The Jaguar Knights

by Dave Duncan

  How much was this done by drugs and how much by indoctrination? Once Wolf had sat on the anvil at Ironhall waiting for a sword through his heart, but he had known it wouldn’t kill him.

  None of the victims cried out, but they probably couldn’t, once their chests were cut open. How long must this go on? He had lost count already. He wanted to scream at them to stop. But why? He was the King’s Killer, wasn’t he?

  His head was throbbing now. The conjuration must be concentrated around the altar stone, but the ride on the Spirit Wind would hurt, as he knew from today’s experience. Long journeys brought mental confusion, Lynx said—that was why he and Fell had managed to overcome Plumed-pillar at Quondam. Wolf must plan. He must be ready to act when he reached Quondam. Only if he knew exactly what he was going to do could he hope to be fast enough to overcome the Eagle.

  Yet he could not tear his eyes away from the horrifying parade of drugged victims, could not help staring at them, wondering why they did not rise in revolt and at least try to die fighting. Most of them were appallingly young. Young or old, their faces were totally blank, their eyes dull as pebbles in the torchlight. Then came one who was paler than the others and had a straggly beard. He was Euranian…Chivian, in fact…his name was Louis, known as Flicker.

  Without thinking, Wolf surged to his feet. The pain in his head clanged like a great bell, so he staggered—and then just stood there, staring, paralyzed.

  There was no sign of Heron-jade, who ought to stand out because of his size, but he might be farther back, lower down on the long climb. No, he had to be dead, or he would have identified himself and called for his lord, Sky-cactus. A blood-caked swelling disfigured the left side of Flicker’s face, perhaps a relic of the blow that had disabled him and led to his capture. Had it rendered him unable to talk, to explain who he was, or had his protestations just been ignored? Who would believe a Hairy One, trying to lie his way out of the abattoir pen? Had the Eldoradoans killed Heron-jade by mistake, or had he fallen to the Distlish forces and Flicker gone on by himself? There were a thousand possible explanations.

  Another man died without a cry, another corpse rolled away down the staircase to the waiting butchers. Flicker was urged forward by an acolyte, and another man stepped up behind him. Now Flicker was only two men back from the stone.

  What could Wolf do? However the Tlixilian prisoners might feel about donating their hearts, Flicker would not feel honored.

  Nothing. Wolf could do nothing. He had promised not to interrupt the ritual, and the pain in his head was ample warning that elementals had been gathered in great strength. To release so much power at random would surely cause disaster. He could not save Flicker and why should he even want to? He had sworn to kill the rat. He was a rapist. Let him die now!

  Another heart dropped in the brazier. Another corpse rolled over the brink and was gone. Flicker was only one man away from the altar stone. His unsteady gaze wobbled past Wolf, then returned. Something changed. He seemed to make an effort to focus. He frowned uncertainly.

  Dolores began to fret and her eyes opened, as if the pain had returned. She could not see Flicker from down there.

  But Flicker could see Wolf. Life began to shine in his eyes. He was struggling against the mind-numbing drug—perhaps even using some inquisitors’ trick to resist it. The acolytes noticed his alertness and two of them jumped forward to grip him even before the previous victim had been completely processed. He shouted feebly and tried to struggle. He was turned around and dragged down on the altar.

  Wolf knelt down to attend to Dolores. His head hurt less down there. “What’s wrong?” He had to crouch close to hear her whisper through the thunder of the drums.

  “How many? Wolf, stop this! Murders?”

  Wolf kissed her. “Soon be over,” he promised.

  “Wrong!” she muttered. “Wrong, wrong!”

  Not all wrong. Flicker had gone. All the waiting victims were Tlixilians.

  The rising moon was smearing the eastern sky with gold.

