The Change: Tales Of Downfall And Rebirth - The Change: Tales of Downfall and Rebirth Part 29
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The Change: Tales of Downfall and Rebirth Part 29

He rolled his head back farther. Two figures stood a few meters away, silhouetted by the sun they were both looking at and discussing in muted but professional-sounding voices. The male wore a cotton loincloth elaborately embroidered in gold and red. The female wore a skirt of rattlesnakes. Live fucking rattlesnakes. All writhing slowly.

Both appeared to be nude beneath. In the case of the man that was flat unfortunate, in Zamora's eyes. The female, though as middle-aged as her companion and likewise on the . . . compressed side, had kind of a nice ass, though, he had to admit.

They turned back to him. Both of them wore elaborate headdresses that looked as if they had been designed by Carmen Miranda's hatmaker on a bad acid trip, with feathers and shiny bits of metal and rock in place of fruit. The man's had an eagle beak, the woman's a stylized rattlesnake head.

They were naked from the waist up except for bulky stone medallions. Hanging over the dude's hard biker paunch was a standard image of Huitzilopochtli, showing the War God in a beaked and plumed helmet, carrying a shield and a curved macuahuitl. Like his boss, the Eagle Knight had an obsidian-bladed sword and a shield slung by either hip.

An idol sporting a wide rattlesnake head with doubled sets of fangs, four hands, beast feet, and, of course, a skirt made of rattlesnakes nestled between the priestess' sagging breasts. Her face and her companion's were painted with what looked, given the light and the nearly setting sun dazzle forming halos about them, like simple broad swatches of color.

"So," Zamora said. "You gonna do me with rattlesnakes, the way you did my pal, Brodie?"

She smiled. "Oh, no. We prefer to reserve that means of sacrifice for the innocent."

Zamora laughed. It wasn't even faked, to cover the rapid spinning of his mind as it sought a way out of this mess.

"Brodie was a lot of things, sister," he said, "but 'innocent' wasn't one of them."

She laughed. She had a surprisingly nice laugh. She looked like a handsome, unusually well-preserved peasant woman of mature years. But people like that didn't always have the best kind of life even before things Changed. So he could at least see why she might enjoy a power trip like this.

He could also see, with some sense other than his eyes, that she had no real idea of the nature of the Power she was fucking with.

Well, I was Seeking for reasons why the world turned out this way, he thought. And at least now I'm getting some pretty strong hints. If only it looked like I was gonna have more of a chance to integrate them . . .

"He was, you know," the priestess said. "Innocent. At least, he was remarkably credulous, for a man of his . . . background. He so eagerly embraced what we told him, about a mythical orphanage where children could be raised right and taught the means to a better life. And his abilities served us very well, until he began asking the wrong sorts of questions."

"He always did say it was easiest to scam a scammer," Zamora said ruefully.

"He just didn't like the answers he was getting," the priest grunted.

He looked as if he might once have been among the goofy dentists and accountants who'd fancied themselves as restoring the proud heritage of the Meshika people, whom Zamora had run into when he visited the Federal District-Mexico City-as a boy. Just another silly-ass reenactor.

But now he bore the badges of an Eagle Knight, including the tattoos. His fat was hard, and his biceps were big. Whatever he had been, he was no soft upper-middle-class poser now.

And after all, reenactors had inherited the Earth.

The Knight waved what he was holding in his right hand at the pen. With a heart that managed to sink farther from its present position, Zamora saw younger rattlesnake-priestesses already dragging out the first quartet of children, while Eagle Warriors poked the rest back into place with long poles. The big, brave bastards.

"We told him the truth: they are being groomed to serve, in a far finer way than grubbing in the dirt. They are to become food of the Goddess!"

He was using one of Zamora's own pet bowie knives as a pointer.

"That's right," the priestess said. "We shall sacrifice the innocent to Our Rattlesnake Mother, in the purest way: using Her children!"

As if on cue, the dozen or two snakes tied by the tails around her waist stirred and stuck out their tongues. They seemed to be moving in slow-motion, as if under the influence of drugs. Or-something else. And not just that the sun was going down and their exotherm batteries were running low.

"You, however," she continued, "are called a mighty warrior, Seeker."

Sure, he thought glumly. Because I gave right up when your people started popping up from the brush all around me pointing crossbows at me?

