The Jaguar Knights (44 page)

“Where is Heron-jade?” Blood-mirror-walks
demanded. “Why did he not warn you of our approach?”

“The noble warrior went inland with Flicker about a moon ago.”

The Tlixilians exchanged glances that Wolf found worrisome.

“Good chance to them,” Lynx said. “We must hurry, Brother, but you should offer your guests hospitality.”

The servants might be hiding under their beds or they might have fled to raise the population. Wolf asked Megan to inspect the outbuildings, and she went off accompanied by Blood-mirror-walks.

“You are welcome to all we have. What do you eat now? Raw meat?”

“Meat when I can get it.” Again Lynx had answered in Tlixilian. His obvious reluctance to speak Chivian suggested that either he had learned a new respect for good manners or that his companions did not trust him.

“Should I butcher a gardener?”

He purred that peculiar laugh again. “No, I haven’t gotten to that yet. It’s good to see you again, Wolf!”

“And you, Lynx. But you are changed.”

“No regrets!”

Could this night get any worse?
“Then I’m glad for you. How is dear Celeste?”

“Very well. Much happier. I came to fetch you, Wolf. Your presence is commanded in El Dorado.”

Yes, it could! Much worse.

“And me!” Dolores shouted. “And me!”

Wolf was appalled. He had been sure the mission was dead and could be written out of his life. Now it was alive again, he knew that he did not want it alive, did not want it to succeed. He wanted his brother to be a man, not a monster. He wanted to take his wife home, not squire her halfway across a continent of cannibals. He certainly did not want to acquire any vile conjurations for Athelgar and Grand Inquisitor.

He flopped down on a chair, feeling a hundred years old. “Listen, Lynx. I was relying on the Eagles to transport the arms we want to trade. I’m told that they can’t do that—that they only found Quondam last year by homing in on that pendant. If that’s so, then we’ll need years to ship weapons here.”

His brother scratched an ear with a claw like a fleshing knife. “Don’t see a problem. Both Amaranth-talon and Bone-peak-runner have been to Quondam. Either of them can find it again for you.”

Dolores squeaked with glee. The original plan was viable again! Life and incredible wealth were back on the table.

Wolf switched back to Chivian. “I have no weapons to trade. I was lying.”

“Then you may have serious problems when you get to El Dorado. But you are coming to El Dorado if I have to carry you.”

“So am I,” Dolores said sharply.

Lynx curled his lip in the snarl that he considered a smile. “Then you carry him. Where’s the kitchen?”

Wolf heaved himself to his feet and ripped a tapestry off the wall
to make himself at least semi-respectable. He led the way to the kitchen shed, where the sailors were already preparing food for the visitors.

Megan emerged from the dark with a different escort. There were more intruders out there in the grounds, she said, but the servants were still abed and must have slept through the commotion. Fights were every-night occurrences in Sigisa.

Lynx ignored promises of beans and tortillas, demanded meat now, raw if necessary. He shrank to his old height when he sat on a stool with his cat feet under the table, and when he also tucked his forepaws out of sight he could almost have been a human being with his head inside a huge pard mask. The illusion disappeared as soon as he began to eat. Young Night-fisher held the meat for him and he tore off chunks with his side teeth, swallowing without chewing.

The object strapped on his back was
Ratter,
securely tied in her scabbard so she would not fly out when he performed the sort of gymnastics he had demonstrated earlier. He must be carrying her only as a talisman, for he had no need of a sword and could not have wielded one with both hands. Forepaws.
Oh, Lynx!
Did he not even
care
what they had done to him? Wolf wanted to scream.

The Jaguar consumed most of a standing rib roast, raw. Night-fisher was his squire, or possibly nursemaid, for he wiped Lynx’s muzzle and chest to clean him up after the meal. Then the boy was free to finish his master’s leftovers, which he did eagerly. It was common knowledge that the native diet offered little meat—
venison, turkey, rabbit, and dog—and almost all of that went to the nobility. Human flesh was a privilege of the very highest, meaning the most honored warriors. Other intruders had been ransacking the larder and almost came to blows over some pork ribs they found there.

