missing it. The fierce, constant wind kicked up snow, making it hard to hear
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anything.
"My name Lionel." Oaxyctl turned around toward the accomplice who was yelling
at him over the wind, the sailor by his side. "I never introduce myself
before." Lionel nodded over at the other sailor. "He name Vincent. He with
us."
"Okay." Oaxyctl pulled Lionel close and whispered, "Your task is the two
mongoose-men. Get them out of sight, kill them."
"Yeah."
They crunched over the ice away from each other, breath puffing out in front
of their faces.
John's fever had let up again, Oaxyctl noticed. John craned his head back and
looked up at the great fins of metal around them all. "Oaxyctl, are those
letters?"
Oaxyctl looked up the sides of a large fin across from the party.
"Yes." Faint shadows of symbols could barely be discerned.
"Read them to me."
Oaxyctl squinted, but couldn't read the faded shapes. "I can't."
"Damn." John struggled around a bit, then stopped. "I don't know where my
spyglass is."
"We left it on the ship."
"Oh."
Oaxyctl walked out toward the end of the rope, taking his place next to Avasa
and Lionel. The two mongoose-men walked out in front, scouting the way. They'd
found the ice to be treacherous, filled with crevasses. They walked with
splintered lengths of plank to stick into the snow every other step to search
for lethal gaps.
"Oaxyctl," John called out. "I think we lost my leg."
Oaxyctl said back over his shoulder, "I know." He picked up the rope, then he
and Avasa began to pull. They weren't as fast as the ship. And
La Revanche didn't fall into crevasses as they might.
Three, or four, more days of this hell.
It didn't help Oaxyctl's nerves that at any moment he knew something horrible
could burst out from the gloom. The god was out there, tracking them by now.
He felt it.
Lionel's attack came three hours later. The mongoose-men and the two sailors
left to explore up ahead.
They were out of the great forest of fins into gentle hills of snow.
Oaxyctl heard a scream, and then another.
Lionel returned alone, fifteen minutes later. He looked shaken, a good actor.
"A big crevasse," he panted. He shook his head. Looked at Avasa with a tired
expression. "My man Vincent dead. And you
two mongoose-men."
Avasa dropped the rope, calm. "My two best men?"
Lionel nodded. "We go need avoid that area."
Avasa walked over to him. "Those men never made mistakes like that. Not ones
you would have been able to walk from."
"What you saying?" Lionel asked.
"We keep going. Straight. I want to see what happened for myself."
Lionel hesitated, but Oaxyctl took up the rope. "Let's keep going."
Avasa circled the scuffed marks in the snow and squatted. Oaxyctl stood next
to him. The crevasse, he thought, was a few feet away. If he just shoved and
kicked Avasa in, he could be done.
But he could see a wariness in Avasa's posture that told him otherwise.
And even if he didn't see it, he wasn't sure he could do it.
Coward, he berated himself again.
"They fought," Avasa said. "I don't know about that man Lionel. He is lying.
He killed my men."
"Maybe the other man, Vincent, did something," Oaxyctl said.
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Avasa shook his head. He pulled a gun out and trudged over to Lionel.
Oaxyctl pulled the ax out of his belt and followed. "Listen, there is no need
for any of this!" He tried to get closer to Avasa.
Lionel stood up and pulled a long knife out from his boots. He and Avasa
circled each other. The sound of a shotgun being cocked stopped them all.
John sat upright, shivering in his blankets. "No one kills anyone. You all
stay right in front of me. You all put your weapons on the sled, slowly. Then
we continue on."
The silent face-off continued until John fired a shot between the three men.
Snow spray kicked up into the air.
"Now."
They complied. John sat upright, shotgun cradled under his good arm, watching
them with a strength none had suspected he still had.
Oaxyctl began thinking about the sign of Ocelotl again.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Pepper trudged his way through snow. To any other eye, the constant white
sleet would have rendered them lost. Even as Pepper moved forward, his
footprints disappeared.
But he kept tracking John, as he had promised.
The cold numbed him. Pepper increased his body temperature. He'd lose some
body mass. It would impede his ability to survive more than a week out here,
but that didn't matter. If he didn't survive the week and find the
Ma Wi Jung
, he was dead anyway. Why prolong it?
A faint change in the wind.
He sniffed the cold, barren air and paused.
Snow crunched far to the left, and Pepper realized he wasn't the only one out
among the featureless hills and sudden crevasses tracking prey.
The nearest snowy hillock exploded. Pepper planted his feet and turned to face
the Teotl.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
John's leg stopped throbbing. Chill crept throughout his whole body. He wasn't
too sure if his left hand was a hook. He remembered both that it was a hook,
and that he had once had a hand and that was new. He hadn't remembered what it
was like to have a hand for a long, long time.
And Starport: he saw a map of where they sat in his head. He spun it around a
bit, rotated it, then pushed it away.
He had a kid. Jerome. He remembered a wife. Shanta.
Interesting. When had that happened?
"Johnny, Johnny, what the fuck is going on?" he chattered.
He'd fucked up something serious. Left himself bits and pieces.
Gonna have to amputate this soon or die. Only an ax around, strapped to a
bundle of canvas. Ax wouldn't do the job. Kill him quicker. And the three men
standing at the edge of the rope looking back at him might do the job even
sooner.
John didn't trust them. Couldn't trust the motivations. Several things were in
the air.
Emergency, man. Focus on the necessary. Discard excess. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]