Bright red tomatoes and sweet potatoes, fat, ripe squashes and juicy beans, avocado pears, plums, papaya, all were spread in colorful profusion before them.
A drink prepared from the cacao bean, boiled with chili pepper before the eyes of the guests and stirred into a froth with a carved stick, was served in great wooden cups.
There was honey, too, in abundance. The only thing Neil missed was bread.
And then the dancing started when they sat back after their meal.
Drumsticks began beating a lively tattoo on various types of drums-a large, slitted, horizontal drum and small round drums, as well as tall, thin ones. Several musicians pounded on turtle shells. A series of flutes, reed, bone, wood, shrieked into being. Large conch shells were pressed to the lips of musicians and blared forth as trumpets. Whistles screamed and calabash mouthpieces were fitted into wooden trumpets. And there were rattles, and together with the rest of the instruments they beat out a wild rhythm while the dancers whirled and gyrated in the center of the square formed by the tables.
The dancers formed a circle, linking hands. Two of the troupe leaped to the center of the circle, one of them armed with slender lances. He drew these back and snapped them across the circle at his partner, his muscles gleaming in the light of the torches, his feet stamping on the paved court in time to the drumbeat. His partner squatted, his feet moving rhythmically, parrying the lances as they came with a small shield no wider than a pole.
Neil watched in fascination as the men in the ring leaped into the air, their feet flashing. The dancers swarmed around them dizzily, their voices raised in a wailing chant. The drums increased in tempo, their beats resounding against the stone building behind Neil. The trumpets blasted loud and clear, shattering the night air with their stridency.
And then, above all this, sounded a shriek, a vicious shriek that electrified the air. It grew in volume, and was joined by many voices raised in shouts and cries.
The dancers stopped, the music trailing off to a weak moan behind them.
Talu leaped to his feet in the glare of the torchlight.
He shouted orders at the Mayas just as a group of unkempt, dirty, leering men burst into the courtyard, spears and daggers bristling from their arms.
Another scream, a scream that could be nothing but a battle cry, wrenched through the night.
Chapter 9
Battle of Blood
The scream seemed to hang in the court like the tattered fragment of a shredded banner. And then, instantly, the Mayas were on their feet, tables overturned, lush, ripe fruit spilling to the ground like colored beads ripped from a necklace. Torches were ripped from the wall, flashing through the night air with the brilliancy of screaming rockets. There was the thud of heavy wood against solid stone, the voices of the women raised in frightened cries, the hoarse cries of the men as they reached for weapons, swords slithering from belts, spears rattling, slings unfurled.
Shields were raised, and sweating torsos gleamed in the light of the torches now smoldering on the stone floor of the court.
The invaders were small, dark, squat men with the bodily appearance and coarse black hair of the Mayas. They bore crude weapons, and they screamed lustily as they charged forward across the court. And yet, in spite of the resemblance to the Mayas, there was something different about them. Their hair was longer, matted and twisted, and their bodies were covered with filth. They were almost naked except for tattered, dirty loin-cloths slung haphazardly about their waists. They were barefoot, too, and they ran with the swiftness of a people hardened to a life of wilderness.
It was almost as if Neil were looking at two sides of the same race: one civilized and the other barbaric.
The word barbarian had barely crossed his mind when he felt Talu’s slender hand tug impatiently at his arm. Neil turned, and the priest beckoned with his finger. Swiftly Neil followed the old man. Dave and Erik ran after them, along with the other unarmed Norsemen. Talu led them into a stone building resting on a low mound of earth. To Neil’s surprise, three Maya soldiers immediately took positions before the single entrance, their spears raised.
“I don’t get it,” Dave said.
“I imagine they’re trying to protect us,” Neil suggested. “We’re their guests, you know.”
“Those other guys don’t strike me as being nice playmates,” Dave said wryly.
The Mayas and the barbarians seemed to pause momentarily, like players in a tennis match, surveying their opponents for a brief, respectful moment.
Their weapons gleamed dully in the flickering torchlight, and their faces appeared drawn and tired, the way the faces of men in war always look.
Suddenly the battle burst like a balloon filled with blood. There was an insane rush by the barbarians, their feet padding across the court, their voices raised in wild threat. Onward they charged, screaming all the way, their weapons waving over their heads, their bodies sweating freely. They were horsemen without horses, wild in the fanaticism of their reckless charge.
The Mayas held their ground like a solid stone wall, spears extended, swords ready, faces impassive. The barbarians crashed into that wall with the strength of a runaway bull. The wall bent in the middle, swayed backward, and then surged forward again.
The barbarians retreated a little way, then turned and charged again, pitting their frenzy against the stolidity of the Mayas, their faces impassive as the barbarians swooped down again. Swords flashed and screams tore the night. The wall held for an instant, like a frayed rope about to split, and then it ripped apart, men scattering, arms flaying wildly, legs thrashing.
Neil watched as the great battle began in earnest. Man pitted himself against man in a sweating, bleeding, furious struggle.
The Mayas fought in little groups, their arms swinging swords, spears jabbing out, spilling barbarian blood. The barbarians, on the other hand, were like a flooding stream that rushed over everything without direction, without purpose.
Four shaggy, half-naked men seized a Maya and pinned him against the stone wall, their swords slashing again and again until the man hung like a tattered cloth. They turned, the blood fresh on their hands and their swords, swept across the court to where a group of Mayas were battering away at the barbarians who had surrounded them. They leaped over the heads of their fellow men, crashed into the Mayas, two meeting instant death on the tips of spears, the others flailing wildly with their swords.
Then, bursting into the court with a fresh band of heavily padded soldiers, was the captain with the scar on his face, the one Talu had called Baz.
His face was grim, and the scar stood out in vivid relief against the tautness of his cheeks. The light flickered over his face like the fires of hell on the face of a demon.
“Baz!” the cry went up from the Mayas. “Baz!”
Like a fury unleashed, he slashed across the court, his sword cutting a wide swath around him, barbarians falling like grains of wheat before the power of his thrashing arm. His soldiers stamped along behind him, caught in the fire of his charge, men fighting for their city and their home.
A terrible grin split Baz’s face in two, and his teeth gleamed, his eyes like two fiery coals embedded in his head. He shouted, his voice tearing through the night like the scream of a motherless coyote. He burst into a group of barbarians, lifting them, throwing them, slicing, cutting, gouging, kicking. The barbarians dispersed, regrouped and charged across the court again.
But this time the Mayas were strong behind the leadership of the screaming, bloodthirsty Baz. Like a tireless machine, they rolled across the court, the barbarians falling before their sharp swords and spears. The stones ran red, and their feet splashed in the blood and they forced the invaders back, back, killing, furious now in their first taste of victory, anxious to annihilate the foe, anxious to pound him into the very stones underfoot.