  Wolf had fulfilled his oath—he had executed the rapist Louis Duteau, known as Flicker. Why should that bother him? The spirits knew he had slaughtered enough of his brother Blades in the line of duty, and this latest killing ought to bring him great personal satisfaction—and no small relief, because in mortal combat Flicker would have been as dangerous an opponent as any he had ever encountered. Was that why? Or because he had let others do his dirty work for him, like an Athelgar? Or because it might have been possible to save him with a whispered word to the Eagle? Or because he was not quite certain of Flicker’s guilt? No, no, no…

  How would Dolores feel when she learned that saving her life had cost hundreds of deaths and it had all been in vain, because what she wanted to do with the conjury was impossible, that Tlixilian spells would always require mass slaughter? Wolf was cheating her as much as he had cheated Two-swans-dancing. He was the King’s Killer, but he would not rescue a culture so unspeakably barbaric that even Lynx could not discuss what underlay its power. Dolores was wrong. Jorge had been right. The Distlish were right. El Dorado must die.

  He must have his plans clear in his mind, so he could act instantly when he arrived on the turret at Quondam. It would be dark, possibly snowing. If the sentries noticed his arrival at all, they would take a few minutes to react. He knew what the cold of a Chivian Secondmoon night felt like, and the Tlixilians did not. He must take the Amaranth-talon first, certainly, before the Eagle could use the Serpent’s Eye on him. If he could kill the Eagle and the two acolytes and throw their bodies over the edge, to fall far down the cliffs below, then he might just get away with it. If he didn’t, Athelgar could have the pleasure of deciding whether to hang him for murder or behead him for treason. Flicker would certainly have tried to stop him, but Flicker had met his just deserts.

  The moon peered over the mountains. There were no more men waiting at the stone and the ritual had ended. Amaranth-talon raised his head to the stars and screeched in triumph. He swung around to face the stretcher, spread his wings. Wolf screamed at the explosion of agony in his head.

  8

  The world rocked. After the din of trumpets and drums, the bonfires in the night, he was plunged into blazing sunlight and a salty gale as cold as any icy torrent. And intolerable pain. Screaming, he drew his sword. The howling wind helped, making the Eagle stagger, and he was too big a target to miss, even in that sudden blinding glare. Wolf leaped over the stretcher. A slash might have been deflected by the tough feathers, so he lunged, withdrew his blade, and rammed Diligence into the monster again before it had collapsed on the shingle. He stabbed it a third time to be sure.

  The sun was not far above the horizon, a brilliance in a hazy maritime sky. Surf boomed on the rocks, hurling up pillars of spray. One of the acolytes scrambled to his feet and Wolf felled him with a slash to the neck. The other screamed and tried to run, reeling and flailing on the loose shingle, but heading the wrong way, toward the sea. Wolf ran un-steadily after him. A breaker exploded on rocks directly ahead, hurling foam skyward and probably terrifying the Tlixilian out of his few remaining wits. Wolf caught up with him and killed him too.

  By then the pain was almost gone from his head. He felt no guilt or regret as he hurried back to Dolores. Those three had been pitiless murderers on a vast scale. Compared to such butchers, the King’s Killer was merely a naughty child. He removed Amaranth-talon’s regalia and smashed it to fragments with a rock so that no other Eagles could come to see what had gone wrong. The only one who knew the way now was Bone-peak-runner, who had accompanied Amaranth-

  talon on the raid a year ago, but Wolf doubted strongly that the Eldoradoans would risk him. At the new moon they might. Not now.

  It was a wild morning, but the damp in the air was flying spray, not rain. Impelled onward by the wind, he almost fell over the stretcher. Dolores made incoherent noises. He wrapped blankets around her.

  “It’s all right, love,” he said. “We’re home in Chivial. We�
��ll have you to an octogram very soon.” Not as soon as he had hoped. He had asked the Eagle to deliver them to the turret, but they were down in Short Cove. He wondered if he could have bullied one of the acolytes into helping him carry the stretcher. Probably not, and murdering him later would have been more difficult in the presence of witnesses.

  “Why, why?” Her whisper was almost lost in the wind. Her pallor was terrifying. “Why kill them?”

  “Because what you wanted isn’t possible, dearest. Their conjury only works with beating hearts. The Distliards have tried to make it work otherwise and can’t—Rojas told us, the Conch-flute says so, too. This horror must be stopped. I’ve stopped it. Now let’s get you out of the wind.”