Not that he'd had a whole bunch of choice. He hadn't even had a knife drawn while sneaking down toward their camp in the slanting, buttery light of late afternoon. And they had a lot of crossbows. It wasn't like with the one dude back at the cantina. He'd have been lucky to nail one before they quilled him like a porcupine.

It wasn't as if his Pensamiento and Recuerdo, had been much help. They'd been preoccupied by the Mexican eagle, the snake-eating one from the flag-and the old Aztec legend-circling overhead. Really a big type of falcon, the caracara preyed on crows, when it couldn't get anything better. More often, it bullied them off carcasses they were scavenging.

Turned out that while the crows were being Zamora's eyes in the sky, the fucking caracara had been doing the same for the cultists. As the crows themselves called to Zamora in passing, as they fled the suddenly stooping raptor, and every bush sprouted an Eagle Warrior or a cultist with a cocked arbalest.

Now the caracara sat, appropriately, on a prickly pear not thirty paces away, eating what looked like a baby green rattlesnake. Maybe it hadn't been up to Coatlicue's standards . . .

"As such, you shall be given as thanks to our Mother's son Huitzilopochtli," the priestess said, "in thanks for his assistance to his Mother, at the moment the sun goes down."

Which'll be any minute now, thought Zamora. Much as I hate to think this-Tezcatlipoca, if ever there was a time for a little divine intervention- "Only using your own blade," the Eagle Warrior said, "rather than the customary obsidian one."

He turned the weapon over in his hand.

"Nice knife. Not as sharp as volcanic glass, but keen enough. Less likely to turn in my hand and cut me like a pinche gey cabrn, too."

"And in case you were hoping your jaguar-loving friend would help you-" the priestess said with a knowing smile. She held up the Smoking Mirror. A wisp of vapor coiled from its flat surface, stained as if with blood by the dropping sun.

"Do you hear me, Tezcatlipoca? Night and Wind, Lord of the Near and the Nigh? Or are you in your Aspect of Tepeyollotl, and can't answer because you're skulking around on little cat feet?"

She tensed, then hunched in interest over the stone. Her compatriot joined her, jostling bare shoulder to shoulder in his eagerness to see too.

With a rustle a black shape landed by Zamora's left wrist. Another lit by his right.

Zamora kept his face turned resolutely upward, to a mauve sky already turning indigo in the east, lest the slightest hint of motion-or twist of his attention-betray the birds. But from the corner of his right eye he saw Recuerdo whip him a quick wink as the brothers began pecking the woven yucca fibers that bound his wrists to the sun-heated granite.

For some reason none of the other assembled cultists spotted the birds. Even in the twilight, that was strange. But Zamora figured they were all engrossed either watching the two senior sectaries trying to get a rival god on the phone, or watching the reluctant captives being led to four priestesses who waited with rattlesnakes semiquiescent in their hands.

Or maybe they were just eyeing the snake priestesses' bouncing bare titties. Some of them were young and not bad looking.

The High Priestess yipped. She threw the stone/Mirror to the sand by her feet. Smoke seemed to fairly billow from it now.

"Mierda!" she exclaimed. "The puta got hot as a coal!"

As one she and the Eagle Knight looked back at the altar. The priestess screeched in fury at seeing the crows working on Zamora's bonds.

"Get them!" she cried.

The caracara snapped its head toward the altar. Zamora looked at him.

Even in twilight, even though the bird's eyes were already dark to the point of near blackness, he saw them go blacker. As if they'd suddenly turned into obsidian themselves. Or portholes into Void.

With a booming of wings it launched itself from the cactus. Recuerdo immediately took off and flew away at an angle.

"I'll draw the bastard off!" he cried.

Pensamiento continued stabbing at the rope around Zamora's right wrist with his beak. "Go on," Zamora grunted at him. "Get out of here. It was a nice try, but-"

For just a moment, the raptor dithered, five meters off the ground, treading air with its wings like its much smaller cousin the kestrel. Then it arrowed in possessed fury for Pensamiento. With a squawk of terror the crow fled.

But the bigger-winged caracara was faster and had a head start. He caught the crow with an audible thump of his claws thirty meters beyond the camp's bare-beaten earth. Pensamiento gave a despairing cry and fell into the bunchgrass.

Its wings never missing a beat, the eagle continued in pursuit of Recuerdo. They vanished in the gloom.

