Find the Feathered Serpent (Winston Science Fiction)

by Evan Hunter

  The Maya shook his head and shrugged.

  Neil repeated the action. “Neil,” he said. He pressed his finger against Erik’s powerful chest and said, “Erik.”

  He then pointed to the old man, and spread his palms wide as he shrugged.

  The old man seemed to be struggling for meaning. He touched Neil’s chest and asked, “Nee-ill?”

  Neil nodded happily. “Neil.”

  “Neil,” the old man repeated.

  Neil pointed to Erik again. “Erik,” he said. For an amusing moment, he felt very much the way Tarzan must have with his “Boy-Tarzan-Jane” routine.

  The old man understood fully now. He pointed to the bearded Norseman and repeated, “Err-ik.”

  He looked quizzically at Olaf and pointed a long, thin finger at the squat Norseman’s chest.

  “Olaf,” Neil said.

  “O-laf,” the Maya repeated. Then Neil pointed to the old man.

  “Talu ,” the Maya said. “Talu .”

  “Talu ,” Neil repeated.

  The old man seemed to think a game of some sort was being played. He pointed to the captain with the scar across his lips and said, “Baz.”

  Neil repeated this name, and one by one introduced the Maya soldiers, becoming very much amused at Neil’s repetition of each name.

  When this was done, he stared at Neil, apparently waiting for something more to be said.

  “Erik,” Neil said hastily, “give me something I can offer the old man. A present.”

  Erik glanced down at his belt, then changed his mind when he saw the old man’s narrow waist. He touched his chest with widespread hands, wondering what he could give the old man. And then his hands went to the metal helmet that sat atop his blond head. He lifted it down with two hands, placing one under each of the metal wings, and offered it to the old man.

  The old man shook his head and grinned, pointing to Erik’s head and wiggling his finger impatiently.

  “He doesn’t want it, I guess,” Neil said disconsolately.

  “What else can we give him?” Erik asked.

  Neil was wearing his dungarees, boots, and a tee shirt. There wasn’t very much he could offer the old man, actually. His eyes suddenly fell on his wrist watch, the one he’d gotten from Uncle Frank on his sixteenth birthday. Quickly he unbuckled it and held it out to the withered Maya.

  The old man stared curiously at the instrument, his eyes squinting down at the dial. Neil noticed that Erik, too, was looking at the watch with great interest.

  The old man shrugged his shoulders.

  Neil realized he’d have a difficult time trying to explain a wrist watch to an ancient Maya. But he pointed up at the sun and slowly moved his finger across the sky.

  The old man seemed to grasp the concept immediately.

  “Itzamna,” he said, nodding his head. “Itzamna.”

  Neil didn’t know whether this meant “time” or “sun.” But he nodded his head and held out the watch again. The old man refused it a second time and turned to say something to the Maya soldiers. The soldiers nodded, touched their foreheads in salute, about-faced, and walked off into the city.

  “They’re gone,” Olaf said, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the city. “Let’s run. The soldiers are gone.”

  The old man seemed to sense what Olaf was suggesting so excitedly, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “Silence,” Erik commanded, and Olaf caught his tongue.

  Neil was wondering why the soldiers had touched their foreheads when leaving the old man. There was the remotest possibility that he was an officer, but Neil felt this was unlikely. Why then had they . . .?

  His thoughts were cut short by the sound of a familiar voice.

  “Neil! Neil, are you all right?”

  It was Dave, two Maya soldiers behind him with spears. Following him, guarded by the heavily armed Mayas, was the rest of the crew.

  Dave broke into a run, ignoring the spears.

  “Neil! Are you all right?” he asked desperately.

  Two soldiers started after Dave, but the old man snapped an order and they stopped short, the dust rising up around them. In deference, they touched their hands to their foreheads and watched the proceedings respectfully.

  Neil clasped Dave’s hands. “It’s okay,” he said. “Everything’s okay, Dave. These people are friends.”

  “They’re Mayas, you know,” Dave said, his eyes blazing. “We’ve found Yucatan after all, pal.”

