surviving Apachureros were now less than fifty yards away. Time to haul ass, Coop decided. Grabbing up the M60 and throwing its cartridge belt over her shoulders, she vaulted the trench’s rear wall and ran toward the chopper, turning periodically to fire away at her pursuers, who were quickly closing the distance
She was forty yards from the chopper, then thirty, then twenty, then ten.
The bandit-soldiers were no longer shooting at her but pouring assault-weapons fire onto the chopper. Moreover, the last time she turned to cover her retreat, she saw two officers perhaps seventy-five yards away, mounting grenades on the muzzles of their weapons.
Shit, they were going to frag the chopper.
Throwing herself to the ground, Coop tried to take out the grenade-launchers in the back, but there were too many troops in front of them—as if they were using men for flack jackets.
The first gun-launched grenade went wide, detonating when it hit the ground forty feet from the Cobra’s nose.
Ten seconds later, the second man fired a frag-grenade and scored—
a—
a—
a direct hit.
Glancing over her shoulder, Coop felt a surge of relief.
Her friends had not climbed aboard yet and seemed unhurt.
She guessed the chopper crew was dead.
Well, Hargrave was checked out on choppers—if the craft could still fly.
If not, we make our last stand there.
Turning, for the last time she ran to the craft. She could see Hargrave throwing the dead pilot out of his seat and flinging him across the craft’s bulkhead. Jamesy dragged him and the rest of the dead crew out of the craft.
Now Coop was at the chopper. Shoving the big Browning up and through the chopper’s hatch, she clambered onto the landing strut. Grabbing the side door, she swung inside the craft. Bullets sang past her ears, riddling the chopper’s frame and its interior. Seating herself on the hatch’s edge, feet dangling over the side, she grabbed the Browning off the bulkhead floor and swung it toward the charging bandits. They were now less than twenty yards away, and the big gun cut through them like a scythe.
They dropped to their bellies, attempting to return her fire from the prone position.
When Hargrave finally lifted off.
The Huey had not escaped the fragging unscathed. Its engine billowing black smoke, it lurched erratically. Hargrave was flying it toward the cliff’s edge, was now over breaks of the Río Negro, the rapids of a black thunderous jungle river, which was narrowing precipitously toward a vertiginous series of waterfalls.
The chopper was shaking badly, swinging over, it seemed, all the abysses of heaven and earth.
Nor were they free of Apachurero gunfire.
Her legs hanging out the hatch, the bandits’ assault rifles still had the range to hurt them, even knock out the rotor, which they seemed to be sighting in on.
But the Browning M60 had an even longer effective range.
Time to exploit that last, single advantage. Bracing the m
etal stock against the chopper’s bottom bulkhead, she elevated the muzzle and sighted in on the bandits, lined up along the cliff’s rim, pouring fire on them.
Again, the big gun cut through them like a machete.
Until some hijo de puta sharpshooter found his own range.
Four tremendously powerful rounds exploded through the top bulkhead—only inches from the rotor’s rusted-out mount.
“A goddamn Barrett!” Jamesy shouted over the chopper’s din.
Coop knew what that meant. A .50-caliber Barrett M81 sniper rifle, its effective range was upwards of three thousand meters, and it packed enough stopping power to take out tanks—even at that three thousand meters, which several Navy SEALS had done during Operation Desert Storm.
And the son of a bitch was sighted in.
Leaning out the hatchway, she spotted the marksman. He was crouched over the cliff, the big rifle not mounted on a bipod but handheld.
He’s a strong son of a bitch, Coop thought. I’ll give him that.
Well, two could play that game. She still had sixty or seventy rounds left. The chopper was pulling away, he seemed to be their last human threat, so she emptied the belt, the metal stock braced on the bottom bulkhead, the Browning’s muzzle pointed almost straight up.
But not before he got off a final round.
She felt the jolt when his last .50-caliber round hammered the rotor casing like a cannonball out of hell.
The chopper bucked like a rabid bull busting up a squeeze chute.
That a microsecond later she saw the shooter tumble over the cliff face gave her no solace.
Coop was falling, too.
For a second or two, she seemed to descend in ultra-slow motion, so much so, she was able to extend her left arm and hook the landing strut with an elbow.
Pain shot through her shoulder like a hundred hornet stings.
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