Nathan Raine ripped the night vision goggles from his face, spitting out a curse as the eruption of firelight seared his retinas. Before he could do or say anything, however, a razor-edged ball sliced through the air above his head, taking a lock of black hair with it.
“Might want to keep your head down,” King warned.
“You think?!” He glanced about at his surroundings, now lit up by the fire glow, his vision quickly having to adapt from the muted, other-worldly green glow of the NVGs to the intense blazing red of the cavern. “What the hell’s going on, Benny?” he demanded.
“You walked us smack bang into the middle of a Mayan Ball Game. And not just any ball game,” he added. “A ball game in the Mayan Underworld.”
Raine could only think of one thing to say. “Oops.”
Down the far end of the avenue, one of the Chinese soldiers panicked and made a run for the curtain of fire blocking off the entrance. Whatever it was he intended to do when he got there, he didn’t have a chance to demonstrate. One of the razor-edged balls slammed with colossal force into the back of his head, pummelling his skull and splashing out brain matter and gore. He fell forward, into the intense fire and, somehow still alive for a fraction of a second after impact, gave out the most blood-curdling scream Raine had ever heard.
“Well, I guess that way is out of the question,” he said, glancing at an identical wall of fire blocking the other exit.
So close!
Another ball whistled above him, hit the far wall and bounced back. “Whoa!” He jumped out of its path, watched it until its inertia died and it rolled down a groove, into a hole at the base of the wall to be, no doubt, reloaded.
“Any ideas?” he asked King.
“Hey, you’re the super-duper action hero. You come up with something.”
Gunfire rattled from the far end as one of the Chinese soldiers tried firing at a ball. But the balls were not hollow and could not be burst. The solid lumps of rubber weighed in excess of nine pounds. At least the flying balls of death were keeping them distracted, however.
“Okay,” he said to King. Another ball flew out. He tracked it and both men crawled out of its path. “Tell me about these ball games. What’s the big deal?”
“You mean, other than the balls of razor sharp metal?”
Despite outward displays to the contrary, Raine was not a stupid man. He had been in enough tight situations to know that he needed to utilise every possible asset. The biggest asset in any situation was knowledge. Right now, he needed King’s knowledge.
“Ben!” he snapped.
“Okay, okay,” King struggled to wrap all his thoughts together. “The Mayan Ball Game, or Mesoamerican actually. Um, it’s called Tlatchtli in Náhuatl—”
“Something useful, Benny,” Raine urged, rolling to the left as a ball shot to his right.
“I’m trying, I’m trying!” he rubbed his tired eyes hard with the palm of his hand, trying to focus, then he looked up and took in his surroundings. “Okay, up there, I’m guessing they’re the twelve lords of Xibalba.” He pointed to the very top of the enormous walls at six statues on either side, sitting in thrones. While some distance away, he could make out the depictions of tortured human beings carved into the thrones, while the statues themselves depicted the personifications of the lords: Hun-Came (One Death) and Vucub-Came (Seven Death); Xiquiripat (Flying Scab) and Cuchumaquic (Gathered Blood); Ahalpuh (Pus Demon) and Ahalgana (Jaundice Demon); Chamiabac (Bone Staff) and Chamiaholom (Skull Staff); Ahaalmez (Sweepings Demon) and Ahaltocob (Stabbing Demon); and finally, Xic (Wing) and Patan (Packstrap).
They sat atop the cornice, below which the slanting eighty-foot high ‘Apron’ walls depicted scenes of human sacrifice.
“These are the ‘Bench Walls’,” he indicated the vertical walls rising twenty feet above the ‘Playing Area’. About six feet up their sides were twelve holes, spaced out underneath the statue of each Lord, six to a side. From these, the vicious balls were spat, as though propelled by the Mayan demons. Another twelve holes at ground level directed the balls back inside.
“The Ball Game was much more than football is to the British, or baseball is to you Yanks,” he explained, dodging another ball. A cry from the Chinese followed the near severing of an arm. “It was a deep, spiritual ritual, played for at least three thousand years, though I’m guessing this place is older than that. Sometimes it was just played for fun, but often it was associated with battle and with human sacrifice — the losers would quite literally lose their heads.”
“Soccer hooligans, huh?”
“In myth, the Xibalbans took it one step further. They used a ball, covered with razors, to injure, humiliate, and eventually kill the players. They killed Hun-Hunahpu, the father of the Hero Twins, the central heroes of the Popol Vuh… the Mayan bible,” he very crudely answered Raine’s quizzical look. “The Hero Twins eventually came to Xibalba and were challenged by the Lords to a Ball Game.”
“Did they win?” Another ball bounced against the far side and almost slammed back into King’s shoulder, missing by an inch.
“Uh… not really. They allowed themselves to be defeated and eventually killed, so that they could return to life and trick the Lords.”
“So, you’re saying we’ve got to die to win?”
King frowned, not liking what he was saying any more than Raine.
“How was the game played?”
A bouncing ball nearly took out Raine’s leg as King answered. “No one knows for sure. There were probably two teams who had to stick to their own side of the court. If it was anything like the modern day descendant, uluma, it was a bit like volley ball, only without the net. The teams had to bounce the ball to one another using only their hips until one team didn’t return it.”
“So it doesn’t always involve shooting razor-sharp balls jettisoned from holes in the wall?”
“No.”
Raine cursed, unsure of how King’s knowledge benefited them after all. He considered trying to block the holes on the ground, but even if they could prevent the balls from shooting at them, they would still be trapped within the fiery gates with half a dozen pissed off Chinese soldiers!
But then, gazing up, he noticed a further series of holes in the Bench Walls, again six to a side, only these were almost at the top, twenty feet above the ground.
“What are they for?” he asked.
King looked. While the holes shooting the balls were designed to look like the mouth of a snarling jaguar, the higher holes were worked into carvings of snakes.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “On several ruined courts, archaeologists have found protruding stone rings. Theoretically, if a player got the ball through the ring — almost impossible considering they were twenty feet off the ground — then it would be an instant win.”
Raine stared at the holes for several more seconds. “It’s not volleyball,” he realised. “Its basketball.”
Then, before King could protest, Raine rose to his full height, spinning the assault rifle he carried so that he held the barrel. Like a baseball bat, he swung the rifle’s stock at a ball as it hurtled towards him.
The ball and the rifle struck with a metallic clang, before the rubber bounced off the weapon and hit the wall. It came back at Raine and he changed his position, ducking as another ball rushed at him from behind—
The hilt of the sixteenth century cutlass struck the second ball and sent it rebounding back. King felt the jar of impact shudder through his muscular shoulders and then stood back to back with Raine, each of them parrying against the flying balls of death.
“Are they insane?” Lieutenant Xan muttered in Mandarin as he watched the two men play the ancient ball game.