  “I know, I know,” Neil said excitedly. He turned to the old Maya and pointed at him.

  “This is Talu .”

  The old man smiled. “Talu .”

  Dave caught on and pointed to himself. “Dave.”

  Talu nodded.

  “I think he’s a big wheel,” Neil whispered to Dave. “He orders these other guys around like waiters.”

  “Probably a priest,” Dave murmured.

  Neil snapped his fingers. “That’s it! I should have known. He is a priest, I’ll bet.”

  Suddenly the street seemed to fill itself with milling bodies. They gathered around the group of strangers, inquisitive brown eyes taking in the curious scene.

  Talu addressed the people softly as Neil looked over the crowd. The men were dressed differently than either Talu or the soldiers. They wore a waist garment that passed between their legs, and their chests were bare except for a square mantle thrown over the shoulders.

  Skillfully embroidered into the ends of the waist covering with colored threads, were complicated designs — and some of the men had feathers colorfully decorating their garments in intricate mosaics.

  The women’s garments extended far enough up to cover the base of their chests. Many of them wore colorful jewelry.

  Neil noted with surprise that many of the men and women were tattooed on their faces.

  Talu went on speaking to the people, and they listened quietly. When he had finished, they took up a chant, waving their arms over their heads.

  Then they began laughing and shouting, and running off to various parts of the city, leaving the street almost deserted again, with the dust leaping into the air in playful gusts.

  Talu spoke to Neil. Neil listened carefully and then shrugged his shoulders.

  Dave slapped his forehead. “Oh, no! Wonder boy understands Maya too. He must.”

  “No, Dave, I don’t. Look, he’s trying to explain something to us.”

  Talu had opened his mouth wide, and was now putting his fingers into it. He dropped his fingers, pantomimed the lifting of an imaginary object, and then put his fingers back into his mouth.

  “Food,” Neil said in sudden understanding.

  “I’ll be darned,” Dave agreed. “The old boy is inviting us to dinner.”

  They sat at low, rectangular tables piled high with food. Four persons sat at each table on small wooden stools provided by Talu . In addition to the stools, Talu had given each of his guests a cloak of fine feather mosaic work and a painted pottery vase which rested on the table before them.

  Neil sat at a table with Erik, Dave, and Talu . The other Norsemen were seated at tables arranged in a large square within a court in front of one of the big buildings.

  Food in great variety, some foods that Neil knew and others he could only guess at, stretched out in abundance at each table, and Neil realized that this was no ordinary meal but a banquet prepared in honor of the visitors.

  Many different types of meat, all cooked to a succulent brown, melted in Neil’s mouth as he tasted each hungrily — deer, wild boar, turkey, small birds that were delicious to the palate.

  Bright red tomatoes and sweet potatoes, fat, ripe squashes and juicy beans, avocado pears, plums, papaya, all were spread in colorful profusion before them.

  A drink prepared from the cacao bean, boiled with chili pepper before the eyes of the guests and stirred into a froth with a carved stick, was served in great wooden cups.

  There was honey, too, in abundance. The only thing Nei
l missed was bread. And then the dancing started when they sat back after their meal.

  Drumsticks began beating a lively tattoo on various types of drums — a large, slitted, horizontal drum and small round drums, as well as tall, thin ones. Several musicians pounded on turtle shells. A series of flutes, reed, bone, wood, shrieked into being. Large conch shells were pressed to the lips of musicians and blared forth as trumpets. Whistles screamed and calabash mouthpieces were fitted into wooden trumpets. And there were rattles, and together with the rest of the instruments they beat out a wild rhythm while the dancers whirled and gyrated in the center of the square formed by the tables.

  The dancers formed a circle, linking hands. Two of the troupe leaped to the center of the circle, one of them armed with slender lances. He drew these back and snapped them across the circle at his partner, his muscles gleaming in the light of the torches, his feet stamping on the paved court in time to the drumbeat. His partner squatted, his feet moving rhythmically, parrying the lances as they came with a small shield no wider than a pole.

