Naamah's Blessing (41 page)

“They very well might dig them up,” Balthasar finished the thought for him.

“Take the armor downstream and throw it in the river,” I suggested. “It’s deep and fast enough in places that they’d be hard-pressed to retrieve it if they even thought to look there.”

Bao gave me a grateful look. “And the water will rust them in time. Well thought, Moirin.”

Accordingly, Balthasar recruited one team to set about the grim business of stripping the dead of whatever armor they’d managed to don in their haste and gathering those pieces they hadn’t, and another team to begin hacking a common grave out of the soil, using the hand-axes and adzes we’d brought for the purpose of building vessels.

While they worked, Bao and I went to question Pochotl. We borrowed Denis and Balthasar—the former because I wanted someone else skilled in the Nahuatl tongue to hear what was said, and the latter for his keen interrogation skills.

As it transpired, Pochotl was more than willing to talk. After months of sullen reticence, he was downright forthcoming. When I asked him why he’d done it, he stared at me as though I’d gone mad.

“To make an end to this!” He waved one hand, indicating the campsite. “I do not fear to risk my life for
my
people, but why should I do so for
yours
?”

“Because the Emperor ordered it,” Temilotzin growled. “Do you
think he would thank you for giving steel weapons and horses to our enemy?”

Pochotl shrugged. “It is only one small city. None of the Cloud People know how to use these weapons. They do not even have
macahuitls
. We could have come back with an army and defeated them, taken their weapons and horses. The men of Aragonia are too far away to stop us. The Emperor could not be angry at us, because
we
did not harm the foreigners under his protection.”

Temilotzin scratched his chin, dislodging flakes of dried blood. “That’s a pretty good plan.”

I scowled at him.

The Jaguar Knight grinned at me. “Peace, my little warrior. I did not say I agreed with it.” He thumped the spotted hide over his chest, loosing a further dusting of dried blood. “I keep my word. Shall I kill him now?”

“Yes!” Eyahue said in a fierce voice.

“No!” I said in alarm. “No, we need to know for sure if he acted alone, or if Eyahue knew.” I glanced apologetically at the old man, who shrugged, taking no offense. “We need to know if the Cloud People are gathering for another attack, and if we’ll find them enemies from now onward.”

“Oh, those are good questions.” Temilotzin turned to Pochotl with a cheerful smile. “Answer them, or before I kill you, I will peel the skin from your flesh and dance before you wearing it like a priest of Xipe Totec.”

“Xipe Totec?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Denis murmured.

Balthasar, doing his best to follow the conversation, shuddered. Even Bao looked a bit nonplussed.

For a mercy, Pochotl continued to answer freely. No, Eyahue had known nothing of his plan, which he’d conjured on the spot once they’d parted ways in the city. The Cloud People were of two minds whether or not to trust him, and decided to send a small raiding party of fifty or sixty warriors to see if it was indeed possible to kill us all in our sleep.

“Not you, Uncle,” he added. “I made them promise to spare us.”

Eyahue glared at him. “Idiot sister-son! You trusted them to keep their word?”

Temilotzin rubbed his chin again. “That is a flaw in your plan.”

“They had no reason not to!” Pochotl defended himself. He gestured at the campsite. “In their eyes, I would have given them a great gift!”

“No,” Eyahue said as slowly as though he were speaking to a dim-witted child. “In their eyes, you would have proved yourself an oath-breaker unworthy of trust. It is likely they would have killed us rather than take any chances.
That
is why a
pochteca’s
word of honor is so important. Trade is built on trust. I am sorry you never understood this.” He glanced at me. “The Cloud People attacked us. They will not hold us to blame for their defeat, and I do not believe they will try again.” He nodded at Temilotzin. “You may kill him now.”

Obligingly, the spotted warrior raised his club.

“Wait!” I pleaded once more. Temilotzin sighed and lowered his club. I turned to Pochotl. “You said you found someone among the Cloud People who had seen Prince Thierry’s party on the road. Was that true?”

Pochotl gave me a flat stare. “No,” he said. “I lied.”