  She stared at him unbelievingly, tears in her eyes. “All those deaths? Why did you let them die?”

  To get her home, of course. He raised one end of the litter and dragged it off the beach, into the grass, and there found her a sheltered spot in the lee of a boulder. He was still exposed to the gale, though, and it was a struggle to change into the Euranian-style garments that Raging-stone had provided. They were not Chivian style, but would seem less bizarre than his Tlixilian garb. The hose were two large for him, the shirt and tunic too snug. No doubt they had belonged to Distliards who had left their hearts in El Dorado.

  He crouched beside her again. “I’ll be as quick as I can, love. I’ll run up to the castle and get some conjured bandages and some men and horses.”

  She was weeping, but perhaps that was just the wind. “You could at least have let me try to make the rituals work. Just for a few days, Wolf!”

  No. To bring knowledge of the Tlixilian conjury into Chivial was to trust Athelgar, and to trust Athelgar was incredibly stupid, as he had told Lynx and Celeste. Oh, the beloved monarch would not start tearing men’s hearts out right away, but sooner or later the public good would demand extreme measures. Needs must—so Wolf himself had argued. And Lynx had, too. In a jam, if the evil was available, eventually it would be used, just as the Distliards were using it now. As he himself had just used it to save Dolores. He would not let Athelgar have it!

  And even if the floating city promised a mountain of buttery gold instead, he would not send them weapons. The city must fall. The secrets must be wiped off the face of the world.

  “I’ll explain tomorrow, love, when you’re better,” he said. “I have to run up to the castle. They’ll have conjured bandages up there, and we’ll come back with horses.”

  She tried to cling to him. “Don’t leave me!”

  “I must. I will go as fast as I can, I promise!”

  Remembering Twidale and Obmouth, he covered her face to keep the gulls away, although they should find enough carcasses to keep them occupied. He set off as fast as he could go on rough ground, plunging through spiky grass. By now the Eldoradoans must know that Amaranth-talon was not going to return. Were they even now interrogating Lynx and Celeste?

  He was appalled at how weak he still was from his long bout with fever. In no distance at all he had to slow to a walk. He looked up to orient himself on the single turret that could be seen from Short Cove. It was not there.

  Spurred by panic, he ran down the shingle to the water’s edge and looked again. From there he could just see a jagged edge of masonry, blackened by fire. For a moment his mind staggered from one absurdity to another, but finally had to accept the only possible explanation—the King had followed his suggestion and slighted Quondam. That explained why the Eagle had not done as Wolf asked—the turret was gone. The walls would be cast down, the buildings burned, and no doubt the bailey was a wasteland of rubble. There would be no one up there to help him, no conjured bandages, no horses.

  He trudged back to Dolores. “It’s me, dear,” he warned her before he lifted back the blanket. “I think I’ll have to carry you.”

  She looked even paler than before. She shook her head feebly. He had to make her repeat her words three times before he understood: “I’m losing the baby.”

  She was hemorrhaging. Nothing he could do would make any difference. He stretched out on the grass beside her and held her as she writhed in pain. He talked, barely knowing what he said—lies about help being on the way, probably—but soon she was past speech and probably did not understand anything he said anyway. He could not possibly carry her up the cliff path unaided. To make the attempt would kill her. Even if it did not, they would still be miles from the nearest help, perhaps days away from an octogram. Flicker’s child was killing her.

  Flicker was dead. So was Lynx, dead man walking. He had known what Wolf planned, had guessed, could have stopped him. So he had approved.

  Later Wolf said, “When you’re healed, we’ll go and rescue young Edwin from Brackyan.”

  Later still, “We have to get out of the country fast, before Athelgar finds out what I’ve done.”

  And even later, “We did find our fortune, darling. We’re rich now!”

  He babbled on for hours, until he was too hoarse to speak, long after he knew that he was alone.