  Neil watched in fascination as the men in the ring leaped into the air, their feet flashing. The dancers swarmed around them dizzily, then voices raised in a wailing chant. The drums increased in tempo, their beats resounding against the stone building behind Neil. The trumpets blasted loud and clear, shattering the night air with their stridency.

  And then, above all this, sounded a shriek, a vicious shriek that electrified the air. It grew in volume, and was joined by many voices raised in shouts and cries.

  The dancers stopped, the music trailing off to a weak moan behind them.

  Talu leaped to his feet in the glare of the torchlight.

  He shouted orders at the Mayas just as a group of unkempt, dirty, leering men burst into the courtyard, spears and daggers bristling from their arms.

  Another scream, a scream that could be nothing but a battle cry, wrenched through the night.

  Chapter 9 — Battle of Blood

  THE scream seemed to hang in the court like the tattered fragment of a shredded banner.

  And then, instantly, the Mayas were on their feet, tables overturned, lush, ripe fruit spilling to the ground like colored beads ripped from a necklace. Torches were ripped from the wall, flashing through the night air with the brilliancy of screaming rockets. There was the thud of heavy wood against solid stone, the voices of the women raised in frightened cries, the hoarse cries of the men as they reached for weapons, swords slithering from belts, spears rattling, slings unfurled.

  Shields were raised, and sweating torsos gleamed in the light of the torches now smoldering on the stone floor of the court.

  The invaders were small, dark, squat men with the bodily appearance and coarse black hair of the Mayas. They bore crude weapons, and they screamed lustily as they charged forward across the court. And yet, in spite of the resemblance to the Mayas, there was something different about them. Their hair was longer, matted and twisted, and their bodies were covered with filth. They were almost naked except for tattered, dirty loin- cloths slung haphazardly about their waists. They were barefoot, too, and they ran with the swiftness of a people hardened to a life of wilderness.

  It was almost as if Neil were looking at two sides of the same race: one civilized and the other barbaric.

  The word barbarian had barely crossed his mind when he felt Talu’s slender hand tug impatiently at his arm. Neil turned, and the priest beckoned with his finger. Swiftly Neil followed the old man. Dave and Erik ran after them, along with the other unarmed Norsemen. Talu led them into a stone building resting on a low mound of earth. To Neil’s surprise, three Maya soldiers immediately took positions before the single entrance, their spears raised.

  “I don’t get it,” Dave said.

  “I imagine they’re trying to protect us,” Neil suggested. “We’re their guests, you know.”

  “Those other guys don’t strike me as being nice playmates,” Dave said wryly.

  The Mayas and the barbarians seemed to pause momentarily, like players in a tennis match, surveying their opponents for a brief, respectful moment.

  Their weapons gleamed dully in the flickering torchlight, and their faces appeared drawn and tired, the way the faces of men in war always look.

  Suddenly the battle burst like a balloon filled with blood. There was an insane rush by the barbarians, their feet padding across the court, their voices raised in wild threat. Onward they charged, screaming all the way, their weapons waving over their heads, their bodies sweating freely. They were horsemen without horses, wild in the fanaticism of their reckless charge.

  The Mayas held their ground like a solid stone wall, spears extended, swords ready, faces impassive. The barbarians crashed into that wall with the strength of a runaway bull. The wall bent in the middle, swayed backward, and then surged forward again.

  The barbarians retreated a little way, then turned and charged again, pitting their frenzy against the stolidity of the Mayas, their faces impassive as the barbarians swooped down again. Swords flashed and screams tore the night. The wall held for an instant, like a frayed rope about to split, and then it ripped apart, men scattering, arms flaying wildly, legs thrashing.

  Neil watched as the great battle began in earnest. Man pitted himself against man in a sweating, bleeding, furious struggle.

  The Mayas fought in little groups, their arms swinging swords, spears jabbing out, spilling barbarian blood. The barbarians, on the other hand, were like a flooding stream that rushed over everything without direction, without purpose.