“
Now
may I kill him?” Temilotzin asked in a tone of long-suffering patience.

I thought of Edouard Durel held under guard in Orgullo del Sol. He had betrayed us as surely as Pochotl had, but gods willing, he would be returned to Terre d’Ange to bear witness against Claudine de Barthelme and her son. He would be tried fairly in a court of law, and mayhap even granted some form of clemency for cooperating.

Executing a man in cold blood was not a deed that sat well with me.

But Pochotl
had
betrayed us; and if his plan had succeeded, there was no chance we would have survived. The Cloud People would have crept into our camp and bludgeoned us to death in our sleep. Pochotl had slit poor Clemente DuBois’ throat with his own hand, and five
other men were dead because of his treachery. He had disobeyed the Nahautl Emperor’s direct order.

By the implacable looks on Eyahue and Temilotzin’s faces, I could see that there was no sparing him.

“Yes,” I said to the latter. “You may.”

The Jaguar Knight hoisted his obsidian-studded club. “You may wish to stand back,” he warned us. “This will be messy.”

The rest of us retreated a few paces.

Pochotl stood unmoving, his expression stoic. Temilotzin swung his
macahuitl
club in one hard, level blow at the fellow’s neck. The edges of the obsidian flakes lining his club may have been brittle, but they were razor-sharp. His strike sheared Pochotl’s head clean away from his body. The head bounced and rolled on the plain, while blood jetted in a crimson geyser from the stump of his neck. The headless body remained upright for the space of a few heartbeats before crumpling to the ground.

Denis de Toluard turned away and vomited.

I would have liked to do the same, but I fought against the surge of nausea, swallowing bile and struggling to keep my face expressionless. Temilotzin gave me an approving look, then clapped Denis on the shoulder. “Your stomach will grow stronger in time,” he assured him, then stooped to pick up Pochotl’s head by its long black hair. “Do you want him buried with the others, old man?” he asked Eyahue.

The old
pochteca
regarded his nephew’s disembodied head with disgust. “No,” he said. “Leave him to the scavengers.”

We did.

FORTY-FIVE

I
n the wake of our first battle, once the worst of the aftermath had been dealt with, I found I had a rebellion on my hands.

Alain Guillard, the hotheaded Azzallese baron’s son who had bunked in one of the wardroom’s cabins aboard
Naamah’s Dove
with us, was arguing that we should turn back; and he’d convinced at least three others.

“This was madness from the beginning!” he railed. “What in Elua’s name were we thinking, any of us?”

“
I
was thinking I abandoned some of my dearest friends and the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange to their fate!” Denis de Toluard retorted with unexpected force. “And that I’d been given a chance to redeem myself!”

“That’s your burden, Denis,” Alain said in a remorseless tone. “
I
didn’t.”

“Be glad I carry it!” Denis shouted at him. “It gives me nightmares until I can’t sleep at night!” He jerked his chin at the waiting common grave dug into the earth and the line of D’Angeline dead nearby, stripped of their armor. “If it didn’t, we’d all be like them!”

“And so we all will sooner or later!” Alain shouted back at him. He gestured savagely in my direction. “She doesn’t know where she’s going, Denis! None of us do!” With an effort, he wrestled himself under control. “We’ve been on the road for months, and we’re not even in sight of these fabled jungles. Now we’re supposed to rely on
people like to slaughter us in our sleep to assure us we’re on the right track?” He shook his head. “We’re only days away from the borders of the Nahuatl Empire. If we turn back now, we stand a chance of surviving this.”

His allies murmured in agreement, and others looked uncertain.

“Don’t let him get the upper hand, my lady,” Septimus Rousse murmured in my ear. “If you do, he’ll never relinquish it.”

Bao nodded. “He’s right, Moirin.”

I took a deep breath. “My lord Guillard speaks the truth! I
don’t
know where we’re bound. The task is harder, and the journey longer, than I knew.”

“That is not what I had in mind,” Bao muttered.

