Slick Rock squatted on his heels, his arms braced on his knees, a smug satisfaction almost radiating. It could be seen in his eyes, in the set of his mouth and the lift of his eyebrows. The slight smile distorted his facial tattoos. Bruises were fading on his hide, white edges having formed on some of the older scabs. He’d pulled his thick black hair into a bun and pinned it with turkey-bone skewers.
His only movement was the slow flexing of his hands, fingers extending, then tightening, rearranging the pattern of old scars on his knuckles as the tendons rose.
Seven Skull Shield would have conjured his best murderous glare, but the brutal pain in his head sapped him of the will, let alone the energy.
He’d awakened on the dirt floor of a Panther Clan council house. Or so he assumed given the building’s round shape, the low benches around the periphery, and the cat images drawn on the poorly plastered walls. A cold fire pit filled with gray ash lay between him and Slick Rock. Three scruffy and scrawny-looking men dressed in worn breechcloths hunkered to the side, watching him with bored stares. A hot shaft of white midday sunlight poured through the oversized smoke hole, its brilliance doing nothing good for the searing pain in Seven Skull Shield’s broken head.
He’d already tried the ropes that bound him up like a trussed bear. All he’d managed to accomplish in the struggle was to pull hide from his wrists and ankles. Each time he strained against the bindings, it augmented the agony in his head by a factor of ten.
“You really are going to regret this.” He studied Slick Rock through slitted eyes. “Every time you’ve taken me on, you’ve come out second best.”
“So I’ve noticed.” Slick Rock’s fingers spread and closed again, as if squeezing the air into a tiny ball. “Which is why you’re lying on the floor, a lump the size of a goose’s egg on the back of your head. Given your expression, it hurts just to breathe. Which is just an itty bitty hint of the pain, horror, and misery waiting for you when I finally get you to Horn Lance.”
“Where am I?”
“River Mounds City.” Slick Rock rubbed his palms together, the callused skin making a rasping noise. “Waiting for dark.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I’m not an idiot. The Keeper’s got spies all over. I’ve gotta get you to Horn Lance without anyone the wiser.”
“And how you gonna do that?”
“By learning from you, you big maggot. Got ten Panther Clan men gonna bring a canoe up just after dark. We’re gonna whack you in the head again to remind you to be quiet. Then we’re gonna toss your meat into the canoe and carry it to Horn Lance’s.” His smile widened. “Clever, huh? Just like you did with that foreign warrior last spring. The one you smuggled to the Keeper’s.”
Slick Rock tilted his head in enjoyment. “The idea of doing to you just like you did to others brings a unique pleasure to my heart, you loud-mouthed piece of maggot crap.”
Seven Skull Shield worked his tongue around his mouth. “You got any water?”
Slick Rock looked at a leather bag off to one side. “I do. But not for you. It’s probably the only favor I’m doing for you. Letting you thirst and starve.”
“How’s that a favor?”
“Do you think that even as much as I hate and despise you, that I’d let Horn Lance torture you to death without giving you a chance to work up to what’s coming? Just let you start suffering without any preparation whatsoever? What kind of a man do you think I am, anyway?”
“You’ve kicked over a pile of manure before?” Seven Skull Shield asked.
“Of course.”
“Then you’ve seen the little white worms? The ones that tunnel through the shit and end up down at the bottom pile, where it’s wet and moldy? That’s the kind of man you are.”
Slick Rock’s smile only grew wider while the man’s eyes narrowed to menacing slits.
Seven Skull Shield asked, “How much did you give Wooden Doll for giving me up?”
“That part was too easy. I just had to crawl between her legs. At the feel of a real man she melted. Offered me everything she had if I’d just stay with her forever. Instead I pulled out and told her I’d never slip it back in again if she didn’t send me word the minute you showed up.” He glanced absently off to the side, as if considering. “I imagine she’s panting right now. Wondering what’s keeping me.”
“You’re a lying pile of fly-infested vomit. What did you Trade her for me?”
Slick Rock shrugged. “Two shell necklaces.”
Something deep inside Seven Skull Shield went hollow.
Reading his expression, Slick Rock added, “You really are something. You actually thought you meant something to her?” Then he chuckled. “You self-deluded fool. I can’t wait to tell this story to the others. We’ll be laughing our guts out for the rest of our lives.”
Seven Skull Shield gritted his teeth, wincing at the pain it triggered.
“I never thought victory could taste like this—a delight to be tucked into the heart for eternal joy.”
“Oh, it can indeed,” a voice called from the door. A big man with Fish Clan tattoos on his face ducked into the room. He carried a war club, his hair done up in a bun. A beaded forelock, denoting a blooded warrior, hung down over his nose.