Leaving the feast in progress, Wolf went in search of Dolores and found her being helped into her traveling clothes by Megan. Obviously she was bound on going to El Dorado no matter what he said or did. A trek of eighty leagues or so over mountain ranges seemed utterly impossible in his condition. He doubted he could walk as far as the river bank. If the Emperor wanted him so badly, why didn’t he send an Eagle?

He found a shirt and sank down shakily on the edge of the bed.
“You, my beloved, must stay here and see the others safely home to Chivial.”

Before Dolores could protest, Megan bristled. She changed her posture, her voice, and her age, transforming into a lady. “Since the death of my husband the count,” she announced haughtily, “I have decided to return to Chivial with my entourage. Do you imply that I am incapable, Sir Wolf?”

Dolores laughed. Wolf apologized and pulled on the shirt. In the next few minutes each one of the sailors appeared in turn, offering to go to El Dorado with him, but they spoke little Tlixilian and he refused to lead them into a stewpot.

“Flicker left us three stamina bracelets,” Dolores announced. “You want one now?”

“I’ll save them for later.” What else did he need? “Medicine chest?”

“It’s too big,” she said. “And we can’t know what we might need from it. Leave it all.”

Probably only an hour intervened between the first tangle mat scream and the click of the gate being bolted behind them as they left the villa. Wolf took nothing with him except
Diligence.
He was too weak to lift a bedroll off the floor and knew better than to ask a warrior to be a porter. By then it had become obvious that the real leader of the expedition was Blood-mirror-walks, for it was he who assigned them positions—Lynx, Dolores, and Wolf in the center, six Tlixilians around them. However much Lynx looked the part, he lacked a knight’s authority.

The eastern sky was just starting to brighten, but Sigisa never slept. As the expedition emerged from the hacienda, a sailor reeled past with his arm around a woman. Neither seemed to notice anything amiss. Nor did any of the other people they passed on their way to the river. A were-jaguar might be disregarded as illusion—mushroom eaters saw much stranger things than that—but feather-decked killers carrying obsidian-toothed spears and swords around in the middle of the night should be attracting suspicion.

“You are conjuring us?” Wolf asked.

“We have been blessed,” his brother said softly.

There were always many dugout canoes moored along the riverbank. Their owners slept or even lived in them, for no one in Sigisa left anything of value unattended. The intruders had brought one of their own and left three men to guard it. Exhausted already, Wolf collapsed into the stern. Lynx shoved in behind him as if that were his place; Dolores went in front of him. The warriors pushed off and scrambled aboard without tipping the Chivians out, which was undoubtedly trickier than they made it look. Soon the craft was racing upstream, driven by powerful paddle strokes.

The sky over the treetops began turning blue, birds and monkeys were wakening in the forest. The Tlixilians began chuckling and cracking quiet jokes, as if they thought they had made a clean getaway. Blood-mirror-walks chirped once and silence fell. Sound traveled well over water, of course, and his caution was justified almost before they rounded the first bend. Another chirped order sent the canoe veering sharply to the right. It drifted in under trailing vegetation; strong hands took hold of roots or creepers and brought it to rest against the bank. Wolf tried not to think of snakes and poisonous spiders. Then he detected sounds the warriors had noticed much sooner.

A large canoe came into view, heading downstream. Paddles were much quieter than oars and no one aboard was speaking, but a man at the stern beat stroke with a maddening monotonous tap. There was also a muted clinking sound. The canoe swept past, clearly visible in midstream, carrying a cargo of prisoners, at least some of whom were being compelled to paddle their way to exile and slavery; the clinking came from their chains. Wolf expected Blood-mirror-walks to order an attack, for the slavers were few and could have been speared before they even knew they were being watched, but no one moved or made a sound, and the evil sight glided on its way unmolested. A few minutes later two more canoes followed it.

Some time after that, the warriors resumed their journey, but the luxury of effortless travel did not last long. Alerted by no landmark Wolf could see, they swung the canoe into the bank, passing under a leafy drapery into a tiny creek; also into renewed darkness, a fog of insects,
and air ripe with vegetable odors. A paw tapped his shoulder and whiskers tickled his ear—

Lynx whispered, “Salt-ax-otter is royalty. Do not look at him.”

Interesting, no doubt, if one knew what it meant. Wolf passed the word on to Dolores, who gave him an odd look, checking for delirium.