"Hurry!" the High Priestess hissed to the Knight. "The sun, he dies!"

Belly jiggling, the man scuttled toward Zamora on his skinny bowed legs. He held the bowie poised over his right shoulder, point downward.

As he loomed over Zamora the knife came down. Hard and fast.

With a grunt of effort Zamora snapped his left wrist free. Too late to try to stay his knife on its traitor course.

Instead he shot his freed-up hand under the Eagle Knight's loincloth, grabbed him by the balls, and squeezed for all his mighty grip was worth.

The Eagle Knight howled like a gut-shot wolf.

With a thunk! clearly audible over the scream the bowie planted itself four fingers deep in the cultist's thigh.

Violent femoral-artery spray painted Zamora's arm instantly red. Hot drops stung his face. He let go the man's well-violated parts. Batting now nerveless fingers from the hilt, he grabbed his bowie and wrenched it out of the Warrior's leg. With a swipe that flung blood in a darkly glistening arc into the black velvet painting sky, he slashed through the rope that held his right arm to the altar. He nicked his own skin in the process-painful and unhygienic, but also the least of his worries.

Slightly higher on the list was the fact that he was butt naked. But he had to play the hand he'd been dealt. Even if a couple of jokers had turned up at an opportune moment to help him, the other side had plenty of high cards left to draw.

The priest was doubled over, shrieking and clutching at his blood-hosing leg. Sitting up fast, Zamora gave him an overhand right to the side of his head. He sat down. As he did Zamora yanked the macuahuitl from his belt with his right hand.

With icy deliberation the High Priestess walked toward him. She held a huge rattlesnake in her hand, fully roused, jaws opened almost flat, fangs protruding for Zamora's face like curved spears. He had no time to defend himself with steel or obsidian, and was off balance to do so.

Her eyes had turned dead black. "I . . . See . . . you," she said.

"Yeah? Well I raise you!"

And he kicked her hard and straight in the crotch.

That blow wasn't quite as virulent to a woman as a man. But from experience Zamora knew it could still take one out. But that wasn't the purpose.

It wasn't really a crotch shot. It was a snake shot.

It succeeded beyond Zamora's wildest expectations. The whole skirt full of rattlers seemed to wake up at once. And they woke up pissed. The High Priestess stopped in midstride and screamed as they buried fangs in her bare flesh.

The snake she was holding twisted around and bit her in the cheek.

She reeled back as the megadose of hemolytic toxins started popping her blood cells like bubble wrap in her veins. They turned into a black network, spreading rapidly beneath her skin. Neurotoxins started her convulsing.

Zamora rolled the other way. He didn't want to be near a passel of enraged rattlesnakes. As he did he felt something brush air across his bare back. His ears picked up the hum of a crossbow quarrel turning to the angle of its vanes as it whipped by.

Fresh screams broke out all around him like fires set in dry grass by a shower of sparks. Apparently the other sacrificial snakes had all snapped out of whatever spell held them docile to the priestesses' will. And they were expressing their ire in the only way they had, to the agonized dismay of the Rattlesnake Mother's servants.

But other, burlier figures were converging on Zamora fast from all directions: male cultists, led by several Eagle Warriors armed with spears and macuahuitl.

Zamora decided his best bet was to take the offensive. He put his head down and charged straight at the nearest knot of attackers.

An Eagle Knight shorter than he but wider across chest and shoulders swung a club edged with razor-sharp rock at him.

He guided it by with the flat of his own stolen macuahuitl. A couple of decades' experience fighting with big knives had taught him that movie sword-fighting was a load of horseshit. At least where it came to parrying with your edge. You never, never did that, unless you wanted to wind up smart quick holding a dull club. Or an even more useless stub.

As he dashed past the Knight he hit him with a powerful backhand. And found out something surprising about the macuahuitl: while the volcanic-glass flakes set into it were indeed sharper than the finest steel, their square edges acted like saw teeth. His stroke didn't just send a dozen teeth flying, but ripped half the skin off the man's lower face.

Which gave him something to do other than press the attack on Zamora, such as falling down while trying to scream and not choke to death on teeth and blood.

Zamora kept running. He had no clear destination. Just away from the point on which several score angry enemies were converging. A cultist appeared in front of him, jabbing with a spear. Zamora jinked as far to the right as he could. The spear tip gashed his left hip just below the bone. He slashed the man across both forearms in passing.