Four more warriors followed, crowding in around Seven Skull Shield. One of them leveled a war club at Slick Rock’s henchmen, ordering, “Get out. And if we see you again, you’ll wish we hadn’t.”
“Who are you?” Slick Rock demanded, rising warily to his feet, his right hand dropping to a deer-bone stiletto at his belt.
“Admirers of yours.” The Fish Clan warrior smacked the stone head of his war club against the hardened palm of his left hand. “You’ve sent a runner to Horn Lance? Told him you’ve caught the thief?”
Slick Rock nodded, eyes flicking back and forth in his uncertainty. “You are in his service?”
“After a fashion.”
“I don’t know what that means. Why are you here?”
The Fish Clan warrior spread his arms wide in mockery. “Like I said, we’re admirers of yours. We’re here in admiration of the tricky way you caught the thief. We just wanted to thank you, tell you how much we appreciate it, and how impressed we are.”
Slick Rock’s wariness mixed with confusion. “I don’t understand. If you’re not Horn Lance’s … then whose men are you?”
The big warrior shrugged. “You didn’t really think that you’d be the only one with an interest in the thief, did you? Now, we’ve told you how much we appreciate you grabbing him for us—which, given the circumstances, is more than we needed to do. So if you’ll just disappear we’ll consider it a token of the high regard we hold you in and call it even.”
“I’m not giving up the thief! I’ve got Trade coming!”
A grin split the Fish Clan man’s broad face and exposed peg-like teeth, some of them broken. “I just explained that part. You get to live. That is, you do if you trot those feet of yours out the door, out of River Mounds City, and we don’t see you again. If we do, our first thought is that you didn’t appreciate our kind gesture. We’d take that as an insult. Something happens when we’re insulted. We just lose all sense of restraint.”
Even as he said it the other warriors began to nod in agreement and growl under their breaths. War clubs made a hollow popping as they were slapped suggestively into cupped hands.
Seven Skull Shield, his heart hammering, drove a swallow down his dry throat. At the same time, Slick Rock looked like a man in agony as he shot glances at Seven Skull Shield and then back at the Fish Clan warrior.
“I guess you didn’t appreciate the depth and sincerity of our offer, which means you think we’re shit,” the Fish Clan man said with a deep and supposedly heartfelt sigh. He turned to the man behind him, asking, “I think we’re insulted. What should we do?”
“Can’t let that go, Squadron First. Gotta kill him.” The man took a step forward, dropping into a crouch, his war club at the ready.
“Wait!” Slick Rock raised his hands, edging away. “It’s all right! I’m going. He’s all yours.”
With that, he scuttled around the curved wall and ducked out through the door.
The big Fish Clan warrior stared thoughtfully at the door; the hanging swung in Slick Rock’s wake. “Guess he appreciated us after all.”
“Good to see you,” Seven Skull Shield told the man amiably. “The sooner you cut me loose, the quicker you can take your pick of the Keeper’s finest Trade. She’s a most generous woman.”
“I’m sure she is,” a familiar voice called from the doorway. “But I’m afraid there’s a complication.”
Seven Skull Shield twisted his head to stare over his shoulder. A renewed blast of pain brought tears to his eyes, but through the shimmer he could see Flat Stone Pipe.
“What’s the complication?”
Flat Stone Pipe sighed, extending his small hands. “I’m sorry, old friend. It’s just that in politics, the structure of influence and authority continually changes. When that happens, prudence dictates new alliances. Horn Lance and the Itza have offered Evening Star House certain concessions in return for our support. Disagreeable as it may seem, that includes you.”
“I saved Columella’s children that day! But for me and the Keeper, they’d have burned! I was going back for Chief High Dance when the roof collapsed!”
“We are more than aware.” Flat Stone Pipe actually looked torn. “Which is one of the reasons political reality has such an ugly aspect. Unfortunately, it is just the way things are.”
He pointed at the Fish Clan warrior. “Squadron First, I assume you can secret the thief across the river to the location I have specified?”
“I can, Lord.”
“Oh,” Flat Stone Pipe added, “and could you send a runner to inform the good Horn Lance that despite what he may have heard from less-reliable sources, Seven Skull Shield is safely under our control?”
“Yes, Lord.”
Head reeling, Seven Skull Shield felt himself lifted. A thick mat was rolled out beneath him. They let him drop, the impact blasting his head apart with pain.
Within a heartbeat they had him rolled up in the mat, lifted, and he felt himself being borne from the council house.
“I saved her children!” he bellowed in disbelief.
A war club thumped hard against his ribs, the matting barely dulling the blow.
“Quiet! The next time I have to whack you, I’m breaking bones. And thief, hanging from a square when your bones are broken is even more excruciating. The sharp ends stick out through the skin. I hear it really hurts.”