They passed within arm’s length of logs that plunged into the water and swam away. A creeper extending downward changed its mind and slithered back up onto its branch again. The creek soon dwindled, grounding the canoe at the edge of a tiny clearing, not far from a tumbledown thatch cottage, well hidden from river traffic. There were no people in sight. Had the original owners of the boat been paid for its rental or just slaughtered out of hand? There had been law in that country before the Distlish came and might be some in the future, but there was none at the moment.

The travelers scrambled out and set off in single file along a barely detectable track, slick and ankle-deep in rotting leaves—huge leaves, like heaps of old clothes. The ground on either hand was mossy and fungoid, half hidden under fallen trunks and roots that coiled and looped as constant reminders of snakes. Life rioted amid the odors of decay, with every tree a colony of lesser plants, suckers and parasites, all draped with vines and constantly dripping in the steamy air. Far overhead the forest soared in shadowed vaults, inhabited by flocks of raucous, improbably colorful birds.

Wolf managed to keep up only because he was wearing a stamina bracelet, but it would not support him for long at that pace. He staggered and sweated rivulets. They came at last to a place that was a little more open, although not truly a clearing, and Blood-mirror-walks stopped without warning. He dropped. So did everyone else, and Lynx’s great paw pressed hard on Wolf’s shoulder. He crouched in the weeds like the others.

Blood-mirror-walks touched a hand to the ground and his lips. “I kiss the feet of my lord.”

Only then was Wolf allowed to see the jaguar knight posed in their path. He had not been invisible, exactly, just hidden by a few trailing fronds and dappled shadows that should not have concealed anything at
all. Back in Chivial the Dark Chamber’s spiritual toolbox included an invisibility cloak, but it was unreliable and required long training in a type of mental gymnastics most people found extremely difficult. What Salt-ax-otter had just done did not seem any harder than blinking. There was another warrior behind him, holding spear and shield. And another off to the left…there must be at least a dozen of them.

The knight was magnificent, towering seven feet or more from his furry toes to the tips of his spotted ears. He wore an embroidered loincloth and a sumptuous full-length feathered cloak, which hung equally from both shoulders, exposing a jaguar pendant of jade and silver on his chest. Plumed-pillar would have looked like this before his battle with Fell and Lynx.

“Speak,” he said.

“As my lord commanded, so it is.”

“You are valorous and worthy, having been dutiful when there was no honor to be gained.” The knight’s voice was distorted like Lynx’s, yet it carried resonance and power.

“Glorious are the words of my lord.” Blood-mirror-walks rose. One by one his men performed the touch-ground-and-kiss-hand gesture, then stood up, keeping eyes respectfully lowered. And so, when it was their turn, did Dolores and Wolf. The only exception was Lynx, who had remained standing all along.

“This is my father’s son, terror of the night,” he said, “and his wife, the acolyte.”

The man-cat did not answer. It must be Wolf’s turn.

“We are honored to meet the dread Salt-ax-otter, and bring greetings from our king.”

The Jaguar looked to Blood-mirror-walks. “We could hear them coming all the way from the river. Carry them both.”

“As my lord commands.”

Wolf flopped down on the soggy ground to rest. Dolores joined him and Lynx squatted on his heels, which left him as high as he would be on a chair.

“What
is
the problem?” Wolf asked.

Lynx growled. “Enemies everywhere.”

“Those prisoners we saw—there has been a battle?”

“Many battles. Fighting’s going on everywhere from the coast to El Dorado.”

So much for Flicker and Heron-jade. This was no time for non-combatants to be wandering around Tlixilia.

“You can’t just whistle up an Eagle?”

Lynx said, “Don’t want to attract attention. The enemy has Eagles too.”

“That’s a good second reason. What’s the first reason?”

Silence. Cat eyes stared at Wolf as if their owner was planning how to skin him. How much of the old Lynx was left inside the new Jaguar?

Unnerved, Wolf said, “Not enough prisoners, maybe?”

Lynx licked the back of a paw and wiped his whiskers. “Don’t ask too many questions, my lord Ambassador. The Pirate’s Son can’t protect you here.” He rose and stalked away.

Wolf looked at Dolores. She bit her lip and said nothing.