Horn Lance yawned and rubbed the back of his neck as he stepped out the Men’s House door. The faintest hint of dawn grayed the eastern horizon. A ring of Natchez warriors, their weapons at hand, slept in a semicircle between the structure and the open plaza. Bitter Wood, the squadron second, hunched in the misty morning, back braced against the Men’s House wall as he kept watch.
“Good morning, Lord,” the war second greeted.
“You have seen the ahau?”
“He’s around back. Had his medicine kit.”
Horn Lance nodded his thanks and walked quietly around the building. The Men’s House was built upon a low mound, barely enough to lift it above plaza height. On the apron of dirt in the rear, Thirteen Sacred Jaguar was removing the last of his clothes. Beside him stood Burning Ant, his hands clenched on the kukul’s staff. The carved image of Waxaklahun Kan snarled at the reddening horizon, the War Serpent’s fangs gleaming as if bloody in the light.
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar neatly folded his breechcloth and laid it aside. He spread a red, yellow, black, and white blanket on the beaten grass. A small ceramic pot, its sides painted in the k’ak b’utz hieroglyphs for fire and smoke, rested beside his blood-letting kit. Glowing embers were visible within the small pot. A small ball of pom incense burned before him, its aromatic smoke rising in a blue plume.
“Greetings, Ahau. Are you prepared for the day?”
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar shot him a brief glance, then knelt naked on his blanket. “Offerings must be made. Last night I held vigil for the Nine Lords of Death. This morning I send offerings to the Thirteen Lords of the heavens. If I am to succeed here in this nest of ignorant monkeys, the Powers of both Kan and Xibalba as well as the will of the gods must be with me.”
“My travels have laid the groundwork for several valuable allies, Ahau. As in all things, there must be a beginning. A seed planted. At both Horned Serpent House and Evening Star House I have made the fertile suggestions that opportunity exists for the other Houses. I will follow up with them again after a uinal has passed.”
A uinal marked twenty days, a basic unit in the Mayan calendar.
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar nodded, his eyes on the brightening horizon as he removed a sheet of juna from his sacred snake-skin bag.
Horn Lance could see the prayer, its hieroglyphs carefully drawn. The different colors of ink added their Power to the words themselves.
“Fertility?”
“I am hoping that this very night I will do some planting of my own. The prayer asks that the Zero-One Portal where the Canoe of Life opens in the northern sky will produce a new soul. That it will join with my semen as I take this ugly woman.”
The lord referred to the northern terminus of the great white band of stars in the night sky. It was believed that there, in the constellation the Itza and Yucatec knew as the Cracked Turtle Shell, souls reentered the world from the realm of the Dead.
“May it be so, Ahau.”
He watched respectfully as Thirteen Sacred Jaguar spread his knees, placing the juna with its prayer hieroglyphics on the blanket so that he straddled it. Then he laid his sacred stingray spine beside his right knee.
Humming a prayer, Thirteen Sacred Jaguar raised his hands and eyes to the eastern horizon.
The first spectators, having risen early, caught sight of the Itza where he continued to pray, hands raised. They were pointing, calling to each other. Others appeared, rounding the society houses and temples that packed the space around the Men’s House.
Walking to the Men’s House front, Horn Lance called, “Second, if you could rouse a couple of the men, Thirteen Sacred Jaguar is in prayer. People have started to approach. If we don’t keep them back the ahau will be mobbed.”
“Yes, Lord.” The Natchez yawned and began kicking his warriors awake.
Horn Lance returned to the rear, relieved when the first of the Natchez warriors created a protective ring around the Itza as he earnestly prayed to the rising sun.
More people arrived, a crowd building.
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar’s voice continued to rise and fall; as he prayed, his naked body reflected the morning’s orange glow. Cupping the pom smoke in his hands, he bathed his body with it.
The first bright spear of orange sunlight cleared the eastern bluffs. Thirteen Sacred Jaguar shouted in triumph. As the light spilled yellow onto the back of the Men’s House, he reached for the stingray spine.
Horn Lance shot a curious glance at the now-silent crowd.
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar grasped his dangling penis in his left hand, pulling the foreskin out above the glans. He lifted his voice in prayer as he used the sharp point to pierce the foreskin.
An audible gasp rose from the crowd as Thirteen Sacred Jaguar directed his penis over the juna. Blood, the highest form of ch’ulel-laden itz, dripped onto the paper in scarlet starbursts.
Letting his penis bleed, Thirteen Sacred Jaguar lifted the paper, offering it to the sun, to the four directions. With his left hand he reached for the k’ak b’utz pot and poured hot embers onto the paper. Holding it just so, he blew. The embers reddened before the juna burst into flames.
“Rise, sacred smoke!” Thirteen Sacred Jaguar cried in Itza. “Take my prayer and my offering to the thirteen heavens. Tonight, as I join my wife, let a soul come to our union! With the sacrifice of my blood, born of my pain, hear me!”
Within moments, flames consumed the parchment, and a spiral of gray smoke rose toward the morning. Several tendrils Danced along the kukul’s fanged face before weaving their way through the gaping jaws and vanishing as if inhaled by the war god’s ch’ulel.
The crowd seemed stunned, having never seen the like of it. Yes, let the word travel. Let the Morning Star wonder. Horn Lance could not care less if the Zero-One Portal spit out a soul to join Thirteen Sacred Jaguar’s semen. An heir would eventually come. If not tonight, then sometime in the coming year.
It was the crowd he wanted. And the story they would tell about the remarkable offering the Itza had made on the day of his wedding. Yes, let that go from lip to lip. The most Powerful of weapons were not always yaotlatquitl in the hands of dedicated warriors, but the questions in the common man’s mind.