  Four shaggy, half-naked men seized a Maya and pinned him against the stone wall, their swords slashing again and again until the man hung like a tattered cloth. They turned, the blood fresh on their hands and their swords, swept across the court to where a group of Mayas were battering away at the barbarians who had surrounded them. They leaped over the heads of their fellow men, crashed into the Mayas, two meeting instant death on the tips of spears, the others flailing wildly with their swords.

  Then, bursting into the court with a fresh band of heavily padded soldiers, was the captain with the scar on his face, the one Talu had called Baz.

  His face was grim, and the scar stood out in vivid relief against the tautness of his cheeks. The light flickered over his face like the fires of hell on the face of a demon.

  “Baz!” the cry went up from the Mayas. “Baz!”

  Like a fury unleashed, he slashed across the court, his sword cutting a wide swath around him, barbarians falling like grains of wheat before the power of his thrashing arm. His soldiers stamped along behind him, caught in the fire of his charge, men fighting for their city and their home.

  A terrible grin split Baz’s face in two, and his teeth gleamed, his eyes like two fiery coals embedded in his head. He shouted, his voice tearing through the night like the scream of a motherless coyote. He burst into a group of barbarians, lifting them, throwing them, slicing, cutting, gouging, kicking. The barbarians dispersed, regrouped and charged across the court again.

  But this time the Mayas were strong behind the leadership of the screaming, bloodthirsty Baz. Like a tireless machine, they rolled across the court, the barbarians falling before their sharp swords and spears. The stones ran red, and their feet splashed in the blood and they forced the invaders back, back, killing, furious now in their first taste of victory, anxious to annihilate the foe, anxious to pound him into the very stones underfoot.

  The back of the barbarian resistance was broken. Like a crippled snake, the foe slithered away from the city, pursued all the way by the ferocious Baz and his warriors.

  The screams died on the night, and the smoldering torches faded and winked out, replaced by the cold, hard stars overhead.

  The barbarian attack was over.

  Neil slept fitfully that night, dreaming of the unkempt invaders and of the warrior Baz.

  It was not until three weeks later, when Neil could converse with Talu in a halting, broken version of the Maya tong
ue, that he learned that those barbarian attacks were not infrequent.

  “They come from the south,” Talu said, and Neil strained his ears and his mind to grasp the meaning of the Maya language. “They come often, and each time they come in stronger numbers. I fear they will completely overrun the city some day. And then what will become of us? What will happen to the Mayas?”

  Neil’s knowledge of Maya had not come easy to him. The day after the barbarian attack, Talu had introduced Neil to a boy and a girl of approximately his own age.

  Talu had pointed to the boy and said, “Rixal.”

  Neil smiled and acknowledged the name. The priest had then indicated the young girl and said, “Tela.”

  Neil nodded profusely and repeated both names, “ Rixal,” pointing to the muscular, brown-bodied boy, and “Tela ,” his finger extended toward the shy, grinning girl.

  The two of them had taken him under their wings then, two well-appointed teachers who led him around the city, pointing out buildings and courts, plazas and pillars. At first they chattered on and on in Maya, but Neil’s ears were deaf to the language.

  After a week of constant exposure to the language, he began to pick up simple words and concepts. Words such as, “eat,” and “sleep,” and “boy,” and “girl,” and “temple,” and “palace.”

  It was then that Neil learned the pyramid-shaped buildings were temples, and that the clustered rooms atop the low, flat mounds were the palaces of the nobles and city officials. Rixal and Tela were brother and sister, and they lived in one of the palm-thatched huts on the outskirts of the city. Ordinarily they worked in the fields during the day, but they had been chosen to serve as guides for Neil and were thus excused from their normal duties.

  Rixal was close to seventeen, and Tela was fifteen.

  Neil learned their ages the hard way, during the second week of his education. By that time, his knowledge of Maya had increased enough for him to make his wants known in simple, direct phrases.

  They had been eating, and Neil pointed toward a plum, indicating that he wanted one.