Another Eagle Knight came in from the right. Zamora blocked his horizontal macuahuitl swipe with the bowie in his left hand. The tip of his own macuahuitl was flat and wide; its wooden "blade" narrowed straight to the grip on both edges. It still worked for poking his opponent hard in the Adam's apple and dropping him choking to his knees.

A Knight loomed in front of him. He blocked a cut from Zamora's sword-club with a clack of his wooden shield. Worse, he forced Zamora to slow down.

Strong arms gripped Zamora from behind. He thought for a heartbeat he was lucky it hadn't been a spear through his kidneys. Then he realized his enemies were still trying to capture him alive to sacrifice him. Just the way their ancestors-or anyway the people they were imitating-had.

The dude was going for a full nelson hold. But he wasn't good enough or quick enough-quite. Zamora jackknifed forward with all the power of his ample core. He flung the attacker right over his head. And literally into the surprised, painted face of the Eagle Knight with the shield.

But that well and truly fucked Zamora's forward momentum. His foes were all around him, a wall of sweaty, grunting, grimacing meat.

And then it was all wild twisting: hacking, stabbing, slashing, with steel and laboriously flaked black stone; elbows and knees and punches and head-butts. Blades gashed Zamora in a dozen places, so that his blood-and others'-covered him like a net, diffusing quickly into a slippery coat. No wounds large enough to be serious, yet. He would weaken in time. But time wasn't something he was worried about.

Even though the cultists had put themselves in the classic mob dilemma of getting in one anothers' way a lot more than they were stomping their would-be victim, it was only a matter of hammering heartbeats before they beat Zamora down. Even though he tagged at least a dozen of them, and dropped five or six more dead or hurt bad enough that it made no never mind, given the antibiotic-lacking standards of today's medicine.

Most mobs, it would've been more than enough to send them all packing off in search of easier prey. But this one had fanatic zeal driving them on. Backed by a head of plain old vengeful anger.

A blow from a club or macuahuitl-side on the temple sent sparks shooting through his skull. His vision got even darker than the sun's fall behind the mountains would have made it. His stomach sloshed like a stormy sea and his knees got weak. He continued to swing his arms feebly, tried to keep moving. Moving at all costs-to stop was to die- Something big and dark flapped overhead. It came close enough to make the dark blurs of faces surrounding him turn upward. His vision began settling back into focus as he looked too.

In time to see the caracara fly by, low and fast. Whatever evil spirit had gotten into it was gone-Zamora could feel it. Now it winged in clear terror beyond the cultist summer camp and around the brush-dotted hip of the smoking mountain.

And behind him came Recuerdo, at the head of a vast flock of crows, a few burly Chihuahua ravens, and a mess of various kinds of jays, all squalling in joyous rage. Corvids hated birds of prey like poison. And a fraction of that number could fatally mob a much larger bird than the caracara.

"Get 'em, boys!" Recuerdo cried.

While a dozen or so of the crows and cousins kept pursuing the caracara, the others suddenly descended. Onto the upturned faces of the cultists and Eagle Knights. They clutched with cruel claws, jabbed with their beaks, and battered with their powerful wings.

They provided, needless to say, a powerful distraction.

Using which, Zamora dropped to hands and knees and, still clutching his weapons, still clad only in a coat of blood rapidly drying to stickiness and salty itching, crawled out of the midst of the yelling, flailing mob.

As soon as he was clear he stood up fast. Somebody blundered into his right side. He turned and lashed out by reflex, laying open the bare back of a male Coatlicue cultist who was trying to punch it out with a pair of punk-Mohawked Steller's jays. The man screamed and fell down. The birds flew off in search of more victims.

Most of the cultists seemed to be struggling with their feathered assailants. At first by blind impulse, Zamora headed toward the cage where the children were kept. Then by iron purpose.

A pair of the less-prepossessing cultists, one fat, one skinny, el gordo y el flaco, each a head shorter than he, tried to bar Zamora's way with spears. He knocked the weapons aside with his bowie and hacked them both down. With the macuahuitl, without remorse.

A trio of topless Coatlicue priestesses barred his way with machetes and a regular woodsman's ax. Fortunately for them, only the High Priestess got to wear the full snaky skirt. And apparently they hadn't been snake-handling when the subdual spell was broken.

"Scoot," he told them. "Get outta here."