glanced back at Krysty and the others. They stood helpless, outnumbered, awaiting whatever fate this jabbering asshole had in mind.
Fright Mask shouted something down at him to get his attention.
Ryan squinted up at the hellish mask of flesh. “Speak English, fuckhead,” he snarled back.
The bossman called out impatiently to the rest of the gathered slaves. Ryan thought he caught the now-familiar word “Shi-ball-an-kay.”
Doc shouted something back in Spanish and was immediately dragged from line and forced to his knees beside Ryan.
“So here we are,” Doc said with resignation.
Fright Mask yelled something in Doc’s face. As he did so, saliva spilled from the corners of his vast, carved mouth, gooey, yo-yoing strands drooling onto his gilded battle armor.
“This strikingly handsome fellow wants to make certain you know that he’s a high muckety-muck,” Doc loosely translated. “Governor of the city-state of Veracruz. His name’s al Modo, Generalissimo al Modo.”
Fright Mask yelled some more, this time at considerable length.
“Apparently,” Doc continued during a pause in the tirade, “the governor-general, here, is of the firm opinion that your capture and that of someone he calls Hunahpu, represents the turning point in a war waged by the Lords of Death since the day of creation, itself.”
“How worried should I be?”
“Very worried,” Doc said. “As should the rest of us. The governor says you will be tried by a duly assembled religious tribunal tomorrow and then executed pursuant to holy writ before the following dawn. What your supposed crimes are, he did not elaborate.”
Ryan glowered at the priests he presumed would be sitting in final judgment on him. “Does it really matter?”
“Perhaps not,” Doc said. The time-traveler stared him in the eye, his haggard face full of anguish and sorrow. “You and I have come an awful long way to take our leaves in a place such as this,” he said, “with our hands and feet bound, and our weapons out of reach.”
“Doc, no matter how bad it looks, this isn’t over yet,” Ryan said. “Don’t give up. Don’t let the others give up, either.”
As Doc was dragged away, he called out to Ryan. “I pray we meet again, my dear friend, if not in the here and now, then somewhere beyond this fucking vale of tears.”
“Remember the islander boy,” Ryan called to him. “Remember Garwood Reed.”
Something slammed into his left temple so hard that it made him see stars. He looked up at Fright Mask, who showed him a balled, metal-gauntleted fist. Ryan was grateful for the blow, which allowed him to focus his anger.
“Unchain me for a minute,” Ryan told his captor, “and I’ll widen that smile all the way to the back of your head.”
The governor-general didn’t understand the threat, and so ignored it. He gestured to the pirates, who pulled Ryan to his feet and hauled him off to one side.
Fright Mask had other, more pressing business to attend to. He snapped his gauntleted fingers twice in High Pile’s direction.
As the Matachìn commander took a small, dog-eared notebook from inside his armor, the priests started making rhythmic scraping sounds, steel on whetstones. They were touching up the edges on their ceremonial daggers.
High Pile walked over to the line of slaves. Pausing in front of the first man, who was naked to the waist, his back and shoulders blistered and peeling from the sun and the lash, the captain referred to a page in his little book and made a check mark with a tiny stub of a pencil. When he nodded, the crewmen unhooked the captive from those waiting behind him. Before the poor bastard could make a break for it, the pirates grabbed him under the armpits and rushed him toward Fright Mask and the waiting priests.
Though the slave screamed and fought, and tried to dig in his heels, it was to no avail. The Matachìn carried him bodily the last fifteen feet, then flung him to his knees in front of the men in robes. One of the pirates grabbed the prisoner from behind by a hank of hair and pulled his head back; another held his cuffed hands out of the way. A priest stepped forward and expertly dispatched him with a backhanded knife slash across the exposed throat. The slave made a gurgling sound as blood sheeted down his bare chest. After a moment the pirates let their victim slump onto his back. Kneeling, the priest plundered the still-heaving chest for its precious clod of muscle.
No sooner than the gruesome butcher job was done, a second slave was unhooked and bum-rushed to a nearly identical death.
As Ryan watched the next man in line dragged off to meet the point of a knife, he saw the priests were taking turns in the chilling duties, so as not to overtax themselves. All but the hairless spider, who was chanting in a nasal singsong and doing a little shuffle-foot dance behind them. High Pile made another check mark in his little book before consigning a fourth prisoner to the same fate. The courtyard echoed with shrill screams and the cheers of the red sash audience.
Were they going to sacrifice all the slaves? Ryan asked himself. His companions were still a good ways back in the file. For the first time, he saw the possibility that he might actually outlive them, spared from death for another day; and worse, that he would be forced to stand by and watch them all slaughtered.
That was not something he could accept.
He had tested his manacles so many times since their capture that he had worn away the skin of his wrists, but he tested them again, anyway.
Mind working in overdrive, he tried to see a way clear. If he could overwhelm the pair of pirates guarding him, then what? Chill the Matachìn with their own blasters, allowing the slaves to flee? Even if he managed to do that, the only way to get out from under the sights of the red sashes along the battlements was to make it inside the hard cover of the colonnades. But the prisoners were chained together. They’d have to all pass through the same archway, which meant instead of ten exits to cover, the red sashes would only have one. They could concentrate fire. It would be a turkey shoot.
Escape was impossible against these odds on this terrain, Ryan concluded.
As High Pile advanced down the line of the condemned, the piles of corpses and severed hearts grew. Realizing what was coming, the slaves struggled futilely with their bonds, weeping and begging their captors for mercy.
All but the companions.
Jak, Krysty, Mildred, Doc and J.B. were staring at Ryan. Their fixed, defiant expressions all said the same thing: we’re not going to check out like that. Not like chickens on the chopping block.
The one-eyed warrior nodded in agreement, then he looked away. If they couldn’t escape, they could do the next best thing. They could take out as many of the bastards as possible before they were cut down.
Ryan Cawdor withdrew deep into the core of his being, shutting out the grisly sights and sounds around him. He wasn’t preparing himself to die, he was preparing to fight and chill to his last ounce of strength. To expend it all, here, now. And when that strength was gone, death could nukin’ have him, ready or not. It took only a moment for him to make the attitude shift: it was like a gate swinging open, and when it was done, Ryan felt a sense of freedom and power.
The