  Half frozen, Wolf staggered across to the stream and drank. Then he began the long labor of gathering driftwood, dragging it across the shingle, and eventually the work warmed him and eased his cramped muscles. Knowing he lacked the strength to lift the body onto a pyre, he covered it with brush he cut with Lynx’s sword and piled the heavier wood on top. When that was done he searched the beach in the fading daylight until he found a piece of flint to strike sparks. After much effort he made a flame, using an abandoned bird’s nest as tinder. Once the fire was burning, he hauled the acolytes’ corpses to the water so the tide could carry them away. The Eagle he left for the Tlixilians to find if they came looking.

  He was tempted to hurl the priceless scorpion chain into the blaze as a final gift, but Dolores would have disapproved of such waste, so he didn’t. As night fell, he started wearily up the path, burdened with riches and sorrows and his brother’s sword.

  Epilogue

  The horseman rode up by the arroyo track and paused at the top to let the mare catch her breath while he admired the view. Workmen were burning brush somewhere, so a faint haze lay over the green hills that rolled away to a far glimpse of ocean. It was as fine a vista as he knew—grass and high rainfall and limestone, great country for horses. The mare snorted, as if in agreement.

  He laughed and patted her sweaty neck. “Not far now, Malinda.” He nudged her forward again. Many years ago, founding his stud, he had bestowed that name on his first brood mare, and he had kept the personal joke going ever since.

  His own name had varied over his life. Originally he had been Hugh Byrd. For three glorious months, he had been Sir Eagle of the Royal Guard. Much later he had become Don Águila, but the locals had more often called him El Chiviano and still did, although there were two Chivian ranchers in the hills now. It was the other one he was on his way to visit. This new one, Don Lope, was generally known as El Diablo, but that was a comment on his looks, not his behavior. His workers adored him, for he paid them the highest wages on the island and addressed them in their own tongue. The only people who spoke ill of him were other ranchers who had seen their best hands disappear in his direction.

  The man had ability and fanatical attention to detail. Felipe’s hacienda had been a ruin when he bought it, and was now such a success that half the landowners in Condridad were trying to copy his methods. Riding in, Eagle noted improvements even since his last visit—the new roof was almost complete, the dam on the stream had been raised to turn a pond into a tiny lake, and the training ring had been much enlarged. Edwin was in there now, putting his pony over the jumps under his father’s watchful eye.

  Eagle enjoyed visiting his new neighbor and wished they lived closer. It was good to talk his mother tongue sometimes, to reminisce about Ironhall and hear tales of men he had known in boyhood: Panther, Hector, Stalwart, Shadow.

  He had been seen. Wolf was waving a greeting. Eagle rode up to the rail and shook hands across it. />
  “You are indeed welcome, brother,” his host said. “How long can you stay? Greet Don Águila, Edwin.”

  The boy began in Distlish and switched to Chivian. Then he grinned and repeated the welcome in Tlixilian.

  Eagle thanked him in the same three languages. “You speak as well as you ride, master. Let me see those jumps again.”

  “Sí, señor!” Flushed with pleasure, the boy turned his mount, digging in his heels.

  “I swear he grows a handsbreadth every time I see him!” Eagle said.

  That was Wolf’s cue to look pleased. “That’s because you don’t come by often enough. You should have seen what a starved little waif he was when I…by the way, I have a gift for you.”

  When Sir Wolf had passed through Mondon five years ago, he had been accompanied by a wife. The following year he had turned up again, with a son and no wife. The boy was almost certainly not his. Edwin was going to be very tall and his shock of screaming-red hair would not have shamed a pure-blood Bael. Whatever their relationship, man and boy were obviously very close.

  “Indeed?” Eagle said. “And I have news for you.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “Both.”

  They waited until Edwin had completed the circuit, then applauded as he rode past, triumphant. Hands arrived to take charge of the riding lesson and Eagle’s horse. The two ranchers walked over to the house.

  “Begin with the bad news.”

  “A great tragedy. Sigisa has gone.”

  “Gone? How?”

  “Hurricane. Six days ago. El Caudillo barely escaped—he had sailed just two days before. They say the entire town has vanished. The sandbar was washed away. The river empties directly into the sea now.”

  Wolf walked for a while staring at the ground, then said, “The world is better off without Sigisa, but there were some innocent people living there. At least, I think there must have been. No survivors?”