I ignored him. “But I
do
know that Thierry de la Courcel lives, and I know it is my oath-sworn duty to attempt to rescue him.” The spark of my
diadh-anam
blazed steadily in my breast, lending me strength. I pointed at Alain Guillard. “You volunteered for this, my lord. All of you did. You begged for the chance to accompany us. Will you turn back now, just because it is
hard
?”

A few men chuckled.

Alain glared at me. “Do you think it is easy for one of Azza’s scions to admit he made a mistake?”

“No,” I said softly. “I don’t.” I glanced at the D’Angeline dead lined up beside the open grave, at Clemente DuBois, his slit throat gaping, his empty blue eyes gazing at the sky. He would never make another nervous jest.

Stooping beside his body, I closed his eyelids gently.

I straightened. “If anyone wishes to turn back, now is the time,” I announced. “My lord Guillard is right. In a few days’ march, you may return to the protection of Emperor Achcuatli’s realm.” I glanced at Arnaud Latrelle with his arm in a splint, and Gregoire d’Arnes, the fellow with the broken clavicle. To be sure, there was no point in their continuing onward. “You can escort the injured to safety. You can carry word to the crew of
Naamah’s Dove
in Orgullo del Sol that the journey to Tawantinsuyo is harder and longer than we knew, and
order them to wait for us. I will not compel anyone to accompany this expedition. But
I
mean to press onward. I mean to find Prince Thierry, and restore him to the throne of Terre d’Ange as the rightful heir to his father’s realm.”

At that, there were cheers, and a few murmurs of dissent.

I ignored the latter. “Who is with me?”

As it transpired, quite a few—but not all. We lost Alain Guillard and two out of his three allies. The third, a fair-haired young man named Mathieu de Montague, changed his mind.

“Will you trust me to address them, my lady?” Balthasar asked me discreetly.

I nodded. “Of course.”

“D’Angelines!” Balthasar got their attention in a ringing tone. “All of you who are hale and unharmed, think well before you make your final choice here.” He locked gazes with Alain Guillard, contempt creeping into his voice. “Will Azza’s famous pride allow
you
to sleep at night knowing yourself a coward and a quitter, Alain?”

The fellow reddened, but did not reply.

Balthasar turned to Mathieu de Montague. “And you, Messire de Montague! Do you imagine you can have another change of heart at the next skirmish?” He shook his head. “Don’t. Lady Moirin is overly generous. She is in command of this expedition, but I am in command of
you
.” He glanced around at all the men. “I will not attempt to gainsay her generous offer, but I will say this. It will not be repeated. Make your choices here and now. From this day forward, anyone who argues for turning back will be considered guilty of fomenting mutiny!” His voice hardened. “Is that clear?”

There were nods all around.

“See, Moirin?” Bao said to me. “
That’s
what they needed to hear.”

“I suspect they needed to hear both things,” Septimus Rousse said diplomatically. “Commanding men unwilling to serve is a dangerous business.” He nodded toward the picket-line. “That is a lesson we may take from Pochotl’s betrayal.”

And a bitter lesson it was, too.

Once the matter of rebellion was settled, we buried our dead. Each of the slain men was wrapped in a cloak and lowered into the grave as gently as possible.

I’d witnessed battles and tended to the dead before. In Kurugiri, Bao and I had been the only ones willing to handle the corpse of Jagrati the Spider Queen, winding her into a shroud to lend a measure of dignity to her death. But I’d never been responsible for the actual burial of the dead.

There was a terrible finality to it. Once the last body had been lowered into the grave, we stood about uncertainly. I did not know the protocol for such matters, but I suspected I knew who did.

“My lord captain,” I addressed Septimus Rousse. “Would you be willing to offer an invocation?”

He inclined his head to me. “Of course.” He knelt to gather a handful of loose soil, then rose and stretched out his closed fist, holding it over the grave. “Today we bid farewell to six dear companions,” Septimus said in a firm, steady voice. “They perished in pursuit of a noble cause. May they pass through the bright gate into the Terre d’Ange-that-lies-beyond, and may Blessed Elua and his Companions receive them gladly.” Opening his hand, he let the soil trickle into the grave. “Blessed Elua hold and keep you.” He nodded at Balthasar. “Will you commence the speaking of their names, my lord?”