The Sacrifice Game

(76)

I had them scrape me clean and get me up out of the caves, up the newly cleared interior staircase to the top of the mul. Even from inside I could hear that weird oceanic all-over noise. It wasn’t loud like an industrial-age battle, it was more just the amount and multiplicity of the voices that made it up, the shouts and dogs barking and the raiding drums and signal horns and bull-roarers all combining into a desperate whirring wave. My attendants screened the door of the sanctuary enough for me to peep out without being spotted. It was clear the situation was way hopeless. It was midafternoon on 2 °Cayman. The lace blanket of the city around us was on fire at its edges and wide waves of pus-colored grass smoke rolled southeastward through the temple district. I couldn’t see much actual flame but from the amount of smoke behind the mountains it was obviously too late to put them out without help from a massive rainstorm, which the Chak-answerers said wasn’t likely to happen. I couldn’t see much of the defense from here, either, but it definitely looked disorganized. Thousands of refugees had pressed inward onto the peninsula, instead of doing the rational thing and taking off, and they were eddying around just outside the holy courts, not knowing what to do and expecting us to protect them with our nonexistent magic.

Severed Right Hand had attacked after dawn with at least ninety thousand bloods, about twice the number Hun Xoc had been able to get together for the defense. And it was probably just Severed Right Hand’s first wave. The attackers seemed to have picked up some of the Napoleonic tactics 2 Jeweled Skull had introduced, at least to the extent of going for the kill as a goal and not just the capture. Maybe through 9 Fanged Hummingbird.

It looked too late to do anything but leave. Severed Right Hand would be here in less than two days. And my brain spikes were getting so bad that I worried that at any moment I might collapse into a 75-IQ blob. Dag, I’ve really made a mess, I thought. I was in charge for the shortest possible time and I got the whole place trashed. If I died today-I mean, if I died forever today-I wouldn’t have too much to be proud about.

I pulled back into the dim antechamber and took my mat. There were twelve other people crowded into the little room, not counting attendants. Hun Xoc went into his report. He said that for the last three suns the Rattler partisans had been holding the Puma alliance off with walls of dart fire, and how we’d been getting desertions and mass suicides and the clans weren’t going to hold out another night. Tomorrow would definitely be Ix’s last sun. I cut him short and motioned for 14 Black Gila, 1 Gila’s son. He kneeled over and crouched in front of me.

He reported that 1 Gila had kept his group together and that nearly five hundred score of Koh’s Rattler families were still with him. He was camped around the eastern palisades, his son said, and so far holding off Severed Right Hand’s men, but he was going to be forced to retreat northward. I had the feeling 1 Gila was going to come out of this whole thing on top, and maybe even ahead. Which was fine, it’s nice when at least a few people know what they’re doing.

We’ll blood to your father, I said to 14 Black Gila, if he can take so many dependents with him.

Speaking for his father, 14BG pledged that he would.

And once they set the fires in the temple district, I want him to order our bloods to surrender, I said. The closest word they had to surrender was suicide, so I had to explain what I meant. He promised that too. Hun Xoc set a small screenfold book on the altar table in front of me and spread it out. The pages were way too hurriedly done, nothing like the right style for this job, but it looked complete. I held up my left hand and he pricked the palm with a stingray spine. I dipped the end of a wet lettering brush into the blood and drew a set of four glyphs on each page. It wasn’t exactly a will, but it commended or pledged all my bloods and goods and land and rights-except the tombs of me and my new ancestors-to 1 Gila of the Spider House as the legitimate head of the Star Rattler Society. I blotted and folded the book, slipped it into its deer-stomach case, tied it, and handed it to 14 Black Gila.

“By your hand only to his only,” I said. He acknowledged the order with an I’ll-die-to-protect-this gesture and left. Snotty little bastard, I thought.

So, what else did I have to do around here? I wondered. Any important assassinations? I wondered if I should make doubly sure they torched my office at the Ocelot House. No, not necessary, I thought.

Any messages to send out? The rest of Koh’s followers were under this new Rattler person. No use talking to him. Or to the other bacabs. 14 Wounded had been killed, supposedly. Alligator Root was coming with me to repay part of his of his burden to Koh. And it was Mask of Jaguar Night’s job to die with me. Maybe I should have the rest of Mask of Jaguar Night’s acolytes killed, too, I thought. No, also not necessary. They probably wouldn’t get that far anyway. They were double traitors as far as the Pumas were concerned.

I wondered what Marena was up to. Would be up to. She would have been able to deal with all this stuff, I thought. Better than I did, anyway.

Fine, I thought, it’s no fun ruling Egypt by myself anyway. The hell with this ring-ding-run country. I feel like Boris Yeltsin.

I gave the order to set up my entombment.